Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The anticipated photos!

King size bed! 

Looking at the apt from bedroom door.

living room

View from front door.


patio

view from patio door

kitchen/bar

Gracie is so glad to be out of the car!

She loves her new home...She helped me take the pictures!

View from the entry to the kitchen

Other side of kitchen

view from the kitchen

other view from the kitchen

again

bathroom


other side of bathroom

view from bathroom

Brenna's new couch from Craigslist!  Also made a great friend out of this transaction! Thanks Theresa! 

new love seat with new pillows from World Market

CUTE TV stand from Sequel Resale Shop in downtown Spokane

Awesome new SmartTV! I'm jealous!

View from front door

Again!

Backyard

patio

Had to buy a sign...Gracie is CRAZY

Other way in the backyard

Hallway. Bren's is the one on the right

garages

parking lot out front

Sunday- Are there cops in the west? Or is this speed limit (75) just a suggestion? (85 mph it is then!)


Michala:
Where to even start?  Today has been…interesting…I, Michala, have been failing in EVERYTHING that I do today.  Just call me the bull in the china shop! Taking off from Linnandy’s was a little delayed because I couldn’t drag my butt out of bed.  Brenna had to load the car by herself!  Oops…well, I was supposed to be the navigator but I wasn’t quite prepared and we missed the exit.  Oops.  This, caused us to drive an additional 15 minutes too far north.  We could have just continued on the path we were on but we decided that we would drive through South Dakota (thanks, dad and Meggie, for the suggestion!) we turned Lynette (Brenna’s mom van) around and headed south a tick. Naturally, we had to stop for some Caribou, man they make a mean breakfast sandwich! FINALLY, we made it out of Minneapolis, around 6 am….only a few hours late!  J  Once we got out of the city, it was smooth sailing! 

I didn't get very many pictures out of Minneapolis. It was pretty dark the whole time we were there...I'm waiting on Meggie to send me some pictures from that adventure...mine and Brenna's phones died on the way to the track!






In the span of the day, we have seen flat lands, rolling lands, pink lands, orange lands, dead lands, and BAD lands!  Talk about cool.  
they have dinosaurs in South Dakota!
This is just so cool!
The throwback music makes it even better!  As I said in a previous post, Angela Ervin packed us some awesome food for the road. Because Brenna started driving, I got to prepare breakfast!  Cheerios and fresh strawberries on top…with some dirt mixed in.  Not intentionally, of course! Apparently, I am just doubley left handed and knock everything over!  In the span of 5 minutes I managed to knock over our cereal cups, spill some milk, drop the camera, knock over the water bottles, tipped over the trash can, dropped our phones at least three times, lost the pen, and lost our spoons for the cereal…talk about a rough 5 minutes. Of course Gracie was happy about this because she got to eat all the strawberries and cheerios that ended up on the floor.  There were quite a few of them. 
We finally got to South Dakota…not sure what time, I forgot to look! It felt like we were driving through SD for forever!  Around lunch time we started seeing dinosaurs and signs for a place called Wall Drug.  We weren’t sure what that was but it sounded cool and there were about a million signs for it on the way out.  Not all it was cracked up to be...We stopped and took Gracie in with us...apparently they aren't as concerned with health department codes as they are in Illinois. We were a little worried about her being around all those people, but she did fine! She was pretty anxious, but she didn't growl at or bight anyone!  Good day.  We headed back to the car and Gracie started breathing like a crazy person.  Brenna was freaking out because she thought Gracie was dying.  She just got really over heated.  

We continued on driving for hours after hours. It was a long drive.  We stopped in a little town along the way called Deadwood.  We stopped at a restaurant with a patio so we could take Grace, little did we know, there would be live entertainment!  A fun little band played while we enjoyed our dinner.  It was a nice break from the car.

 

Not much else really happened on the way to Billings, MT. We arrived around 10pm at the Dude Rancher Lodge...Thanks mom. It was totally a "DUDE" Rancher. The sheets weren't even on the bed right. Gross. Brenna and I shared a double bed and let Gracie sleep on the other because it just didn't seem as clean...and she's a dog.  We DID check for bed bugs...we were more than a little concerned.

 FYI- The Glade was the best purchase of this trip….skunks, dog farts, nasty asphalt, it pretty much covers up everything! 
  

Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Last Supper and The tales of the Birdman.

Friday Night-
The Last Supper-
Brenna picks me up from work!

Friday night I got off work at 4 and Brenna picked me up…we were OFF!  We stopped in at mom and dad’s in Rantoul.

Dad makes the most AMAZING enchiladas and as Brenna’s “last supper” at home for a while, he made them for her.  Talk about delicious! On our way in to Rantoul, we stopped at Walmart and bought $49 worth of who-knows-what! 




After dinner, we repacked the car to add some last minute items.  Mom packed us a cooler full of healthy food and snacks for the road so we wouldn’t have to eat out the whole way! 
We ended up leaving for Chicago… only about an hour late!
We finally made it to Lizzie’s apartment; I showered and went to bed because I had to drive first in the morning.  Brenna and Lizzie went out for Sam’s birthday…
  

Gracie and Cleo (Brenna’s dog and Lizzie’s cat) don’t really love each other… but that might be an understatement.


Now over to Brenna: Saturday Morning- Got up a little late… but only about 15 minutes; we were all tired from a long night out!

Gracie isn't ready to be up!


Packing to head out
We had such a great time in Chicago but had to get on our way up north. We left around 5:30am and made great time to Minnesota arriving around 12:45pm! On the way we enjoyed some oldies like Nelly, Sisqo, and some awesome reggaeton. Unfortunately the throwback bliss was interrupted by the was a foul stench leaking from Gracie’s rear end the entire way so our glade spray came in quite handy! Gracie also managed to warded off several scary children for us actually making a little boy cry; crazy girl! Children should NOT run up to scary dogs!!!
Gracie says goodbye to a very sleepy Lizzie.
So early!
 
Once we arrived at Andy and Linnea’s beautiful home in Lakeville Minnesota we quickly changed and freshened ourselves to go to the race tracks. The Extreme Canterbury Races were a blast! This weekend included special races such as a “Camel Dash” and a “Don’t Lay an Egg Ostrich Run.” We made a few individual bets on the Extreme races and I won the Camel Dash bet with “Mayor Camelot” while Meggie won the Ostrich Run with “The Bird Man!” The races were great although we couldn’t win a bet to save our lives… Our losing ticket “pile” turned into more of a mound, but I blame to booze.
 We left the races and moved on to waste our money at The Mall of America, sending the mini-van home with Andy and his matching sunglasses; cute touch Mr. Mom. ;) This was my first time to the massive money eating mall. Luckily I didn’t have much money to spare. I bought 2 king sized pillows at Marshalls for my new comfy bed (I can’t wait to climb into it and never come out!) Since us girls were all starved we went on a mission to find some grub locating a... “Risky Asian” as Linnea would say but I believe it was really called “Stir Crazy” and was not risky at all! Linnea, Michala, and I ordered the “bottomless market grill” that bottomed out after only one large bowl each! Starving right..? haha. Meggie had some awesome sweet and spicy chicken that we all enjoyed as well. While the food was great our waiter was more interested in flirting with the hostess. Lucky for us the manager picked up his slack and we got some free drinks out of it! Let’s just hope the waiter turned out lucky as well because it may have cost him a job! ;)
After dinner we hit the racks at Nordstrom where we spent our last hour of mall time and absolutely no money. We had a pretty great time trying on giant shoes and fuzzy coats though!
Andy, the dog whisperer, told us it was time to come home. He hadn’t made it to the grocery store for our chips and redbull because he couldn’t get Gracie back in her box, nor could he get her on a leash to go outside so he had to endure her raunchy sent! She didn’t enjoy being in a strange house with a bunch of boys she wasn’t familiar with.
In true Minnesota fashion we picked up a bottle of Jaeger and some redbull to enjoy some jaeg-bombs to close out our night. When we arrived we played a quick game, punishing the loser (me) with two jaeg bomb shots right before I headed to bed! Michala continued to play Pictionary and take jaeg-bombs since I was driving first Sunday morning. According to Michala, Linnea is a pretty awesome artist until she draws a picture depicting Meggie and expects us to guess it! The boys ended up winning on a fluke. L Michala ended up going to bed around 2am….no wonder she couldn’t wake up on time! 

The Prep: (To the tune of “To the Left”) To the west to the west, everything I own in the car, headed west!

Brenna:

Gracie's HUGE box!

All packed in...hope she can breathe!
Takes up most of the van! 
Packing was the easy part, fitting everything I own in a mini-van was a different story! While making my moving plans Michala and I explored and exhausted all options deciding our best bet would be to get an SUV or van to haul my life out west. A 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan was the final culprit; “don’t mind the kids in the back.”
OH MY!  Did we REALLY get all that in the car?
space saver bags are GREAT!
Little did I know at the time I purchased them, Space Saver Bags would be my saving grace. This was a great idea taking my bedding, bath and clothing and shrinking it to 1/3 sized solid bricks that stacked fairly well in the back of my mom-mobile. I believe I had a total of 5 XL cubes and several medium and large sealed bags along with a brand new 47” TV, 52” mirror, Large dog cage, 4 Rubbermaid stackable drawers and a tall 3 drawer stand, about 10 medium sized boxes, 2 backpacks, 2 suitcases, 2 girls and a bitch. Everything else I purchased on amazon and had shipped to my new apartment in Spokane WA Including a king sized bed and bed frame, pots and pans, dishes, silverware, baking sheets, knife set, pizza stone.

Pictures are to come....we are having some technical difficulties with them....our phones are JUNK.

UGH.