The Celebrations Are Complete....For Now

So today was the last hoorah of this amazing weekend. What first? K- it's officially JMoney's birthday today....
The morning was relatively uneventful. He had a paper to write. Brad and I had to wake up.
Bridget...I think B-ridge was watching a movie.
Moving on...
John arrived at 5:30. For Presents!! From me and Bridget. Who got him a cool poster and sweet pics of (who else?) us all to hang on his barren bachelor walls.
Then.. off to Sprinkles for the 2nd best cupcakes I've ever had. Shout out still to Lilly Jane's. Banana. Lemon. Dark Chocolate. Caramel Apple. Or Pumpkin. The jury is still out on that one.
Cupcakes into a box. It's time for dinner.
Dinner was Kona Grill. I had 3 sushi rolls. There was Pad Thai. There was macadamia-crusted chicken. There was salmon. All very tasty. Sprinkles were cut in quarters and shared. All was so delicious that one picture was all that got taken. Too much distraction.

These are John's roommates, who had never before graced us with their presence. Something about law school, I think. Anyways, fun guys. Fun times.
Then to Family Home Evening for a quick stop to check out the scenery and drop pumpkins from the roof of the parking garage. Also quick stop to see our new friend Brad in the Econ building.
And last, but certainly not least, to a sweet restaurant recently visited by Bridget. AZ-88 for Letitia's birthday, sent from the Spirit World the same exact day as John. And almost as amazingly cool.

So AZ-88 is yet another sexy sexy Scottsdale addition to the food scene. How sexy you ask? The girls' bathroom says "SHE." The guys'? "HE/SHE" yup. I think you're starting to get it. By that time we were so stuffed we only managed a fruit and cheese platter with a little butterscotch dipping sauce.
The place was happenin' (because of Letitia's huge group of friends!) and a great time was had by all. Brad missed out on most of the pictures chattin' it up at the other end of the table, but Bridget, John, and I had to check out the concrete chaise lounge on the patio. And the red bench. And kiss John's face. And watch him give a toast to him and Letitia. With water. Lotsa mormons.











And what birthday is complete without a little posing by the LOVE sculpture?

Oh, LoLo.

So Candice's 27th birthday was on Friday. John's 26th is tomorrow. How serendipitous! What could be done to fully appreciate this excellent turn of events? What could possibly do justice to celebrate the birth of two of my favorite people of all time?

A little background. John is from LA, as I'm sure you remember. It is in LA that Roscoe's chicken and waffles is located. Chicken and waffles you say? What do you mean? What do I mean? I mean fried chicken and delicious waffles on the SAME plate. This is apparently, "soul food." It is served in places where there is a dominant African-American population. This appeals to John not only because he is from LA, but also because he served his mission in Detroit. Where he was the only white kid for miles. 

Fast forward Fall 2008. John and I talk a few months ago about chicken & waffles. I am fascinated. I want to experience this. Luckily, LoLo's is in town. Yep, that's right. Phoenix has a little Roscoe's of their own. Lolo's Chicken & Waffles. A perfect place to celebrate a birthday or two. 

Candice (my little sister) and her husband and two darling children came down for this. (Ok, and maybe to get a car, but let's focus here)... She was none-too-excited, but mercifully chill about this possibly interesting experience.

The outside didn't help. It's down a dark street. With a few bars on the windows. In downtown Phoenix. 

The inside did. What a beautiful awesome, delicious, and fun experience!! Where do we start? With the "Watch yo' Step" sign in the front?

The "Got Milk? Well, LoLo's Do" line on the menu?

 The Red Kool-aid Drank in Mason Jars?


The succulent candied sweet potatoes? The fried okra (which wasn't quite as good as mine)? The most delicious waffles I've ever had?

Or the cheesy eggs with onions? Or the Home Fries? Or the pecan pie for the birthdays? Okay, I'll just show you the pictures. I can't handle it. John at one point asked if I ordered one of everything. The answer was basically yes. Because besides most of this, I also had grits. I took the leftovers home and had eggs, waffles, and Candy Sweets for breakfast this morning.

Lolo's waffles are even tasty on day 2. Oh, so exciting. 

Oh, and this is how the night basically ended. Awww.

What Not to Wear. Oh, and The Curb.

I am going to post these pictures of what happened Friday night, but you have to go to Ariana's blog because SHE was the star of this show. I just need to publicly thank her for having such a keen eye and seeing on the MACY's ad who was coming to Scottsdale. And What Not to Wear affects my life again. (Oh, and, as a side note, my road rash is healing just fine, despite being constantly barraged by hospital bacterial infestations. I think I'll get my bike checked out tomorrow.) The eating out occurred after the show. This picture, I think, captures a little of John's LA-ness and a lot of Ariana's perma-grin that didn't stop ALL night long. :o)

And.

This is the very tiny curb I tried to ride over. Again,

 this does not work.

Poisonous Thorns & Ambulances

So this story requires a little background. Sorry if it's a little long.
For the last 3 months, I've now been riding my bike to work pretty consistently. Not everyday, but about two out of three days, and it's generally gone very well. I think all the time of you, my readers, and I think of all the interesting things I could point out to you. And then I think that perhaps they are just interesting because I'm on my bike and looking for interesting things. For example, the Church of the White Birds. This is what I called in my head the group of utterly silent white birds gazing upon one solitary white bird on the shore of the lake. Doing nothing. Meditating, perhaps? Who knows. Or I could tell you about the trees I pass with green leaves and green trunks. Or the fact that I passed 13 bikers one day before one finally waved or said hi, and she was a cute Asian about my age and she always says hi. And I love it. Or even the cool egret I saw swallow a huge fish right before I took this picture. But my favorite thing so far would have to be the, "Feels Good, Don't It?!" guy. He's probably in his 50's and I've passed him twice in the mornings playing Ultimate Frisbee. (Or Spinning...not exactly sure on this point...) Anyways, I passed him the first time in a super-awesome mood on a gorgeous morning and he looked at me and shouted, "Feels Good, Don't It!" Caught up in the bliss of it all I yelled, in a much higher pitch than expected, "It feels awesome!!" Yep. Queen of Coolness. And the next week when the same thing happened, I just giggled and said Good Morning. But I love the Feels Good, Don't It Guy. 

On to the Gypsy. This is Bridget's bike.

She blogged about it last week, and her friend from Argentina bought it for her. As in, Bridget, hey, I called around and bought your bike over the phone. Go pick it up. Holy crap. Beautiful bike. Beautiful Bike that only fits in the Bel Air. So I was called in for back-up. This was on Saturday. A day that was supposed to be filled with errands and was instead filled with riding beach cruisers (I borrowed Bridget's roommate's red one) along the sidewalks, ignoring traffic rules and wearing and eating ring pops and drinking out of the water bottles in our baskets. It involved biking 4 miles to John's house and talking him into joining us. It involved him spending 6 hours with us instead of taking the nap he deserved. It may have involved me biking directly into a tree with a branch full of poisonous thorns hanging off of it and scratching my forehead all up. Maybe just up. But still, it gave me a headache. So I think they must have been poisonous. I talked to an old lady 2 days ago who said they might have been. What that story comes down to is 1) I am a klutz on a bike and 2) That was an awesome awesome day. 

Moving on... to Wednesday night. Biking to work. Looking for a little detour to avoid some more cars. Because I'm always scared of the cars. Attempting to stroll onto an itty bitty 2.5 inch curb. Faced with the reality that road bike tires never ever stroll onto curbs. What they do is crash people on their faces onto the asphalt when they try to stroll onto curbs. Leaving them quite a bit embarrassed and scratched up in the parking lot of Enterprise Rent-a-Car. And washing up in their bathroom. 

But with this awesome irony. A guy who watched me crash literally offered to call an ambulance for me. I just laughed. "Well, I'm actually a nurse on my way to work at the hospital, so I'll be there anyway. Don't worry about it." He just sat there in stunned silence and I got on my bike and rode away. 

And by the way, my arm burned like mad in the wind all the way to work. And I got a tiny hole in my super awesome yoga pants. 

But wow, what a way to start the work week. 1/4 mile from my house. 

(Do you love the pathetic, traumatized, somewhat-in-shock look on my face in this picture?) 

Now I'm off to bed! Why do you people keep me up so late?!

Off to WOFT

I neglected to mention a few weeks ago (while I was in California) that Josh graduated from Boot Camp and is now in Warrant Officer Flight Training, which means it's about 100 times cooler. Apparently boot camp wasn't exactly what he was expecting. It seems we've gone a little soft in recent times. But the grenades were cool. Yep. Here's a few graduation and beyond pics.
Congratulations!!

Goldilocks is Coming to Town

So I'm going to see Emily Udy's family in Boston (in Salem!) for Halloween. We are going to be Goldilocks and the three bears, which is going to be awesome. And I get to be Goldilocks, which I am very excited about.
However, finding the costume was a little harder than expected. Here were my two options from the internet:



I don't like the blue one, and I don't think I could wear the yellow one to a ward party. Nor do my legs look like that. So, anyways, Brad and I went shopping. Found a pattern. Found some cute material. And now the adventure starts. I've never used a pattern before. I am pretty nervous, and the lady told me that even though most of my skirts are size 6, I had to go by the measurements on the back and make the skirt a size 14 and the top a size 16. This seems a little jacked up to me, but at the retro store we went to in LA, the size 14 from the 60's fit great. I just tell myself that Marilyn Monroe was a 12 in the 50's, and get to cutting. This is going to be one awesome heck of a Halloween.

Brad Turned 24 on Friday

I feel like I dropped the ball this birthday. Maybe it was because last year I set the bar so stinkin' high. See here.
But, it's not like I forgot. My mom did. Until 10pm. My dad did. Until 7pm. Candice did. Until Saturday at noon. But I remembered. And texted him Happy Birthday from work at 3:41 am. And he was awake. 'cause he's my brother.
So what did we do?
Well, I worked Tues, Wed, and Thurs, so I woke up about 4 pm and Brad and I went birthday present/card shopping. I bought him some sweet shorts and myself 4 shirts (THEY WERE ON REALLY GOOD SALE!). And cake mix.
We were going to make dinner, but then got lazy and hungry and went to Delux instead with John & Ariana. It is the sweetest little blue-lit sexy hamburger place ever. Leave it to Scottsdale to make hamburgers sexy. So fun. I'm stealing Ariana's picture for the view. (Her tribute to Brad is on her blog.)
Then we all went home, baked a cake, and decorated it. And by decorate, it said, "Happy 24th Birthday Brad-o." Ariana even blew up 3 red balloons.

It's no poison apples like Maria's little girl. It's no pink hair extensions like Mindy's little girl. Just drill bit-looking candles and chocolate cake.
But Brad, even if this birthday wasn't as freaking awesome as last year, I still think you're cool. And you're the best roommate ever. So thanks for being my twin born 1752 days after me. :o) Love ya.

General Conference Muffin Party

So on Thursday night I get a text from John, "We should get all the homies together for conference and make those healthy muffins." Knowing that never for the rest of my life would I get another text containing both the words "homies" and "muffins," I knew I had to act. See, Women's Health (which is always on my coffee table) had some great recipes for fun muffins that we had talked about making, and this was the perfect opportunity. We invited over like 10 people and made a party out of it. He & I & Ariana all went shopping for the ingredients. Saturday it was just the three of us, but by Sunday, people's schedules had cleared, Brad & Bridget were home from Utah, and we all enjoyed healthy muffins and a healthy dose of spiritual enlightment. I'm sure I will have to go back and review some of the talks, as I did spend a good amount of time in the kitchen, but it was a shockingly reverent but fun group. Yay!!
The recipes are on Candice's & My Dinner Blog. And yep, we made all 3 kinds over the weekend. :o)

Go Back?

So I kept switching back to Ariana's blog and trying to figure out why her pictures looked so great. And then I realized that my template was all squooshed to the center of the page, allowing my pictures no room at all to spread out. So I switched mine to a wider template, but I think I can't decide if I love it or if it feels like an assault to the eyes...or just boring. who knows. Love it or hate it, let me know your opinion. It won't be hard to switch back.

The High Magistrate Returns

So most of you know I got "ordained" online to perform Jessica's wedding in February. Apparently I talked about it enough that one of my co-workers remembered and asked the High Magistrate of the Church of Serendipitous Love to make a return appearance. I hadn't met her fiancee until tonight, but they are darling together, and the wedding was beautiful. Nicole is the bride, and Bridgette is the blonde in the other pictures who works with me, too. And there are more pictures coming!

The Finish Line

More fun pictures on Ariana's Blog!!