Indy Post (finally!)

Ok, so I finally posted about our anniversary weekend, but since I started it so long ago, it's a little far down!

So click here and it will take you to the post!

Hope you all had a nice Memorial Day weekend! We had a lot of fun with Taylor's brother and SIL so I'll share pictures from that soon :)

New Responsibilites

You know that saying "with a great rent house comes great responsibilities"? Oh wait, that's not it. I made that one up. But oh well, it's still true and one of those new responsibilities for us is mowing. Now, I've never mowed before and really don't care to learn how, but Taylor has already told me that I will have to. Ha! I'm not really sure why he is making me learn because I know a secret. Want to know what that secret is? The secret is that Taylor REALLY likes to mow! I'm not sure if it's the feeling of accomplishment, smell of a freshly cut lawn, or nice look but Taylor likes to mow, I mean he really enjoys it. So I vote he always mows and I will always vacuum, since that is what I like to do! What do you think? If you could pass this idea along to Taylor I would greatly appreciate it, since my attempts are not working :)


Well, I did have a point before that ramble about my mowing ideas, but now I have forgotten... Oh, wait... I remember! We have started to mow the yard at our house since Ashley already left for CA! The grass grows pretty quickly (especially with all this rain) so Taylor, uh, I mean WE, have started mowing about once a week or so. The yard isn't really that big, which is nice, and we have plans to make a few changes to the house in the next few weeks, so we will be over there anyways. So maybe my real point wasn't to share this new responsibility we have, but to get you on board for the "Jamie Doesn't Have to Mow" campaign! Probably won't happen, but oh well... thanks for thinking of me anyways :)

Happy One Year!

Today is our 1 year anniversary! It's hard to believe, I still feel like I can remember our wedding day like it was yesterday. Since we "celebrated" last weekend in Indy (which yes, I know I still need to blog about) we decided to just play golf today after church and go out to eat. Taylor did wake up early this morning and fix breakfast before church! I have been craving cinnamon toast a lot lately, so he made that (and it wasn't as dark as this picture makes it look)!


These are the flowers he had sent to my work on Friday. He took our wedding book into the florist and had them match the colors that were in my wedding bouquet! How sweet is that :) This might be only the 2nd or 3rd time he has ever given me flowers so I was very surprised!


We decided to play golf this afternoon and I think this pictures captures just how windy it was! I looked up at one point how hard it was blowing and it said it was 28mph. It look us 3 hours to play 9 holes due to the wind, a busy Sunday, and this one group that was holding EVERYONE up! We ended up just getting a credit to come back and play the last 9 holes, which was really nice of the course.


We went to Outback tonight and then got ice cream for dessert! So, happy 1 year to us! I love you Taylor :) Here's to 70 more!

Our Weekend in Indy

**Note: This is a pretty long post, but I just didn't want to forget anything!

We started thinking a couple months ago about what we wanted to do to celebrate our 1 year and of course Taylor's only requirement was that it included playing a nice golf course. Who would have guessed? :) We knew that we wouldn't be able to do a long trip with his school and my lack of vacation time, so we decided to check out Indianapolis. Neither of us had ever been there and it's only about 2 hours away, which is closer than Chicago!

We decided that we would just drive over on Saturday morning, play a round of golf and then spend Saturday evening and Sunday exploring Indy. We left about 7:30 Saturday morning and had plans to stop for an hour or so and have a nice breakfast before teeing off. That would give us 3o minutes or so to hit the range and put before starting. Well, about an hour or so after left, I noticed that my phone had changed and it wasn't 8:30 anymore but it was 9:30! Ha. We had completely forgot to take into account the time change.

So we nixed stopping for breakfast and drove through McDonalds! Ha. I know, we go classy on our 1 year :)


After our fancy breakfast, we made it to the course with about 20 minutes to spare. We had been afraid that it would rain during our round the entire week before. Even as we pulled into the parking lot, I thought at any moment it could just start pouring! But, it never did. The round turned out to be perfect since it was cloudy and cool outside. We played at the Golf Club of Indiana and really enjoyed the course. We both played very well and I actually shot my lowest score EVER!

Look at the awesome GPS they had on the carts!

After the round, we headed to our hotel to check-in and get ready for dinner. Taylor booked all the reservations so I had no idea what to expect, but we stayed at the Staybridge Suites (right outside of Indy) and it was wonderful! Our room was clean and the whole building was less than 5 years old so everything felt very new. They had this awesome outdoor patio area with tables, a HUGE fireplace and a couple nice grills that the guests could use. Even though we had dinner plans, I think Taylor was very tempted to just go buy some steaks and grill them ourselves!

We had decided to eat at this little Italian restaurant in downtown Indy that we had read really good reviews about. I joked with Taylor as we were walking in that it would be funny if they had reservations and were booked up that night! Well, what do you know? We walked in and the girl gave us a funny look and said they were completely booked until 9:15. She said the only open table was a tall one over in the bar area, so we took it!

Now, I wish I could tell you that we had a romantic Italian meal for our 1st anniversary, but sadly that wasn't the case. We sat down to eat around 6:30 and were out of there by 7! Ha. Here is why...

This is a picture of our plates! I ordered Chicken Parm and Taylor ordered a spicy Chicken pasta. Pretty normal selections right?


Here is a picture of our food about 5 minute after taking the first bite (and Taylor's impression of the food!)...


And then here it is about 5 minutes after that (please excuse the nasty trash can!)...


Hahahaha! If you haven't already guess, this was the WORST Italian food we had EVER had! I have no idea who was rating this place and what their taste buds are like, but I will never be going there again. The chicken was chewy and Taylor couldn't even eat his pasta because it was burning his mouth. We could not believe that the restaurant was booked for the night! Those people have obviously never had good Italian! Ha.

So, after "dinner", we headed to the movie theater in downtown to see "Bridesmaids", which was pretty funny. I usually don't like movies like that, but Kristen Wiig was hilarious! We did get a bucket of popcorn and a Sprite to share during the movie, since we were bother still very hungry. After the movie, we headed back to the room, still starving! So guess where we stopped?


Arby's! So on our 1 year anniversary our dining selections consisted of: McDonald's, no lunch since we were on the course, AWFUL Italian, movie popcorn, and Abry's! Haha. So romantic, I know!

On Sunday, we slept in and had breakfast at the hotel before checking out. We didn't really have much planned that day, except to check out Circle Centre, which is this really cool mall in downtown Indy. The night before we had driven down a street called Meridian to get back to the hotel, and it had about a 4 mile stretch of the largest homes I have ever seen! We decided to driven back down it on Sunday morning, since it leads right into downtown. Here is a picture of 1 or 3 HUGE and beautiful churches we saw on Meridian. This picture does not do justice to how large and ornate the building was.


After making it to the mall and shopping a little, we decided to stop and eat lunch. There was a PF Chang's close and Taylor said he was only going to eat at a place he knew he could get something good. Ha. So for the first time on the trip, we had a delicious meal! After lunch I think Taylor was a little tired of the mall (surprise, surprise!), so we decided to drive over to the Indy 500 track and look at it. Neither one of us are into racing, but the track is pretty cool. It's huge and you know what Taylor's favorite part was? They are a golf course called Brickyard Crossing that has four of it's holes INSIDE the track! How cool??!! We have decided that sometime in the future we are going to drive over and play and watch some of the time trials. I've heard if you don't like racing, you will still think the time trials are cool because the drivers are just trying to go as fast as they can!

After checking out the track, we decided to head back to C-U. We stopped to eat at a place called The Beef House, which is supposed to be the best steakhouse in our area. It was very delicious and we will have to take y'all there when you come visit. So even though our Saturday food selections were terrible, Sunday made up for it! Well, overall we had a great weekend in Indy and had fun celebrating our 1st year of marriage! We will definitely be going back in the future.

What's Up?

So, I'm sure you're wondering what's up with us lately since it has been weeks since I posted??? Well, without much detail, here is a short list of things we have had going on lately (in no particular order)...

• I went to a coupon seminary (ha!) with Laine at our church and learned some basics on couponing! The speaker was from a small town around C-U and was very entertaining! Here is a link to her blog: The Frugal Family
• Taylor finished his first year of graduate school! Wow, can you believe it? I feel like the last year has just flown by.
  
• We got the keys to our new (rent) house, which we will officially move-in to on July 1st! Wahoo :) Ashley, the owner, left to go back home earlier than she thought so she left the keys with us. I think our plan right now is to start moving things over slowly in the next couple weeks and then do a big move that 4th of July weekend when our families are here.
  
• We celebrated our 1 year anniversary (a week early) in Indianapolis last weekend with a round of golf and some shopping! I'll do a full post about that soon, since we did have some funny circumstances come up :)
• Our Saturday Market opened a couple weeks ago so Laine and I made our first trip of the season! They were pretty low on produce and all the good stuff at the moment, but I'm sure as the season goes on it will get better.
• We tried out a new golf course in the area called Ironhorse and we really loved it! I also finally found a new pair of golf shoes that I have been looking for awhile now. I think Taylor thought I was just being picky, but I knew what kind I wanted and wasn't going to buy a pair until I found them :) Ha!
• Taylor has decided he is going to play in a couple of the area golf tournaments this summer and there is a couples tournament late this summer that we are both going to play in! I feel like my golf game has been going surprisingly well lately, so I'm interested to see if it will last through the summer. Fingers crossed!! :)

Well, that's about all I can think of at the moment and sorry no pictures! I hope everything has been going well with you and check back soon for a post about our weekend in Indy!

Ebertfest

Did you know that Roger Ebert is from Urbana? Well, until about a week ago, I didn't know that either! For the last 13 years, there has been a festival in C-U called Eberfest, where Roger Ebert selects some of his favorite past or present films/documentaries and they are played at a local theater in Champaign. It is pretty cool because they bring in the directors and main actors/subjects of the films and do Q&A sessions after each showing.

The theater was so pretty!

Since the News-Gazette and our radio stations are a large sponsor of the Festival, we are allowed a certain number of passes to each film. This is really cool because the passes are pretty expensive and sell out right away, so they are really hard to get! Each employee is allowed to sign up for one film, but since there were a couple open spaces left, I got to sign up for 2 this year.

That's Roger Ebert on the right!

Last Wednesday evening, we went and saw "Natural Selection" which stars Rachael Harris! She was actually at the film and did a Q&A session after, but since it was 12:45am (on a work night!) before the film ended, we didn't stay. I wouldn't recommend the film for everyone, but Taylor and I both enjoyed it.


This afternoon we went to see "Louder Than A Bomb", which is a documentary about the high school poetry-slam competition in Chicago, and it was AWESOME! I highly recommend seeing this film if you get the opportunity. The creativity and abilities of each poet is really crazy and the documentary will make you laugh or cry and even leave you breathless at some points! After the film, they brought out the film directors and 5 of the main cast they follow. The Q&A session was interesting to hear about why the directors made the film and what the poets are doing now. The director of the actual "Loud Than a Bomb" competition spoke a little more about the event and said they had just recently explored having the slam in a new city. Can you guess where the most recent competition was? TULSA!! How cool!


After the Q&A, the 5 poets performed one of their "slams" called Counting Graves. It was a very emotional performance in content, but shows how talented they are! I filmed the performance but it won't seem to upload, so if you click here you can just check out the film's site! So, like I said before, if you get the chance to see this film, you should! We are already looking forward to next year's Ebertfest!