I am the laziest person in the world, and for that my followers, I apologize for my negligence. I have some pretty huge announcements (which if you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, you already know about said announcements), but here you will get to hear the whole back story, and all the juicy details. And trust me, you'll want to!
Last weekend (Nov 11th-14th), was finally the weekend we were to spend in travelling to Denver, CO to see my beloved,
City and Colour. Dallas Green, who is the heart and soul of the group, is the most magnificent and talented musician I have ever laid ears upon. You can basically say I have a bit of a crush on him. (Click the link to check out some of his music! Trust me, you won't be disappointed!)
Before I get into the concert...let's back track a bit, shall we?
I had a doctor appointment Friday morning, the day we were to leave, and naturally, I was running late. I am the least punctual person I know. I can't be on time for anything, but at least I can admit that it is always MY fault.
This appointment was my dreaded glucose/gestational diabetes test. What happens for this appointment, is before the appointment takes place, the doctor gives you a glucose drink, that you are supposed to consume within a 5 minute time period, approximately one hour before the glucose test appointment. If you results come back looking kind of sketchy, you need to go in for another glucose test, except this one takes 3 hours. I opted for the lemon-lime flavored glucose drink (with options of fruit punch and orange), and made sure it was nice and cold before I drank it. To describe the taste, imagine if you will, a thick, syrupy, flat Sprite, that is twice as sweet as a normal one. Gross, huh? Yeah, I had to chug that stuff otherwise I might have thrown it up.
Anyways, showed up to the appointment late, and barely got in to have my blood drawn. Had to wait 15 minutes for my doctor after my tests were run, since my tardiness had inconvenienced a lot of people (which I felt horrible for). My results came back normal (thanks goodness).
Our initial plan was to hit the road immediately after my appointment, which we did. But we were running later than I had hoped. The reason I was late for my doctor appointment in the first place, was because I had neglected packing for our little excursion until that morning, and our clothes weren't even completely dry by the time we needed to pack, which I started doing so 15 minutes before we needed to leave. Not the brightest idea, but I somehow managed to have everything we needed for our adventure.
Jake went and picked up his friend, Derek, who was going to tag along to Salt Lake (which was on our way to Denver). Derek was planning on seeing New Found Glory, along with a phenomenal line up of other great pop-punk bands, he was going to buy our tickets, but one our way there, it seemed as though the show had sold out, because the pre-sale tickets were no longer available online. We were bummed, but not terribly. We later found out that they were still selling tickets at the door. Again, not terribly bummed out.
First thing we did when we got to Salt Lake, was stop buy a sweet little shop called "Next Level Custom Tattoo". Why do you ask? Oh, because Jake and Derek decided he needed to get his knuckles tattooed that night. And I was not complaining, seeing how every time Jake mentioned getting his knuckles tattooed, I would always push him to go for it. I love his tattoos, and am excited to see which ones he will get in the future!
I met some of Jake's friends while we were at the tattoo shop. There's a band that hails from Salt Lake called "Becoming Everest". They're really good friends with Jake's band "Our City Skyline". Anyways, I finally got to meet most of the guys and their significant others. Here are some pictures from Salt Lake:
Salt Lake was a blast. We weren't there long, but we got to see some cool people. Instead of hitting up the New Found Glory show, we found a hotel, and decided to relax until the show got out and then we were going to go to "The Pie" for pizza with some friends. Unfortunately, Jake and I passed out and slept all night, and slept through texts and phone calls from people to see where we were. THAT we were bummed about.
The next morning, we woke up early, grabbed free continental breakfast from the hotel lobby, checked out and hit the road for Denver. I slept the majority of the drive, which was kind of nice because of how boring and dismal the drive was through Wyoming. I felt bad Jake drove the whole way, but he didn't complain once. We made it to Denver around 6:30pm, and the show for City and Colour started at 9pm. The hotel we stayed at was actually pretty sweet. It didn't look like a hotel at all!
The upper part of the hotel was actually a sports bar/restaurant, which some pretty tasty food, which we indulged in to try to pass the time. I finished eating before Jake did, and went back to the room to freshen up before the show. Meanwhile, one of our friends from Boise (Miss Kelli) who is going to school in Fort Collins, met us at the hotel to head over to the show with us! It was nice seeing a familiar face in a strange place. We took the free hotel shuttle to the show, and ended up taking a cab home. Downtown Denver is...sketchy...to say the least. It could possibly be the fact that there was a Tech N9ne concert that same night, so you can only imagine the group of people going to see that show.
(I wish I would have taken more pictures while we were in Denver. I'm so mad at myself for not doing so!)
The City and Colour show was at the Ogden Theater, which is an old, vintage theater. I LOVED the building. It seemed like it had so much history! And it definitely fit the style that City and Colour brings to their shows. The opening group was called "Hacienda". They were pretty good. They had an indie/folksy feel to them. But of course, I wasn't so interested in them, because I was finally going to see Dallas Green!
He finally came on stage about 10:00, and they played for a good hour and a half straight. He didn't do much talking between songs, he did mingle with the crowd a little, but he kept the music coming. It was so intense, and beautiful, that every inch of my skin was covered in goosebumps. His voice is so pure and gentle, I could listen to him for hours and hours. Here are a couple of pictures I took with my phone (sorry they're not very good quality...)
There were even times during the show I found myself tearing up. Yes, I had the ultimate "fan girl" moment. I was just in total awe at how talented this man was. His music has been my music of choice the majority of this year, and I had been anticipating this show all summer. And the best part was I got to experience it with Jake. He made this all happen for me. He is the reason I found out about City and Colour. He was the reason we were there, at that exact moment in time, enjoying the beautiful melodies of Dallas Green's talents.
Sunday morning, we woke up early and hit the road to head for home. Our plan was to drive straight home in attempt to make it back in time for work, but the drive in Wyoming didn't allow that to happen. There was one stretch of road where I took over driving for a little bit, and we moved about 8 miles in 3 hours. 3 DREADFUL HOURS. It was awful. And it was snowing to top it off. Wind gusts would hit at least 50 mph, and while we were sitting there in bumper to bumper traffic, in the middle of nowhere, it hit me. I had to pee. And when a pregnant woman has to pee, that means NOW. I ended up having to hold it for about an hour (this was an hour 1/2 into the standstill), and it hurt, but I tried to hard to be patient to at least by pass traffic before doing something drastic, such as pulling over and "roughing it".
It felt like forever sitting in traffic, but we finally managed to by pass the stalled semi, and drive at a normal pace. I told Jake that I was pulling over at the next exit, restroom or not, and relieving my aching bladder. He laughed and said he was hoping I would say that. He slept the majority of that parking lot we were stuck in, but when he woke up he could see I was in pain from holding my bladder. I took the next exit off, and there was nothing that I could use as a bathroom facility. Not even a port-a-potty. I didn't care, I had to go! I pulled the care over, put it in park, got out and walked around to the back of the car and propped myself up in a wall squat position. I've never felt such sweet relief in my life. And that's as far as I'll go with that...
We go into Salt Lake around 1 am to pick up Derek and head home. I slept the entire way back, curled up in a little ball, covering myself in a make-shift blanket of pea coats. We pulled in to the driveway at 8 am, and headed straight for bed.
Later that night, I had to go to orientation for school. That's right folks, I'm officially a college kid! I've neglected furthering my education long enough. I'm sick of dead end jobs and limited opportunities. I'm doing online classes through University of Phoenix, and my major is Human Resources Management. The orientation class lasts three weeks, and just teaches us how to utilize and navigate the website we will be using during the duration of our attendance at the university.
After sitting in a two hour long class listening to people tell their life stories on why they're finally going back to school, I came home to relax, since I didn't have much time to do so after getting back from our trip. I sat on the couch with Jake, and remembered I had bills I needed to pay. I mulled around on my laptop, watching my bank account dwindle with each bill getting paid, and then Jake ran upstairs without saying a word. I thought to myself,it was a little weird, but didn't put too much though into it. He came back downstairs, and kissed me, and then gave me this little speech:
"I really screwed up this weekend. I had this huge plan to surprise you, and I had been trying to coordinate this surprise with Dallas Green in hopes to make it a super eventful weekend for you, but I screwed it up."
I replied by saying: "This was the best weekend I've had in a long time. It was perfect, why do you feel like you screwed it up?"
"Because, I forgot something very important here at home that I needed for the show", he said as he pulled out a beautiful diamond ring and slipped it on my finger. He then got down on his knee and asked me to marry him.
I was absolutely shocked. I had a bit of a hunch that he might propose while we were at the show, but I will say, this "oops" he feel like he made definitely caught me off guard. I had butterflies, and the warmest, warm fuzzy feeling I'd ever experienced. I almost cried, but instead teared up and felt giddy, which I can't remember the last time I felt "giddy".
So, now you are all caught up on the past few weeks, wonderful events.
And to answer your questions on if we have a date picked or have we started any wedding plans, we aren't making any plans until Caige is born. Our focus right now is making sure he is healthy and stable. We're planning on moving into a new house next year, and want to get settled into that prior to taking on the stresses of wedding planning. Not saying that planning a wedding is or should be stressful, but we have quite a bit on our plate as is. So bear with us, we will make these announcements as they come along! :)
And, I'll leave you with the most recent "belly pic" I've taken. In this picture, I'm 28 weeks (or 7 months along).
As you can see, little Caige is really heading south. He likes to keep things on the down low ;-)
XO
