Life according to my phone

This past weekend my family celebrated my Aunt's 50th birthday up at her new lake house and since Barrett was still in town we took a little road trip up to the hill country to celebrate with her and as a bonus he could finally meet the rest of the family...ha ha...4 and a half years later.

This is the view from her backyard. The lake is still down a lot, but one day it will be back to normal. We spent a good amount of time outside playing bocce ball. Since we were first timers, we may or may not have made up our own rules. Then my little cousins (ages 1 through 4) wanted to play so it turned into just rolling the balls back and forth and trying to not let them eat the dirt...yep...still not ready for kids...ha ha.

We also have made it to the movies twice. Figured we should try to go to some we really wanted to see before he leaves for work. The first movie we saw was Lone Survivor. Great movie! If you haven't seen this yet...go see it now. Or don't know if you want to see this movie, just go see it. I don't think I've heard anything bad about it so far. We also saw Ride Along. Pretty funny...Kevin Hart opposite Ice Cube is hilarious. And the way they ended it could be a set up for a sequel.

I also took the dialect quiz that was going around from the NY Times. That's some pretty interesting and accurate stuff. I even took it a second time and made the boyfriend take it as well. Pretty much if I didn't think you would see it from a different blog I told you go to take it...ha ha.

Lastly, I took a Friends Character quiz (I love a good quiz) and some how came out with the character Gunther. I promise I'm not a creep...well not all the time he he.

What have y'all been up to lately? Do you have a fun quiz I should take?!? Let me know!!

Biloxi, Mississippi Road Trip

A few weeks ago B and I took a 6 hour road trip to Biloxi, Mississippi for a little weekend getaway. I finally uploaded my pictures and can finally share some of my trip!

The Beard and I started our road trip on a Friday afternoon.

Welcome to Biloxi!

We stayed at the Palace Casino and Resort...the only non-smoking casino on the Gulf.

After we settled into our room, we decided to go hit up the slots. This would be my "I'm sad because I'm losing money" stance and B was actually winning for a while, but in the end neither of us won...boo.

Saturday afternoon, after losing some more at the slots, we decided to explore Biloxi a bit. It had been raining all morning so everything was gloomy and wet.

There were actually some people with their feet in the water even though it was kind of chilly at the time.

After walking out on the pier we headed over to the Biloxi visitor center, I wanted to sit in these chairs so bad, but they were all wet as well.

This is Biloxi's famous lighthouse. It is right across from the visitor's center. When researching things to do, this was number one on the list. They actually offer tours where you get to go inside the lighthouse, but there are only 3 tours and all in the morning. So needless to say, us sleepy heads did not wake up early enough for a tour.

After exploring Biloxi, we went back and got ready for our night out at the Hard Rock Casino to see Clay Walker perform!

We decided to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe before the concert and I ordered a delicious strawberry and basil lemonade. The drink came with a souvenir cup...woo hoo.

Clay Walker!!!!

The concert was awesome! It was a smaller venue, so even though we were in the back we still felt close.

Sunday morning we woke up to sunny skies! Yay!

Since the sun was out I wanted to take a picture of the bridge right outside of our hotel and surprisingly there wasn't anyone fishing at that moment. Off in the distance you can see Margaretiaville.

On the drive home Sunday, we stopped at Bass Pro Shop right outside of Baton Rouge (I don't think we can ever pass a BPS without going in) for lunch. B got fried shrimp and alligator. The alligator came with its very own lime green alligator sauce. Turns out it was cream cheese and jalapeno jelly and actually tasted pretty good. 

For once I actually remembered to take pics of all my outfits. My driving outfits consisted of my black skinnies and leopard flats. And my saturday outfits were boots and my two new pairs of skinnies, army green and floral.

One last thing...

Ok I know I said yesterday I was done with vacation pictures, but it wouldn't be a full cruise vacation recap without showing y'all all the cute towel animals we had waiting for us every night!!

We aren't quite sure what all of them are, but this is what we came up with...(each row left to right)

1. Elephant
2. Mouse
3. Monkey
4. Frog
5. Platypus????
6. Aardvark????
7. Bunny (my parents got back to the room before we did and hid the bunny in our room and my Dad made us guess what it was before we could go look at it. Sadly it took us a while to figure it out...ha ha...but I won and guessed right!!!! Oh yeah!!!)

Rome, Italy (part 2)

Fountain of the Four Rivers (Danube, Ganges, the Nile and the Rio de la Plata) in the Piazza Navona

Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed this fountain. Legend has it that the River God on the right is cowering because he is afraid that the church of Sant'Agnese will crumble on him. The church just so happened to be designed by his rival Borromini. However, the fountain was years before the church was built...ha ha.

Church of Sant'Agnese...the legend goes on to say that the woman statue on top of the church is turning her head away from the fountain because of it's ugliness. Again this was all just a legend we were told. 

Old Roman streets now below the city

Flag of the Vatican City...it is it's own city within Rome

View of St. Peter's in the distance

Not sure if these chairs are out there every day, but we visited the Vatican on a Wednesday and the Pope had given his audience that morning. The Pope, however, does not give his audience from the balcony you see in this picture. He gives it from the balcony of the Pope's apartment.

View of the Vatican from the entrance to St. Peter's

Most of the people you see in this picture are waiting in a 2 hour line in the rain just to get tickets to go inside St. Peter's.

The Pope's apartment

Michelangelo's first sculpture resides inside St. Peter's

The letters you see on walls are actually 2 meters tall. Everything is so proportional inside that you can't tell. Truth time...I thought the tour guide said 12 ft, but I googled to make sure and everything was saying 2 m or 6.6 ft. Guess I was so intrigued by everything and was busy trying not to get lost in the sea of people I mis-heard her.

Literally a sea of people!! This is walking out of the church and into the "lobby" area.

The Basilica is called St. Peter's, however, Pavlvs (Paul) is written more than Peter.

Vatican guards...I'm assuming these cape like things they are wearing are rain coats and that they have their crazy uniforms on underneath :)

That's all folks!! I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I tried my best not to overwhelm y'all with too many...ha ha.

Rome, Italy (part 1)

Roman ruins

Colosseum...over 5 million people visit it a year! If I ever get a chance to go back to Rome, I definitely want to go inside!!!

Found out from our tour guide that unlike the movie Gladiator, real gladiators did not fight to the death. They were admired like some of our football players today. If you wanted a gladiator to fight to the death, you had to pay that gladiators owner a lot of money for his future loss.

Fontana di Trevi

Our guide told us if you throw 1 coin in the fountain you will return to Rome, 2 coins and you will find love and 3 coins and you will get divorced...ha ha...I think she made up the 3 coins. All the coins in the fountain are collected and given to charity. There are lots of police around to make sure you don't even put a finger tip in the water!! Talk about strict!!

Really cool statue...I can't imagine how long it took to carve all of that

You can tell that the building on the right is much older than the other two buildings in this picture because of how small and how few windows there are.

Pantheon

The dome of the Pantheon is one piece!! Unbelievable!! There is also a hole in the top where rain and light comes through.

A single rose laid by someones grave inside the Pantheon

The columns on the front of the Pantheon are 1 piece as well. Somehow they were able to transfer these and get the standing without them being in sections...they had so much knowledge back then and sadly it died with them.

Sorrento, Italy

Those lemons were the size of my head!!! No special effects here...they are really that big!

Fruit stand...take a look at the tomatoes and how they are all indented compared to our mostly dent free from ones from the grocery store.

View from the bus on the way to Sorrento

Beautiful houses built right on the side of a cliff

Fresh fish! Reminded me of Seattle

We had about two hours to kill in Sorrento before lunch so my parents and I sat by the water and admired the views.

I'm pretty sure this was an apartment, but what caught my interest was everything hanging...so pretty!!

Random melted clock in Sorrento

The farm where he had lunch. We got to see them make fresh mozzarella and then we got eat it a few minutes later. It looked so good that I was happy to take my dairy pill to be able to try it...ha ha...let's just say the food in Italy was pretty good, but it's not a great diet for someone who can't eat cheese or a lot of marinara sauce...ha ha...I have problems

The smallest island in the world...Bikini Island!! ha ha