Week Long ExCiTeMeNt!!!!

Last Wednesday, July 15th we celebrated Dave's 26TH birthday! We are now officially in the almost gross stage for the next week, while I'm still 19 & he's turning into an old man! hahaha...
Just kidding, well, sort of.
Anyways, sadly we are responsible, hard working adults and we spend the majority of his birthday at work & away from eachother :(. I didn't even get to make him a good breakfast because I had to be into work early that day, but I was able to buy him raspberry filled powdered donuts that we got to enjoy together for about 2 seconds before I had to run out the door. JOBS :(

Luckily, I was able to get home from work before Dave and make him a yummy candle light dinner. I decided to go with an italian theme, because Dave likes absolutely everything, and thats what I was in the mood for :) We had italian bread to dip in seasoned olive oil & cracked pepper, salad, some really good pasta dish with a lot of asiago cheese, parmesean cheese, and my newest discovery, creme fraiche. It was VERY cheesy :) And we had grapefruit italian soda with ice cream just to make it tast better. Even though we have dinner at home the majority of our nights, it was nice to make it special and kind of romantic with candles and music :)

Dave said not to post his birthday card on our blog, but....he's sleeping. hahaa..
I'm just so proud of it. I searched and searched through so many cards everytime I went to the store but I didnt want just any old card. I got to the point that I just decided he wasn't going to get a birthday card this year, thats the boring part anyways, right?
After I decided this, I stumbled upon this. It just seemed to fit so well, and I knew it would be well appreciated. It would probably be well appreciated by any man...something I will never understand.

He didn't get a happy birthday song from me (but thank you to pretty much everyone in his family that called him and sang him solos on his birthday-you guys are brave!)
He did make a wish though, and he even told me because we decided you can tell your wife and it will still come true. But we can't tell YOU haha....
I'll just say, it was cute :)

YAY It's Dave's birthday...I'm clearly more excited than him, I don't know if the old thing is setting in or what!

Dave is so good at making excited faces when he opens presents though, and I make him do it everytime just so it's a nice, dramatic picture.

This one's my favorite though because he stopped acting & it's his real face :) Well the ones before were his real face too, but you know what I mean. He was actually happy, it was cute :)

I got him Mariners tickets for Saturday's game up in Seattle, and of course he had to have his shirt, we had to look like fans even though we're not ;)
(The original plan was basketball tickets, that being his favorite sport...but after a little research, I sadly found they don't play in the summer or something :/)
We were still both excited about the game though, and I got us some pretty good seats too :)

Mission accomplished: I made my husband happy on his birthday :)

So the work week dragged on, and I mean DRAGGED. Yay Jobs. Saturday finally rolled around and we got up early, got ready & headed out. We had to make a couple stops on our way out, because the night before I saw a commercial for a new candy,
Starbursts Gummi Bursts
and I was really excited about this. I tend to be a little obsessive, so when they weren't in one store we just had to go look in more. We couldn't find them anywhere and I finally gave up so we wouldn't be late for the game :) ( I was a little upset though, why advertise something and get people excited if you aren't even going to sell it!)

I soon forgot about the new candy when Dave started getting excited for the game. I tried to turn the video the right way but it wouldn't work, so just tilt your head, or actually that part doesn't matter. The best part is my husbands beautiful voice.

And don't worry, we did come prepared with PEANUTS & Cracker Jacks :)

We finally got there, parked in some super scary junkyard scary place, and started following all the fans to the stadium.

And LUCKY us, not only did I get us good seats, I got us seats right behind this beauty.
Why in the world would a woman go to a baseball game topless?

hahah well, they probably wouldn't. This beauty is actually a man. He was wearing a cute woman's tank top when he arrived, but apparently, couldn't take the heat or, wanted a more even tan. He was very strange, luckily we knew he was a man so it wasn't as shocking, but seriously, anyone seeing this from behind could be traumatized.
very STRANGE.

Dave brought his glove & was ready the whole game to catch a ball! I wanted him to SO bad, but sadly it never happened. I purposely didnt get seats right behind the home plate because I thought there is no way a ball could go directly behind the batter.
Well I was wrong. Like 10 balls ended up going straight behind them into that section throughout the game, How do you even do that? Either....the Mariners are really bad, or...they're really good.

We also came to discover while at the game that I don't know how to eat sunflower seeds, and personally, I don't think they are worth it to learn. Dave makes it look so easy and he loves them...as you can see them covering all his teeth making him look like a creepy, creepy man.
Everytime I would get one I would either spit the seeds out onto myself, and it was gross, or I would bite too hard just making the whole thing a mess in the mouth and I would have to spit the whole thing out.
Too much work, no more sunflower seeds for me.

Dave's side looked like art by his feet. Perfectly scattered, perfectly split sunflower seeds. I purposely didnt take a picture of what it looked like by my feet.

THIS was the highlight of the game, at least for me. The pictures aren't the greatest, but it's okay. In the middle of the 7th inning (I think, I dont know...I'm talking like I know baseball) In the middle of some inning! Some crazy guy jumped over the fence and started running across the field waving his arms and yelling!
It was just like a movie, the crowd started going crazy and cheering for him and he had like 5 security guards chasing him! IT was so exciting. He finally just stopped and layed down so he would get completely tackled but they still jumped right on top of him :(. They arrested him right there in the middle of the field and escorted him out and the game went on.
I started telling Dave how I wished he would do something crazy like that...you can't get in too bad of trouble for something like that, but it would still be cool to say you did it :) I think he automatically took that as, "you're boring and old and I wish you were more fun" (not what I meant at all, but it lead us to some more adventures....)

After the game, which by the way the Mariners lost, we drove around Seattle for a little while...

The Space Needle

And then Dave said "Should we just be crazy and keep driving up to Canada?" I just rolled my eyes and didn't say anything because he always will have these fun ideas, but it's never realistic in his mind because it wasn't in our budget or we had something to do or something. I now don't even think twice about comments like that because I end up getting too excited and then when I realize he wasn't serious I get really sad. So we started heading towards the freeway to go home, and Dave was in the lane to go south back to Vancouver, and just to test him, I said, "I thought you wanted to go to Canada?"
So, without hesitation, he swerved into the lane going north, and off we went :)

There is a new law now that you have to have a passport or birth certificate with you to get into Canada, which neither of us had with us, why would we take that to a baseball game?
But we decided oh well, the worst that can happen is we'll have to turn around.


So off we went! These are our SPONTANEOUS, CrAzY faces. Dave just wants a kiss when he's feeling this way I guess.

On our way up we stopped at some gorgeous indian reservation with a brand new casino/ resort. We stopped by just to look around and to see how much rooms were in case we were unable to finish our journey.

The whole drive up was gorgeous, the higher north we got, the greener it got :)

And then we saw it! The Canada sign! We were getting excited. Dave had never been to Canada before and I had a few years ago, but I was excited to be able to go with him :)

This is the point we started to get scared. When we were approaching the border. We kept thinking of all these things that could go wrong, and what if they question us about this and that, and I was so scared!

While we were in line with ALL Canadians, waiting to go across, we saw this little, or I guess big, monument thing....and it had engraved across the top "Children of a common Mother". Weird. But, we decided if they were to not allow us in, we would use this as our argument.
The closer we got to the border the more nervous we got as we kept making up scenarios of just driving the car through really fast and being chased down, having all the cops yelling at us "Arret! Arret!" (which we learned is STOP in French.)

The longer we had to wait the more we started to feel like we were bad guys trying to escape the U.S. and we had to lie to get ourselves in. I dont know why, that just how they make you feel.

It was at this point that we looked across the field and saw the cars in line to cross the border back to the U.S. The only thing is, the border to go into the U.S. and the border to go into Canada, is not right across from eachother. There is this middle NO WHERE that we figured we could end up living in, because if canada didn't let us in, and the U.S. didnt let us in, we would just have to live in this field, under the monument that lies and says we are children of a common mother for the rest of our lives. There were quite a few people walking around this field and we didn't know why...it just hit me, maybe they live there.

After about a 30 minute wait, we got up to our little booth thing, or whatever you call it. We were about to find out our fate. Surprisingly it was this little petite asian girl at the window...it would be a peice of cake.

wrong.

She was scary. She just started asking us question after question.
Why don't you have your passports?
Why are you coming to Canada?
What do you do for work?
What do YOU do for work?
who's car is this?
Do you have $10,000 or more with you? (ha i wish)

She didn't smile or anything. Seriously what were we gonna do, blow up Canada?
She gave us a paper and let us through to go inside some building so they could try and prove our citezenship in there because apparently a license doesn't do it.
We started being questioned again by some guy this time, the same questions and he was getting mad at us that we didnt have passports with us.

We tried to explain to him that we were at the Mariners game, decided to be spontaneous and spend the rest of the weekend up here since Dave had never been before.

He then went on to tell us that maybe next time we decide to be spontaneous, we should make sure we have our passports or birth certificates with us.

um HELLO SIR do you know what SPONTANEOUS means?!

ugh.

Anyways, after being questioned some more, I believe they were able to look up our birth certificates after we gave them the hospitals we were born in.
He went on to tell us this is the last time we are allowed in Canada without the proper ID lalalaa....

WE MADE IT! MORAL OF THE STORY:

You actually DON'T need a passport to get into Canada.
hahahaa

We drove up to Vancouver, BC, a big, gorgeous city in search of a place to stay.
We stopped at a gas station to get a map, and Dave "ran in for a second" while I waited in the car parked next to some scary bar place.
After like 5 minutes, I was getting worried but I tried to distract myself. After like 10 minutes my mind started going insane and I was sure something had happened to Dave and I would be stuck in Canada all alone! I was so scared! So I got out of the car and went inside to find Dave making friends with the people at the gas station. the cashier was french and hard to understand so I believe that was part of the hold up, but the real hold up, MYSTERY INVENTOR MAN.

Me & Dave got back in the car and he told me we were going to follow this man. I was like are you kidding me. He was in some old beat up car and he kind of was a little bit crazy looking....not to be judgemental, okay well, i guess that is judgemental.
But you can't just follow some crazy man you meet in another country! He could lead us anywhere!
Apparently he knew of this really nice hotel for a good price right by his house and he was going to take us to it. I was not happy about the idea because I like to look around and see the city and pick my own place, not just have some nut tell me where I am going to sleep!

I told Dave I was mad at him for being his friend.

He took us to the hotel, and I was thinking, okay, we'll just sit in the car until he goes home and then we'll leave and do our own thing.
Mystery inventor man had a different idea.
He parked his car too, Dave got out and he told Dave he would just take him in and help him get it taken care of.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?!
So of course, Dave goes into the lobby with this man, as I am once again, waiting in the car. As I'm waiting there are all these scary people walking around just looking really sneaky and suspicious (I know, it was probably in my head and they were probably normal, but thats not the point.) I was once again scared waiting for Dave to come out so we could just get out of this scary part of town!
After like 10 minutes I was going insane, so once again, I went in to fetch my husband.
Apparently, this hotel was completely booked for the night.

YES we were off the hook.

NOPE.

Mystery inventor man had the hotel call around to all these other hotels he knew about & liked, until they found us one with an available room. He even got us the "corporate rate".
Now I had mixed feelings, yes, he was being kind taking time out of his night to help these little lost americans find their way around his big city.
But, my mind doesnt work like that and no one is that friendly to complete strangers. So I knew something was fishy about him and i didnt trust him. After we walked out of the lobby to head to our hotel that he once again, picked for us, we thanked him, and thought we had gotten rid of him.

oh no.

IT was at this point he became MYSTERY INVENTOR MAN. We dont know his name, but he decided to talk to us for about an hour, standing by his car, about how smart he is. How he is going to chage the world with magnets. He littlerally rambled on forever, pretty much having a conversation with himself, while dave maybe got in 5 "uh huh's".
RIDICULOUS.
After like an hour he decided he didn't want to waste our night rambling to us. How considerate of him.

Once again, we thought we could thank him and say goodbye.
He decided it was kind of hard to get to our hotel, so he would go ahead and drive there and once again let us follow him, just to make sure we got to the right place. We tried to decline but he wouldnt have it. HE IS A CRAZY MAN!!!!
He drove us all the way to our hotel and I believe got out and checked in with Dave, I don't know for sure, I was once again waiting in the car.

And that's the story of mystery inventor man. He was insane. Friendly, but creepy. And I was sad that we had like 12 hours to be in Canada and he had wasted about 2 of them.

oh well. We got to our room, empty handed, seeing that this was spontaneous and we didn't have any change of clothes or anything. So we went to the store to pick up some toiletries and food, went back to the hotel and fell asleep.
I apparently was talking in my sleep all night about how I was scared and I was bored. And I didn't want to be close to Dave because the Ad Agency was on the other side.
It was a weird night.

This is the only picture we have taken IN Canada, well of us at least. Sadly it is only Dave's knee, but its not just a regular knee.
It was SO sunburnt from the game. Pictures are really bad at showing sunburns but it was so pink :(

This morning, we woke up early, got ready to go, but still felt disgusting because after showering we had to put on our clothes from yesterday (the downside of being spontaneous....we have decided we are going to keep a change of clothes in the car so we will be more prepared for times like these)

We went in search of this mall that I had been to about 2 or 3 years ago. I got the PERFECT pair of jeans here and they were my favorite forever. They lasted me up until just a few months ago when they were so worn they completely split, and I have been so lost without them since.
I figured since we were back in Vancouver BC we had to at least look. So we found the mall at about 8:45am, went inside and realized the stores didn't open until 11:00am! We were so tired and didn't want to waste gas so we decided to just wait in the mall.
We had cinnamon rolls, and then found the store that carried these jeans, and waited outside it on a couch for like an hour and a half :)
Canada is really similar to the U.S.....except you feel like you're in ASIA. We were the ones that looked weird there, EVERYONE, I mean EVERYONE is asian. It's so weird. They are taking over.
Anyways, thats besides the point, just something we noticed while we were waiting. Finally 11:00 rolled around, we went in the store, and it only took us about 2 minutes.
Sadly, styles do change. This store ONLY has skinny jeans now. I don't do skinny jeans.
I was so sad :(
But, we decided it was good that we waited around to find this out, because I have been talking about these jeans to Dave forever, and I needed closure.

Since that was our only purpose of being at the mall, we got back in the car and headed back to the States! Once again, as we were driving to the border, we started getting nervous again. I forgot to mention as we checked out of our hotel, the lady said "Good luck at the border". It then hit us that getting into the U.S is probably a lot harder than getting into Canada.

These are our nervous faces.

Once again in No where land where we could very possibly stay.

The Beautiful America Banner...we could only hope we could come back to this place.

It was our turn and this time it was a big scary man. We were asked the same questions, we explained to him what our situation was, and after about 3 minutes of talking with him, we were FREE!!!
woohoo:)

I have to admit I was a little disappointed because there wasn't really any excitement. He also told us that this would be the last time we are allowed in the U.S. without passports...

MORAL OF THAT STORY:
You CAN get into the United States without a passport.

So come illegals. come one, come all.

The excitement was done, we just headed out for our long drive home.
But we got one more exciting surprise. Well, I guess it was more exciting for me.
We stopped at a gas station in Olympia, Washington because we were both really thirsty, so we went in, got our drinks, paid for them...and on our way out we saw......


Starburst Gummi Bursts!

woohoo :)