My Brother's Getting MARRIED!

So my brother David has finally decided to tie the knot. I'm so excited for him. My brother's an amazing person and I figured that someday a nice girl would notice that too and they would live happily ever after. I don't know Melissa (David's fiancee) but my sister Becky likes her and so I give her a stamp of approval based on Becky's recommendation and I'm sure I'll get to know her better through wedding plans and such.



If you want to know the story behind the story here you can get it from the source at David and Melissa's wedding blogspot

1812 Army Band Concert

Mel, Reed and I went up to DC for the Army Band 1812 Concert. The venue was perfect and the atomephear was fun. We took some random pictures before the concert started.

Some pictures of Reed and Mel

Some of me and Reed pretending to sleep

The Moon

The cannon 'shoters'

We will have to wait for the best of all. Mel took a video of the 1812 Overture, however it's too long to upload to blogger, believe me I tried...waiting almost 3 hours for it to upload. So I'll have to figure out how to edit it and then we'll try again later.

Great Times!

America Idol Concert

So I've never really been one of those people who watch all of the American Idol shows and get excited about what's going on and into arguments with people about who should win and such, however I do enjoy good music.

That said on August 14th my coworkers and I went to the American Idol concert for our funday activity. I was excited, but not overly so, which is to say I was a lot calmer then my coworkers. However I did have a great time and enjoyed most of the songs.

SYESHA

JASON...one of my coworkers is a great fan of Jason and managed to find someone with an extra seat on the floor who let her sit with them while he performed...I bet her pictures are better.

DAVID ARCHULETA... as stated before I didn't watch the whole American Idol season, so I don't know ins and outs of everyone's votes, but after the concert if I had been asked to vote between David Cook and David Archuleta I totally would have voted for David Archuleta. I liked his stage presence more as well as the songs he sang. The doesn't mean that I didn't like David Cook, I just like Archuleta better.

New York, NEW YORK!

So I have this friend Braden. He's one of the people who went with me to Gettysburg. He and my roommate Jess became good friends and they were supposed to go to New York sometime before Jess left for California, however that never worked out. So...Braden and I went. We tried to get some other people to come with us, but that just didn't work out. Despite that I had an amazing time...sleep deprived, but a fantastic time.

We bought tickets for the 2:30am Chinatown bus, but it turns out that they don't have a 2:30am but, but a 3:30 am bus, so we spent about 45 minutes wandering around 6th and I Street NW DC at 2 in the morning waiting for the bus. We weren't the only luckily ones. The exciting adventure of that part of the trip was our new friend the rat...a huge, gigantic rat. We tried to get a picture, but turns out he's a little camera shy and once we took out our camera he refused to show himself clearly.

Once we were on the bus I thought...yay, now we can settle down and sleep for the next 5 hours or so, but no...first it was cold, but the most interesting part was that the bus driver kept stopping every so often on the side of the road and get out walk around and get back in...what was going on I don't know, but we did eventually make it to New York.

The bus drops you off in Chinatown New York and we just kind of followed the crowd until we ended up at subway stop. Thanks to my and Jess' wandering in Europe via train and subway/metro I'm every familiar with getting use to new cities and figuring out the public transportation. I'm not shy about asking for directions. We made our way up to Time Square and one of the first things I did was buy a map. I've learned the hard way the value of a detailed map when wandering on foot in a new city.

This was one of my favorite signs in Time Square...so get out and VOTE People!

We spent quiet a bit of time trying to decide if we wanted to go to a Broadway show, but after standing in line and seeing the prices and the times we decided that we wanted to spend more time actually seeing the city then watching a show. That will have to happen some other trip to New York. So we wandered. We went up to Rockefeller Square and then hopped on the subway back down the Battery Park to take a ferry out to Ellis and Liberty Island. We waiting in line for about 2 hours, but when all was said and done it was worth it. You can spend an entire day just at Ellis Island.

Us in line for two hours...good thing we're good at entertaining ourselves.

On the ferry

I had family come through Ellis Island and it was interesting to see a little of what they might have experienced

After the Islands we started our way toward Uptown, walking of course, so we could see more. We ended up at the World Trade Center site and then on to Wall St.

And for those who like the National Treasure movie we went to the corner of Wall and Broadway and saw the Trinity Church.

(yeah I'm a dorky history loving girl).

Having satisfied our curiosity for downtown and just about done walking we jumped on the subway once again and took it up to the temple. It was closed, but it was fun to see it. A random building in the middle of Manhattan. We then went to Central Park. I was definitely done walking by that time and sat down for a while, while Braden wandered around. We then found a pizza place, for New York pizza. Then we started on our way back. Our plan was to stop by the Empire State Building, but as we walked down Broadway, near Times Square, now in full night time activity we realized that we weren't making good enough time to make it to see the Empire State Building and back to our bus in time. The place was packed full of people! So we found our way to the closest subway and went back to Chinatown. We made it with about 15 minutes to spare.

The ride home was just as interesting...our bus driver got cut off and had to slam on the breaks and the van in front of us started fish tailing and it looked like an accident was inevitable. But the van righted itself and we moved on. We made it back to DC by 2 am and home by 3:30 am. The metro was still running and we managed to make the last train home. I was so exhausted. I slept until about 11 am. We had a very busy 24 hours!

Good Times!

Quarter of a Century Old!

It's a big year for birthdays...my little sisters keep growing up, even though I moved out of the house. My "little" sister Becky (I put little in quotation marks since she's a good 3 inches taller then me :)) celebrates her 25th birthday today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

A quarter of a century old and still kicking! I remember when I was 25...

Gettysburg again :)

I went with some friends to Gettysburg. Even though I'll been there several times I really enjoyed it and learned something new. They just completed the new Visitors Center. I really enjoyed it. It put into perspective how many people were involved in the Civil War. The numbers never sunk in before.

After spending several hours in the Visitor's Center we went touring around Gettysburg. It was a beautiful day outside.

They had some reenactors were giving a demonstration on how they maintain volley shots with the Civil War rifles. It was cool to watch.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times I go to Gettysburg I learn something new.