night at the stanley

ya'll know who stephen king is, right? and remember the book he wrote back in the 70's, 'the shining'?

well... i don't want to brag or anything, but, i was there. at that hotel. but there were a couple things i learned after taking the history tour. stephen king stayed in the famous 217 room while he wrote the book. all of his inspiration came from this hotel in colorado. but it wasn't filmed here! it was actually filmed in like wyoming or something at a more "remote" hotel. pff. still cool tho! there was a miniseries based from the book filmed here tho.. so there ya go.

also.. i know you know harry & lloyd from dumb & dumber, right? the hotel they stayed at in "apsen" was the stanley! name changed in the movie, but same place. racing up the stairs scene, bar scene, outside scene.. i was there. don't be jelly. we landed on the moon!

also.. where are my ghost adventure fan girls at?!

utah hogle zoo

so this was the first time baby girl had been to the zoo. she loves animals and i thought before it got too cold, it would be fun to visit! it was about a week until halloween, so we got to see it all decorated and festive. so cute.

drey loves his sister so much, and he was so excited to take her around and show her the animals, make the noises and act a fool to make her laugh. he followed her around, never letting her get to far from his reach and told her everything he knew about anything. "these are zeeee-bruhs but you can also say zeb-ruh because that's the right way." omg freakin' swoon.

welcome home, ally!

while my mom was over in turkey, she made a bestie. a sweet little pup named ally. she was abandoned and when my mom decided to keep her, she contacted SPCA International -Operation Baghdad Pups to help get her home. originally, ally was supposed to get home before my mom was, but she got back about a week and a half after my mom. which happened perfectly, if you ask me.

homecoming deja-vu

this is the 4th deployment homecoming that i've been through in the last 4ish years. my mom and brother came home from the middle east (iraq and afghanistan) in the same summer of 2011. then my mom left twice more and this last time coming home on thursday the 10th of november. and i'll always remember that date because trump happened that same week. best week everrr.

here and here are the homecoming posts i did back in 2013.

and here is the post that will explain the flamingo thing if you aren't already familiar.

so hopefully she'll stay put for awhile because we love her blah blah.. but also because i'm sick of driving out to the airport to pick her sorry ass up. and how many signs does she have now? like a million? geeezus.

it's never too late to post about our christmas party at dugway

awhile back.. like way back in december, my mom invited us to her work christmas party out in dugway. if you non-utahns don't know where or what that is, it's basically the area 51 utah style. you know like where they keep the aliens and stuff. or where they "don't" keep the aliens...... shh.
anyways so yea it was a blast. they had lots of games, activities for kids, rock climbing, food, dessert, santa showed up on a firetruck, tyler and i both won prizes! he won a raffle, but i won the 'best santa hat' contest. sooo take that boyfriend. then we played the whip cream game where you turned the little thingy and it might flip up at your face and it might not. that had my anxiety on lockdown, shiz. if you follow me on snapchat || eemilyosbornee || then you probably remember that day cause my story never stopped haha. 

so there you have it. christmas in february. 

anyone have any fun adventures and never blogged about? do tell.

seattle

if you follow me on instagram, you prob already know that we took a quick trip to seattle last weekend and it was so so good. i had never been there before so i was like a little kid when we landed. i wanted to visit the space needle, pike's place market, the gum wall, eat beecher's mac & cheese, munch on cheese curds, gyro's, falafel and everything else that would make a trip to seattle incredibly cliche. but i didn't care. we had about a day and half to do everything we wanted to do and damnit we were going to fit it all in!
after landing at about 8:30am on friday we had a few hours to kill before we had to check in with the army's yellow ribbon (the entire reason we were there) and we headed straight to pike's place. i couldn't believe i was really there in real life! it sounds so silly, but there is something about being in a place that you've only read about or seen in movies that makes being there in person so cool. the first thing we did was head straight for the gum wall. after accumulating gum for the last 20 years, they had scraped it only a couple weeks before so it could start over. which was a bummer but didn't matter because i was starstruck at just being in the alley! and the new gum already stuck to the wall is an incredibly disgusting tradition that for some reason i'm obsessed with.
later in the day we went to a couple thrift shops (because my mom & i are addicted obviously) and found a few treasures to bring home! i wish i had more room in my carry on because there were a couple of chairs i would've loved to bring home... next time.
saturday evening after the convention, we booked tickets for a ghost tour in downtown with 'spooked in seattle' at pioneer square. so cool you guys! i love ghost tours in old parts of cities when they have the city history and spooky stories to go along with it. tyler had some negative reservations about it at first, but he'll tell you it was really cool if you ask him now. he's slowly learning that there's cooler shit to do than the average sight-seeing. anyone watch dead files on the travel channel? they did an episode at merchants cafe in pioneer square and i went to it! to the downstairs and everything. don't be jealous.
sunday we had meetings until noon and our flight was at 5:30pm. so after getting back to our room, packing and heading out, we had a couple hours to bum. we met some friends at woodland park zoo, socialized for a bit and then headed to our last destination. the space needle.
unfortunately, we didn't get to go up, there was just no time. but i did get to stand in awe in front of it for a few minutes and take a million pictures as everyone complained. cause that's just what i do.

anyone from seattle? been there? want to go again? what did i miss that i need to do next time?

christmas morning.

Every year we have like 900 places to be ON Christmas. We are normally driving from house to house dividing our time between my mom, my dad, Tyler's family, grandparents...one end of Utah to the other... It's exhausting. I look forward to the day when everyone travels to my house on Christmas and I can stay snuggled in my jammies & be worthless.
This year, though, was a little different. We celebrated Christmas with Tyler's family the weekend before, then my grandma's party that is normally on Christmas Day was celebrated the afternoon before which gave us 2 parties that day back to back. Then after our annual Christmas Eve party, we headed to my moms, where we've planted ourselves and haven't moved. I don't think I've even taken a shower since we've been here and I am not ashamed. Oh my gosh I can't tell you how amazing it is to NOT travel on Christmas. I envy everyone who never has to do it. Seriously, I hate you.

So these past couple of days I've been hiding in my moms basement, snuggling up with my minky, & catching up on the History channel like a boss. I've loved it. I ditched my phone for like 2 days & IT. WAS. THE. BEST. I love my phone but I hate having it around me. Plus, since we had gotten all our visits out of the way, I didn't have to worry about calling anyone to let them know "we're on our way!" or "okay plans have changed, we'll be there at 4 instead of 2" or "roads are bad, we're going to be late".. etc. Ahhh it was awesome! I feel like you're reading this and thinking this girl is dramatic, it's not that bad to travel on Christmas... And to you I say a very bad word. This is a Christmas post so I'll refrain from those bad words to you bitches right now. Just know I am still ecstatic that I haven't gone A N Y W H E R E since Christmas morning. Like, there are no words haha.

We had a perfect morning. It snowed A TON the night before and it was the picturesque "white christmas". Dreydan got everything he asked for, plus a little more. Santa dropped off his skateboard he'd been asking for AND he found a real dinosaur tooth in his stocking. I got my scarf I'd been eyeing for almost a year & Tyler was bombarded with Footlocker gift cards. We listened to some Christmas tunes mixed with a little Taylor Swift all afternoon as we munched on treats and laid around in our new jammies. We had family coming in later for dinner so my mom & I started cooking the 100lb prime rib she found and a million potatoes while we watched Mike & Molly. It was a good day. I didn't take many pictures & I'm sorry to those of you who text me sweet Christmas nothings and I never responded, but I was content with hiding. I hope everyone had a beautiful Christmas day. And to those of you sucka's who had to travel.... hahahahaha! But really though, I don't feel bad. Not even a little teeny bit.

 

XOXO

Ikushima-Jinja.

Ty found this shrine on our Google maps search & it was only a few blocks away from us, so we

decided to make an afternoon of it with a visit & then lunch on the way home!

Obviously we couldn't read the signs so we didn't know what each section was or why it was there etc..

and nobody was there to guide us. Literally. There was nobody. It was a little eerie.

You'd think being a Saturday afternoon there would be more peeps around. It honestly could have been 

closed for all we know. Haven't figured that out yet.

So we walked around for a little bit, snapped some pictures, Dreydan prayed & then Ty rang the bell, 

and we also may or may not have walked on sacred gravel... Haven't figured that out yet, either.

For lunch we found a little place that served udon noodles, one of Ty's favorites.

It's a self serve noodle bowl shop thing with tempura veggies & meat.
Not totally my flavor, but the tempura onions were on point. Yum!

When we got home I tried to Google this shrine so I could read about the history of it and

I couldn't find anything! I don't know if I have the name wrong or I'm spelling it wrong or 

maybe it just really isn't that cool to post up on the web..? I don't know. There were lots & lots of 

other shrines, but not this particular one. 

I've also thought that maybe the .jp is different from .com and you'd come up with better results in America?

Seriously, I don't know why the hell I couldn't find info or what I'm even talking about. I'm mentally challenged.

Someone help! If you care to search & happen to find something, send me the link, please.

ps.

the pictures aren't the greatest because i had only my iphone

and it's super humid so my lens gets randomly foggy...