Diary of a Real Girl » Edmonton

Busy Busy Bridesmaid

Jen — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:05:36 +0000

WOW!! I can’t believe how fast time is flying by!!!

It’s absolutely ridiculous that we are halfway through August!

When I agreed to stand in two weddings this summer I KNEW that August would pretty much be written off…but now that I am in the middle of it all, I just wish that I had a vacation coming up!!! (Yes, I know, I just got back from vacation, but that was a busy one!)

Anyway, we are heading out tonight for wedding #2! This one is for 2 dear friends of mine, but it isn’t going to be ANYTHING like my best friend’s wedding…I am not saying anything bad about this wedding, it’s just that there is something special to watching your best friend walk down the aisle to the man she is meant to marry. As well, because both me and my husband were in the last wedding, it was so much fun to walk down the aisle towards him again…ALSO, because it was our best friends, we got along with family and whatnot so much better. AND…the inlaws weren’t at the other wedding…

Either way, this is going to be a good time!! I am going to get to watch another one of my friends walk down that aisle to the love of her life!!

I do have another couple of busy days ahead of me though!! The drive tonight is 5 hours (AFTER work…so we won’t arrive until around 11pm). Then I am up tomorrow for a mani/pedi with the bride and a few errands while Danny takes my newly sick iMac to the doctors. Then we have the rehearsal at 4:30pm and hopefully an early night!!!

I am meeting up with the girls at 9am for hair and makeup, which means that I have to get into the city (we are staying outside) pretty early (poor Danny has to drive me!) and then I will have one busy day!!! Oddly, the bride and groom has TOLD the entire wedding party that they must stay until the end of the reception when we have to clean up…that is 1:30 am! Not to sound like an old lady, but we have another 5 hour drive in the morning!!! I am thinking that I won’t really be drinking at this wedding (not like the last!) because I want to make sure that both the husband and I are in a condition to drive the next day!

I am hoping to be back to blogging at LEAST 3/4 time starting next week…we are camping next weekend, but not until after work, so I don’t really have any excuses!! Plus, now that all of the hoopla is over, I will be able to focus on a healthy lifestyle!

Oh, and about that relaxing vacation??? I have booked a 5 day trip for the husband and I to Halifax in October to visit the girls!!! THAT will be bliss!

Posted in Life in General Tagged: Edmonton, Halifax Trip, Life or Something Like it, Weddings Weddings Everywhere!

Weekend Update

Jen — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:53:31 +0000

I just figured I would pop in for a quick weekend update!

My weekend in Edmonton was FANTASTIC! We left some not so great weather here to SOMEWHAT nicer weather in Edmonton (it was nice there on Friday – snowy Saturday, which didn’t affect us much) and we left bad weather in Edmonton yesterday to come home to nice weather here!! It was a nice trade off!!

Friday was spent traveling for 5 hours (yeah, Edmonton is our closest city too…terrible hey?). We had a few stops to make on the way in and picked up a few things that we needed. We then headed downtown and parked in a parkade for the rest of the evening. We had a few places to go right in the middle of downtown, so we parked where we would be at the end of the evening – this way we got some walking in too!! We met our friends at the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner – great company but the food was really nothing to write home about and then we made our way over to the theater for “the Wizard of Oz” – it was fantastic!! REALLY well done – and I thought the girl who played Dorothy did a great job (VERY much like Judy Garland!)…and then we drove to Stony Plain (we were staying with my Aunt) and called it a night (it was 11:30 at this point and we left Fort Mac at 8am!!)

Saturday – we spend SEVEN hours at West Edmonton Mall!!! CRAZY!!! We started out with shopping at about 10 am. We dropped our bags and stuff in the car around 12:30, grabbed a bite to eat and went to watch a movie in the mall. We saw “I love you, Man” – this was my 2^nd time seeing it but Danny’s first, I found it really funny (Danny did too, but he said he like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” better – though I don’t think they are comparable!!) After the show we met one of Danny’s friends for dinner and we chose “Tony Roma’s” (we were still at the mall). Once again – food was not that great, except for the Kickin Shrimp we all shared at the start – that was fantastic! Danny and I hit up the cupcake place for a little after dinner treat!! We picked up a few cupcakes (we freeze them and save them for a “rainy day”) but we each had one while we were there – the one I had was called “Bliss” and I certainly agree!! It was chocolate cake, chocolate frosting covered with chocolate ganache – OMG!!! SO GOOD!

Sunday, we picked up a few things at Costco, stopped at Tim Horton’s and hit the road – and I was in a TERRIBLE mood for the beginning of our trip!! I had wanted a breakfast sandwich at Tim Hortons but they were out of stuff to make them (11:50 and they stop at noon, so that is understandable I guess). The sandwich I got wasn’t good and it cut the roof of my mouth (the bread was hard) and the coffee was burned and they didn’t put any cream in it…if I could only have ONE thing in my coffee it would be milk/cream! So then I was just awful – Danny made it up to me by suggested we pick up Wok Box once we got into town so that I wouldn’t have to cook…that helped me be a little less grumpy/stressed (AND he let me watch TV while I ate – when I say let, I mean that he didn’t bug me to help him put stuff away, he just let me catch up on Grey’s!)

Anyway, so yeah, we are back, and we bought a lot of stuff – that is the downside of living so far away from things, you have a huge shopping list whenever you go anywhere with stores you would like to go to!! The Costco trip alone was pretty big!!

But we are back, I weighed myself this morning and I am the same as I was on Thursday of last week (I forgot to weigh on Friday, oh well!). SO I am still maintaining a small loss – it’s nice I didn’t just gain it back!!!

I apologize still for the sporadic posting, it’s not that I am not enjoying blogging, it’s just that I haven’t had spare time lately!! I need to make a bit more time for it in the mornings I think because the evenings are taken up with workouts, visiting, cleaning, relaxing, etc!

OH and we are on our recovery week for P90X! I can’t believe we made it through Phase One! WOO!

Posted in Life in General, Shopaholic Tagged: Addicted to Shopping, Edmonton, Grumparific

The Good Old Hockey Game

Jen — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:35:46 +0000

Well, I apologize for the lack of posting over the past few days!!!

We made our trek to Edmonton early Tuesday morning (after a quick breakfast at Tim Hortons) and the roads were ABSOLUTELY awful!! I mean TERRIBLE!! We had very little visibility for the first 2 hours and lots of drifting snow…I was really starting to wonder if it was worth it!! But, by the time we hit the halfway mark (it’s a 5 hour drive). The sky cleared up and so did the roads…we didn’t hit any ice and there wasn’t much traffic for the rest of the way…whew…I still got cut off at one point, hit my brakes and fishtailed…really not what you WANT to do going 100 km/hr!

Anyway, we hit Edmonton and stopped at Best Buy as per Danny’s request. MUCH to our surprises, Boxing Day sales have now become Boxing Week sales! We geeked it up at Best Buy and got some pretty good deals! Including a mini Camcorder that I have been wanting for a while. I wanted to add a little something new to my blog, so I wanted to video record my vacation in Mexico at the end of the month. Now I can do so, conspicuously! Anyway, we also hit the Tommy outlet for some great 50% off deals!

We made it to our hotel which is in the middle of downtown Edmonton and checked in. We got a great rate AND the hotel is IN a mall, seriously, what more could you ask for?? But it was getting late, so we just went to our room and got ready for dinner. We made our way up to the pub upstairs for some pre-game food! I had a pint of bud light (with clamato in it, yes, I am gross) and for supper I had a blue cheese and bacon burger with sweet potato fries (yeah, I was not a good girl). I was getting a good buzz (I am also a light weight when it comes to drinking) when I spied one of my coworkers! What are the chances!! He was staying at the same hotel as us, eating at the same pub and neither of us knew the other would be going! Unfortunately, he and his wife walked in as we were leaving, so we couldn’t chat long as we had a game to get to!

We walked through the mall to the LRT (train) station to get the Arena…we spent MAYBE 3 minutes outside altogether, so really, this was THE way to travel! We got our seats and some more pre-game beer and waited for the game! We also got to sit in 30 minutes of blackout AFTER they introduced the teams and sang the anthem…crazy people couldn’t get the lights back on! Whatever, the downside was when the game started up again, it took the fans a while to warm up!! EXCEPT for a girl in our section…quick little bit on her…she came in with a long sleeve shirt on, a jersey “dress” (she was a sens fan…and I thought we were a classy breed!) and some pants. She walked away to get some snacks and came back sans pants…um nice…she had leg warmers on and her “dress” hit JUST below her bum (for the record, I was wearing thick jeans, knee socks, faux uggs, 2 shirts, a senators jacket, and the Oilers jersey danny bought me and made me wear over top of my senators jacket so I wouldn’t get berated – and I was FRIGGIN FREEZING!!!). Anyhoo, the whole 1st period she yelled “go sens” every two seconds, while she – consumed 3 beer, ate 2 individual pizzas, a huge bucket of popcorn, reapplied her makeup twice and talked on the phone (while still screaming) – yes, I am a people watcher. Anyway, when we came back after the 1st intermission (me armed with a soft pretzel and a diet coke, YUM!) and settled in to watch the 2nd period. “Sens girl” had not returned. When the clock was at about 14 minutes left, she returned (so a lot longer than 6 minutes!). Anyway, as she got more and more drunk, she then removed her long sleeve shirt from under her “dress”…this was where it got worse…she jumped up to cheer at one point and ALL of us realized she wasn’t wearing underwear…that made her popular with the married man sitting beside her!! Anyway, it made me think about how little self respect one has to have for themselves to be such an attention seeker, this girl didn’t do ANYTHING without looking around to see what people were saying/reacting to around her…anyway, she missed about half the game because she disappeared for a while after the 2nd intermission as well…I don’t think she was there to support her team as much as she was to attract attention (she messed up a few of the players names and didn’t seem to know much about hockey)…anyhoo, I am a firm believer – if you are willing to show your cooch for your team, you had better be there to support them!!

Anyway, moving on! (Short form!)

Next day we hung out with our friends from Fort Mac that also went to Edmonton! We went out for lunch with them to Milestones (4 cheese burger, more sweet potato fries) and did a little running around. Then we had some New Years plans with our friends to go to Red Robin for dinner (more burgers, fries…this time a milkshake!!) and we went to our other friends house to play a little Wii before the countdown (aren’t we wild??). We walked back to the hotel at around 1:30 am when we were told that we couldn’t get a cab for AT LEAST 1.5 hours!! EW! We also decided to stay ONE MORE night because the roads weren’t great (so we heard).

So we got up early New Years Day searching for something to do! Luckily the Bay was open in our mall and I hit a few more sales! Then our friends texted us to say that West Edmonton Mall was open! Sweet!!! We hit that up as well!!! I went to Lululemon and got a pink hoodie and we mosied around for a while!

We went to Mongolie Grill for dinner (YUMMY!) and went our separate ways. Danny and I went back to the hotel to watch “Hancock” (not bad!)…

Yesterday morning we got up early and had to return something, then we made our way home!!!

We had a GREAT trip (spent a bit too much) but it was a nice time away! I couldn’t believe all the amazing sales we hit!

Over our trip though we decided quite a few things that need changing in our lives. And since I am all about planning, I came up with my resolutions…

I will post them later with an action plan – right now I am off to the grocery store and then to the gym!!

Posted in Fluff Tagged: Edmonton, Hockey, Spend spend spend

Looking forward to work??

Jen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:22:42 +0000

Well not really…more so I am looking forward to going back to normal life…

This week has just not been good…I have had a lot of fun, and a lot of good times, but really I have had ZERO time for me…and even though Danny is WITH ME at all these events/occasions, we have had ZERO time together! No fun. At least I can look forward to our mini trip away tomorrow though, we are going to Edmonton for one of Danny’s Christmas presents – an Edmonton Oilers vs. Ottawa Senators Hockey Game!! YAY!!! I love me some live Hockey and have been a somewhat follower of the Oilers for years, however, both Danny’s and my loyalties lie with the Senators and we have never seen them play! I can’t wait!! (Yes, so this is really only Danny’s christmas present right???)

So this week is really nothing even close to resembling normal…Danny is at work today, and I have agreed to go in for the middle of the day…I really have no desire to sit at home while Danny goes off to work, so it just seems better that way! I am working on taking down the tree as soon as I finish this post…otherwise I am certain the kitten will have destroyed it by the time we get home!

I am working on my New Years Resolutions but I think I will wait until New Years Day to post them. That doesn’t mean that I will wait until then to follow them…I just need to fine tune them a bit…I want to see a lot of changes this year for both Danny and I, and I want to make sure that I can stick to them. I have also set a few timelines for some things.

It is definitely looking like a new job is in the works…now I just have to find out where…I am glad that I forgot about that over the holidays because it was causing a little stress before then…this isn’t something I should do…it is now something I have to do…I can’t go into full details on here, but there will be a LITTLE bit of explaining around the middle of January, but because of personal reasons, and confidentiality, I am sure you guys understand.

I will keep this short because I am off to take down the tree and then get ready for work…I will be packing tonight for our mini-getaway in the morning!!

Posted in Life in General Tagged: Edmonton, Hockey, New Years