ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

plus two rum and cokes by my side.

Today is our 10 year anniversary...yea for us! We were married pretty young and although it isn't something I recommend to our kids (the divorce stats aren't so good when you get married young!), it is nice that we've kind of grown up and melded our lives together. It's just so much easier and more fun now than when we were struggling at the beginning with finances, jobs, babies, etc.

Here are some pics of us over the years....

1997, the year before we got married


1998, the year we got married


1999


2001. I'm pregnant in this photo but not that pregnant. I start to question Andy's decision to remain married to me judging by the looks of this pic.


Later in 2001, Blake is born.


2002 - I dropped half a person in size and grew twice the amount of hair.


2003. Andy used to do all kinds of things to cover up his teeth issues including making silly faces.


2004


Later in 2004 when we went to Vegas...


2005 at a club in Disney World...


Early 2006 in Thailand...


Later in 2006


2007 in New Orleans...


Later in 2007...

After seeing the video below, I thought it would be interesting to take a photo everyday and then put them together to see the changes over the years. I haven't started that process yet but this site makes it easier to put all of your pics together so you can make your own.

Wordle.net allows you to take your own words or a URL and it creates a text cloud. You can format it in different ways, have it re-generate the words, etc.

Here's mine using my blog as the source for the words.

Last week, the runs were very difficult for some reason. They were both 3.5 miles which shouldn't be hard for me but it was really difficult. After that, I wasn't looking forward to today's 5 mile run especially since I'd never run that far. Good thing was that it was fairly easy and I completed it without a problem. The change of scenery at my parents house and the mid-60s temps couldn't have hurt anything!

Weight-wise, I lost another 2 pounds. The last two weeks I've lost two pounds each week which has been nice to finally break free from the plateau I was in for a month or more.

This week will be interesting because I don't want to skip any runs or gain any weight but....we'll be in Mexico. I've timed it so I should only have one run while we're there but being at an all-inclusive with unlimited food might make the weight gain thing a little hard. I'll just aim to not gain and see how that goes.

Sunday was a bit more laid back. Andy and I got up and ran and the temps being in the 60s plus having 3 tracks/trails near my parents' house made it fun to do as we ran loops around each one. After a shower, Andy and I headed to get stuff for our trip - tiny toiletries (we aren't checking our bags this time), gifts to leave for the kids, etc.

After lunch at my parents', we headed over to Andy's mom's house to spend the afternoon with Maria and her family. It wasn't even 80 degrees so there was no way I was getting in the pool.




We left so I could go start dinner at my parents' house. We had a lot of produce at home when we left so I packed it in a cooler and brought it with us so we could make use of it.

Tonight's dinner was marinated chicken breasts, chicken kabobs, deviled eggs, fresh corn on the cob, celery with peanut butter and Crash Hot Potatoes (recipe I've been wanting to try for a couple of weeks - delicious!).

Some time playing the yard including some baseball practice...

(I took a picture of our dinner and the baseball playing but my memory stick got messed up and had to be reformatted.)

Once again, we all got to bed early. Monday is our last day before our trip so it's all of the last minute things and then we're off!

On Saturday, we headed over to Dan and Katrina's house (except Dan wasn't there) to spend most of the day with them. The kids played Wii for a while and then we headed to the Crown Center area that we visit quite often except this time, I wanted to make sure we went to Union Station which is within walking distance of Crown Center but we'd never been.

We started with lunch at Fritz's Railroad Restaurant where we've been a few times. It was fun as usual and we were so hungry that we ate our food up very quickly.

After lunch, we walked to Union Station using the tunnels that connect the buildings. After walking around Union Station for a bit, we got tickets to Science City (located inside Union Station) and headed there.














We really loved Science City and are generally big fans of children's museums since they are so interactive and fun. I wish I had taken more pics of Union Station outside of Science City because it's so beautiful. I'll get the pics on our next visit.

We headed back toward Crown Center where were parked, stopping in the Westin Crown Center hotel to throw coins in the waterfall.




Compare that photo of the 4 of them w/this one taken in June 2005.


One last stop by the candy store where Joey got a lollipop the size of his head. His face color matched the lollipop by the time we got home.



After grabbing some dinner on the way back to Tonganoxie, we stopped by Andy's mom's house so the boys could get their hair trimmed. Payton and Blake went out to snip some flowers to take with us.



After all of that, we were exhausted and headed back to my parents house to wind down and headed to bed early. Although I love doing stuff and staying busy, it's been pretty exhausting lately so the trip to Mexico will be nice where we won't be running around and wearing ourselves out everyday. Can't wait!

We drove up to KC on Friday morning to spend a few days before Andy and I head to Mexico. I had a work meeting in Lawrence at 12:30 on Friday so we went to Maria's house first with lunch (from Taco John's - don't have those in Wichita) and hung out w/Andy's mom and Maria's kids. I headed to my meeting and when I was done, we left Maria's house and headed for Ben and Jerry's (another thing we don't have in Wichita and loved going there in Texas).



After that, we headed to my parents' house to unpack and get settled in. Later in the evening, my brother and his wife came with their kids and we hung out in the yard for a bit.






Taken by Blake...

Taken by Blake using the timer...



Picking leaves off the trees w/Uncle Andy...


Later that night, my brother, his wife, Andy and I went to The Legends area to go out for some drinks. We started at The Yard that has dozens and dozens of beer to choose from plus some really good martinis which I had. Of course, Rusty stuck with his regular and had Bud Light or Coors Light in a very tall glass (1/2 yard?).



I ordered a spicy tuna appetizer to eat and instead of looking like sushi rolls, it looked like some kind of a cake. I didn't like it much as it was too heavy on the tuna w/o the rice to tone it down. Pretty though!