Recently in Traveling Category

Bold the ones you've visited and post ... Many of these are Japan, China, India ... hope to one day visit Japan for sure!

1. Times Square, New York City, NY: 35 million visitors every year

2. National Mall & Memorial Parks, Washington, D.C. (Washington Monument, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials,the war memorials): About 25 million 1999.

3. Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Lake Buena Vista, Fla.: 16.6 million with family

4. Trafalgar Square, London, England: 15 million

5. Disneyland Park, Anaheim, Calif.: 14.7 million

6. Niagara Falls, Ontario and New York: 14 million - and they were frozen!

7. Fisherman’s Wharf/Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, Calif.: 13 million

8. Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan: 12.9 million

9. Notre Dame de Paris, Paris, France: 12 million.

10. Disneyland Paris, Marne-La-Vallee, France: 10.6 million

Pictures from Hawai'i if you're interested!! We took about 1700 photos ... I only put 125 online though!!

Click here for aloha photo happiness from Steve & Lacy

If you just for a few pics ... here are my favs from each island (although it's probably easier to just flick through them on the above pages!)

OAHU

    Pearl Harbor / USS Arizona Memorial (beautiful memorial - I never realized you can actually see the ship in the water)
        USS Arizona 2
    Amazing Ocean Water Color (every single island - the water is this color - it's breathtaking sometimes)
    View from the top of Diamond Head Crater  (just glad I was alive by the time we got up there!!!)
    Dole Plantation
        Pineapple Princess Lacy (seriously.  they had a song called the Pineapple Princess playing ... ) 
        Pinapple Prince Steve (you know he loves this photo ... ha!) 

BIG ISLAND

    Whale Watching    (it's the fluke!)
            Whale Watching 2  (see the fluke ... and then you can see another whale's blow hole in front of it; there were four around our boat at this point; whales the size of a bus; crazy!)
    Black Sand Beach    (loved this)
            Black Sand Beach 2
    Steve walking down Volcanic Lava Tube

MAUI

    Ocean
        Ocean 2
    Maui Restuarant (who could pass this and not take a picture of it??)
    A fish at the Maui Ocean Center with a serious complex
        A stingray smiling at us ;) 
        A weird fish
    Steve windsurfing

KAUAI

    Wailua Waterfall
    Kilauea Point Lighthouse
    Waimea Canyon 
    'Opeaka'a Waterfall 
    Lawai (near the Spouting Horn)
    National Tropical Botanical Gardens
        One    Two    Three    Four

Let the countdown commence.

Only Five Days 'til Two Weeks in Hawaii.

We haven't been on a real vacation in two years (a real vacation for us is going somewhere we've never been ... and for more than a week!). Steve has been traveling A LOT with work ... and we were moving, building a house ... vacation just wasn't going to happen until this year. So - we have been planning this trip for about 9 months now. It is technically our five-year anniversary trip ... even though we just celebrated six years in December!

We are FINALLY seeing some benefit from Steve's traveling all over the U.S. for HCA. We're using frequent flier miles for our flights, hotel points for our hotels, and car points for our rental cars. We are staying at some AMAZING resorts ... I can't wait. The thread count alone is going to make me sigh with vacationary delight. Bring on the relaxation.

We'll be spending time in Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island (Hawaii). Neither of us have ever been to Hawaii before (one of our real vacation stipulations, remember?) - so we're really excited. My parents and brother/sister-in-law have been there before and have been a great source of information for things to definitely do and see on each of the islands. Neither of us are really "lay on the beach for hours and do nothing" type of people ... so we have each day planned out with what we will be doing.

Sooo ... five days and counting. Yesssss!!

Another item I'm finally getting around to uploading - TWO YEARS after the fact. Sheesh. This is a short video I shot with my canon elph camera ... if you haven't ever been to Vegas and seen the Bellagio water shows ... they are so beautiful!

A few months back Steve found out that the England football (soccer) team would be coming to Chicago to play the US team. Almost before he finished reading the announcement he was looking online for where and when he could buy tickets. The game was this past weekend — and we had a blast. Steve lived in Chicago (downtown on East Ohio Street!) for almost two years when he first moved here from England — so we visited a lot of our old haunts and enjoyed seeing the city again. Navy Pier, Michigan Avenue, Water Tower Place … the shopping! Oh my, the shopping!

The game had great atmosphere — with more than half of the 50,000 crowd being England fans. English flags were everywhere in the stadium — if you were to just look at the stadium you would think there were ONLY England fans there — there were that many flags. England won 2-1 in a great match. I love soccer (football) because it’s 90 minutes of playing time - not long and drawn out with time-outs and yadda yadda yadda. 45 minutes. 15 minute half time. 45 minutes. The game is finished. American Football could learn a few things from that!

We got a bit of shopping in, visited the Chicago Mac Store, Navy Pier; bought two pairs of the wonderful Clarks shoes (yes!); and on Saturday night we went to see Star Wars. Ah the tragic inevitability.

Sunday we stopped in at Frys (the only one in Illinois - how lucky it’s close to Chicago!) and enjoyed checking out one of the geekiest stores in the planet. I wish we had one of those in Nashville - it would be so handy!

Click here for our photo album of the weekend!

Lake Tahoe is peaceful beauty. San Diego is wild, but 2 days was enough. San Francisco is a mecca of fun and trolley-hanging-off-excitement. Las Vegas is spectacular and alice and sad all at the same time. Reno is Harley filled and stark landscapes. The Grand Canyon is majestically breathtaking.

We fly home tomorrow night. It's been a great two weeks. Simply great. Photos and more to come ...

Steve and I will be leaving for a two-week tour of California next week. We leave on September 21 - a day which also happens to be my 27th birthday! We'll be going to San Deigo, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Phoenix, the Grand Canyon, Oakland ... we're taking advantage of the super cheap flights that Southwest Airlines provides. Our flight to San Diego is only $99 ... and then we're doing short $20-$30 flights between all the cities over there. It's quicker than driving ... and cheaper considering gas and rental car prices!

The floor (aka Comments) is open for Sight-Seeing suggestions ... are there places in the cities we're visiting that we shouldn't miss? Good restaurants? Cool shows? Beautiful scenery? We don't want to miss anything!!!

Following in Kristine's footsteps, who followed in Lisa's ....

Those states in bold I have visited, those states in bold/underline I have lived!

1) Alabama 2) Alaska 3) Arizona 4) Arkansas 5) California 6) Colorado 7) Connecticut 8) Delaware 9) Florida 10) Georgia 11) Hawaii 12) Idaho 13) Illinois 14) Indiana 15) Iowa 16) Kansas 17) Kentucky 18) Louisiana 19) Maine 20) Maryland 21) Massachusetts 22) Michigan 23) Minnesota 24) Mississippi 25) Missouri 26) Montana 27) Nebraska 28) Nevada 29) New Hampshire 30) New Jersey 31) New Mexico 32) New York 33) North Carolina 34) North Dakota 35) Ohio 36) Oklahoma 37) Oregon 38) Pennsylvania 39) Rhode Island 40) South Carolina 41) South Dakota 42) Tennessee 43) Texas 44) Utah 45) Vermont 46) Virginia 47) Washington 48) West Virginia 49) Wisconsin 50) Wyoming and 51) DC

I'm going to try and install Moveable Type on my server sometime this week -- I don't know that I want to use it on this site, but Steve thinks he might use it to log in articles and results for his soccer website. If I have any problems, I'll be running to Miss Moveable Type 2003, Addie. She doesn't even know it yet ;)

I spent this past weekend in Knoxville being in a friends wedding. She and her husband graduated from medical school just one week before their wedding -- so needless to say, it was a bit hectic because they had SO much going on right up until the wedding day. It all turned out beautifully though -- we, the bridesmaids, had pretty two-piece black dresses that *SHOCK* we MIGHT actually be able to wear again. (Maybe I should post pictures of the bridesmaid dresses I have in my closet .... only two of them are even remotely possibilities for a second wearing, and only if the skirt is altered. Guys get off so easy .... sure they have to rent a tux, but at least they haven't spent $100+ on a dress that, if it wasn't for their friend, they wouldn't be caught dead in. Seriously -- who wants a bow or a row of roses on their butt in satin???)

SEVEN on SUNDAY:
1. What was the last movie you saw and what did you think of it? The Patriot (the one with Steven Seagal that was on TBS). Lamest biowarfare movie I've ever seen in my life? I mean, come on, curing the virus with flowers? The end of the movie was a bunch of helicopters dropping flowers over the town. I don't know why I expected more ... it WAS a Steven Seagal movie. LOL
2. What summer releases are you looking forward to? Non-movie, of course it would be the latest Harry Potter novel; Movie-related..... Legally Blond 2, American Wedding
3. Are there any movies that you just do not get the hype over? 2Fast2Furious. Or the first one. I guess I'm just not into the lame car-chasing macho guy crap.
4. Name a great movie that you don't think has gotten enough hype. Angela's Ashes - definitely not a feel good movie, but awesome; Billy Elliot - hilarious, probably more so if you have a british person around to translate!!!
5. What movie genre do you usually enjoy most? Wow I like almost all -- I love drama, action, suspense, mystery, romance. I don't enjoy thriller movies though. At all.
6. Are there any movies that you know are really stupid, but you loved anyway? American Pies I/II... they are stupid movies, but hilarious none the less.
7. What's the next movie you plan on seeing? Bruce Almighty

Happy belated birthday to Rae .... the queen of the blog. May you have many more years of being the leader of online blabbering. (Rae probably doesn't even know this ... but it was her website that made me want to have a blog!)

This week is going to be a good one. I have no plans whatsoever. It's the first week in a long time that I've just had normal life going on -- so it will be nice! Last night Steve and I stained the deck of the house and I framed a few prints (links to one photomosaic print that we have) that we had in storage. Steve wants to add on a whole new section of deck this summer -- so maybe we'll get started on that this weekend. (It's so nice just to have a free weekend to start on it if we want to.) Maybe we'll even be able to go OUT to a movie theatre. Woohoo!

Only 11 more days til Harry Potter !!!

Today's top news stories ....

-- This is the freakiest thing I've seen in a while ...
-- This is the coolest picture I've seen in a while ....
-- Unbelievable!
-- Whoa Nelly!
-- If only we had known .... Ha.
-- Addie and her donkey would be right at home here ....
-- Mr. Stinky ....
-- Hot mama

We're leaving for St. Augustine, Florida in a few hours! A nice, relaxing weekend of nothing but sitting in the sun, swimming and reading. Sigh. It will be fabulous! Steve got our hotel free, with his frequent traveler points -- so we're staying in a super-swank hotel right on the beach -- I can't wait! Everybody needs a vacation where they just do nothing, don't they? No touristy, busy, full-schedule trip -- just a few days at the beach where you don't have to get up at a certain time or be anywhere to meet anyone. Just you, a good book, and the beach. Ahhhhhhhhh

I'm growing tired of this layout .... and maybe before the end of summer I'll have decided what to do for a new one. I like this one just because it's simple and different from all my other layouts .... but I've had it a LONG time. It's well past time for a makeover. I have a few ideas -- and none of them involve half-naked men or women -- I don't want to have to cover my own site with my hand when I'm looking at it at work :)

We spent Memorial Day weekend painting the office at home & then building a big desk for it. We framed out the desk, painted it and then installed two ready-made countertops from Home Depot on top. It looks pretty cool. The desk is an L-shape desk around two entire walls in the office. It gives us plenty of desktop space and room for all of the computers, scanners, printers, etc. It will be great to not have everything crammed onto a teeny weeny little 3 foot wide desk!

THIS-OR-THAT TUESDAY
1. Do you prefer silence or do you like background sound (music, TV, etc)? (If I'm reading, I like silence though ... but for working, I like music or TV)
2. Bathe/shower in morning or evening?
3. Sleeping in complete darkness, or with a nightlight on?
4. Lay out clothes the night before, or just grab what's closest in the morning?
5. Hang up/fold clothes neatly, or just toss them wherever?
6. Work out at a gym, or at home on your own (or do you not bother with exercise)?
7. Talk on the phone, or via IM/e-mail?
8. Are you usually on time, or late?
9. Spendthrift or frugal? Tough question .... I think I'm both. That IS possible, you can be careful with your money and not be a tightwad!
10. Thought-Provoking Question of the Week: You work with someone who is not in the habit of bathing regularly. The smell seems to be getting worse and worse! Would you: 1. try to do something about it, or 2. try to grin and bear it? If you said 1, what would you do? Maybe for their birthday, get them one of those baskets from Bath & Body Works, be sure to have the body wash and shampoo and a bar of soap! I don't think I could ever outright tell them they stank and needed to take a bath! That's the bosses job :)