That time we saw Ben Stiller

It was March 17th.

We were somewhere warm, soaking up the sun during our spring break.

We were eating a delicious & gluttonous steak dinner at about 9:00pm when he walked right through the archway into the back room of the nearly empty restaurant. He had a big smile on his face and was walking fast & before my brain even processed what was happening I blurted out, "Hello Ben Stiller!" in a this-isn't-real-so-he-won't-hear-the-ridiculous-tone-of-my-voice sqeak/squeal.

But it was real.

He sat down for dinner with only an empty table separating us.  

We decided not to be "those fans" and bother him during dinner.

So we finished, paid the bill & went back to our room (for our better camera).  And I maybe put a quick swipe of mascara onto my bare lashes before we went back to camp outside of the restaurant and wait for him to reemerge.  (& get a picture with him on our better camera with my eyelashes standing out!!!).

Much less annoying and creepy.

He came out, but I was freaking out about not being stalker-ish so we hung back and only saw him sitting in the front seat of the car ready to drive away.  

And then he was gone to who knows where, his private villa or something.

Still, a pretty cool story, even with no picture as proof.

So funny to see a celebrity in person.  Even if you think you'll be cool and not even care because Hollywood is so removed from actual society and totally corrupted with too much money for their own good... you will not be cool if it's Ben Stiller.  

He's the best.

We also-

Read books: Outliers (Fascinating!), These Is My Words (Positively heart warming and wonderful), The Glass Castle (Pass; could barely finish it, too depressing) &  Freakonomics (Like).

Explored/took walks and admired the pretty scenery. 

Lazed around next to & swam in the turquoise blue ocean.

We really didn't do much more than that.  Mckay got the worst sunburn of his life on Day 2, so that kind of put a damper on things.  I'll spare you the pictures, just know that a week later he still looked like a ripe tomato, it was so sad.  We also ate too much food (specifically dessert) and stayed up too late watching TV.  It was four days of nothing productive and everything relaxing and leisure and we loved it.

Cap Cana, Dominican Republic

March 16-20, 2013

03.02 happy birthday to me!

This year my birthday was on a Saturday, obviously the very best day of the week on which to have your birthday land.  Mckay gave me the best gift ever, him! All to myself doing everything I love for the entire day. It was the best.  He's been spending most Saturday's at his office studying so it really was such a treat to get to spend the entire weekend together, completely ignoring the books.

He gave me a "card" he'd made that had a sweet birthday note on one side and on the other was our schedule for the day, with pictures for every activity he had planned (all of it was a total surprise to me!).  I believe he made it on PowerPoint, which is so Mckay.  It made me laugh.
 
After making and eating a yummy breakfast together, we got pedicures!  It was awesome.  Once all was said and done, he did not love it. He especially hated them filing his toes (that's what is going on in the above picture).  He also had a lady doing his pedicure, which everyone knows is always second string to a man.  But he wasn't letting a man near his feel, quite the conundrum!  There were a few ladies there, I don't know what they were thinking, but they were staring.  I loved it and thought it was so sweet of him to be a good sport.  Plus, his toes look better than ever and he got to speak a little Korean with the employees.  Later that week he had a dermatology appointment and said, "Do you think if she see's my feet she'll know I got a pedicure?"  :]

After our pedicures we hopped in the car and drove into the city for lunch at one of my favorite places, La Bonne Soupe.  It's this wonderful, cramped, authentic French place that has become pretty popular since we first went in 2010 (when everyone was speaking French & we couldn't read the menu).  They have the best "onion soup" I've ever tasted.  The food is delicious and the service is quick.  We were too full for dessert after the soup, ham & swiss crepe (me) & lamb burger (him) and I was bummed because I wanted the chocolate tart... next time!

Once we were sufficiently stuffed, we saw a play!  I love being able to see a Broadway every now & again.  Chicago has been on my list for some time and after getting the green light from a friend, we went for it!  I thought it was great and had really great music, and the girl who played Roxie was adorable!  Mckay didn't love it like I did, but I didn't really expect him to.

The show ended and we raced back to Connecticut for sweet Tillie Rose's 1st birthday party.  We absolutely adore that little lady & think her parents are pretty great too.  We blew out birthday candles together and got to hang out with some of our favorite people. 

It was a birthday that was practically perfect in every way!

Blog-to-book help!?

Has anyone ever turned their blog into a book? 

I took a stab at it tonight and wanted to yell curse words and smash things...

I downloaded BLURB and didn't find it user-friendly at all.  I didn't do the auto-build, I tried putting the posts in myself, which messed up layouts and cut out titles and all other sorts of ridiculousness.  

Advice? What have you used that has worked?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

While I'm on here:

Nothing too exciting going on in our lives. 

I started school and have been completely invigorated after being positively burnt out, that was a pleasant surprise.  I cannot believe it's my last (last??!*&#$*@) semester! Just this last hurdle and then the NCLEX.  I am so looking forward to being done.

Mckay is surviving, that's really the only word for it.  He is so busy between school, work and studying for the CFA.  He manages time to play a little basketball and football and love on his cutie wife, which makes us both happy.

I got really sick two weeks ago and ended up in the hospital after puking my guts out for 5 hours.  That was a fun way to spend my winter break.  But I was in and out so fast, just needed some magic Zofran in my veins and 2 liters of fluid and I was good to go. At least back to bed where I would lay for three days and not move a muscle.  This "flu" (it was some GI virus anyway) does not mess around.

It snowed today which made us both sad.  We were having a "warm", sunny and bearable winter up until last week when the temperature dropped to below 20 and today the snow came.  This is our last winter here!  We say that every year.  Frigid temperatures aside, we truly love it here in Connecticut.

Mckay's parents just got their mission call to Finland, which is where his Dad served 50ish years ago.  We are excited for them and hoping we get a chance to visit.

I watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey tonight while Mckay was at class and cried so now I have puffy eyes and a headache, but so worth it.  I absolutely love that show.

We love 2013 so far.

2012

she

studied a lot & finished 75% of nursing school

turned 23

survived a year of ctr 4 and fell in love with 12 little ones

spent a solo week in utah with her fam

decorated a new apartment

he

turned 30 and celebrated in style with a night of korea-town karaoke

was accepted to NYU, started his MBA program & finished his 1st semester

played a basketball &/or football game at least once a week, three times if he was lucky

passed level 2 of the cfa

watched the bachelorette & abandoned all sense of pride to read people magazine in broad daylight

we

moved into our second apartment and made a new home in darien

explored and tasted all that italy has to offer

went to virginia, massachusetts, maine, illinois, indiana, texas, utah, california, maryland & italy

lived without electricity for a week & helped clean-up after sandy

had the best summer guest ever

celebrated two beautiful years of marriage [with creme brulee of course]

spent a grand christmas in texas playing with nieces & nephews

pulled off a surprise christmas trip to utah 

& had family pictures taken 

2012 was far from a perfect year but it was definitely a sweet one.  lots of growth, lots of pulling together, lots of love, lots of fun! 

cheers to 2013!

Closing time

December is coming to a close. 2012 flew by, but the end has also been slow in coming... Here's what we've been up to this month, the last month of the year! (& the pictures are out of order and refuse to change)

Finished my last clinical day at the hospital! We celebrated with a "fancy" lunch at the "fancy" hospital cafe, it was delicious and the company was lovely. Just one more semester to go, and although this one was no walk in the park, I'm looking forward to getting my motivation up for the final four months that are around the corner. Getting close!

Annual night in the city to see the Christmas festivities! The tree is always so beautiful to me, and breathtaking when you get us close to it, it's just massive and so sparkly, what's not to love? 

Mckay's brother Jared came to town to celebrate his birthday and we got to hang out with him all weekend (we were supposed to go to the Killers concert, which ended up being canceled).  We had brunch at Sarabeth's, a "chick" place, but I think they both ended up really liking it. Jared liked it more than his face in this picture shows.

Our sweet neighbor baby Tillie (who we absolutely adore) came to play one night when her Mama needed to run an errand. Lucky me got to soak up her darling baby-ness for a few hours.

Birthday desserts for the birthday boy! Toasted marshmallow milkshakes -the best milkshake I've ever had in my life!

Mckay's flag football season ended, don't worry, I believe another one has already started up again.  They shall not go without.  I said, "give me a tough face".

We had dinner with our wonderful friends, the Francia's and laughed for two straight minutes at their baby stuck in this foam toy.  It was hilarious watching him try to escape. 

Stars changing colors to Christmas music at the Time Warner Center.

Red 

My milkshake from the birthday dinner. I kid you not when I say it was the milkshake of ALL milkshakes. Toasted marshmallows aren't even my favorite thing and I couldn't shovel this into my mouth fast enough. If that + our wonderful company isn't enough to get you to visit I don't even know what is.

When we stole away to Otis...

One of my sweetest friends from nursing school offered to let us use her cabin for the weekend. We jumped on the thought of running away for a weekend.  We didn't know what the cabin would be like, but couldn't very well screen it; "Yes, we'd like to use your cabin, but how nice of a cabin are we talking?"  No, that would be rude, so one graciously accepts and hopes that one is not stuck in a freezing shack in the woods, sleeping on a futon.  We were so very thrilled to discover the most beautiful log house (I can hardly classify it as a cabin) we'd ever seen.

We spent the weekend tucked away inside, putting together a 1,000 piece Christmas puzzle, drinking cup after cup of hot chocolate, sleeping in the comfiest pillow-topped bed, soaking in the claw-foot tub, cooking yummy meals in the gourmet-cabin-kitchen, building fires, falling asleep to the crackling embers, watching movies, ignoring phones & computers, simply enjoying each other.  We were even lucky enough to wake up to a few inches of softly falling snow on Saturday morning, so perfect.

It was a cozy, comfy, lovely weekend in Otis, Massachusetts. 

The fire I built us.

The cabin that wasn't a shack.

The puzzle we spent 8+ hours putting together.  

The pretty patchwork quilt that divided the living room & kitchen, my Mom would have loved it.

The cute colored mugs that held our hot chocolate all weekend.

The tired but obsessed lovers working on the puzzle at 1:00 AM.

11.30.12-12.2.12

Mormon Helping Hands

Last Sunday church was canceled so that members of our stake could spend the day garbed in the bright yellow "Mormon Helping Hands" vests helping to clean up the mess Sandy left.

We hopped onto yellow school buses after a mini-sacrament meeting in work boots and sweatshirts and got comfy for the 1.5 hour ride to the Rockaways, a peninsula of Long Island.

We were split into teams, arrived in Queens, gathered supplies and made our way through the neighborhood still littered with debris & sand and lined with damaged homes.  It felt a little like a ghost town & a war zone at the same time.  We found people that needed help, and we helped.

They were hours well spent.  Every home had been flooded. I couldn't have imagined the damage that was done, it was something you had to see to believe. People still without power, homes destroyed, and the sand, weird to see it so far removed from the ocean! It was just devastating.

Mckay and some other guys removed some huge trees and were pretty excited about it (so excited in fact, that they filmed themselves chopping it down with an axe to show their wives).  It was a long day of hard work but it felt wonderful.  It was neat to have the opportunity to be a part of something so good that the church organizes.  It was realizing that sitting in the pew at church on Sunday really isn't what the gospel is about.  It's about love and service and charity; about lifting others and pulling together as a community.  It was so great to spend the day with work gloves on my hands and sneakers on my feet doing good. 

The men transporting our "sleigh" of supplies.

At one point during our day a possibly looney, very small Asian man said that we were going to save the world. "Just watch!" he said, maybe a slight exaggeration but I'll take it.

Cleaning up in the dusty, sandy basement.

Lunch break at the food trucks.  Businesses donated food for the people (& volunteers, we assumed) in the area.  It was tasty stuff!

Right before we went home, a walk down the street to see the ocean. 

In front of one of the homes on the shore.

Cleaning the ruined windows in a family's newly remodeled (and now completely gutted) basement.

We were tired by the time we finally made it home through NY traffic (ugh) and slept well that night.  It's crazy to think that tomorrow as families across the country are roasting turkey in their ovens, there are still people without power, camping out at hotels and trying to salvage their properties and get life back to some form of normal.  It lends a whole new meaning to gratitude this year.

This year, my Thanksgiving thankful is for my warm home, bright lights, cold fridge and hot water.  

oh sandy baby

sandy visited us & certainly did a number.

but i'll start with halloween.

we had a funny/slightly inappropriate costume in mind for mckay that didn't reach us in time for party #1. so we improvised and he went as a male nurse. and he played the part well.  in fact, we were scared that he was going to win the "most convincing costume" award. but he didn't, much to his relief.  he wore my scrubs and when he first put them on at home, i flat out said no, he could not go out in public dressed like that, even on halloween. but he did.  luckily they had stretched some by the time we made it to the party, & luckily he didn't rip them.

me and my hospital patient at party #2.

seriously!?! it was almost too convincing for some people.  he was wearing spandex under the fake, foam butt, unfortunately he insisted on playing the part (there is a theme with him) and had them pulled up into boy-shorts so they wouldn't really be seen.  the lights were off for most of the party, but that didn't do much to camouflage his huge behind from sparkling in the candle light. it gave everyone a good laugh.  love that he is willing to go along with stuff like this.

Meanwhile.... something nasty was brewing outside.

by sunday night all work & school & social engagements had pretty much been canceled all along the east coast.  on monday, mckay and i took advantage of his empty office across the street from us and went to work. we were there for most of the day, all the while he talked about how blown out of proportion this "hurricane" had become.  because he's from texas and he knows hurricanes and east coast people are wussy and it's going to be nothing... talk like that.  i told him he better pipe down or we'd be humbled.

& sure enough... that evening we lost power.

the short (under 2 minute) walk from his office to our house was incredibly eerie; howling wind, completely empty streets, thick darkness, and branches scattered all over the ground.  i actually ran home because i was creeped out. he followed suit a few hours later and found our sweet little apartment without blessed electricity, which is how we would remain until saturday afternoon. 

the night we lost power i was thrilled. it was like being a kid again in california and having a thunderstorm wipe out the power and being so excited for mom to light candles and pull out a board game.  mckay came home and we lit candles and played scrabble.  and it doesn't matter who won, but i did!  that was my favorite part of our sandy-week.

the next day we still didn't have power but were sure it would be on within the day.  we live in downtown darien and weren't concerned about the whole situation because of our proximity to the train station, fire department and all the shops & restaurants that would certainly be a priority in restoring electricity.  we hit starbucks for hot chocolate and to charge our phones and spend the rest of the day driving around taking in the devastation and visiting friends.

right about here is where we were humbled.

scenes like the above were literally on every street.  it was bizarre to see trees completely horizontal.  95% of our town was without power the day after sandy due to fallen trees taking out power lines.  transformers blew up all through the night and the wind howled.  there wasn't pounding rain, or rumbling thunder, just wind.  it's amazing what kind of damage a little wind can do.  it brought the water level up and into homes and took trees down and destroyed properties.  

& the damage done to other parts of the east, manhattan and new jersey, is just staggering.  

it was more than we bargained for, that is for sure.

what the dunn family learned:

candles will keep a little room amazingly warm 

being cold is the worst (just reinforced our knowledge of this)

have water bottles in storage for emergencies

prepare, prepare, prepare

you may have to throw out your entire fridge and freezer, but look at it as organizing, not wasting

a dirty house is wonderfully disguised by the dark

a down comforter will save your life

a hot shower is sometimes all you could ever want

but when a sweet friend with electicity lets you use theirs, don't run their water bill through the roof (it's just too hard to get out)

someone is always worse off than you are

be grateful

& the last one- we should have taken off to aruba for the week.

saturday the power surprised us by buzzing on.

never have we been so thrilled to flip a light switch, it was utter glee.