veggassssss!

 on friday, jon and i packed up the car and headed to LV for a weekend of FUN!

 the first stop we made when we got there was obviously cafe rio. there are a few of them in southern california, but i think the closest one to me is an hour and a half away? or something. but we all know that it tastes better the closer you get to utah, anyway. 

this is jon in the middle of saying "Vegassss!!" hahahah

he really loves vegas. more than anyone i know. 

we decided to stay with our friends at the Rio for the first night. thats where we had reservations for saturday night and it was cheaper to split the room with them. the hotel lobby was very questionable, but the rooms were really nice! they were big and updated. 

we hung out with jeno and lynn for a bit while they got ready to go out. then we took the shuttle to the strip and went to the coke factory!

 it's definitely not as cool as it was when we were little. i remember going with my dad and seeing that big machine pouring the coke into the glass bottles on the conveyer belt...that was so cool. we were really disappointed when we went last year and didn't see anything like that. we did, however, start the tradition of tasting all the different drinks from around the world!

flashback; August 2010:

 its only been a year, but jon looks so cute and young. 

we looked at this cup this weekend too. i didn't know it liked it last year! that means i really want it!

back to 2011:

we sat at the same table that we sat at last year to try our drinks. some are very very yummy! some....so gross!

 that night we went out with a few of jon's marine buddies. one of them basically lives in vegas, so he took us to a fun off the strip place. it was called 'insert coins'. an arcade/dance place. there was a dance floor where peeps were breakdancing and impressing everybody. then they opened the floor up for everyone to dance. it was house music, though, and i'm just not into that. so we left and stopped at carls jr. before going to the Venetian to see the canals. 

 

carl's jr was the only place open at this time of night, so we had to stop there. i would never eat there in normal circumstances. i got fries and this ice cream sandwich and i HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!!!! the ice cream tasted exactly like the cream inside the oreo. it was soo good and only $1.50.

saturday morning we woke up and ordered room service. it was such a fun sleepover with our friends! i have to also say this. we got back to the room at 3:30 am. they had left a light on for us so we could get ready and get into bed. we looked and them and they were cuddling and sleeping so cute! his arms were around her. i didn't think people really slept like that.

anyway, after we had breakfast which was really lunch, lynn and i had a hairdresser come to the room to get us dolled up! she was so cute and sweet. if you are looking for someone to do your hair or makeup in vegas, let me know and i'll give you her information. 

after she did our hair, we followed her over to the new hotel Aria so that she could do our make up at the Laura Mercier counter. 

(best tinted moisturizer ever)

i had to take this photo before i used it. i've never seen such beautiful lipstick.

and then we were off!! here is jeno walking through the casino to the ball room with his NCO sword hanging from his belt. he kept saying "I'm carrying a sword around." 

and here we are dolled up.

me and jon, lynn and jeno, paige and kyle.

 

lynn and i! we had so much fun getting ready together!

 the boys. 

i told them to do something funny and jon was the only one who heard me. 

turned around!! yes, that is funny!

 our official ball photo.

the ball was so amazing. the ceremony was really cool. they played the national anthem when they brought the american flag in, and they played the navy's song "anchors away" and "the marine corps hymn". you should take the time to read the lyrics. 

they also had a table set up with a black table cloth and a single flame to honor the killed in action and the prisoners of war. the commandant of the marine corps (the head honcho...the guy directly below president obama) made a video that was shown at all the marine corps balls around the world, even in afghanistan. it was mostly about Pearl Harbor and 9/11, seeing as how 2011 was the 60th anniversary of Pearly Harbor and the 10th of 9/11. it was a touching speech.

after all of that...we danced. it was really fun, and worth the two year wait to go to the ball. last year, jon was in afghanistan. he celebrated it there, but it obviously wasn't like this. 

we came home to change and went to the club on the roof of our hotel.  

funnest night! when the clock struck midnight, it was officially lynn's birthday! so her husband bought her a birthday shot, haha. and we danced until we could no longer.  

jon is the cutest little dancer. he didn't stop until we left the club.

 this was the view from the top; the entire strip.

did i mention that we got in free? we showed up to the entrance with five other people. one of the younger marines was talking to the bouncer and told him that we had our ball here tonight and they told us we could come up here for free. the bouncer wasn't buying it. the next thing we know, jon's navy chief (not EXACTLY sure what that means. all i know is that he's in the navy and he's kind of old. so i think he's really high ranking.) walks up and puts a spell on the bouncer and all 8 of us are walking in for free and didn't have to wait in line. it was an awesome night all around. it was so much fun to be celebrating 236 years of the marine corps (america is 235 years old. did you know america had a marine corps before they had an america?). and i loved seeing all of jon's work buddies just dancing the night away.

 here we are around 2 am in our hotel lobby. we were so drained at this point. 

which leads us to this:

normally, i'm very against energy drinks. but in this case, jon can do whatever it takes to stay awake on the drive home while i'm asleep next to him. good guy.

house tour: bedroom

yeahhhhh, the best room in the house, where [most] of the magic happens!

okay. 

now we can move forward, dirty joke free. 

this is our bedroom from the hallway. we decided to move the bed from under the window onto the big plain wall. it opened up the room a lot and made it seem a lot bigger. it causes conflict, though, because jon wants to sleep by the open window and i don't want to sleep closest to the door. so i think we're probably going to move it back under the window :)

to the right of the doorway right when you walk in,
we have our laundry basket and jon's dresser.
(i took these photos back in MAY)

jon gets mad if i put anything of mine on his dresser. 

his is very exact...

when the bed was under the window, i had an almost empty slim fast can on the window sill and rumbi knocked it over. chocolate got on the curtains, so i washed them. i didn't dry them and thought that they would be good. welllll, they weren't. they shrunk and I tried to fix them and it only made them worse so now they are too short and i hate them when i used to love them. boo.
the shade is from ikea. i bought an antique shade pull on the internet somewhere so it doesn't look so plain. and amanda marie made me those pots for my birthday this year!

to the left of the window is my night stand. i've had it forever. and it will be mine forever. sometimes i think about refinishing it, but i don't think i can erase this:

yep. when i was little, i found joy in carving my name into furniture pieces. i even carved my name into the piano at my dads. ugh. this says "alexandra jane a.j. robinson". ha! what was i thinking??
the night stand is too short for our bed. our mattresses are just sitting on top of the bed frame, they don't fit inside the actual frame where they should. the bed is really really old, so i think mattresses are just a little bit bigger than they used to be. thats why our bed is so unusually tall. my dad is going to help us fix it when he comes for THANKSGIVING!!!

my dresser is on the other side of the bed.

i just recently took these photos, so things have moved around. i bought that crate at michael's for $8 or so, and just screwed it right into the wall. it's nice because it's tall enough for the bed, but there are no outlets in sight. we can't put a lamp there or charge our phones. jon's work is (obviously) very strict so they can not be late in the morning, ever. so he has his phone plugged in every night, just to ensure that it won't die in the middle of the night and not wake him up in the morning. he sleeps closest to the door, and he has to charge his phone and leave it on the other night stand. i am a really heavy sleeper and never wake up as early as him, so it's a dangerous thing. sometimes i turn off his alarm for him in my sleep. most mornings i don't turn it off for him and he wakes up and walks around the entire bed to get his phone. we have got to think of something else.

 i had this made before we moved here, and i wish i would have picked different colors. and a different size. i haven't bought the correct matting for it yet, because i just don't love it.

my dresser with my belongings. my dad got me that 'i love cats' thing. isn't that the cutest? it has since moved downstairs onto our bookcase and lately rings truer than ever. we got another kitten. moving on...

i added these studs to our rug to help it stay in place, and to add a little character. i thought it looked really cute, but they weren't long enough to go through the carpet and into the wood. so it really didn't do its job. we moved the rug downstairs into the living room and i did something else with the studs. 

i put them on the wall.
and this is why. 

thanks for touring our bedroom. you're welcome almost any time. now please get out.
:)

happy. hallo. ween. [ha.]

[front.]

[back.]

p.s. i would have sent you one of these if we got more than ten free ones. 

also, i'll update soon. 

sdblackout2011.

on thursday, jon and i were hanging out at home. he had gotten home from work early at about 3:30 so that we could go to an appointment at 4:30. he was upstairs changing, and i was downstairs sitting in the front room. suddenly, all the lights turned off and i heard the air conditioner shutting down. i didn't think much of it...the power has gone out a few times in my life, and it usually turns back on in less than an hour. i went out front to see if anyone else's power went off and a girl from the next complex over said hers was out. i thought that was weird because our houses aren't connected......so then i started texting a few of my friends and their power had gone out too! they live off base, about 15 minutes away. that's a pretty big area to have no power....but what surprised me even more was when hannah text me and told me her power had gone off as well....in YUMA. uhhh, yikes. we knew that we should probably leave for our appointment early, since all the street lights wouldn't be working. we left the house at 4. twenty minutes later, and about two miles down the main road, we realized there was no way we were going to make it on time. so we took a left turn and got back on base. 

 the marines had everything set up. they were directing traffic and keeping people calm. however, this toolbag made us U-turn at this light to take us off base again. we told him we just needed to get home, and he said we needed to go back off base and drive the two miles we had just driven and come back in through the main gate. we were not about to do that. so instead, we parked our car at the barracks and walked home. 

 this is why he wouldn't let us turn left. the traffic trying to get off base was ridiculous. i was feeling so sad for the marines that live far away. it probably took them hours to get home. it was awesome that the power went out right during rush hour too...

the power outage was actually kind of fun.
the house was SO hot, but we had no obligations or anywhere to be. 

jon decided that he needed to dress up to protect us from the zombie apocalypse. that isn't a real gun............................

the house was dark even before the sun went down, so jon and i sat on the back patio and i did homework. we didn't have anything else do to once the sun went away entirely. we drove around base for a bit. it was really creepy because we couldn't see anything and alarms were going off in all the buildings! we also went on a walk. the stars were so beautiful, and it was almost a full moon. that was the best part about the blackout. we saw more stars than you can ever see here. 

we came back and tried to get to bed early but it was way too hot in our bedroom. they told us we needed to preserve our water, so we couldn't take a cold shower. jon had a good idea.....he wanted to sneak into our neighborhood pool. it closed on labor day, but it's still filled with water. the military policemen had better things to do then check the base pools, so we ran over there, hopped the fence and swam for a few minutes. it was so serene and the water was a perfect temperature. it was kind of scary though... i wish we wouldn't have watched so many scary movies last weekend right before the blackout. my imagination was going crazy. i am certain there were creatures swimming in the pool with us undetected.

i am pretty proud of our emergency preparedness. we had two large flats of water, and lots of flashlights and candles. it turned out to be a fun night in. another bonus: they cancelled school for everyone on friday so i got a random day off!

the black out was a result of someone in yuma doing a routine maintenance check up and messing up. all of san diego county, some of orange county, mexico and arizona was out of power. it was estimated that roughly 3 million people were in the dark!!!!!!!! they weren't sure how long it was going to last. luckily, our power turned on about 12 hours after it had gone out.

it was the funniest today in church when a man stood up and told us he was here visiting from arizona. he said his family has been here a week and they are leaving tomorrow and he's just "getting used to san diego's electrical system." you should have heard what happened next. the entire classroom erupted with laughter. never have i ever heard a group of people laugh harder than that, especially in church. ( fyi. i was laughing the hardest / loudest.)