Entry 423: Julie's Royals Room

Julie really loves to scrapbook, so Lance decided that this summer he was going to clear out a room to dedicate to Julie and her scrapbooking. This should come as no shock to anyone, but we are both huge Royals fans and have collected a lot of Royals stuff and decided to make it a Royals theme in the room. The room is nearly done, except for a few heavier items that need to be hung with care, and Julie has already fallen in love with it. Enjoy the pictures.


This is a look at the Royals scrapbooking room when you first walk in. As you can tell by the bag of dog food in the corner that it is also Maggie's eating room. Julie also uses this room to ride her bike in.


This is a mirrored Royals logo that one of Julie's friends gave her. The pictures are autographed from Billy Butler, Zack Greinke, and Alex Gordon.


Here are the autographed shersey's that are hanging up right now. We still have a signed Mike Moustakas shersey that we are waiting to buy a frame for. Julie's goal is to have the whole wall with autographed sherseys/jerseys. It will only take one or two more to complete it, so Julie is excited.


This is where Julie keeps a majority of her scrapbooking materials. You can see her table behind it as well as her Ipad and speakers.


This is Lance's little contribution to the room. Everytime we go to a Royals game Lance takes the ticket and puts it on the bulletin board. Hopefully by the end of the season it is all filled up.


One of Julie's season ticket holder friends knew that she was a big fan of Eric Hosmer, so he gave her this awesome picture he took of him at a game. Julie is going to have Eric Hosmer sign it for her in the very near future.


These are all of the current and former Royals that have autographed baseballs for us. Lance is waiting to hang it up because he wants to brace it to make sure it doesn't come down. Julie's favorite ball is naturally the one signed by Eric Hosmer, but Lance likes the Frank White one.

Entry 422: Now That Is Painful

Lance's stepdad recently decided to have his hernia taken care of. He has had it for a few years and recently decided to get it taken care of. In the end he came out fine, but he didn't have a hernia he had 2 hernias. Now that is what Lance calls a high pain tolerance. Get better soon dad.

Entry 421: Pics Of The Kids

It has been extremely hot lately, so Lance and the dogs have been forced to spend a lot of time inside. The dogs were pretty cooperative today, so Lance snapped some pictures.


A closeup of Maggie.


Trying to get a picture of just Maggie, but of course Bobby had to get in the picture.


Bobby and Maggie relaxing with each other.


Everyday when Lance stretches out on the couch, Bobby feels the need to lay down on him.

Entry 420: Harry Potter

Julie is a big fan of Harry Potter, but Lance is not such a big fan. Julie has read all of the books and seen all of the movies, but on the flip side Lance has read none of the books and seen only 2 of the movies (and that is only because Julie drug him to them). As you can probably guess Julie was excited for the last Harry Potter movie while Lance was not, so we came up with a compromise; the Twin Drive In. This way we both got what we wanted, Julie was able to see the last Harry Potter and Lance was able to see The Green Lantern which he really wanted to watch. It was a great and cheap compromise and we both left happy. The picture below is Lance's attempt to make the back of the car into a makeshift bed.

Enry 419: Mall Of America

We decided that one day we were going to devote to the Mall Of America. There were tons of things to do there; such as putt putt golf, an aquarium, and a Nickelodeon theme park. We decided to stay away from those and just focus on seeing everything in the mall. We did do a little bit of shopping and ate a delicious meal at Bubba Gump Shrimp (next time you see Julie you'll have to ask her about her souvenir glass). Overall we had a great time and just enjoyed walking around and seeing everything.


A Corona restaurant.


Yes you can get married at the Mall Of America.


Bubba Gump Shrimp entrance.


The entrance to Nickelodeon Universe park.


The amusement park from up above.


Spongebob welcoming you to Nickelodeon Universe.


The Rainforest Cafe.

Entry 418: Downtown Hotel

We decided for our trip to Minnesota that we wanted to stay in a downtown hotel. Since we stay at a lot of Choice Hotels we decided to use some of our points and stay at the downtown Comfort Suites. Saying that we loved it would be an understatement because we absolutely loved it. The price was reasonable and our room was incredible. Everything in the hotel was a suite, so we had lots of room to spread out. The view as you can see from the pictures below was amazing and the best part is that we could open the windows and just listen to the downtown noises as we slept at night. This was one of the best hotels we have ever stayed at.

Entry 417: Our Minnesota Road Trip

As you can tell from our previous post we recently took a road trip to Minneapolis. We drove down on Tuesday and drove back on Friday. he drive wasn't that bad, but on Friday we were driving through a torrential downpour up until the Iowa border. While in Minnesota we went to the Mall Of America and went to a Royals/Twins game. If you would like to read about the Royals/Twins game and see pictures please click here. We plan on posting tons of pictures, so stay tuned.

Entry 416: Minnesota Here We Come

We have had a plan for quite some time to go and see the Royals play an away game. Our original plan was to go and see them play in Tampa, but with work and other things that have happened we settled on Minnesota. We are going to split our time between the Mall Of America and the Royals/Twins game. It should be a great time.


The luggage is packed/


Julie's sign for the game.

Entry 415: Lunch With New Friends

What we are beginning to notice is that we are getting to know a lot of people at the Royals games and really enjoy talking to them. Today we went to the stadium to get Mike Moustakas's autograph and saw some season ticket holders that sit in our section. We talk to them quite a bit at the games and while talking to them today found out that they live about 10-15 minutes from us. After we got our autographs we decided to meet up for lunch at the Dish Pizza and we really had a great time. Bill works for the water department in Gladstone and his wife, Kim, works as an early childhood special services teacher in Kansas City. We talked about the Royals of course, our jobs, and other things to get to know a little bit more about each other. It was a great time and we are already making plans to go to a BBQ at their house so Lance can see Bill's autograph collection.

Entry 414: A Little Problem

After dropping Julie off at work today, Lance came home to this blocking the entrance to our street.

Entry 413: New Ceiling Fan

Julie has been bugging Lance for quite some time about buying a new ceiling fan for the guest bedroom. Lance finally gave in and we purchased one on Saturday. Julie's dad, Kent, came over on Sunday and helped us install it. Below you will see the finished product.

Entry 412: It's Getting Hot In Here

When we got back from Lance's birthday dinner we were greeted with a surprise; our air conditioner decided to stop working. This wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the following problems:

- It was 9:45 at night when we found out that it was broken.
- It was a Saturday night and Monday was the 4th of July.
- It had been incredibly hot and humid the past few days and it wasn't supposed to be getting any better.

Lance went down to take a look at it and as expected had no idea what the problem was. We decided that we should at least make some calls and see if we could get someone out to take a look. We actually found a few places that had 24 hour hotlines and tried them. The first place we called said that the earliest they could get out was Wednesday and that wasn't even guaranteed. The next place we called was C.M. Mose and Son and they actually said they could be here tomorrow, yes Sunday, around 12:00. Lance naturally thought, "yeah right", but Sunday rolled around and the repairman actually showed up at 10 in the morning (yes early). Lance liked the repairman right off the bat because he was from Ottumwa, Iowa and they talked for a few minutes about Ottumwa. The final diagnosis was that the cylinder motor was fried (Lance's term, not his) and needed to be replaced. We were thinking that we were going to be paying an arm and leg for a Sunday visit, but we were shocked at how reasonable it was. Thanks again to C.M. Mose and Son.

Entry 411: Belated Birthday Celebration

Even though Lance's birthday was this past Wednesday, we celebrated with friends this past Saturday. We went to eat at a great Italian place called Salvatores. Julie ordered the Spiedini Di Pollo Giovanni and Lance ordered the Ziti Con Broccoli. The food was delicious and the company was just as good. Julie enjoyed the fact that the waiter was calling her honey and was making fun of Lance the entire time. It was a great birthday dinner wrapped up with dessert at Dairy Queen. Thanks Anita and Tyson for going with us.