Here's To Two Years of Happiness

Two years ago today I married Howie.

Two years ago today I made the best decision of my life.

Two years ago today we made a promise...

I'll love you for forever and a day.

Happy Anniversary, honey!

LASIK - Yikes!

I've decided to take the plunge and have LASIK done on my eyeballs.  I'm excited about the end result...I'm not excited about the procedure itself.  For some reason, the thought of a laser putting over a million pulses into my eye and then the doctor pulling back a flap from my cornea doesn't sound all that appealing.  Nor do I care to think about the bloodshot eyes and halo effect in your vision that you may get for a few days afterwards.

However, the prospect of having 20/20 vision is VERY appealing to me and makes any possible side effect or duration of procedure seem...minuscule.  Vision is so important.

I had to go through the LASIK consultation before I could be approved for the surgery.  It was pretty much eye torture.  Well, maybe torture is a strong word to use.  It was mini eye torture.  They have to shine a lot of bright lights into your eyes...they make you get a puff of air shot into your eyes to test the strength of your cornea...they also had to test to see how moist my eyes kept themselves by placing two stringy things in my eyesocket.  My eyes didn't do very well on that test because they sent me home with drops that I have to put in three times a day until my surgery.  They said the bottoms of my eyes are naturally a little dry.  But, so far, it looks like I'm a good candidate for the procedure.

July 8th is the big day.  Wish me luck!

Trip to the U.K. and France - Part 2

Hadrian's Wall - England

Howie has always wanted to see Hadrian's Wall so we had to put that on our list of things to see.  I, to be honest, had never heard of it until Howie mentioned he wanted to go.  So, it was a fun little bonus for me!  The day we planned to visit the wall it down-poured on us!  Yuck.  That's the worst spat of weather that we had on our whole trip.  But, no worries.  We weathered the storm in a warm pub called the "Twice Brewed Inn" and by the time we were done with our yummy lunch, the storm had passed!

Before heading over to the wall, we took the advice of a friendly local and went up to an overlook first.  Awesome views!

Then we went on over to the Housteads Fort.  It's still really well intact.

Looks pretty good for a fort built in AD 124, eh?

Here is the only part of the wall that you can (legally) walk on.

Howie felt like Superman on that wall.

I would've shown you the picture of me on the wall, but it made me look fat.  Moving on.

After we were done playing on the wall, we decided to go to Vindolanda to see the recreations of what the wall and forts would've looked like back in the day.  Here are examples of what they looked like built out of wood and built out of stone.  I guess the Romans did both?

Watch your head!

Apparently, my idea of a "funny face" is just sticking my tongue out like a goofball.  Cute Tara.  Real cute.

Vindolanda has an awesome and I mean AWESOME museum with Roman artifacts that they've excavated over the years.  They have Roman shoes that are over 2,000 years old!  It was amazing!  They even had volunteers excavating there as we toured the area.  Very cool.  I would love to do that someday.

Falkirk, Scotland

Howie and I had to keep ourselves entertained on the car ride up to Scotland.  So, we pulled out his new scarf.  It's amazing how entertaining a scarf can be. :)

We got to visit the wonderful Falkirk Wheel!  This wheel was on my in-laws list to visit and it turned out to be really neat.  I had never heard of it before.

The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift that connects the Forthe and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal.

We got to take a ride on it!

Here's what it looks like when it rotates.

Corsewall Point, Scotland

Another one of my favorite stops was to Corsewall Point in Scotland.  We stayed at a wonderful place called The Corsewall Lighthouse Hotel.

It was right on the coast and I LOVED it!

Here is the place we stayed in.

It was quite modern on the inside.  We had gorgeous views of the ocean.  Absolutely loved it.

The front room had these two comfy chairs that we sat in to star gaze at night.  I wanted to stay longer!

Howie and I exploring the area.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of this Lighthouse.

This Lighthouse Hotel was a 5 star place.  We had a wonderful dinner the night we got there and an even better breakfast the next day.  After we, sadly, left the lighthouse we headed over to the ferry dock to catch our ferry to the Island of Arran.  We were even able to take our rental car on board so it worked out perfectly for us all.

Island of Arran - Scotland

We knew we wanted to visit an island on the outer part of Scotland, but the problem was trying to decide which one to visit.  They all looked so beautiful.  So, for the sake of time, we settled on Arran.  I'm so glad we did.  It was beautiful.

First thing we did on the island was visit Brodick Castle.

The further you explored the property, the prettier it got.

Howie and I saw a sign advertising a "Summer Cottage" so we took the path down to see what it was.

We came to this:

And here's what it looked like on the inside:

It was so bizarre!  Entirely covered in pinecones!

After the castle, my in-laws picked us up and we headed out for a drive around the island.  Since Arran isn't very big it didn't take us too long to get all the way around.

We heard there were some neat stone circles on the island so we went to find them.

History lesson for you: these stones were errected some 4,500 years ago. 

Does that not just boggle your mind???

Edinburgh, Scotland

Our last stop in the U.K. was to Edinburgh.  I've been to Edinburgh before but I didn't get a lot of time there so I definitely wanted to go back.  We first visited Edinburgh Castle:

After we left the castle we just walked around the city.  Edinburgh is so cool!

We went into a shop just outside the castle that had a little factory in the center of it.  They had these huge machines making tartans.  It was neat to sit and watch them.  They work fast!

Of course, we had to visit the Hard Rock Cafe.

Then we had to go back to the B&B and get our rest because the next day we headed to...PARIS!

Paris, France - Day 1

Paris was an absolute breath of fresh air, literally.  I was SO happy to be there.  The weather in the U.K. was ok.  Not the greatest.  But paris was a wonderful 80º while we were there.  I was excited to get out of that airport and into the city!

Here is the hotel we stayed in:

True story: I almost cried the first time I saw it in real life.  The wonderful Eiffel Tower:

Going to the Eiffel Tower is the first thing we did once we got there because we had dinner reservations to eat at one of the restaurants. 

But first we wanted to check out the views from the tower!

When you're in Paris, steer clear of red people!  They steal your stuff!

As I mentioned before, we had dinner reservations at one of the restaurants in the Eiffel Tower.  We ate at 58 Tour Eiffel.  The food was delicious and should be for what we paid for it!  The best part of dinner was being able to watch the sunset over Paris.  This is the best picture I got of it:

You're probably wondering what we ate there, right?  Well, I will tell you!

Appetizer: Veloute glace de petits pois a la Francaise (Chilled Pea Soup)

Main Course: Filet de volaille poele, champignons et vrais jus (Chicken with mushroom and gravy)

I'm really not sure what's with the bubbles on top.  Weird.

Dessert: Palet amande aux framboises, cremeux de citron (Almond soft-biscuit topped with raspberry, lemon flavoured soft cream)

Howie had the same things I did except for his dessert.  He had this:

Profiterole, glace vanille, sauce chocolat (basically a big fat Eclair)

After dinner it was pretty dark out so we decided to walk across the street so we could see the Eiffel Tower sparkle!  It does it every hour on the hour after dark.

It was really romantic to walk around the Trocadero area and take in the sights.  Absolutely beautiful.  After walking around a bit we headed back to our hotel to rest up for our first full day in Paris!

Paris, France - Day 2

Howie and I started our first full day in Paris by going out to breakfast at a little street cafe.  We could've eaten at our hotel where they spoke perfect English, but we decided to be daring and try our French skills.  Well, we had a little language barrier with our waitress(who wasn't a very happy person), but we managed to order a "petit dejeuner" or a breakfast with a croissant, orange juice, and a hot chocolate.

Howie and I both took four years of French in school so, it's not like we were completely hopeless.  We just read it better than we understood it.  But, we did try!  You gotta give us that!  If I didn't have this book with me at all times we would've been in trouble.  Luckily, I did!

We again decided to do the hop-on-hop-off bus tour in Paris.  It really is a convenient way to see a city.

We saw the Louvre, but (tear) we didn't go inside.  Next time!  We just didn't have time.

We did get to go into the Notre Dame Cathedral!

They had some kind of service going on while we were there.

Looking down the Champs-Élysées at the Arc de Triomphe.

The Famous Moulin Rouge!

We went on a river cruise down the Seine River.

We sat inside the boat because we were sunburned from our bus tour!

The Paris Hard Rock Cafe, of course.

On our way back to our hotel for the evening we had to stop and get an authentic French crepe.

This nice crepe vendor made us a Nutella, banana, and chocolate sauce crepe.  Yum!

We got back to our hotel and got ready to go home the next day.  After I showered and put my pajamas on I had to go out on our balcony and take in another Paris sunset.

I can't wait to go back!