The Coke Can Fiasco

I have a tendency recently to forget about stuff... maybe i should start taking my ginko biloba pills already.... anyway, to give you a little background story... around Christmas time when we were visiting some friends in Florida, they put a drink in the freezer to cool it off for me... and Billy said, "I put this in here for you, so do forget about it!" Well the night went on and soon it was time to leave... halfway back to Justin and Crystal's house we get a phone call from Billy sarcastically asking if we forgot something... none of us thought we left anything there until he mentioned the Soda in the freezer... "ooops" I said. So Billy, being the nice guy he is, didn't make a big deal about it and cleaned it up. Now I just hear the occassional teasing every now and then.

Months later.... almost 6 months later to the day... we were up in Rochester for Sarah's Wedding (Sheila's longtime childhood friend) and also visiting Sheila's family and Justin/Crystal and Sophie who flew up for some quality family time... So it was getting pretty hot out and no cold drinks... so before I started getting ready for Sarah's wedding I put a Coke in the Freezer and figured I would have a nice cold drink to take with me right before I went to the wedding. So after an hour of sitting around and 10 min. of getting ready for the wedding.. I rushed out... Didn't even think about the Coke... never crossed my mind until that night when we pulled into the driveway and Justin came out to meet us and with a big smile asked: "did you forget something?"

Then a little red flashing Coke sign went off in my head... "oops!" (& to quote a classic tv character: "Did I do thaaaat?") So they left it for me to clean up and I decided to take pictures and blog about it....

Everyday is a Rainy Day in NY!

Well if you live in the northeast, you know that we've been plagued by a monsoon for the last month... with very little sunshine and enough rain to drive Noah to the brink of madness... o.k. maybe not that bad... but we've gotten a lot of rain. At work we play soccer every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during lunch for about 1 hour and 1/2. sometimes 2 when the weather is nice.. They encourage us to get out of the office and those excel spreadsheet.... well our field has basically been drenched to the point where it no longer wants to soak up water...So for the last few weeks its been rather... muddy. So after this last weekends rain showers, we knew we were in for a nice drizzly, mud splashing, slip n' slide type game, and wouldn't you know my cleat pretty much decided it had seen enough water as well and decided to jump ship... fortunately we have showers here at work just for this reason...

So that's my little story for the day... soon we will be heading upstate to rochester where one of Sheila's best friends is getting married and older sister Crystal and baby Sophie are visiting the family so we will be spending some time with the before they come visit us on the 4th of July as they make their way back to Tampa, FL.

The Fireplace Project

One of the many things we enjoy is collecting items people will be throwing out and fixing them up, making them ours.... One man's trash is another man's treasure right... so Sheila's work was throwing out this feax fireplace they used in an display... so we snagged it, painted it a nice gray color(it used to be this ugly out-dated birchy wood color).

Picked up some candle holders and next thing you know we have a nice cozy feeling to our apartment... Sorry, i forgot to take some before pictures... but I promise one day I'll take some pictures or give you a guided video tour of our apt. since its been almost a year now that we've lived there..

A New Hobby for the McGrames'

Sheila is a very creative woman and like her dad she likes to keep herself busy with projects... so why not mix her love of jewelry and projects together. Our friend Rachel and Myself had to be the models for the new jewelry line... So if you see some scruff in there, its not a hairy woman!

Sheila has started to create jewelry for herself and friends. David has helped out a bit as well, creating a bracelet and earrings... But Sheila has done most of the work in the design and creativity of the items... One friend liked her creations so much she offered to have Sheila's jewelry displayed/sold at a beauty salon where she works.

So here are some pictures of her creations so far... nothings for sale yet... but you can submit a request if you want...Sheila does it more out of enjoyment than to try and sell them... but if you have an idea or a picture, email us at mcgrames@gmail.com and i'll submit an order for you! =0)

Our New Toy

Well a few months ago a co-worker in a different dept. went home to Europe for Christmas and ended up with a new job, not returning to the U.S. (His research grant expired in May, so he had to look for a new job anyway), he recently came back to the U.S. for the long weekend to pack up, get rid/sell his belongings and take what he could back to Europe with him. One thing we always discussed besides soccer was video games, and so he said he had a PS3 he was planning on getting rid whenever he came to pack his stuff up, so naturally, being the geeky-techy gamer I am, i showed interest. I brought it up with Sheila and she told me to sell some stuff on eBay and we might be able to buy it from him... scraped up a bunch of old items i no longer used and made some quick money... One day, I see my office door slightly open and a PS3 box starts sliding through the door... i started laughing, we caught up a bit... and found out he just wanted $100 for it, since he had purchased it for his son who decided he wanted to keep the Xbox360 they had purchased as well, He was looking to just get rid of the console. The PS3 doubles as a Blu-Ray player, so at $100 that is way cheaper than any Blu-Ray player on the market so i gladly relieved him of his PS3 and now its our new toy/Blu-Ray player.. Fun times....

Memorial Day "Camping" weekend.

Well we decided to go camping on Memorial Day weekend, our friend Rachel was born on May 25th and she is a big outdoorsy type person but by the time we got our act together and went to reserve a camp site, they were all booked... the only thing left was a cabin, in POOR condition. Literally said that on the website when we went to book the camp site. Here is Tina and her husband Joe and birthday girl Rachel, who happened to have a cold and fever that weekend. Nice way to spend your birthday, but it was a nice time. Despite still being a little cold and most of the entertainment being closed since the state park had just opened that weekend, no canoes, kayaks, innertubes or row boats available. I can't seem to find the majority of the pictures(which there weren't too many) but once I do, i'll add a bunch to the bottom..

Easter Egg Hunt

Well going back to a childhood tradition for most of us, we decided to have an Easter Egg hunt with a few of our friends. So on our wednesday night "LOST NIGHT" where Josh Dyke, Rachel DeMaggio and us get together, eat dinner and watch ABC's LOST. So before we ate dinner and watched LOST, Sheila went outside our apartment and hid 44 easter eggs(of which we only found 42, so some lucky squirrel is gonna have some chocolate and peanut butter candy for the spring. So here are some of our pictures...

Here is Josh who incurred a 10 second penalty for going outside while Sheila was hiding the eggs...

Riding in Style...

One of our weekends we decided to get away, and head up to Sheila's home in Livonia,NY(up by Rochester). Sheila was part of one of her friend Sara's bridal Shower, and David got some time with the four wheelers and the backhoe. It was a fun weekend overall, playing games with the family, riding around on the wheelers and workin' in the field, pulling scrap metal, junk and cleaning out the property... We cleared a pathway at one end of the field, where we were cleaning all the scrap metal and made a tiny, tiny jump... maybe in the future Mr. McCaffrey will create a big jump that we can use. So above is the video of me riding through the path... One of the our favorite video games on the Nintendo Wii is Raving Rabbids, has a bunch of different mini games but our favorite is the dancing mini-game so here is Ashley, Andy and Sheila playing the game in the basement, late at night after everyone went to bed. That was fun short weekend upstate with the McCaffrey's.( it doesn't seem to work, so check back later this week and I'll have it fixed.)

Extreme Porch Makeover Edition

We use to have a small empty porch, that we were hardly ever able to enjoy last summer when we first moved in, so this weekend we kicked it into high gear and decided to make it a little more inviting. This is our porch before... Then we decided to take a trip to one of our favorite stores... IKEA! and along with the visit comes new furniture and a start at decorations for our new "mood" porch. Unfortunately due to our condo regulations, no gas or charcoal grills of any kind...Only electric... yuck!

So piece by piece we started putting the furniture set together... Came together pretty quickly, a couple few issues with those pesky IKEA screws but all in all we are happy.... So now feel free to look down and view our new porch... a little crammed...but we like being close to our friends!

This is our night set up... a little more space, a little more conversation room.

Lucky The Wonder Dog

Well with Little Sophie growing up and getting all the attention, I thought I would share the love of my other little spiegel... Lucky, the jack russell terrier. It's hard to keep her still...

Normally when we've been in Florida i've been taking Lucky out for walks every day, or just about depending on our schedule... and she likes running too... so much i had to take the bike out one day since I couldn't even keep up with her...

This is lucky's favorite toy, other than her bones. She will bite onto this rope and not let go... she has a strong bite, most of the time you can even pick her up along with the rope... then she will run off with the rope and protect it at all costs... or at least until she is bored again and she brings the rope back to you to play..

And that's Lucky, Justin and Crystal's Wonder Dog...