Merry Christmas from Chris, Evey and Belle

I have taken way to long to finish telling you guys about our trip. So I guess I will just try and tell you as much as I can think of right now and try not to let it get too long.

Saturday morning we got up a little later than we had planned...Go figure! It was a wonderful day though. We drove to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal which was only about 10 minutes or so from our hotel. We decided to take the ferry because it was free and it saved us the headache of driving into the city. We also found street parking so we didn't even have to pay for parking for the day.













The ferry ride is only about 30 minutes. But it is so cool to stand outside and watch as the city gets bigger and bigger as you get closer. And by far the ferry gives you the best view of the Statue of Liberty.

Most of our day was spent walking everywhere. We saw so many things in only 6 or so hours. One of the first things we did was go to the site where the The World Trade Center towers once stood tall over the city of New York. It was surreal standing there and looking at the massive empty space in the middle of the city. There is a fence that surrounds the whole area of Ground Zero. On one side of the fence there is a timeline of what happened that day. Actually standing where such a horrific tragedy happened was a little emotional. Chris and I just stood there in silence along with so many other people. There is a cross at the site which I assume is made from the remains of a beam from the building and as I stood there looking at it tears started forming. At first I was embarrassed thinking that people would think I was crazy...Only then did I realize I was not the only one. After that we went so many places....Rockefeller Center, Times Square, CBS Studios, Empire State Building, Macy's, Madison Square Garden, Penn Station. We of course took the subway quite a few times because it would have been WAY too much to do all the walking. We were sure to get a hot dog from a vendor on the street and it was YUMMMY! All the lights, store windows etc...Were such a treat. It really is a beautiful city. I loved it and can't wait to go back. Saturday night we met an old friend of mine and her parents for dinner. It was so wonderful to see them.

On Sunday before we headed home we drove back into the city and spent some time at Central Park. It was so pretty with the snow and the trees and of course all the buildings that surround the park. We took Belle for a nice walk and went and saw the skating rink and stuff. After we left Central Park we headed to the Bronx to get a few pictures of Yankee Stadium. That was about that. We had a wonderful weekend. I recommend to any to go to New York City, it really is amazing especially at Christmas.

For those of you who haven't see our pics yet we have them posted on a seperate site. Feel free to go check them out.

Chris and Evey's Weekend Getaway Part 1

Chris and I left our place around 8 am to head to New York. When we woke up that morning we looked outside to see a blanket of white and it was still coming down pretty heavy. It looked pretty but the thought of driving through it wasn't very pleasant. But off we went anyways. We would drive for a while with heavy snow and clearly slippery roads, but then we would drive for a while through nice clear roads that were just wet more than anything. We stopped for gas in Rhode Island and noticed a Tim Hortons just down the street. Of course I was VERY exited by this given the fact that there aren't many around that I can just go to whenever I want. There are two in Massachusetts, both of which are about an hour or so drive. By the time we were almost out of Connecticut and into New York the weather had cleared up nicely and the sun was out. We had great timing in leaving Boston for the weekend...That day we left they got hammered with like 7 inches of snow:)

We got a little lost once we got into New Jersey because Chris decided he wanted to go a different way that he thought would be quicker. IT WASN'T!! lol. Eventually he got us on the right track and we found our hotel. After we checked in and unloaded the car we were undecided if we wanted to go out and do something or just relax at the hotel until we needed to head out to the hockey game. We opted to stay at the hotel. Chris walked over to the Wendy's near our hotel and got us some lunch and we just relaxed and watched TV for a few hours. The hockey game was SO much fun. Being fans of the visiting team can be scary, depending on where you are. You can imagine our relief when we showed up at the arena and there were people all over the place with Colorado Avalanche jerseys on. At least we knew we weren't alone. The game was well worth the money and the 4 hour drive from Boston. The Devils and the Avalanche were tied after three periods and after the 5 minute overtime. So of course the game went to a shootout to determine the winner. After 7 shooters from each team the Avs finally scored and won the game 4-3. It was exciting!

That was about it for that night. We grabbed a little bite to eat on the way back to the hotel and I pretty much fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

On another note here's to hoping the Oilers continue to play well against the Canucks tonight. We are 2-0 against them this season, hopefully after tonight it will be 3-0. It will be tough and a lot of the outcome may lye in who plays in net for the Oil tonight.

Back from the BIG city

Chris and I made it back from New York in one piece, sorry it has taken me so long to post pictures and stuff. We had such an amazing weekend, there is a ton of stuff to tell. I think I am going to have to split it up into a few posts cause otherwise you would be sitting here reading for a very long time. Since everyone keeps asking to see our pictures and since we took WAY too many to pick only a few, we decided to make a separate blog just for our pictures. When I tell you there are a ton of pics on there I really mean it. They are pretty much in the order that we took them. So please go on over and have a look at them, some of them you will need to click on to get the bigger and better look at the picture. Save that link as well though as in the future we will use it for other pictures. I have been having some trouble getting the link to work for me on a regular basis so if you have any problems just let me know!

I will be back later to start telling you about our weekend:) Hope ya'll are having a great week.

When I say I have been lost in mounds of wrapping paper and stuff, I really wasn't kidding:) We made one final trip to the store yesterday for some more wrapping paper and a few final presents were wrapped. Now all we need is to find 2 LARGE boxes and get this stuff shipped out. We will probably do that on Monday morning after we get back from New York.

We finally hot a brand new hot water heater and system installed yesterday. What a mess all of that was, but thank goodness it's all been dealt with.

For those of you who don't know Chris and I are off to New York City this weekend. We are leaving early tomorrow morning, will probably check into our hotel and then spend some time in the city before we head back over to New Jersey to go see a hockey game. I am SO exited and am certain I will probably take A LOT of pictures.....thank God we finally got that digital camera. We plan and hope to see a lot of things this weekend....one thing that is a must for us is to go see Rupert at the Hello Deli and have him make us a sandwich. Oh....we were going to rent a car this weekend but our landlords were like "why are you going to rent a car when we have 3?" So they are letting us take one of their cars....how awesome is that!?! :)

Where Has Evey Been???????

Somewhere amidst all the wrapping paper and tape and presents I emerged a few hours ago:)

I would like to introduce you all to......

SMUDGE

Smudge is the newest addition to Bryan and Andrea's family. Andrea REALLY wanted a cat and Bryan is REALLY allergic to cats. So they found a breed that is hypo allergenic and doesn't shed. She is a Devon Rex and I think she is SO cute. Her ears crack me up, I keep telling Andrea she looks like a little alien. Alien or not I know they are so excited to have her:)

The Drama Shall Soon Be Over.....

I HOPE!!!! The hot water heater wasn't working because when the electrician fixed the electrical stuff and turned it all back on he never turned the gas back on high enough. SO.....He is supposed to be coming this evening to do that and then on Monday they have a plumber coming to install a whole new system. We are going over to Amy and Troy's for dinner tonight and then bowling so we will just go over early and shower and get ready at their house.

Happy weekend to everyone:)

So Fresh and So Clean!!!

Don't worry folks.....Evey is no longer dirty! Ha! Tonight Chris and I went over to Curtis (our pastor)and Brandi's to use their shower. THANK YOU to them for saving us from being dirty another day. While we were over there we met their very cute and very SMALL dog Zoe. She is a miniature dachshund and she is 10 years old. And she is the cutest thing EVER! I couldn't believe my eyes when her short little legs jumped all the way up on the couch. She was the highlight of my day and just for you all I took her picture:)

Seeing RED!!!!

I am soooooooooo annoyed. No wait....annoyed is not the word. I AM FUMING....there might even be smoke coming out of my ears. We get home this evening to find out our landlord STILL has not called a plumber to come out and fix the fact that we have NO HOT WATER and I haven't had a shower in two days. It's 7 pm and she tells us that they don't have someone coming till MONDAY!!!! Tell me exactly what the heck we are supposed to do till then????

Is it possible that it is December 1st already!?! I mean really?? Why does it seem like everytime I blink another month has passed....craziness!!

Being that it is December 1st and Chris and I officially finished ALL of our Christmas shopping yesterday I am SO excited and proud of us. You have no idea what an accomplishment this is. I am such a procrastinator and I am the one who is normally running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything organized. Not this year....It's all done!! Well I suppose I shouldn't say ALL....Chris and I still need to finish our shopping for each other.....But we have plenty of time for that. But that doesn't count. The stuff we needed to be done was all the stuff for our families back in Seattle and Edmonton so that we can get it shipped out on a decent date. I did a bunch of wrapping last night, now we just need to wait for some things to come in the mail that we ordered online and we will be good to go.

Since I am sitting here blogging it is clear that we did not die of carbon monoxide poisoning....Which is a wonderful thing really. I would have been hacked otherwise. Things are still up in the air with the whole water heater thing, but at least the plumber and electrician were here last night and fixed the fan and we have another detector down here, this time though it's in the ceiling above the water heater so that it will be a little more effective next time. Hopefully there won't be a next time, but thank God for those detectors. But now we have another issue, for some reason now we have no hot water. Which does not make me a happy camper. I had not yet showered yesterday when all of this unfolded so I didn't get to have one. Last night when we got home from shopping I was super happy to know the problem was fixed and we could run the water heater safely and I could have a shower. Well wouldn't you know it...COLD WATER!!! So this morning Chris went in to have a look and noticed the valve for the hot water was turned way down so he turned it up as high as it can go and still NOTHING!!!! BOOOOOO!!! So we are waiting for Alex to get a hold of the plumber and electrician again to get this whole mess figured out. And they better hurry cause I want to freaking have a shower.

Oh and the coolest thing of all is that our landlords felt bad and were thankful that we stuck around yesterday to deal with everyone....The firemen, gas company (twice), plumber, electrician etc, that they are knocking 100 bucks off our rent for this month....SWEET!!

What a Morning!!!

So Chris was in the shower this morning and I was still in bed sound asleep all warm and cozy when all of a sudden a blasted piercing beeping noise nearly put me through the roof. It scared me half to death. Now I knew that it was not the fire alarm because Chris took the battery out of it cause it is so darn sensitive. I ran into the kitchen and sure enough it was our carbon monoxide detector blaring at me. By this time Chris was out of the shower and telling me to go outside with the dog. Lovely....I hadn't even had time to put a brush through my hair....What a sight I was. Finally our landlord calls on Chris's cell phone telling us that ADT (alarm company) was sending someone over and for us to wait outside and let them in. Meanwhile Chris is still in a towel. I was like what part of carbon monoxide detector going off GO OUTSIDE don't you get. LOL. Finally he got some clothes on and outside we went to wait. Next thing we know we hear sirens. I was like oh no how embarrassing......And sure enough around the corner comes a big old fire truck. Good grief.....We certainly do keep life interesting. Ha. So 3 fireman get out and head on into the house with their detector thing and go downstairs to our place and sure enough are getting a reading of about 20. He told us 20 was not even enough to make us sick...Well that's comforting I suppose. Anyways they finally tracked it to the hot water heater which was on at the time the alarm went off. So they ran some hot water and sure enough the reading went through the roof to like 354 ppm..(parts per million) whatever the heck that means. So we have no idea how long the hot water heater has been trying to kill us. LOL. They said the reason the detector probably hadn't picked it up before is because the gas rises so it didn't even have time to reach the detector. Lovely, so we have no idea how long we have been breathing this in.....Maybe that's why I have been having headaches and feeling so tired and stuff lately.

They turned the hot water heater off and called the gas company. They came out pretty quick to check it out and told us what the problem was. Apparently there is a fan that works along with the hot water heater that ventilates and blows stuff out. Well for some reason the fan was not working (we have no idea for how long). There is supposed to be a safety switch of some sort that automatically shuts off the hot water heater if the fan doesn't work. Well whoever did this wiring wired it all wrong. So there is an electrician here right now working on it and once he is done they have to call the gas company back over here to check it all out to make sure it is all good and safe to turn back on.

On another note I have this dumb cold and I can't stop sneezing, my head kind of feels like a soggy watermelon that's about to explode! ha!

Does a dog not get bored of barking OVER AND OVER at everything and anything that moves past it's house? My landlords dogs are giving me such a freaking headache lately. When I am at home all I hear is them barking ALL the time. Our house is right on the street so lots of people and cars are always going by. It is SO FREAKING ANNOYING!!! I wish they would put them in a room or something when they aren't at home so that Chris and I don't have to listen to them yap. And of course when they get barking they get Belle all worked up. I want to scream........

Happy Tuesday

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Chris and I finally got nearly all of our Christmas shopping done. THANK GOODNESS!! I am so thankful I have a husband who doesn't mind shopping cause I could never have done it all on my own. We do still have a few little things to pick up and wait for our online orders to be delivered. As soon as those things get here we will be packing everything up and sending a big ole package to Seattle and one to Edmonton. Which reminds me if ya'll want a Christmas card you need to email me or leave your address in the comment section:)

We have yet to decorate our place for Christmas, normally I would get it all done the first weekend of December. I still may....Although we have decided to wait to put up our Christmas tree till we get back from New York City.

Sunday the Seahawks won their 7th straight game to put them at 9-2 on the season and kept them on top of the NFC. We are so happy they are having such a great year. After the Seahawks game we watched the Edmonton Eskimos beat Montreal for the Grey Cup. It always confuses me when I watch CFL games now because it really is such a different game (rule wise) than the NFL. Later that night we happily watched the Colorado Avalanche beat the Canucks 6-2. Sunday was a very good sports day in the McClees house:)

That is all....I hope everyone is having a great week!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

We ate food, we watched football....all was well!! Hope the rest of you had a wonderful thanksgiving:)

Happy Birthday Trevor!!!!

Today was Trevor's (Chris's nephew)4th birthday!!! Happy Birthday Buddy!

Check out the hot hotties....;) lol! That's my brother-in-law Bryan and his WONDERFUL (and no I am not sucking up A..ha) wife Andrea!!!

stupid, stupid, STUPID cold sore:(

This was a "test"picture for our Christmas cards. We did it too late in the day and the flash totally caught Belle's eyes. 

LETS GO OILERS!!!!

I am a very very VERY happy Evey right now. The Oilers played the Red Wings tonight.....this always makes me nervous for the simple fact that the Wings are good...Really good! Those guys can score goals like it's nothing. We played them a few weeks ago and won 4-3 in overtime. Tonight we were down 3-1 going into the third period. In the old NHL overcoming that in one period against a team like Detroit was almost non existent. Well....we scored 4 goals in the third tonight, 3 of which came within less than 3 minutes. They always have to keep you on edge though as they gave up two more to Detroit late in the game to make it a 5-5 tie. At that point my thinking was that at least we will make it to overtime and get a point out of it. We got a nice break when the Wings took a late penalty giving us the advantage going into overtime. Thank you Kirk Maltby for being the dumbass that you are and shoving Markkanen and getting the interference penalty. The Oilers took full advantage and Jarret Stoll ripped one past Chris Osgood only 33 seconds into overtime. 2 for 2 against the Red Wings so far this year. YAY.....GO OILERS!!!!!

This is what Belle does every night around 5 pm. She sits on the step in our hallway and watches the door waiting for Chris to come home. She is such a daddy's girl. 

Is It Just Me?

It seems to me that we are relying more and more on the internet and emailing etc....I seem to have fallen into that trap where I find it so much easier and convenient sometimes to just fire off an email to someone rather than pick up the phone. I am not sure why this is....I guess the way I see it is that it seems so hard to get a hold of people on the phone these days, even those with cell phones. So I figure that if I shoot them an email then they will for surely get it. Right? I am sure part of it is also that it just seems easy....Your already in your email, why pick up the phone? Wrong or right....It doesn't really matter, it's just a trap I seem to fall in to. Anyone else? Or is is just me? The reason I ask is that someone brought this too my attention today and they seemed really annoyed with me over it. It made me feel super bad cause I totally don't mean anything by it ya know? Anywho.......

Random Ramblings For a Monday

Alright.....It's Monday I still feel like poop. Have a doctors appt tomorrow and I had better get some answers.

The Seahawks beat the Rams AGAIN yesterday and we are now 7-2 on the season. GO HAWKS!!!

Does Nicole Ritchie actually think she looks good? Does she not realize she looks anorexic or does she actually think that its attractive? What about Lindsey Lohan or Hillary Duff even? I see these girls and I just don't get it. I understand we all want to be slim and have nice bodies.....But someone needs to tell them they DON'T have nice bodies.....Its nasty.

Found out the other day I will get to see an old friend in December who I haven't seen in way too long. I am so excited.

That's all I got today, Chris and I are watching the Avalanche/Oilers game.....GO OIL!!!

I know I haven't really been posting much lately. This past week I have not really been feeling so great. I am almost certain I have a bladder infection..BOOOOOO and I got something else going on....I thought at first it might have been appendicitis, but it has been all week and I don't have any other symptoms that would point towards that. So anyways I have a doctors appt for tomorrow so hopefully I will get some answers and some drugs. That is all folks....nothing exciting to say here...hope everyone is having a good week.

Chicken Little

On Saturday Chris and I decided to go see Chicken Little. Yeah yeah I know, make fun if you will. But I was so excited to go see it, I love animated movies like that and it just looked so cute. Most people there were there with their kids, but there was other people without kids there:) Anyways I LOVED IT and so did Chris. It was so cute and so funny. So there you have, if you have not seen it yet...Gather up your little people if you have them and go. And if you have no little people go anyways, you will not be disappointed. How could you be? Chicken Little is too cute for words and his friends are awesome.

Happy Monday

Is it just me or do the weeks seem to be flying by? It is going to be 2006 before we know it. I was thinking this morning that I still remember sitting in class with my Gizmo running shoes writing the date as 1988. Yes people I had Gizmo runners. They were white with Gizmo on them with pink trim, and they were awesome.

Thinking of way back then brought a story to mind of waaaaaaay back when I was in kindergarten. We had this teacher who had this really big hair. It was jet black and curly and short and fuzzy. She was just plain scary and the hair didn't help matters. Anyways, one day I was playing in the sandbox (the indoor sandbox) with another little girl and some little boy decided he wanted to come play too. THE NERVE.....Don't boys know they have cooties in kindergarten. Geez!! So I did the only thing there was to do....I threw a handful of sand at him. Well Mrs Crazy Hair witnessed this act and came over to reprimand me and I did the only thing I could....I picked up a handful of blocks and threw them at her, one hitting her square in the forehead. Boy was I in trouble. She sent me to the corner and called my parents and had them come pick me up. Now now I know what your all thinking, but I really was a good kid....She was just so CRAZY and scary that I could not help myself.

And before my big brother Dave tells you all what a little brat I was maybe I should tell the story of how him and my older brother told the school nutrionist they ate McDonald's 3 times a day..........LOL

I had to post this cause it totally made Chris and I laugh. Chris's nephew Gavin was given a spelling test by his mom Andrea. He decided he needed to put the words that sounded alike together and label them. I should also mention that Gav is 6. Andrea sent me this the other day and I just now remembered to post it. Though you all would get a kick out of it:)

Happy Birthday to Chris

Today was my hubby's 28th birthday. We went for dinner tonight to a Japanese restaurant called Kiku Yama Teppanyaki Steak House . It was one of those where they cook the food on a grill right there at your table. It was so neat. The whole experience was a lot of fun.

First they bring you a hot towel to wipe your hands with. It was funny because when our waitress brought them to us we didn't know what they were for. But we are quick studys and we figured it out. To start they bring you a soup called Miso soup. It was a little interesting.....then comes garden salad with a weird dressing that I didn't really like so much. It actually looked liked minced pumpkin. lol. We also had Japanese eggrolls for an appetizer....they were pretty good. For the main course Chris and I both got a chicken and steak combo. So the cook guy comes out with his cart with all the stuff on it....meat, veggies, rice, bean sprouts and fires up the grill. He took an onion and stacked all the rings up on each other to make it look like a little volcano and then fills the middle with oil and then lights it on fire. It was cool. And off he goes cooking everything up while we watch. It was fun, totally adds to the whole dining experience and makes it totally worth your money. It was all SO SO SO good, easily the best meal out we have had since we moved to Boston a year ago. Oh and we don't know those girls in the picture, they were just sitting on the other side of our table. After dinner we of course headed to Starbucks because well where else do we ever go. lol. Chris got lots of goodies from me for his birthday.....I got him THREE shirts from Old Navy, a maglite flashlight and StarWars Battlefront for PS2.Here are a few other pictures from tonight....

The Great Pumpkin Adventure

I am such a slacker....Last week went by kinda fast, I didn't even realize it had been so long since my last post. I wish I had something super fun and exciting to tell you to make up for the lack of posting. But I don't really think I do, so you will just have to take what you get;)

Chris was on call this weekend and we were dog sitting for our landlords so we stuck around here, we usually do when Chris is on call. Belle always enjoys when we dog sit because it means more time than usual for her to be able to play with the girls.

Friday night Chris and I decided to carve our pumpkins. We tried to go to a pumpkin farm last weekend, but when we got there it was super lame. So Wednesday night we went to a local nursery and got our pumpkins. We didn't start carving them till pretty late, so by the time we carved them and cleaned up all our mess it was like 4 am.

Chris worked so hard on his pumpkin and he was so proud of it. He did a really good job, it took him at least 2 hours. He went online and got a Seahawks logo and printed it out and taped it to his pumpkin and then went about the tedious task of making all the little marks in the pumpkin so he knew where to make all the cuts and everything. I actually carved 2 pumpkins. One was just a normal Halloween pumpkin and then I did an Oilers logo, mine was much easier than his though. Not nearly as much work.

Saturday was a lazy relaxing day. We didn't really go anywhere...I did laundry and that was about it. We were going to take all 3 girls for a nice walk Saturday evening. But the weather had different plans. Around 4pm or so I looked out the window and noticed it was snowing. Since I LOVE the snow this made me very very very excited. Even though I knew it wasn't going to last through the night and that when I woke in the morning it would all be gone I was still so excited to see some beautiful snow.

Saturday night we got Chinese food and watched Bewitched with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman...it was cute, and as usual Will Ferrell was awesome. Sunday was much the same as Saturday, except Chris was gone on a couple of service calls for most of the afternoon. Today I had lunch with a friend and then we spent the afternoon walking around downtown. I would say we were shopping, but we didn't end up buying anything. And now here I sit FINALLY posting this, aren't ya'll relieved it is finally here;)

Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween, don't eat too much candy.......And now I am off to catch up on all my blog reading that I have totally been slacking on.

Happy Halloween

New Post coming to a blog near you......Monday October 31st...eveningish. Starring Chris and Evey McClees

Lori is WONDERFUL, I just love her to bits. She sent Chris and I a BEAUTIFUL blanket. It is so soft and cozy, we love it. It is 2 sided and one of my favorite colors. She also sent us some yummy fudge and stuff. THANK YOU Lori.....love you:)