White Trash

We are coming out of the closet. It is official. We are white trash.

Last night, we went to a Buffalo Bandits game. They are the lacrosse team for Buffalo. They are the defending champions for the NLL for 2008. Go Buffalo! At least one of our city's teams does well...

Regardless, I totally fell in love with it. I had so much fun!! They play up-beat music the whole game. And there is a lot of crowd interaction. They have lots of cheers and the fans are fanatics. I have never seen so much dressing up and absolute enthusiasm for a team since IFHS and Emotion Bowl. It was awesome!!

This is the logo. The mascot is a raccoon named Rax. I am excited to go again. I want to get a big orange cowboy hat, black jersey, wear dark eyeshadow, and purple contacts.

These are some pictures of people in the big orange cowboy hat.

Here are a few of the fans. Seriously, almost everyone was dressed up with just as much fervor.

Here is a player. They wear lots of pads for protection, and they need it! Seriously, they just sit and hit each other with a stick the entire game.

This is a picture of the goalie. It is one of Spencer's favorite things because they wear a LOT more padding than anyone else, so they look huge. It's like those sumo wrestling suites that you can put on and wrestle in at fairs and malls, etc. It is especially funny when they run in their ginormous suites.

Here is a picture of the crowd. Homely would fit right in.

My favorite cheer was for when people on the other team went into the penalty box:

B-O-X!

B-O-X!

To the BOX, to the BOX

To the BOX, BOX, BOX!

WOOOooo!

So much flippin' fun.

I forgot our camera, so these next few pictures are from my phone, they aren't very good.

We had the best seats in the house. They play in the same arena as the Sabres do. We sat in the expensive section, right in the middle. It was perfect. The best part...the seats were free! Thanks to the Buffalo Bills and Woody.

One of the best parts was the fights. It is similar to hockey, except because they aren't on skates and have less padding, they seem to land more punches. It was awesome!! Those American Indian players are fiery.



My favorite players are Brandon Francis (he's a fighter) and John Tavares. The cool thing about the players is because they don't get paid very much they all have other jobs. John Tavares is a junior high math teacher. Cool, huh? He has a daughter named Brianne and he is the best player in the league. He is also in his forties. Go Tavares! I love that these guys love the game so much that they play it even though they get beat up and don't really get paid for it. Talk about passion.

You won't even believe how much fun this experience is until you've tried it.

The Buffalo Bandits won 14-4 and they gained a new fanatic. Go Bandits!! WOOOooo!

We failed another part of the white trash test. We love professional lacrosse. So we are poor, white trash and we embrace it. Now the final test my my white trashiness is if I love NASCAR live.... Then I will be beyond hope.

St. Patrick's Day

This year, I got a record number of texts wishing me a "Happy St. Patrick's Day." It was wonderful! Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I think that I owe it all to my blog posts for last year's St. Patrick's Day.

I love St. Patrick's Day. It is a random, fun holiday that you don't have to feel obligated to spend with relatives or buy people presents. And for most people, it's an excuse to get completely drunk. Mostly, I like it because the whole thing is pretty silly. I have no idea where these random traditions came from, but I think that they are funny.

Last year, was a lot of fun because we got to spend it with our friends playing poker and eating yummy food made by Dan and Jorden. This year was a little less eventful. We miss you guys!!

In Buffalo, there is a huge Irish population. So it is one of the cities that really, and I mean really celebrates St. Patty's. They celebrate it the weekend before so they can get drunk beyond reason. It starts on Saturday night with a small parade, and then everyone gathers downtown at 7 or 8 in the morning to start drinking and watch the big parade. I guess that it is a lot of fun. I wanted to go to the parade, but I didn't know that it would be on the Sunday before. I thought that it would be on the actual holiday. So I had to work.

I took care of a lot of drunk people at the hospital that Sunday. A lot of drunk people that did stupid things like getting in fights, jumping off tables, and driving.

So, on St. Patrick's Day, which was a Tuesday, we went to a real Irish restaurant. It's called JP Fitzgerald's in Hamburg. Spencer had the famous Buffalo beef on 'weck, with wings, and celery/blue cheese. I had the traditional corned beef, cabbage, red potatoes, and rye bread. It was really good. It was crazy and there were a million people there. I guess they made tons of corned beef for the holiday because it is the best place to get it in the area. It was really good. I like the ceiling because it was green tin with clover designs. There was also gnomes all over for normal decor and the extra green tinsel and St. Patrick's decorations.

Here is a picture. This was a drive by. Aren't I good?!

I guess that Hale is of Irish origin, so I have some Irish blood in me. Maybe that's why I like it. Also, it runs in my family to love random holidays. My sister Alexis and I both share a love for random, silly holidays like Talk Like a Pirate Day, Magic Circles Day, Festival of Extraterrestrial Abductions, Increase Your Psychic Powers Day, Look Up at the Sky Day, Wiggle Your Toes Day, Ask A Stupid Question Day, World Sauntering Day, National Handwriting Day, etc. etc. There really are a ton of them, and they crack me up.

So Happy St. Patrick's to everyone!! And Happy National Goof-off Day!! (that's today)

Valentines Day

This year for Valentines Day, we went to Niagara Falls the weekend before (as previously posted). On the official Valentines Day, I had to work. I car-pool with my friends Lindsay and Nancy. That day I was just driving Nancy. After work, we came out to the car to find that someone had secretly stopped by.

I knew the minute that I saw something in the car that Spencer had done something. In my seat was a bag of socks, candy, and a cute stuffed Samoyed. In Nancy's seat, was some Roche candy. Isn't he cute to think of my friend Nancy?! She was so impressed that he drove all the way up there just to do that and thought it was sweet that he took the thought to remember her. She is recently divorced and her kids were away for that weekend. The good thing is that she was going out to dinner with some other girls from work. In fact, Nancy invited me to go, I said that I would but I have a feeling that Spencer will have a surprise dinner or something at home.

I told Nancy that I was actually not that surprised about him stopping by the car and leaving gifts for both of us. I said, "Yeah. That's something that he would do. That's just how he is." And I couldn't stop smiling. I love him so much and he is so sweet and thoughtful.

This was my package. I love cute socks, by the way. And he wrote me a beautiful card. That meant the most to me of the whole thing.

This is Nancy's gift, with a Christmas label.

When I got home, I walked in to a candle-lit dinner. Spencer had made pasta, bought some bread and mozzarella, red roses, and he made a CD of songs that remind him of me that was playing in the background. It was so sweet. And so nice to come home to after work. My heart just melted. We had dinner and I was completely twitterpated. I love that I still get that after so many years of being together. After dinner, Spencer brought out some canoli's from Ileo De Palo's. They are so good.

After dinner, I finished opening my package from the car. It included St. Patrick's Day socks, so I was really excited. Then Spencer opened his Valentines present. I got him socks and candy (that was the agreement this year, socks and candy) and I added some basketball shorts to sleep in because he needed another pair, and they were cheap at Target.

These are my beautiful roses. I told Spencer not to spend a lot of money on flowers because they all die anyways. Aren't these pretty for grocery store roses?

After Spencer opened his package, he said that he had one more present. He pulled out a wrapped box about the size of a jewelry box. I kind of got mad at him because we had promised each other that we wouldn't spend a lot of money on each other. He just smiled and said that it wasn't a lot of money. I didn't believe him. But I opened it anyways. And this is what I found inside...

You can't really see it in this picture. But when I opened that, I started crying. To understand, I will have to take you back about five or six months...

Last fall, I was getting into the shower. Normally I just set my wedding band on the counter and then put it back on when I get out. On this day, I decided that I should be more careful. So I put my ring on Spencer's ring holder. It's a glass thing that has a part in the middle that holds rings. Anyways, I get out of the shower and get ready. I can't remember where we were going, but Spencer told me to hurry. He grabbed his wedding ring off of the ring holder while I finished putting on shoes and socks. At the last minute I remembered to go get my ring, so I went to get it and it wasn't there. I started freaking out. I looked around and couldn't find it. Spencer told me to hurry. So I went out to the car and told him I couldn't find my ring. He didn't seem to worried. Then I got mad because I thought that maybe he took the ring to teach me a lesson about being careful with it or something. I kept asking him if he did this, and he said no.

When I realized that my wedding band, my most precious and irreplaceable ring might be lost forever, I started crying. When we came home we both looked for it for a few hours. And over the next few weeks we kept looking for it. I was certain that I had put it on the ring holder. And I thought that maybe when Spencer went to get his ring that he somehow partially grabbed my ring and flung it somewhere in the room. We searched and searched for that ring and didn't find it.

After a month or two, I was so upset about not having it, that I bought a similar one on-line. It wasn't exactly the same but it was kinda close. I was just trying to move on.

So on Valentines Day, I opened up the box to find my real wedding band. Like I said, I burst into tears. It meant so much to me. That was the ring that Spencer bought for me in Hawaii on our honeymoon to have as a wedding band to wear everyday. It is a symbol of our love and commitment. It is the most valuable possession that I own. I can't even say how much it meant to me.

Spencer told me that he found it a couple of weeks earlier and decided to do this plan. He is so good at keeping surprises, the little stinker.

This was easily the best Valentine Day of my life. It was so beautiful with the music and food and flowers and of course my ring. We danced for a while and then watched a romantic movie.

This is a picture of the stuffed toy Samoyed that Spencer got me. It's been lots of fun.

The dogs are enamored by it.

I think that they think that it is a real dog.

Brady tries to sniff it like a dog. But if you pick it up and try to show it to him, he runs away like he did from the puppies.

Mia tries to pick it up and take it away. I don't know if she thinks it's one of her puppies and she want to take it and lick it or what.

Here they are sniffing and trying to figure it out. I won't let them play with it, though. I don't want them to ruin it.

Silly puppies.

I hope everyone had a great Valentines. Sorry I blog so late afterwards...

Shootout Videos

Buffalo Sabres vs. San Jose Sharks

I took Spencer to the Buffalo Sabres game against the San Jose Sharks on February 13. The Sharks are one of the best hockey teams in the league.

Our seats were higher up. They were the same height as the expensive seats, except it was a cheap section for some reason. We liked these seats alot because you could better visualize what was going on.

It was an exciting and high scoring game. This is when the Sabres made a goal in the last four seconds to tie the game and send it into overtime.

You can see how much time was left after this score.

After overtime, the Sabres won in a shoot out. Here is a Sabre shot.

And a Miller save.

The final score: Sabres win 6-5.

Spencer was happy. Isn't he handsome!

After the game we went to the Melting Pot. We just got chocolate. We get white chocolate and milk chocolate. It's called Yin Yang because they shape it like that. We went in our Sabre jerseys and we didn't care. It was fun.

I love the strawberries and bananas. Spencer loves the pound cake and cheese cake.

Video On the Glass

Here is a video of someone getting smashed against the glass at the game.

Buffalo Sabres vs. Ottawa Senators

For Spencer's birthday, I took him to the Buffalo Sabres game against the Ottawa Senators on February 11. Spencer wore his brand new Roy third jersey.

Before the game, I had to get a picture with Sabertooth. Spence said I had to because it was his birthday. I felt really stupid waiting for the little kids to finish until it was my turn.



For this game, I got tickets against the glass. It wasn't terribly expensive. I guess that the more expensive tickets are higher up where you can see the game better.

It was really fun to be so close to the players, though. And it was cool when they would get smashed against the glass or if a puck came flying at the glass.

This is Roy, one of Spencer's favorite players. It was really weird being so close to him, yet separated by the glass.



This is during warm-ups.



This is Miller, the goalie.

There are scratches on the glass which make the pictures worse.

It was weird being below the scoreboard for once. It was also weird to see ourselves on the screen once in a while. The worse part about our seats was an eleven-year-old kid that sat next to us. He was more interested in being on t.v. than watching the game. He waved his arms and banged on the glass the whole entire game. I wanted to kill him shortly after the game had started.

It was freaking having them come right at you.

Here is one of the fights.



You can see the gloves on the ice here.

In this one someone was getting smashed right next to us.

This is another fight. This one had more players invovled.

We had tons of power plays, but still just couldn't score. We lost 3-1. It was still a fun and memorable experience.

Here's the score and the next game being advertised. We also went to that game.