Coming back home to visit is serious business
Stephanie and I have been home now for almost a week and I think that we’ve packed about as much as we possibly could have into this crazy Midwestern rendezvous. We have been to my 10-year reunion in Pendleton, we have seen all of our friends in Indianapolis, we have partied WAY too much(and WAY too late), Stephanie has hung out with her parents and grandparents, we have seen my nieces and nephew in Kentucky and as I write this we are in Michigan because Stephanie is a bridesmaid for her college roommate’s wedding. She’s actually at a lingerie party for the bride while I am siting here in our hotel room getting my Internet fix. It all works out, right?
Since I have been unable to sit front of my laptop for any extended period of time the past couple days, I have some PhotoCrank work to get done, but after that I promise to post all of the details of our Midwestern adventure. It’s well worth the wait to see some of this stuff, believe me.
But, until then, I’ll leave you all with this pic of Stephanie and I rocking it out on the dance floor last night at Arnie’s at Newport on the Levee. I’m not sure what we were doing, but feel free to Crank it by clicking on the purple button with the plus sign (+) in the bottom left of the photo.
It just keeps getting better
Just when I think things can’t get any better… another fun night rolls around and a new experience completely knocks me off my feet with excitement. Tonight Shannon took us to a fabulous restaurant in San Jose. Straits is a restaurant/nightclub that offers tappas style eating, a bar, and fabulous dancing.
We were completely blown away with this place. The atmosphere was unlike any other. I felt like i was walking down the street to the restaurant with my mouth wide open…. it’s just breathtaking. Straits is right on Santanta Row which is an incredible shopping, eating, and living experience. High-end shops and restaurants line the street and a mass of people flock to the area every night of the week.
The dj was incredible and we ended our meal with some sweet dancing to work off all of the incredible food that we ate. I can’t wait to take our friends to this place to hang out when they come and visit…. You know you wanna go don’t you!!
Yee-Haw!!!
For the past week, I have been enjoying some good ol’ Texas fun with my family down in Houston. It’s pretty exciting down here in the hot humidity of the Lonestar state 
I’ve experienced a great deal of what Texas has to offer including some great shopping, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the beach at Surfside!
My dad and Shannon have definitely kept me busy with all of the site-seeing and fun activities that they’ve planned. I love it down here, and there is so much to do and see, I feel like I haven’t even scraped the surface of seeing what Texas has to offer. It is a pretty big state I guess. Speaking of big… EVERYTHING is big down here; it’s just the texan style really. If it’s not big then it’s not worth anything, or so it seems.
I’ve had a fabulous time here in Texas with my dad and Shannon and it’s good to finally have a picture of what their life is like down here since I’ve been hearing about it since they moved back in January. I can’t wait to make more trips down here, but I think i might wait to let the hot HOT summer pass before I head back for another vacay.
I head back home to beautiful Palo Alto tomorrow, which I miss A LOT!! Texas is beautiful and lots of fun, but I’ve gotta say that Palo Alto still holds my heart. And I’m beginning to miss that one tall guy a little bit too 
Cali Road Trip: Hitting the road
I am writing this from Columbia, Missouri at Stephanie’s grandmas(I love stealing wi-fi) and we are getting ready to head towards Denver tonight. We have about 11-12 hours to go today so I need to get off of this laptop so that we can get driving. Every mile is a minute, here we go!
On the road again…
They say imitation is the best form of flattery…
The couple to the left… is my father and step-mom. What’s special about them?? A lot actually, but what is most impressive recently about their relationship is the fact that they were inspired by our blog! That’s right, just recently we stumbled upon bartandshan.blogspot.com
Since they are such jokesters they also decided to make their website painfully similar to ours. In fact, the very first post is almost word for word exactly like ours, with a few adjustments just to spice things up a bit. I warned them that once you get a blog togther that means things are serious Their tag line reads… “Telling our story ( hmm sound familiar?) but we don’t think anyone is listening” Bart and Shannon, we are now listening… write on!!!
Fixed laptop = more videos!
My laptop and I have been butting heads for many, many weeks and probably months due to the fact that it has been running really, really slow and has gotten to the point where I can barely get my day to day stuff done without throwing it out my car window. Luckily, I took the high road with the many frustrations that me and my constant companion have been dealing with by taking to the time to archive all of the files, etc. from the laptop’s hard drive so that I could proceed to wipe out everything that has been saved, installed, hacked and created on it.
Well, the good news is that I’m back in business with a decent laptop(it’s runnin’ great…for now), it’s not taking 25 minutes to pull up the Internet and probably the greatest result of getting it fixed is that Stephanie and I can start doing videos again. The videos that we put together are a great creative release from me and something that I really enjoy doing by myself as well as with Stephanie. Since I worked so hard at getting the laptop fired up today, I vowed to get at least one video up and ready by the morning, so here goes nothing.
This video is of a glimpse into the first birthday party of my two baby nieces, Reese and Riley - you can also check it out over here on YouTube if you can’t see it below.
A blizzard can’t keep us away from a birthday party
Today Stephanie and I are both down in the snow-filled state of Keeeeeentucky(insert your own hillbilly accent here) for the latest monumental event of the family, the first birthday of my twin nieces Reese and Riley. Up until about an hour ago, Kentucky was under an official blizzard warning(see my sister’s snow covered car here) but it didn’t come close to stopping me and the rest of the fam from making the trek down for the bash. We hopped into dad’s Yukon, slapped ‘er into 4-wheel drive and actually had no problems making our way down once we were on the road.
Well, according to my niece, Madison, it’s time for Uncle Hup to get off the computer and come play and it’s pretty hard to argue with that. I can’t wait to see the twins tear into their first birthdays cakes…get after it, kids and make this uncle proud.
Until I get the video done for today’s birthday goodness, check out my nephew Mason’s first birthday video below or over here on YouTube.