June 30, 2011

Salute the Brave

I had remembered I wanted to blog about this about a month ago when I first heard about it. I thought it was appropriate with Independence Day coming up.
Let me introduce you to Salute the Brave
Salute the Brave is a company a USC student started as a project for a class. Every Friday I receive e-mails from different people talking about the School of Business and the Friday before Memorial Day, Ryan Morris shared his story. Here is an excerpt from the e-mail:
"I decided to try something that could be a successful business, but still give back to a great cause. Salute The Brave hats was born. The idea is pretty simple. We produce a line of baseball caps that feature graphics saluting the brave men and women fighting for our country. Every time I sell a hat, I donate one to Operation Gratitude. Operation Gratitude sends care packages to soldiers who are deployed in harm’s way overseas, or who are back in the U.S. recovering from wounds suffered in service."
I love the message of this especially around Independence Day when we should all be grateful that there fellow Americans that will sacrifice their lives to allow us to keep our Independence.

There are a few different designs of the hats. They have state hats for Texas, North Carolina, and California which have a patch of the state on the side of the hat.
Kinda random thing about this company: I was checking out the company's twitter and it/he had tweeted to Tim McGraw that they would be at the same concert I went to. Sometime during Luke Bryan's set (I can't remember what song) I see Luke grab a hat from the crowd and it was one of the Salute the Brave hats! How cool and random is that?! I hope Luke wears it and gets the word out about this great company.
Go check out the website and buy a hat for you or a serviceman/woman that you know and give it to them for Independence Day and make sure to say thank you to them for all they do.   

Photobucket
Read More




Patriotic WIPT

I am linking up with the lovely Sarah Elizabeth at We're Just Like You Only Prettier for a patriotic themed What I'm Playing Thursday.
Photobucket
Love Love Love this song! Who else is reminded of the scene in The Sandlot when they are playing their one night game of the year under the fireworks?

The first time I saw Brooks & Dunn in concert this was one of the last songs, if not the last song, they sang and it was amazing especially when they brought members of the military up on stage.

Toby Keith has some great America songs.


Your Independence Day is not complete without hearing this song. I love it!

This is just a funny video I found on youtube of the same song just the Muppet version. What I find hilarious is the video was posted by the user "patrioticeagle"

I hope all of these songs put you in a patriotic mood!

Photobucket
Read More




June 29, 2011

Summerthing!

Sunday was one of my favorite events of the summer: Summerthing!


Summerthing is a FREE concert put on by one of my favorite radio stations Alice 97.3. It takes place in this big meadow in the middle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. We had gone twice before to see our favorite band, Lifehouse. This year they had an awesome lineup: Andrew Allen, Parachute, Michelle Branch, Matt Nathanson, and OneRepublic.

It started at noon but we didn't care too much about seeing the first two acts. We left our house at about 11 and we got to the park around 11:50. It took us an hour to find a parking spot. Yes, an hour! I was getting nervous/frustrated/mad that we couldn't find one since Michelle Branch was suppose to go on at 1:15 and I was worried we would miss her. But luckily we found a great spot inside the park.

When we got to Speedway Meadow, it was packed! There were never that many people the two previous times we had went. On the radio, they said normally 8 or 10,000 people show up but Sunday's crowd was near 20,000. Previously, we had also just walked up to the front and stood up to see Lifehouse but that was not happening Sunday. We tried to walk up there but got stuck since they weren't letting people in the front. We got stuck behind some of the tallest people ever right when Michelle Branch went on stage so I could barely see her. :( But she sounded great!


After her set, we decided to leave the standing area we were in and get some food. The food lines were just so long and nothing sounded appetizing so we just got IT'S-IT. We sat in some shade behind a tent and listened to Matt Nathanson's set while we ate our IT's-IT. Once we were finished we decided to get up and walk on the other side. Matt Nathanson did an awesome cover of "Don't Stop Believing'" to end his set.

Note: This is not my video.

It had been a long day already and we were both tired so we left before OneRepublic actually went on stage. We would have had to wait almost another hour for them to go on and we decided we didn't want to wait. It was too bad we didn't stay but we were ok with leaving and not seeing them. We had seen them before when they were on tour with Rob Thomas. We're hoping they come back so we can catch them again. I'm excited because we are seeing Matt Nathanson with Train and Maroon 5 in October and hopefully we will go see Michelle Branch with The Goo Goo Dolls in August.
Photobucket
Read More




June 21, 2011

Traveling South of the Border

Today I am linking up with MichelleMichelle, and Lyndsay for Tastes & Travels. They have this fun series that you should check out if you haven't already. This link-up is to show off your travels to Mexico or what you would do there or even you favorite Mexican food. Join in the fun!


A Little Bit of This and That

I have been to Mexico quite a few times. Most of them were to Tijuana when I was little. We always go to this same restaurant that is literally underground. I actually used to be scared of going to Tijuana don't ask me why though. More recently, my family and I went to Cancun in 2005 and Mexico City in 2007. We were actually planning another trip to the Yucatan Peninsula (Cancun area) this December but we are pushing that trip back until June 2012. When we first visited Cancun, we took a day trip to the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. To say we fell in love with that place would be an understatement. We have all grown to love Mayan ruins and are a bit obsessed with them. We took another trip in December of 2009 to Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras to visit numerous sites.

My post today is focusing on our trip to Mexico City and Palenque which is a modern city as well as an ancient city we took in June 2007. Mexico City is such a big city!
Me in the Zócalo or Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City. This is the main square in Mexico City. To my right not pictured is a large Cathedral and some ancient ruins that they just recently unearthed. Behind me are the Natational Palace and the Federal District buildings.
Did you know that  Mexico City was built on a lake? Well here is the marker of the lake.
One day we visited the ancient city of Teotihuacan, which are Aztec ruins.
Pyramid of the Sun 
Pyramid of the Sun in the foreground and the Pyramid of the Moon in the background
Pyramid of the Sun, we climbed to the top! 
Pyramid of the Moon from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun 
I took a picture from the edge of the pyramid to show how high we were.
We also visited the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Here are two of my favorite artifacts in the museum.
Above is a picture of Chac-Mool which is a popular figure in the Maya world.
After visiting Mexico City we made our way to Palenque which was an hour plane ride and a 3 hour car ride away. Palenque had to be the hottest, most humid place I have ever been. Climbing around pyramids in that weather equals sweaty pictures of me so you won't be seeing any up close pictures of me. Also I had a lot of questionable outfits on this trip. Here are a few of my pictures of Palenque.

Me in front of the Temple of Inscriptions. The tomb of one of the kings of Palenque, Pakal, is deep within this pyramid. Unfortunately due to the humidity, you can no longer go inside and see it.
 The Palace from a top of another temple.

 Temple of Inscriptions and the Palace
 Me and my mom on the steps on one side of the Palace
Another view of the Temple of Inscriptions and the Palace.
We also visited a few other places in the area. One was this pretty waterfall called Misol-Ha.
Aguas Claras
Aguas Azules
Those are some of my favorite pictures from that trip. Eventually, I would also like to visit the town my dad was born in and some of the cities on the west coast of Mexico like Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Mazatlan, and Zihuatanejo (any Shawshank fans?)
Photobucket
Read More




June 14, 2011

Summer's Here

For me, summer has arrived. It's finally warming up! I was so sick of all the rain and gloominess. The swim season has started too. Now all my Saturday mornings (and some Wednesday nights) will be spent at my nephew's swim meets. He swims on the same team that I swam for 14 summers. Last sign of summer: great outdoor concerts!!!

All of my summer activities will be local; unfortunately no big trips planned. Hopefully I will be able to "getaway" to some great places around here on the weekends. Do any of you have exciting plans this summer?   
 
 
 
 
 
  
All images via weheartit
Photobucket
Read More




June 13, 2011

Tim McGraw/Luke Bryan Concert Pictures

 Here are my pictures from the concert.
 Luke! <3
So the majority of my pictures came out horrible. These are the best. Here's a quick story about the first two below: the way the ampitheater is set up there are these ramps that the singers can walk up if they want to. When they do everybody sitting along the aisle will run up and try to touch the singers and or try to get a picture with them. Do you all see the girl in the brown jacket? Well she was actually sitting next to me. Like 10 people in from the aisle. I didn't realize it at the time that she had made her way next to Tim because I was too busy trying to take pictures of Tim to notice she was up there. Near the end of the concert she asked me if I had run up to the side and I said no. I asked her if she did and she was like 'yeah I was on the big screen.' I thought this was hilarious. It's too bad I didn't know that she was in my pictures or I would have definitely shared them with her.
 
 
Photobucket
Read More




Return to top of page
Powered By Blogger | Design by Genesis Awesome | Blogger Template by Lord HTML