Chuck E. Cheeses and Downtown Provo

For a date night we decided to go to Chuck E. Cheese's. We had been for birthdays when we were younger, but it had been a while since we last went. Did you know that it's called Chuck E. Cheese's because when said, it makes you smile? Talk about brainwashing! We were pretty excited to go, but unfortunately, things were much brighter and exciting in our eyes as children than they are right now.

The animatronic Chuck E. Cheese. He is much scarier than I remember. I used to think he was cool. Sometimes one of his eyes didn't open all the way.



3 of the other animatronics. The bird girl was probably the scariest because her mouth hardly ever matched when she talked or sang. It just randomly opened and shut.

The chef dude with a really horribly fake Italian accent. His drumsticks never got close to touching those drums. Poor drums. Never to be played.




They showed their music videos back from the 80's. Hardly any updating at all. Woo.



Me eating official Chuck E. Cheese's pizza. Here's something lame. Behind me Chuck in costume is entertaining a birthday girl and her friends. Behind them is the animatronic Chuck. Back in my day, when the Chuck in costume came out, they closed the curtains so there wouldn't be two Chucks. Now they just don't care. What were they thinking? It's like having 2 Mickey's in the same vicinity at Disneyland! What a catastrophe that would be for some little kids. Plus the animatronics didn't sing the happy birthday song they used to sing. Lame!

Here's a traumatizing Chuck E. Cheese experience. Ok, not too traumatizing, but a little weird. When I was 8 and went there, my cousins and I saw Chuck in costume go into the women's restroom. Pretty much ruined the magic. They need to learn from Disney.



Steve enjoying the pizza.

To our dismay, the Teen Aged Mutant Ninja Turtle arcade game no longer exists at the Orem location :( But we still had a lot of fun at the arcade.

Steve is slick at Skee Ball. Later that night we saw some girls walk up the ramp and place the balls in the highest numbers so they could get a ton of tickets. Once again, lame!

Spider squishing game.

Despite the lameness of a lot of it, we still had a lot of fun.

Afterwards, we decided we needed to see downtown Provo. This was Nov. 30, the night before the first big snowstorm here.

Thanksgiving: Part 3

On the way home to Provo from Gilbert, Arizona, good old Cecil (our car) decided to have a mega oil leak and a big hole burned in his engine. We don't know why this happened. We were stranded a couple miles south of Page, where Lake Powell is.

Where we were when Cecil died.

It was very cold.

So we got towed away and had to stay at a Motel 6 for the evening. Since Cecil was pretty much worthless, we decided it was time for him to go to his grave. Eric, Steve's brother, came and rescued us. Together, we gave Cecil a proper farewell.

Cecil O. Samuelson, the car. So beautiful. So peaceful.





Eric giving a drum roll and Steve giving an eloquent speech.



To end the ceremony, we each ran across the top of Cecil. Even though it wouldn't be respectful for us to run atop of our dead, it is much different with cars. It's quite symbolic, really.

Goodbye Cecil. Goodbye.

Thanksgiving: Part 2

For the second half of Thanksgiving week we went to visit Steve's family in Gilbert, Arizona. We were spoiled rotten and had a great time with them. I am super mad at myself for not getting pictures of the whole family, but hopefully I can get some from Steve's parents to add in the future.

On Thanksgiving morning Steve and his brothers, Eric and Brian, played some turkey bowl.

Brian, in the middle, making an amazing catch. I can't remember if he actually caught it or not...



Steve, in the middle, ready to pull some flags.




Steve coming after Eric, who just threw the ball.



Eric, on the left, ready to get Brian with the ball, on the right, with Steve on Brian's team in the middle.

Gashler brother totem pole minus Mike.

Thanksgiving Vacation: Part I

We were blessed to spend time with both families for Thanksgiving. For the first part of the week, we hung out with my family at Disneyland. Before the trip, Steve pretended to be a Scrooge about it to my little 11 year old sister Heather. Then he surprised her with this:

It was a blast hanging out with my family. Every member is just so fun. Our family is a screaming noisy family meanwhile Steve's is the opposite, so Steve had to live with it.

My cute parents



The whole Peavler clan


Us



I'm making a kissy face if you were wondering.



I wanted to enlarge just our family, but it's really bad quality. Yes, I'm making faces again. Meanwhile Steve is completely relaxed.

Steve loves Merry Go Rounds.

This clip demonstrates the difference between Steves and Teresas.

Steve's manliness and loss thereof

Steve was the essence of manly today. You can tell by his beautiful long hair, which gives him his strength.

Fixing bathroom sink.

Insert Tim Allen grunt.

Eating a manly hamburger and drinking manly chocolate milk.

Alas, every Samson has his Delilah...

Before

After