We’re back! I have to admit it’s taking me awhile to get back into the swing of things around here.  We got back to our place at around 11:00 a.m. Tuesday morning after an all night sleep deprived red-eye and just today am I finally getting my head on straight.  I spent most of Tuesday yawning, unpacking and laundering.  Yesterday I got our place in order, stocked our cupboards and refrigerator and even managed to cook dinner!  Slow and steady. I’ve got lots of blogging to catch up on including my monthly recipe for February (which just flew by).  I thought maybe I should post one photo from Hawaii every day and then my weekly post quota would be met for all eternity!  I won’t do that, but I will make you wait a little longer for Hawaii photo’s.  I took a lot and I need to get them downloaded and organized first. Alright fine just ONE: So while we all wait with baited breath for Hawaii pictures, let’s talk about something equally as exciting:

AMERICAN IDOL!!!!

Yes I am a geek and no I don’t care what you think.  Every year Jon and I say we’re never watching the show again.  Every year we get sucked right back in.  This is because of several things:

1.)  It’s great reality TV with good stories.

2.) Jon and I both love music and especially ‘live’ performances.

3.) Jon and I are extremely competitive and gamble on the outcome every year.

4.) I can’t bear to be out of touch with pop culture/what people are talking about.

So we watch. The episode in which they announce the top 13 commences a very serious ritual in our household.  We separate ourselves and secretively hunch over our notes to rank OUR top 13 top to bottom (please excuse the crappy photo quality).  Jon uses the evernote app on his iPad. I take a more sophisticated route using wine and post it notes (I won last year). Marlo silently judges. The prize is made up of three parts:

1.) Bragging rights.

2.) I hate taking out the trash and don’t do it.  He hates changing the litter box and WON’T do it.  The loser does the others least favorite chore for a month.

3.) Winner gets a $150 shopping spree paid for by the loser.

The stakes are high this year : )  What I want most of all are the bragging rights. I’m assuming most of you have stopped reading by now due to compete lack of interest, but if you haven’t I will explain the rules.  We rank them 1 to 13.  If we guess an elimination correctly it’s +3 points.  If we guess the winner correctly it’s +7 points.  If we guess the wrong elimination, it’s minus the amount of points until their actual elimination.  Pretty simple. Here are the top 13 this year:

Jeremy Rosado Shannon Macgrane Elise Testone Jermaine Jones Joshua Ledet Heejun Han Erika Van Pelt Deandre Brackensick Colton Dixon Skylar Laine Hollie Cavanaugh Phillip Phillips Jessica Sanchez I conveniently put them in order from my number 13 at the top to my number 1 at the bottom.  Keep in mind these are not our lists for who we like the best, it’s our lists for how we think the voting will go.  I guess I thought maybe it would be fun for you guys to keep track of our little competition.  The resulting devastation when one of us loses to the other is something you’ll wanna stick around for. Feel free to play along!

Ali’s Picks

•  1 Jessica
•  2 Phillip
•  3 Hollie
•  4 Skylar
•  5 Colton
•  6 Deandre
•  7 Erika
•  8 Heejun
•  9 Joshua
• 10 Jermaine
• 11 Elise
• 12 Shannon
• 13 Jeremy

Jon’s Picks

1. Joshua
2. Jessica
3. Colton
4. Hollie
5. Phillip
6. Jermaine
7. Elise
8. Skylar
9. Deandre
10. Heejun
11. Erika
12. Shannon
13. Jeremy