Annual Girls Weekend!

Oops, I forgot to post this. Wish I was more like Beth and posted something almost everyday. She is a very good blogger.

It was that time of the year again where my two girlfriends, Nicole and Angie, and I meet somewhere for a rowdy weekend of watching TV, shopping and going to the spa. This year we met in the OC. So I decided to make a mini vacation out of it before I met the girls to see family and friends.

I went on a lot of walks with my mom and Henry.

Went to my favorite coffee place, "The Bean." Sadly, though, I spilled my vanilla iced blended all over my parents carpet so I didn't get to enjoy it.

My mom and I got our nails done - lookin' purtty!

Bates Girls! The visit wouldn't be complete without a night out with my Bates Girls. Some of the best gals in advertising.

I got to visit with my dear friend Dawn. She just had her second baby boy, Logan. He is incredibly precious and so good! For only five days old, he was already very focused.

Here he is, with mom Dawn, a little hungover after lunch.

Finally, the girls trip!!! Me, Ang and Nic.

We were sent some edible fruit and champagne. Here's our valet, preparing the yummies for us. We were there for maybe 10 minutes and Nic and Ang were already texting the family back home.

Lookin' good and off to dinner. Then back to the room to watch TV. We are so exciting!

Went to the beach....

Saw some dolphins (the black dots in the pictures).

Last night before we leave and head back to different states. Yes, we purposely bought matching t-shirts. And just so there isn't any confusion, Nic was a cheerleader and Ang was a pom pom or was in pom. And there is a difference. I was neither so I couldn't tell you.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here we are at our traditional Valentine's dinner hotpost - IHOP!

~xoxo~

Happy Birthday, Dan!!!

Dinner

Our house came with a double oven in the kitchen (where else would it be???). Fabulous right? Well, personally I would have preferred a double MICROWAVE oven. How can you cook a quick meal with only one microwave? With one microwave, it takes a good 15 minutes to make Dan's dinner. If I ever have money to remodel my kitchen... one can dream can't she?

Congratulations Jordan!!!

Congratulations to Jordan Romero, age 11, on his successful summit of Mt. Aconcagua. He is attempting to become the youngest person to successfully summit the eight highest mountains in the world (I thought there were only seven, but apparently there is some controversy about this so he is covering his bases and climbing them all). Four down, four to go. Props to Karen and Paul (his stepmom and dad respectively) on summitting all four with Jordan as well.

Titanic

We (Deb, Dan and I) went to the DMNS on January 1 to see the Titanic Exhibit. I highly recommend this to everyone if it comes your way. I learned so much about the ship, the happenings prior to the voyage and the passengers and why they were traveling on the Titanic. The artifacts they recovered were amazing and some were still in very good condition. It was an incredible history lesson. We all received a "boarding pass" of one of the passengers at the beginning of the tour. At the end of the tour we would find out if "we" lived or died. This boarding pass actually told a lot about the passenger - their age, class, cabin #, reason for traveling and other passenger facts. My lady, Helene Baxter, survived along with her daughter and son's fiance. Unfortunately her son died. I actually was very sad to learn of his fate. I really became engrossed with this ship and its history. Later that night, I went here to learn more about Helene, the Titanic and the stories of the other passengers. Deb's lady, her husband and brother-in-law all survived; and Dan's guy, his wife and their son survived. Go see this exhibit, or check out this site to learn more! (gee, I sound like a commercial.)

On a sidenote, Dan noticed this very funny sign at the musuem.

Happy New Year!!!

Ok, a little late, sorry. We hope everyone has a healthy, happy and adventurous new year!

Broncos and Socks

Deb and I went to the final Broncos game of the season last Sunday. We had our usual treeline seats.

Our QB played pathetically at the beginning - no surprise. Ugh! He drives me nuts. Run forward with the ball, Jay. Don't try to throw the ball if no one is open. You can run with it. Ugh! It was a cold and super windy day. Thank goodness the stadium blocked the wind from us. But then the temperature dropped and brilliant me, I wore thin socks with my sneakers. I don't have warm fuzzy boots yet. Don't ask why. So my tootsies were getting very cold, in fact two were frozen. With only 6 minutes left in the game and ahead of the Vikings by 16 points, I told Deb we had to leave. My toes were done. We ended up going to the Broncos store on the bottom level because I had to see if they had warm, thick socks. And yes, they did! Of course I grabbed the imperfect pair and I didn't realize it until I got home. The word Broncos is in the wrong color on one side of the socks. Awesome. I insisted on putting on the socks before we left the stadium. As I was doing that Deb was watching the game on one of the TV's and noticed that the score was now 11-19. Huh??? There was still 4 minutes left. We are not a cheating/come from behind/stay in the lead team like these guys, so we knew we could still lose. I said lets just walk into section 100 (field level) to watch the rest of the game. Then we casually walked over to some empty seats, end zone view, and sat there to watch the Broncos beat the Vikings in OT. Woohoo!

From all this excitement of attending the Broncos games, we decided to put our names in for season tickets. There are only 24,000 people in front of us, an approximate 12-14 year waiting list. Cool. Does anyone have connections???

Because I know you all are so interested, here is a picture of my imperfect sock. The picture on the left is what it is supposed to look like (and that doesn't even look that great) and the picture on the right is what it actually looks like.

I Couldn't Resist!

http://www.tmz.com/tmz_main_video?titleid=1364230859

Christmas Day was Great!!!

We went to Debbie's house for Christmas. Here we are trying to get out of our neighborhood. It was worse at Debbie's, but that is because she lives on the EASTSIDE of the I-25.

We ate...

unwrapped presents, ate, went sledding...

ate, watched a movie, made dinner, ate, watched another movie and then ate this wonderful dessert! It was an eggnog creme pie with rum! YUM!

This was definitely the highlight of the day. Sorry that you have to turn your head to watch it. After all the eating and a few eggnog's, it was very funny. I swear!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Merry Christmas everyone! I received the best present ever, a white Christmas.

Where is Santa?

Has Santa stopped by your house yet? Find out: http://www.noradsanta.org/

Merry Christmas Eve!

Yikes! Sorry for the delay in blogging! Guess not much has been happening. I did slip down the stairs and fell right on my bum on the hardwood floors. That was fairly exciting.

Any who, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE! My sister came over today and we watched the Broncos get killed by the Chargers. It is so painful to watch a bad football game. Get rid of Cutler!!!! My gosh, look at that haircut! Can he even see anything??? Bring back Jake!

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

It's snowing and it's beautiful!

Here's Dan shoveling our driveway for the first time. So many firsts this year - first house, first cyclocross race, first shoveling!

Just like the Pilgrims

Actually not really. We hosted our first Thanksgiving in our first house. It was very exciting. Family and friends joined us and pitched in with food and entertainment.

Dan was the man and made the turkey and a few sides. I handled the table setting and drinks. After stuffing ourselves, we played games, watched football and danced. Yes, we had dancing, hence the entertainment part. By the time the last friend left, we were pooped. We were in bed and fast asleep by 9:00 pm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday!

Walk Tall And Carry A Big Stick

Dan's dad, Fred, came out for a visit. Unfortunately I was in Philly for most of his visit but I was able to go on a few hikes with him and Dan. The really cool thing about Fred's visit was all the hiking he did thanks to the knee surgery he had on both of his knees this past summer. He was a hiking machine.

Here we are in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was windy and cold and I was so not dressed properly. But it was great to be out in the fresh air and hang with the family.

Many of the lakes we walked around were partly frozen.

Here's Dan standing on a frozen section. Despite the fact he was a half-inch from the shore and it was all of about a foot deep, it still made me nervous that he might crash through. Like I said, it was cold out and hiking in wet, cold shoes is one step away from pneumonia.

On our way out of the park we saw a long line of cars parked on the side of the road. This normally means there is wildlife in the area. So I yelled at Dan to pull the car over to check it out. This is what we saw.

Lots of elk. There were many more on either side of the frame. It was amazing! They just looked at all of us gawking at them wondering what was the big deal. Here are some close-ups.

I was craving some cookies one night so Fred suggested I make them. I thought great idea, how fun! So here I am making the cookies. If you look real closely, you will see really what I am making. It rhymes with egg nog and Jack Daniels.

Crop Circles????

View from the plane on my way to Philly.

Beckys in the City

Sorry for the long delay in posting..... I went to Philly, over a week ago, to visit my friend Becky. We hadn't seen each other in over 5 years and it had been 11 years since I lived in Philly. We spent two days whooping it up in NYC - shopping in SoHo and on the infamous streets of Madison and 5th Avenue (this is one of my new favorite places to shop), and eating in the meat packing district (that doesn't sound too good, but it was great!). Here I am in front of two of my favorite stores.

FAO Schwarz was pretty spectacular. I could have spent all day there and we don't even have kids! The FAO Schwarz man who greets everyone. Becky in front of a life-size pony stuffed animal.

View from our hotel - UN building on one side and the Empire State building on the other.

Some spectacular high rises and apartments.

The rest of the time was spent visiting with Becky's family and reliving our "wild days" on the Main Line.

Chicago O'Hare airport had this really cool touch-screen web TV screen. I checked out the weather in Denver.

My Favorite Holiday

Today Daylight Savings ended. Yeah! We get to fall back one hour which means an extra hour of sleep. Double yeah! Unfortunately not eveyone gets to celebrate this holiday. Sorry.

Weak!

So my sister killed it with the pumpkin carving this year. We totally went the other way. We bought blinking eyes and taped them to the pumpkins. WEAK!!!! Next year, we are really going to do it right.