Merry Belated Christmas!

I absolutely love the Holidays, but have to admit that I'm slightly relieved that Christmas is over. Things have just been so crazy the last few weeks that it's nice to be able to sit back and relax for a few minutes....

My Christmas was fabulous....full of family, food, and presents. Here's a few things that Santa brought me this year:

I recieved a lot of gift cards too, from Express, American Eagle, Macy's, Target, Best Buy, and more. I love gift cards, it means I can go shopping. :)

Jake and I also recieved a gorgeous framed picture of Venice from Jake's mom. I had seen it at a craft show that his mom and I went to a few weeks back, and apparently she managed to purchase it while I was with her without me having a clue!! Here's the photographer's website:

http://www.mikedavidphotos.com/home.html

Go to the Gallery and look through the pictures in the different countries. His photography is amazing.....(The one we got is called the Venetian Sky....)

Not much else is going on here. A little over a week ago a few of my girls (including my fave gal pal Jamie) went to Vegas and had a blast. I'll post pictures as soon as I get them off of my camera!! Vegas is always a good time, even when your cabbie almost gets in a fight with the guy in the car in front of us and then makes us wait in the back seat while he gets a lecture on patience from two policemen on bikes. And then charges us for the time the meter was running during said lecture. Gotta love Vegas....

That's it for now......Many pictures will be posted in the upcoming post :)

Hugs!

A quarter of a century old....

It's this boy's birthday today!

We don't have any exciting plans for tonight, I ended up having to work. I took him to dinner last night where we had yummy food and fabulous margaritas, and I gave him his red Ipod nano earlier in the week so that he could start playing with it. He loves it, and has started taking it with him everywhere he goes to show people his new toy! :) We must be getting old, we don't even have party plans for the big day....

But nonetheless, Happy Birthday to my favorite guy! :)

December already....

I can't believe it's already December! I don't know where the time goes, but I know that I LOVE this time of year. I've been buying Christmas decorations like crazy, trying to make our house festive. I even bought fake snow. Yup. Fake snow. It's probably the coolest stuff I've ever seen. It comes in powder form, and all you do is add some water, and voila!!! It immediately grows into fake snow! It has the texture of snow, and it even feels wet (though it doesn't make your fingers wet...I can't really explain it, but it's cool....) and it lasts for weeks! I'm going to use it around my christmas decorations as a little added touch. We'll see how it turns out.....

Speaking of snow, we have had plenty of real snow falling around here the past week. We had a major snow storm last Tuesday, and then it snowed again all day Saturday. Tuesday's drive was miserable, it took over an hour to get to work that day. And......I didn't see ANY plows out all day. HELLO? When there is a snow storm in Colorado, I'm pretty sure the city is supposed to plow. But apparently the city decided to sleep that day. Because no one plowed. And the next day, even though the snow had stopped, the roads were still awful. It took me longer to get to work on Wednesday than it did on Tuesday. COOL. Thanks a lot, City of Denver. All the people that got into accidents those two days complained about how bad the roads were and were questioning why no one plowed, and the city said something to the effect of "The storm caught us off guard....". That's probably the worst excuse I've ever heard. Number 1-you work in Colorado where there are always snow storms. You should not be surprised if it snows. Number 2-every weather channel was predicting a snow storm last week. How can you be caught off guard if everyone is telling you that it's going to snow? So yeah. That's my vent.

I didn't do too much this weekend....we are working on painting all of the first floor doors in the house, so we spent most of saturday taking all the doors off and setting them up to paint. I only got 2 out of 8 painted, and the rest are waiting patiently for their turn. I worked my whole 3.5 hours at American Eagle on saturday night and then came home and was lazy on the couch. I got some christmas shopping done yesterday.....I'm probably 75% done with my shopping. That's by far a record for me. I'm planning on doing some wrapping this week and hopefully finishing up with my shopping so I can relax until christmas, enjoying all of the lovely decorations and christmas lights.....and of course christmas music!!

And finally, we snapped this picture yesterday and are planning on sending them out with our christmas cards this year.....it's not the best picture but it's the best we could do.....it's tough getting the puppy to look in the direction of the camera, especially when there are birds flying over the yard that she could be chasing instead!!


Happy Monday!!

VEGAS!!

Just a quick note because I'm so excited......

Just booked my trip to Vegas :) I have to go out there in December for a training class and decided to stay for the weekend to play! A few of my gal pals are going to meet me out there for the weekend and we're going to do it up right! I can't wait! Vegas, here we come!!!

I promise there is an update coming soon, but it requires blogger to cooperate and me to make the time to post. Both of these must also occur at the same time......

Week in Review....

Nothing too exciting to report.....this week has been pretty uneventful. I've been watching some TV, doing some cooking and cleaning, and a little shopping as well :)



Speaking of shopping, I got my Halloween costume! It's this one, but I won't be rocking the red hair. I'm thinking that me with bright red hair would look a little strange. ;)









This was the second most exciting purchase recently:

I've already watched it twice, and sung all the songs while watching. :) Because everyone knows the words to The Little Mermaid, right?

Work has been dragging pretty bad this week and I've been drinking tons of this around 3 to make it through the last couple hours of the day....






I've found that Tropical is my favorite, followed by lemon lime. Because I know you were all wondering. :)

Had a small dinner party/gathering complete with good food, lots of wine, and this movie....

It made me laugh and cry, I loved it. Fabulous movie, I definitely recommend it!

My favorite TV shows this season are Grey's Anatomy (of course), Veronica Mars (obviously), and Ugly Betty. I've only seen the first episode of Ugly Betty so far (I have the second one tivo'd from last night that i still need to watch) but I loved the premiere, so I'm hoping the show doesn't let me down :) And can I just say that Grey's Anatomy rocks my world? The writers of the show should be inducted into some kind of Hall of Fame. Seriously.

This is just a little picture of the now college kids from Neptune. :) I pretty much love them. :)

And one last thing......I filled up my car with gas this week for less than 30 dollars. I can't remember the last time I paid less than $30 for a tank of gas. THAT. MAKES ME HAPPY. :)

Happy Weekend!!

A Few Things......

* It's my little bro's birthday today!!! I'm a horrible sister and don't have any pictures of him on this computer, but nonetheless the little punk turns 14 today!!

* Going to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner tonight for the bro's birthday, I'll be sure to take pictures of him there. Especially since I hear they make birthday people do crazy stuff, like write their name in the air with their butt :) There's no way I'd miss that photo op.

* In less than 2 years my little brother will be driving. Now THAT is a scary thought.

* I finished the second season of Grey's Anatomy last night, just in time for the third season to start. I'm not gonna lie, I cried. A lot. I don't know what it is but I ALWAYS cry at those shows. Can't help it. I'm emotional.

* Went to the park/field last night with Jake and Maya to watch the hunting training. I'm actually pretty impressed at how well our little dog is doing with the hunting training. I thought for sure that her attention span was way too small for her to hunt, but it's looking like she has some potential for finding birds. Which makes Jake VERY happy.

* I'm babysitting my cousin's baby Kevin the next two nights. I'm way excited. I hope she knows that I'm holding him the entire time I'm there. I don't care if it spoils him :)

* I'm back on a strict budget after two weeks of splurging. We're supposed to be saving for a house. I have not been. oops. But at least now I have a million new cd's, some new clothes, a laptop, and 3 pairs of cute new shoes that I probably won't be able to wear until next summer. That purchase was necessary, right? Yeah, I'm trying to justify it :)

* I was in a lunch meeting yesterday, and in the middle of my chicken salad I realize that Barry Bonds is sitting at the table next to us. That dude is HUGE.

Things that make me happy.....

My laptop came! And can I just say that I LOVE having a laptop. I've never had my own that didn't belong to work. I've spent a lot of time lately putting all my music onto it. My next task is to get my photoshop up and running on it, then put pictures onto it. Soo fun. It was well worth the wait.....

This:
Came out yesterday. And I, of course, had to have it. And there's a slight chance I stayed up way too late last night engrossed. I can't help it. It's good.

While at the store picking up Grey's, I also picked up these:



I listen to my music in phases. Sometimes I listen to nothing but country. Sometimes I listen to nothing but teen bands and bubblegum pop. Apparently right now I'm in my 80's phase. I LOVE all three of these CD's, they're awesome. It reminds me of being a kid. I love that. The next installment to my "CD's that remind me of my childhood" will be Earth, Wind, and Fire, Al Green, and Stevie Wonder. Yup. Classic :)

And finally. I have to give some love to my Colorado State Rams. Who beat the CU Buffs (sorry Alison!) this weekend in the good ol' Rocky Mountain Showdown. I opted not to go to the actual game this year; memories of flying bottles and beer being spilled on me prevented me from getting tickets. I did, however, watch the game at a downtown bar with some other CSU alumni friends. It was a good time, and best of all, we won :)

Go Rams!!

Have a great day!

Long post ahead......

It's been forever since I last posted.......I don't really have a good excuse.....work has been a little crazy, but other than that I'd say I'm just lazy. Sooooo, I figured I'd do a little catching up on what I've been up to lately....


Went up to Fort Collins last weekend. Brings back fun college memories, I miss that place. They were having West Fest that weekend, so there were booths set up with shopping and all kinds of food, and outdoor concerts all weekend. We happened to be there while the B-52's were playing......we couldn't see them but stayed just long enough to hear them play Love Shack :) TIN ROOF!.......RUSTED......

Some Pics from the evening.......


This is the greatest picture of the night.......she told him to smile like he was on vacation :) He did. :)


This little one has been sick lately......

I'm not sure if she ate something that made her sick or if she's just going through a thing, but it was BAD. I mean, up at 3 in the morning, had to rent a steam cleaner the next day, kind of bad. And, of course, as soon as we deep clean the carpet, she gets sick again the next day. Yay. Talk about good times. She's acting a lot better this week, but I think her stomach is still a little unhappy.....Poor little dog.....

Guess what I found at the store last week........TaaaaaDaaaaa!

If you look really closely, the bottle says: "Hair that gets poofy as it dries?" OMG. I laughed so hard when I saw this.....mainly because MY HAIR GETS POOFY AS IT DRIES!!! Anyone who knows me knows that I have to straighten my hair every time I wash it because as soon as it starts to dry it totally gets out of control poofy and frizzy. So, naturally, I had to buy this. So far it's working pretty well! My hair is crazy poofy so I'm pretty sure nothing will totally tame it, but it definitely helps!! (Or maybe I'm just imagining the results, because I think the fact that they even make this shampoo/comditioner is funny:) )

I also ordered this a couple days ago......

Not this exact one but you get the idea. I'm soooooo excited!! I ordered it from Dell, not really comprehending that they actually have to BUILD it for me before they ship it. Consequently, I'm stuck looking online on an hourly basis trying to see if it's shipped yet. As of 2 minutes ago, it was done with testing and still waiting to be boxed. HELLO? It's been waiting to be boxed for almost 24 hours. How hard is it to throw it into a box with some foam popcorn?? Don't these people know that I'm an instant gratification kind of girl and would really like to play with my new laptop NOW? Apparently they don't.......and here I wait......

Been listening to this on repeat on my IPod for almost 2 days......

I'm in love. Awesome CD.

And finally......Jake bought these for me last week......


You have no idea how excited I am about this. (Ok, maybe Jamie knows, only because I've been counting down the days until their release date for about 2 months....) I've already finished the entire second season of Veronica Mars and started on the second season of House last night. I love them both. So....if you can't find me in the next week, rest assured. I'm more than likely sitting on my couch in gray pajama pants, an old white tank top, hair thrown up in a messy pony tail, ignoring my phone when it rings, eating bon bons, watching TV on DVD's with my mouth gaping halfway open, only getting up to change disks. :) Don't worry, I'm almost done with them, so I'll return to the real world soon......

Organization is a Good Thing.....

I've been working on my scrap space lately, organizing the massive amounts of scrapping stuff I have. It took a lot of time and energy, but I think I finally have most of it organized! Here are a couple pictures of my stuff before I started.....




Random stuff packed into plastic tubs, in no particular order......























And this is the newly organized scrap space.......


The work area......

The out of control collection of Prima Flowers.....

Blogger won't let me post the other pictures of my scrap space, but I have a bookshelf full of cardstock and albums. I also found that I have 5 photo albums full of pictures that I need to scrap, along with 2 boxes of pictures. I did a rough guestimate of how many pictures I have to scrap, and I decided it's right around 2,000!!! I should probably get started on that.....

Once I finished the scrap space I actually sat down and whipped out a couple of pages......pretty much the first pages that I've scrapped in over a year!

Notice the abundance of Prima flowers in both pages :) I'm pretty sure that I will be using prima's on every page for the next year just to make a dent in my Prima collection.....

I'm hoping to get some good use out of the new scrappy space and get a few of my 2,000 pictures scrapped. We'll see how far I get. Tomorrow I'm participating in an Adult Field Day, complete with Dodgeball, Sack Races, Three-legged races, and more. Oh yeah, and there's also a Hula Hoop Race. :) I'm excited!

don't mind me.

avatar.

Highlights....

Been spending lots of time with family this past week, hanging out, playing with babies, bbq-ing......family time always means lots of good food. :) Here are some of the hightlights of this past weekend.....


Friday night a big group of us went downtown for our friend Dani's 21st birthday. Not many of my pictures turned out so I can't even post a picture of the birthday girl, but the cute blonde in the picture is her sister Jen. :) We had a great time showing Dani the Denver night life; although it made some of us feel a little old, and needless to say I am no longer used to staying out all night!






The little dog got a new toy this weekend.....I'm not really sure what it is but I thought it was pretty cute. Maya seems to like it; she carries it around with her all over the house. Jake calls it her gay pony :)







Came home last night to these......I have a pretty cute boy and I must say that I'm pretty lucky..... :)








And I leave you with this......Perhaps my favorite picture to date.....How can you not love these guys?

Canada

Blogger is finally letting me post pictures, so here's a recap of my Canada trip......

I spent a night in Seattle before heading across the border.....a picture from the pier.....Seattle is awesome. I spent the evening walking along the pier doing some shopping, and eating seafood. I don't even like seafood, but for some reason it tastes better when it's fresh :)



The next stop was the Okanagan Valley....in Vernon, BC. We didn't have too much time to hang out here but I managed to take this pic from where we ate dinner. We ate at an awesome restaurant called the Blue Herring that was right on the water, and people would just drive their boats up and get out to eat there. The restaurant had a fantastic view.....



And finally, Vancouver. We didn't actually stay in Vancouver, we stayed in Richmond which is just outside of Vancouver, but we spend a little time walking around the city one afternoon. The architecture there was awesome; a lot of their buildings were circular and there were several that looked like they were made mostly of glass.

We took a trolley ride that drove us around Stanley Park.....The view of the city from the park....

If you look closely, you can see the gas station in the middle of the water. Coming from a state that is completely landlocked, this intrigues me :)

Overall, I had a fabulous trip to Canada. I wish I had a little more time to hang out there, but I guess that just means I'll have to go back sometime soon. Everyone I met from Canada was extremely nice....even the lady that sat next to me on the plane ride home offered me half of her sandwich! This may seem like a trivial thing, but honestly it was very refreshing and reassuring to know that there are still polite and friendly people out there. Sometimes I forget these things on an everyday basis........


And finally, when I got home I got to hang out with this kid.....

......who is now off of oxygen and, as of tomorrow, will be 0!! (his original due date was July 27, so even though technically he's almost 8 weeks old, we still consider him in the negative numbers until tomorrow :) )

Much Love!

Blogger is being cranky.....

....and won't let me post any of my Canada pics. I'll try again tomorrow.....

To be updated.....

Hangin' out (really I'm working) in Canada this week! I should have some gorgeous pictures to post soon!

Sports, reunions, and puppies wearing make up.....

This weekend was filled with sports. Saturday night I watched my first UFC and I gotta say, I wasn't all that impressed. The most action was in the very beginning when one of the guys was bleeding profusely from his head. That's about it. Sunday I spent solid chunk of time watching the World Cup. I thought that was a fantastic game and I'm glad that Italia won, especially after the whole head butting incident. Seriously, who does that? Way to close out your career there buddy.

Another highlight of the weekend.....Spending time with the old crew from AMM. My old job had a little reunion/gathering this weekend where we all just ate, chatted, and played games all afternoon/night. I love these girls and I have so much fun when we all get together. I only got a couple of pics from the party but I had a blast!













<----This girl always makes me laugh :)





On my way home from the party that night I received a call from Jake informing me that our dog Maya had been experimenting with make up. "What does that mean?" I ask. He then gives me the "You'll just have to see when you get home" response. So the entire way home I'm thinking that she had eaten all of my much loved makeup and calculating how much it would cost to replace it all. I get home and am greeted by this.........



Notice the michael jackson whiteness of her face! It's kind of hard to see in the pictures but almost her entire face is covered in white dust!!! We have no idea what she got into, it must have been some drywall out in the garage, but it was freaking hilarious! I was rolling on the floor I was laughing so hard :)



She wasn't so happy with me when I was laughing at her while taking numerous pictures of her, but hey, that's what she gets for getting into trouble :)

And this is her "I have no idea what you're laughing at, I didn't do anything. AND STOP TAKING PICTURES OF ME" look. I get this look a lot. :)

And finally, I played a little volleyball last night and miss Jamie and the bean made an appearance.

This little girlie is adorable. :) Her aunt's pretty cute too......