Saturday, February 28, 2009

All things thankful for: February

... new friends.
... warm weather. well, warm for February anway.
... visits from family.
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yay ... visitors!
... playing lots of these. (only when we didn't lose miserably)
... green tea. hot & cold. I love it both ways.

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... first time skiing in Colorado. Definitely colder than the east coast but lots of fun. I think C has found his newest sport.
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... Valentine's Day flowers.
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... Our second show at the Heritage Theatre.
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it's elvis ...
... more hiking.
... Ollie. He's the most lovable cat. He turns dog people into cat people.

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... Crossing things off my list.
... Henry being ridiculously goofy.

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he decided to sleep on top of Toby.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Busy weekend ahead...

On the calender:

... Saturday we're going to check out a few towns that we're interested in buying homes in.
... Saturday night we're going to some friends' for dinner. yum!
... Sunday we might go skiing.

In between all of that I need to check all of these things off my lists.

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wedding "to do's"


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school "to do's"

I leave you with a picture of Henry because he's just that cute.


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This is him with his Valentine's toy. Don't be alarmed that it has no eyes. He rips those out as soon as he gets them.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

If Colorado had a catch phrase...

... it would be "No worries".

Except in this economy.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Momma said there'd be days like this ...

... there'd be days like this my momma said."

... The day started off alright until I got out of bed and discovered a large pile of cat vomit on the dogs' bed that I narrowly missed stepping in.
... I realized that the dogs were out of milkbones when I went to give them their morning treat. They were not happy with me. Then I realized that I was supposed to give them their heartworm pills 3 days ago. Heartworm pills became morning treat. They were still not happy with me.
... I did almost nothing until the last hour before I had to leave when I had to cram everything I should have been doing all morning into that hour.
... When I got out of the shower and looked at myself for the first time that day I realized that my face was peeling from the windburn I got when we went skiing. It wasn't pretty.
... We have no food because I haven't been grocery shopping. I decided to eat a leftover calzone from 4 days ago. The dogs got most of it.
... I was running late and about to leave when I realized that I forgot to print my notes out for class. I printed out the notes making myself later.
... Once I got in the car I realized that I had no money to pay for parking. I had to stop at the ATM on the way making myself even later.
... Ran from my car to class. My professor decided that today was too nice of a day to come to class. Did he cancel the class? Nope. He just decided not to show up. I realized I could have left the house 3 hours later than I did.
... After leaving class I was walking through Denver when I saw the largest rat in the history of rats (only a slight exaggeration here) swimming through Cherry Creek. I decided not to sit by the water.

February Confessions

... I love having company come and stay with us.
... I also love the feeling of being alone right after they leave. Gotta love some peace and quiet.
... I stuffed my face this weekend. And by weekend I mean Thursday through Monday. Must.Stop.Eating.Like.Pig.
... I think I watched about 3 hours of "Friends" last night. It was fabulous.
... I am currently wearing men's p.j. pants and contemplating going to class in them.
... I didn't make the bed this morning. C is away for a few days and I just didn't feel like it.
... I have seriously been slacking on walking the dogs the past few weeks.
... I opened all the windows in our place today. I'm pretending it's spring even though I'm freezing.
... I am so sick of looking at wedding related things. I am also not looking forward to booking my ticket for April. I always think I'll book it and then find a better deal.
... I have no idea what I'm going to do when I finish graduate school.
... I know that C really wants to buy a house this year but the thought of moving AGAIN just makes me want to roll over and take a nap.
... I cannot figure out what to write my term paper on. None at all.
... I'm seriously annoyed at the fact that they are trapping and shooting coyotes in Greenwood Village.
... I actually had a lot more fun skiing than I thought I would.
... I could care less about the elk in RMNP and I think they should just allow people to hunt them. mmm.... elk meat.
... I want to take my tax refund and spend it at the mall. Instead I'm going to use it to pay for more school. Yay.
... Sometimes I really miss having my own bank account so I can spend money on stupid things and not have to justify it or feel guilty. Being an adult sucks.
... I would much rather have spent last Sunday drinking beer than driving up a mountain. I don't really see the point of driving up a mountain. Even one that's 14,110 feet.
... I am really excited to BE married. But sometimes I get really sick of the planning part.
... I let the dogs sleep on the bed last night.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Pikes Peak

After living in Colorado for six months we finally made the drive to the top of Pikes Peak. We've been waiting to do it when people came to visit and the road was open to the top and today it finally was. So ... we drove to the top and took a ridiculous amount of pictures in the process.

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view about half way up.

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us ... halfway up.

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i made it. yes, that's right, i survived the car ride.

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C made it, too.

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C and his sister livin' on the edge.

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us on top.

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not a bad view.

A little Boulder Fun ...

I feel like Boulder is something that everyone should experience if you're going to make the trip out to Colorado. We've dragged all of our family members to the town and we usually also drag them up to Red Rocks since it's at the end of Pearl Street and it's pretty cool to see. So Saturday we took C's sister and husband to Boulder. We stuffed our faces at Old Chicago and then walked down to Red Rocks.

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we finally stopped at the overlook on 36.

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ahh, Boulder.

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Red Rocks time. Our usual shadow pictures.

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and another.

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I'm like a little kid. I could climb on the rocks all day long.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Colorado ski Trip Number One

A few days ago C's sister and her hubby came into town and we all went skiing yesterday. For C and his sister it was their first ski trip ever so we were expecting to take it pretty slow. Little did I know that C would ride the lift to the top of a blue run, hop off, and beat me down like it was nothing. We had a pretty good day, got a few good runs in, and spent a good amount of time on the beginner slopes.

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C and I after our first run. It was COLD. I definitely ended up with some windburn.

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C's sister and I.

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we had "this much" fun.

After skiing we drove to Breckenridge and walked around and ate dinner.


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why does my head look so huge in this hat?

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the headband twins.

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Breckenridge is the cutest mountain town.

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us four.

Overall we had a great time. I know that C really wants to go back spend some more time on the harder trails. I just wish skiing wasn't so expensive! I suppose it would help if we had our own skis but I just don't want to buy them unless I know that we're going to spend every other weekend skiing. And I definitely don't see that happening. It was nice to get into the mountains where it actually felt like winter. I'm still excited about our 60 degree day tomorrow. :)

Monday, February 16, 2009

V-day Flowers Take Two

So on Valentine's Day C gave me this ridiculously huge flower arrangement. You can't tell from the pictures but this thing was about half the size of me (no short jokes, people). Anyway, I decided to take it apart and make multiple arrangements from it and spread the green and love all over our apartment.

This was the original.
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I relocated the roses to the mantle to go with my "love" theme.
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I love pink roses. They're definitely my favorite out of all the colors.
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Can you tell I was having fun playing around with the camera? I think I finally figured out which settings to use for flowers.
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I have no idea what these are but they are now on our end table.
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... and the lilies ended up on our table a good foot shorter than the original arrangement.
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i love lilies ... almost as much as pink roses. :)
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Sunday, February 15, 2009

I wish ...

... that this paper would write itself.
... that all the "wedding stuff" would be done with and we could just have a wedding, fabulous pictures, and be married.
... that spring would come and stay.
... that my apartment would clean itself.
... that my dogs would walk themselves.
... that I hadn't volunteered to be in charge of this group project.
... that there was a channel on t.v. that constantly played Friends and Sex and the City.
... that insead of skiing this Friday we were going to the beach.
... that napping was an activity I could get paid for.
... that the money I spent on ski goggles and gloves I had spent on fun clothes instead.
... for world peace! (what the hell ... it can't hurt.)

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

Obviously I already confessed last month that Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday. And it's not because of the chocolate, or the flowers, or the limericks that Hallmark makes up and prints on pink and red cards. I think it's because everyone has such low expectations for the holiday. I feel like any card I send or gift I give is genuinely appreciated because it's not expected.

So, of course I started my Valentine's Day a little early ... Friday the 13th, another one of my favorite days. (I always have really good days whenever it's a Friday the 13th. Maybe it's my lucky number. Maybe I'm just weird like that.) So Friday, after I finished my shopping I started baking. Now I realized that this was risky ... everything I've attempted to bake in the last 6 months has ended up in the trash. And it's not because I have high standards, I don't. It's just been that bad. So I decided to bake from a box (always a much safer bet) and make C a Funfetti cake. It's his fave. And then I also decided to make some dog treats because, really, how can you screw those up? The whole point is just to bake them until they're so dry and hard that they'd break a tooth.

Funfetti cake was really my second choice. I actually tried to make heart shaped cupcakes ... they turned out like this:
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not good. :(

Which meant the dogs got the remainder of them. So I took the rest of the batter that I had, poured it in a pie pan, and baked it for a rediculously long time. The end result was this:
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I realize I'm no Betty Crocker but it's ok. I'm making progress. This was edible or should be edible. We ate so much food during the day on V-day that we still haven't attempted this.

The dog treats were no problem. I'm a pro at these and the dogs go nuts for them.
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mmmm .... now if only human food was this easy to make.

So ... Valentine's Day morning Charlie woke me up with pancakes and flowers. Awwwh ... what a good guy. So we ate, exchanged presents and then left for Loveland.
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some of our loot.

We were planning on driving around and checking out some houses which we did and then we ate at Applebees. During lunch a barbershop quartet showed up in white tuxes with red bow ties and started singing. It was a little odd but I got the impression that Loveland goes all out for V-day. There were cardboard hearts that were painted with messages all over Main Street. One of them was a guy asking someone to marry him. But my favorite part about Loveland ... water! We drove around Boyd Lake State Park and it was the most amount of water I've seen in one place since moving out here.
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*sigh* I grabbed this picture from their website. I miss the beach.

When we got home I cooked dinner. (A much safer idea than baking). And we stuffed our faces with a huge amount of food and wine and spent the rest of the night trying to recover.

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Toby was annoyed I didn't bake the pork roast for him.
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They were hungry.
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Happy Valentine's Day, C!!

Friday, February 13, 2009

The Story of Love Part 1: The Beginning

Every good love story has a catalyst. Ours just happens to be a dog.

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(Notice the resemblance to Marley and Me?)

C and I met and were friends long before we started dating. When we first met, Charlie had a long term girlfriend and I was going through my "just having fun" phase. And, it was fun. :) Anyway, for Christmas that year C's present from his girlfriend was this adorable puppy who he named Dunkin. (I've tried to change the spelling to Duncan which I think is much cooler but it didn't work).

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Seriously ... how cute is he!? The first time I saw him I started talking in that annoyingly, high-pitched voice reserved only for puppies and super-cute babies and I haven't stopped since.

So anyway ... C broke up with the girlfriend a few months later and he and I started spending more time together usually under the pretense that we were doing something with Dunkin. We walked him all over campus, took him for hikes in the woods, and swimming in the lake. And the more time we started spending together the more I realized how much I liked the boy ... and so we started dating.

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he loved frisbee back in the day. now it's just all about the tennis balls.

I make it seem a lot less complicated than it really was but moral of the story is that I give Dunkin a lot of credit for C and I getting together and staying together. C always tells people that I dated him and agreed to marry him for his dog. He's wrong, but Dunkin definitely deserves some of the credit for getting us together. He's been the best, most loyal dog to both of us and I know that we both agree that he's just the best dog in the world.

So, Happy Valentine's Day to the dog who's been with C and I for 5 Valentine's in a row!
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