Thursday, December 31, 2009

Peace out 2009!

This year was great, hard, fun, etc. Overall I think I liked it better than 2008. I'm definitely looking forward to 2010.

in january we put away our holiday decorations, waved goodbye to my mom and sister, took a lot of snow pictures, and i started school.
Snowy pups.
pups playing in the snow.

Henry & I
henry & i on a walk.

during february we celebrated valentine's day, our 5 year anniversary, had more visitors, and went skiing at loveland. it was a love-filled month.
Valentine's Day.
valentine's flowers.

Breckenridge
family in breck.

march brought our biggest snowstorm of the year, spring cleaning, and more wedding stuff.
Henry.
henry buried in snow.

i flew home for a shower thrown by my mom, charlie flew back for a bachelor party, and of course more hiking happened in april.
April showers
opening presents.

i think the best month of all might have been may. i finished up my first semester of school, had a fun bachelorette party, and we got married.
Married.
the new hubs and i.

when we got back to colorado in june we wrote a lot of thank you notes, hiked through a ton of snow, and found a new place to live.
Snow in June.
snow covered trail.

in july we hiked part of Pikes Peak in the rain, sent out moving announcements with the wrong zip code on them, packed a lot, and flew back to MD for some family time.
Pikes Peak
hiking down pikes peak.

we moved in august. i started school again, we hiked our first 14er, and got our car stuck on a mountain.
Gray's
on top of grey's.

alex came to visit in september, i turned 26, and we ate a lot of burgers barbecued on our new grill.
AJ & I.
alex & i on bear peak.

in october we continued our halloween tradition of carving pumpkins and making riceballs, watched the rockies lose in the playoffs, and got our first big snow of the season.
coldest playoff game.
go rockies.

Scary pumpkins
dogs & pumpkins.

we celebrated thanksgiving with friends in november and started the ski season.
ItalicSki Bums
first time skiing.

december brought the holidays, family, good food, christmas cards, and a job offer.
Ollie + tree
merry christmas.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Almost over ...

I cannot believe that 2009 is almost over. Not at all. It's been a crazy year for me. I got married. I went back to school. I applied for a million jobs/internships/anything to make a buck. I moved. I missed family. I made new friends. I spent time with old ones. It was hard. It was great. It was frustrating. It was amazing.

I'm looking forward to 2010. Hopefully more stable. I like stable. I like spending Sunday nights watching Netflix. I like waking up at the same time every morning. Walking my dogs in the afternoon. Reading books on the couch. Pretending I like to cook every once in a while.

This week has been great. Spending time with family. Cooking (ok, watching my mom cook) awesome dinners. I did bake a caramel pie all my myself!!! And I didn't explode the caramel. I'm still VERY excited about that.

A few days ago we took my sister snowboarding for the first time. Today we went dogsledding. Charlie's been playing with his Christmas gifts all week. We've been watching movies at night. My husband made french toast for the whole family this morning. Now that's hot. And he makes amazing french toast.

Later I'll post some pictures of skiing, hiking, dogsledding. I'll do our recap for 2009. I'll attempt some 2010 goals. But for now ... I'm enjoying time with family, before the Christmas lights come down, before things get busy, before I have to stop drinking a beer at lunch every day.

Monday, December 28, 2009

short hike + long lunch

sunday we hiked parts of mt. sanitas.

Mt. Sanitas hike
it's another one of my favorite hikes.

Fam
it was slightly snowy, icy and slippery. sometimes i forget that people aren't as happy trudging through the snow as i am.

i think i made up for it by taking them to pasta jays where we ate waaaay more food than we should have. delicious.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Continuing the festivities ...

I mentioned my family is here this week. We've been busy making sure they're entertained.

On Christmas we cooked a delicious dinner complete with the usual mishaps. The turkey was in the oven for 2 hours before I realized the oven was off, I put milk in the turnips, and dinner was served at 9 instead of 6. Whatever. It was still good.

Yesterday we took the whole clan to the Coors Brewery. An appropriate place for a 16 year old, no?
The fam


Coors ... yum!
blue moon is definitely my favorite. i introduced my parents to blue moon with an orange on christmas. i think i may have started a new tradition.

After the brewery tour we ate dinner in golden & I had my first BLT. Seriously, why haven't I had one of these before? It was amazing.

And then .... we went to a show! Charlie and I saw the christmas show at the Heritage Square Music Hall last year and we decided to take my parents and sister this year. Their show was The Haunted Man and it was pretty funny. If you like laid-back entertainment, you'd love their stuff.

Heritage Square
Heritage Square. Slightly creepy, but entertaining. This is the gift shop.

dorks.
my sister and i being dorks before the show.

Cowboys
we tried to convince my dad he needed a cowboy hat. we failed.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas!!

We've been celebrating with family by eating lots of food and taking lots of walks.
DSC_0018

... my sister was very happy to see the cats. she misses them more than me. :)
DSC_0005

henry has been having a blast in the snow.
DSC_0050

it's been so nice to have a cozy christmas with family (and lots of snow outside).
DSC_0049

hope everyone had a great holiday!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Weekend Love.

Saturday we went skiing, again. And since my husband likes to be early to everything we usually leave at 6 in the morning, get a cup of coffee at Starbucks when we get there, and then start skiing around 8ish.

Rockies
one of the few perks about being up that early is watching the sun rise.

I actually had one of the best days of skiing I've ever had. I recently bought a helmet, which seemed to cure the feeling that I was going to die on the mountain. I fall a lot. I mean a lot, but at least I'm not scared to fall now. I'm still pretty slow, which I think Charlie hates, but obviously falling takes a lot of time.

Sunday I went hiking. Charlie didn't want to come, which was fine with me. I was actually looking forward to some time alone. I hiked my favorite trail, which is about 7 miles but has the best views of the flatirons at the beginning. I took Henry with me and left Dunkin at home for Charlie to play with. I'm so glad I went. It was much needed.

S. Boulder Trail
my heaven.

goof.
I know Henry had a good time, too.

I'll be spending this week getting ready for my family to visit and then celebrating Christmas!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Oh, holidays

So school ended last week for me. Whew! I've gotten 2 of my grades back and am waiting for the other 2. So far they're o.k.. I'll admit I was a little disappointed about one class. :( I'll get over it. Ever since they've been done, I've ben busting my butt trying to get all of the holiday stuff done that I'd been putting off while studying for finals.

I sent out our christmas cards. finally.

Christmas cards


Merry Christmas, peeps. I'm hoping these babies make their way to you before the holiday. If not, consider them new years cards.

... and presents for out of town relatives.

In-laws present

Charlie's birthday was yesterday. Which sucks. If you have a birthday super-close to the holidays or have someone close to you who does you know what I mean. It sucks for him because he always gets those Happy Birthday/Merry Christmas presents and it sucks for me because I have to think of awesome presents for 2 holidays within 1 week.

All he wanted for his birthday was an iPod touch. I didn't get him an iPod touch for his birthday. He wasn't happy. So I figured I'd make up for it by getting it for him for Christmas. He was with me when I got it. Ever since we started living together we've had no surprises when it comes to presents. Oh well, at least it means we get what we want.




Merry Christmas, baby.


Happy Birthday!
happy b-day banner I made for C.

Happy Bday, C!
the presents he didn't like. :(

Tonight we're hanging out and tomorrow we're hitting the slopes again. I got a helmet! So hopefully I won't be as scared about smashing into a tree. Or get left on a mountain ... again.

xmas

holiday pup

My parents are coming for the holidays. So excited to have family here for Christmas and we're bringing my parents and sister over to some friends for new years. Although, I have a feeling my parents will be heading the home before midnight.


If you have any tips for hosting houseguests, let me know!! I'm trying to make their stay as comfortable & easy as possible.

P.S. I had a job interview today & got offered the position! I'm hoping everything else falls into place. This is the third time I've been offered something and I'm really hoping it all works out. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

happy birthday, dude

holy crap, you're getting old. ;)

Ski dude.

reasons why i love this man:

1. there is zero chance of us ever forgetting something when we leave the house. he double, triple, and quadruple checks that we have everything. twice.
2. every morning he pours himself a full cup of coffee. and every morning he only drinks about half of it before dumping the rest out and pouring himself another.
3. he actually encouraged me to go to school. although studying is a different matter.
4. i've never heard him say, "you can't do that".
5. he can watch out cold once a month during the winter and not get sick of it.
6. he can survive off of 5 hours of sleep and not bitch about it like i do.
7. when he cooks something, he first measures out everything in little dishes and then starts to cook.
8. he read all 5 off the dan brown books this year.
9. when we got ourselves stuck on a mountain, with no cell service, he didn't freak out.
10. he's a ridiculously hard worker.
11. he makes some mean cupcakes.
12. he gets as excited about decorating for christmas as i do.
13. when he asked me to marry him he was super nervous.
14. on my birthday he got up super early to make me breakfast.
15. he is the yin to my yang, the cream in my coffee, and yes, the cheese to my macaroni (although, i like to think that i'm the cheese and he's the macaroni).

happy birthday. hope it was everything you imagined your 27th birthday would be. and more.

Monday, December 14, 2009

remember those moving announcements?

yeah, the ones that i sent out in august. well apparently, i put the wrong zip code on them.
dear friends and family, don't send me anything in the mail.
crap.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

frozen pipes and Blurb

Whiny portion of the post:

Last night it was cold. Negative something. I woke up this morning to frozen pipes. Now the good thing is it's only in the kitchen, so I can still shower and all of that good stuff. But no water in the kitchen. Since we live in an apartment (VERY happy about that right now) I went down and filed a work order. And do you know what the woman at the desk told me? Oh, don't worry, that happened to a lot of people. Maybe you could try using a hair dryer on the pipes. Um, excuse me, what?!

A. The frozen part of the pipes is most probably not something I could reach with a hair dryer.
B. I am not spending my day holding a hair dryer to pipes.
C. How is it supposed to make me feel better that EVERYONES' pipes are frozen?

Blurb Book portion of the post:

I mentioned before that I ordered some books through Blurb. I ordered wedding albums for us, my parents, and C's parents. Overall I think they came out pretty well. I don't have PS so I just used the layouts in Blurb's BookSmart.

Things I liked:
... the imagewrap covers came out really well.
... the printing quality was really good! i used the premium paper and the colors and detail was really good.
... i ordered the 13x11 size for us and it seemed to work the best with cropping, etc.
... you can create your own custom layouts and/or change their layouts.

Things I didn't like:
... i used the 8x10 size for our parents and the cropping was a little off on some of the pages. it wasn't like they cropped the areas that they warn you might get cut in printing ... it was like they shifted the entire page up. i had selected a black background for a few of the pages and there's about a 1/10 inch white space at the bottom of the pages.

I was happier with our book than out parents' books but I think that was just because of the size. I would order through them again. I wouldn't order the 8x10 size again. Probably because I just think it's an awkward size.

Here's 2 pictures from our album:


Blurb - cover

Blurb book - 1st dance

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

It's 5 degrees ...

which means my dog grows icicles on his face when he's outside.
Icicles

Poor Henry was not made for cold weather.
Even with his jacket on he was still shivering like crazy.


Sunday, December 6, 2009

Happy Sunday

Dunk

Dunkin's wishing you a Happy Sunday,
hopefully with lots of snow and coffee like us!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

It's the little things ...

Irresistible.
this is the face of evil.
seriously he was so bad the other day I'm embarrassed to even talk about it.
But thanks for the picture, A. he looks all sweet & innocent here.

... SNOW! hey, if it's going to be cold then it better be snowing.
... curtains! my bedroom is now semi-dark at night.
... christmas decorations.
... planning out christmas dinner.
... netflix. really, it rocks.
... 1 more week of school!
... catching the early bus.
... my garage.
... walks in the snow.
... coffee.
... catalogs in the mail.
... slippers.
... ice cream.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Denver

I'm lucky enough to go to school in Denver.
At first I thought I was going to hate it. I'm really not a city person.
But the more time I spend there, the more I love it.
It probably helps that Denver's so tiny and easy to get around.
And now it's all decked out for Christmas.
Here's what my walk to the bus stop looks like every night.

Larimer St.
walking down Larimer. after crossing under the creepy part of Cherry Chreek.

Larimer & 15th
15th and larimer.

Clock Tower
16th & the clock tower.

ps. i don't know how people take pictures when they're alone in public. i felt like such a creeper and i wasn't even trying to get the random strangers in my shots.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Kitties and Christmas Trees

What is it about cats and trees?
Oliver LOVES ours. He loves climbing it,
knocking the balls off of it, and of course
sleeping under it.

Ollie + tree

maybe it's the lights?!
Ollie + lights

P.S. Thanks for the curtain advice. I'll start ironing once I work up some motivation. :)

Curtain Ironing ?!

Ok, I have a dumb question. Can you iron curtains? We hung curtains in our "living room" a few months ago and I figured/hoped that all the lines from being folded in a box would eventually just disappear. Not so much.

Last week we hung curtains in our bedroom. Same thing.

My parents are coming for Christmas. And, well, I don't want our curtains looking like we just unpacked them.

Curtains.
See the wrinkles? Especially if you look by Henry's tail.

Bedroom curtains.
these babies are even worse. (and yes I know they are crooked.)

If it makes a difference I think the white ones are 100% cotton and I have no idea what the blue ones are. They are blackout curtains. Not sure if that makes a difference. Thanks!!