Recently in Friends Category

The past few weeks have been wonderful with lots of guests coming to visit from out of town. First Jade came from Massachusetts - she and Sophie got along wonderfully and it was so nice for me to have a friend around to keep me company and to motivate me to get out of the house with Sophie during the day. We went up to Boulder one day, Denver another and went to check out Red Rocks too! It was also nice for me to leave Sophie with Scott and to go have some adult time with Jade and Jon. Fun!

Megan, Michael and Maya also came for a few days and that too was a great visit! We realized in the last few years of seeing each other once was for their wedding, then our wedding, then a get together while Megan and I were pregnant and now here we are with a babies! This is a pretty amazing time in our lives.

Okay Sophie's waking up from a nap - better go get her!!

I am on Martha's Vineyard at the moment. Getting back in touch with my 'roots' and hanging out with my friends. I flew back to the East Coast this past Saturday and hung out with my father in Providence, Rhode Island. It was a short but nice visit. On Monday I took the ferry to the Vineyard. Now I'm here, I brought my laptop with me because I'm not officially on vacation -- still trying to get work done while I'm here -- which is convenient because both my friends, Jade and Jon, still have to work. I'm having a really nice time and am having fun uploading photos daily as I take them.

P.S. Scott just reminded me that today is the 4 year anniversary of the day we met on a plane. Yay!

The weekend before last, I made my second annual Geezers Vegas Hockey trip. Last year it was just me, but this time Charlotte came along for the ride. And what a ride it was! The weekend started out with a thud as we blew out a tire on I-70 on the way to the airport. I've thought about how bad it would be to blow a tire on the way to the airport before, only it'd never happened to me. We ended up missing our flight and could have been stuck in the airport for about 10 hours due to the full Vegas flights (opening weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament), but we were able to get on standby for the next flight. Whew!

I drove up to Keystone yesterday to photograph my buddy Charlie's bike race. I'd been meaning to go to one of these at some point, but the new camera was the perfect excuse.

I got some decent shots and some decent lessons learned. My pictures taken with our longer lens, at about 300mm were much better than with our 70mm lens. Also learned that practice makes perfect when it comes to taking pictures of racers coming at you at around 25 mph. Taking pictures of this race will make me much more confident at shooting slower moving sports, that's for sure.

Charlie finished 7th out of 25 semi-pro riders, which is excellent. Especially considering he'd just dusted off his mountain bike after a long hiatus. Nice!

Our friends Sarah and Jon Woods had a beautiful baby girl a few weeks ago on July 18th. Her name is Ella. Isn't that a pretty name. Ella Woods. I think it sounds like a writer. Perhaps she'll be a writer some day. Mike and Jill Thompson also had a little baby girl, Heidi, on July 26th. I think Heidi Thompson sounds like a physician's assistant. Yes, I think that's what she'll be when she grows up. Our friends Marjorie and Kevin are expecting in December. It's around that time. Scott and I are really excited to start a family but we just want to enjoy married life a little before having babies. All that really means, as far as I'm concerned, is getting a few more big trips under our belt. We're talking about going to Japan (backpacker-style) and with his business in Brazil, there may be a future trip to make out of that as well. We'll see.

Our wedding week on Isla Mujeres was so fantastic! We started the week with almost twenty people arriving Sunday. Every following day was like Christmas, having our great friends and family trickling in. It was so special to have all our guests take a vacation with us. We had planned so many excursions, but once we got to the beach at Na Balam, we couldn't seem to pry ourselves out of the water! Soon we'd settled into a nice routine of rolling out to bed, heading to the beach, making our way to the Loncheria for lunch, having a siesta, and heading back to the beach for the afternoon before all meeting up in the evening for dinner.

I got back late last night from Las Vegas. That's right, my second Vegas trip of the year. A couple months back I attended a hockey practice with a different team -- the Geezers. Afterward they were passing around flyers about an upcoming tournament they'd signed up for in Las Vegas, and they were kind enough to ask me to join. After mulling it over for about a week, I decided to take the plunge. I'd always wanted to do a Vegas hockey tournament, but none of my teams had made the trip.

Finally... I take a minute to write an entry! Scott has been so good about keeping this blog updated, while I have preoccuppied myself with looking for a new job and working to get freelance projects. Fortunately, our weekend in Vegas was a nice little escape from all that and a nice way to celebrate Scott and Marjorie's birthdays. The photos posted in our last entry were of our first day in Vegas. Since it was my first time there, we spent most of the walking the strip and wandering in and out of all the famous casinos, so I could experience all of their incredible interiors. Later that night we went to the Hard Rock Cafe where we stumbled upon an empty theater and had fun playing around on the stage.

These photos are of our second day... which consisted of visiting the lions at MGM Grand, checking out the fish in a big aquarium (can't remember where that was), posing with lifesize stuffed animals at F.A.O Schwartz and at night checking out Fremont, the old part of town.

We finally got around to having a party!! With the holidays approaching we decided to have a joint Holiday/Housewarming party. We did some decorating, made mulled wine, tapped the keg and opened our door wide to all our shivering guests who made their way over in the snowy weather. A lot of people couldn't come because of the icy roads, but we had a blast with those who did. And for those of you who didn't make it -- we still have 3/4 of a keg sitting chilled in our garage, so pop on by and poor yourself a glass or two. Cheers!!

We held our first Thanksgiving in the new house yesterday. Charlotte's mother Brigitte and sister Emilie flew out from Boston to help us celebrate. Also, our friend Jon drove down from Boulder with a delicious strawberry cheesecake for dessert.

The menu featured a 22 lb. turkey, sausage cornbread stuffing, homemade gravy, rosemary garlic mashed potatoes, yams with brown sugar, and green beans. Jon's cheesecake and a pecan pie from Wild Oats finished things off.