Sweet Caroline followed by C'Mon Irene

This past weekend we visited our besties, Stacey and Ryan in Boston, Irene may have interfered with some of our plans but it certainly didn't ruin our good time!

We made the best of the situation

We went out to eat

Hung out by the pool
{yes the kiddie pool!}

We lived it up at the Bo Sox game

we drank several renditions of hurricanes
we hung out at the local bars

we prepared for the nasty weather by watching LOTS of the weather channel and looking at the radar

as well as stocking up on water and other essentials

and just hung out and relaxed on Sunday, waiting for Irene to arrive.

Luckily for us the weather was much further west of us
but I'm fully aware of the damage that was done to the East coast and inland.
I hope you and your families were not affected by this nasty storm, and if you were, I hope that things get back to normal soon for you and your family!

Although the weekend didn't go as we originally hoped it to, we still had a blast!
Sometimes its not all in the planning but who you are with, and I can truly say we had a blast regardless of Irene!

Happy birthday Justin!

Happy 29th birthday babe!
I hope you had a wonderful day because you certainly deserve it!
I love you!
xoxo

Holiday Valley

Anyone who knows me pretty well, knows that I love a good routine, or a tradition.

The tradition of going up to New York to Holiday Valley with our next door neighbors is one that I look forward to every year. This trip started out with our family [Brad, Laura, Alli and myself] and the next door neighbors [Mr. B, Mrs. B, Rachel, Jen and Erica] and now the group of 9 has grown to 14 [which include 2 husbands, 1 fiance, 1 boyfriend, and a kid]

It has been more than fun incorporating the new additions to our large group along the way.
If you are new to the blog here is last years post

Most of us before our first run of the trip
[minus rachel, mike and madison who were all over on the bunny hill for madison's first ski lesson]
this picture is also on the Holiday Valley home page currently as well - were kinda famous!
I love how we all line our boots up in the hallway after we come in from a day out on the slopes - i'm sure the people who we shared a hallway with appreciated it too - ha!
While we were out on the slopes Saturday I went over to help my sister's fiance with learning how to snowboard [well I thought I could tell him how I taught myself how to] well during my trip over to visit him I somehow got the courage to go on the bunny hill terrain park. I am here to tell you that I am a decent snowboarder when its just going down hill or going in the woods - however I have never been one to do jumps/tricks/half pipes.... ect

So here is how it all went down [and I promise its worth reading because at the end I went down a few times]

Attempt #1
Hit a mini table top heading down hill - dismount perfectly - FUN!
Attempt #2
Successfully hit the same jump - feeling VERY confident - I COULD GET USED TO THIS!
Attempt #3
Decided to get fancy and square up on the table top - rode the entire thing [fine it was only about 7-8' long - but still] and Andrew [who was encouraging me to do this] forgot to tell me to re-position myself down hill before i dismounted - EPIC FAIL - landed hard off of a 3' jump - yes i know it doesn't seem possible
Attempt #4
To show off for my sister's fiance I thought I would show him what I had been doing... and in the attempt to get myself situated in the 15' between the orange fence [remember I was on the bunny hill - and its pretty smart of HV to put up a barrier so a newbie doesn't hurt themselves] and the jumps I couldn't turn myself around causing me to nearly hit 2 barrel jumps and 2 flags... EPIC FAIL #2
Attempt #5 [my final attempt]
I regained my composure and tried the table top again - heading in facing down, square up and got a little too fancy and ended up rotating 270 degrees causing my board to go off of the table top and my, you know what, to land right on the edge of the table top - EPIC FAIL #3

I decided at that point that there was a reason that I had 3 epic fails in a row and I decided to pick up my pride and head in for lunch, never returning to the mini terrain park again!

That night I decided to evaluate the damage I had done to myself - sure I saw a small bruise on my hip and I thought that was it... oh no - clearly I forgot how hard that I had landed - and forgot to check my complete backside - HOLY EFF there is a bruise the size of a grapefruit and in a pretty dark blue/purplish color... [i'm just worried about the dr asking how this happened tomorrow and me having to tell her that "Yes, I'm 27 and I tried to hit a jump on a snowboard story"] [and if my pride being crushed on vacation wasn't nearly enough-trying to run with a huge bruise on your backside hurts even worse!]

okay - i digress about my attempt to be Hannah Teter for the day...

Oh well - its not a complete ski vacation without one little minor bump and bruise

Saturday night we went out after dinner to our favorite place, Madigans [and clearly I needed a drink or two to rid me of the pain on my ass].
Alli, Erica, and myself
Erica somehow convinced the bartender to allow her to ride the dummy waiter [that just transports ice and beer upstairs and downstairs!]
Justin and I
We headed back out on the slopes on Sunday before we headed home for Ohio.
Everything was going pretty smoothly until we tried to back out of parking spot, and because of the warm weather we had on Sunday - or truck had sunk a little bit since the night before... so the boys got out and pushed.
It was a fun and adventurous vacation - like always.

Its a trip I look forward to every year and I can't wait for next year :)

Thanks again mom and dad for another fun ski/boarding vacation!

Happy Valentines Day and a DIY Project

I hope you are having an AMAZING Valentine's day and surrounding yourself with people of which you love.

For the first time in 5 years J and I really don't have much planned for tonight [heck-i haven't even bought his gift... shh - ha!] but I'm sure we will come up with something :) Typically we go out to a nice dinner on a day other than valentines day or the weekend of valentines day, and then on february 14th we typically get Chipotle since that is where we met [if your new to the blog or have nothing better to read, your more than welcome to read that story here]

Do you have any traditions for today?

**DIY**

Justin and I watched Molly a few weeks ago and I decided to make a valentines day gift for Jason and Katie from Molly.

I bought the letters from Hobby Lobby and painted them white, and i found the glittery heart at Hob Lob as well.

Here are the best pictures I was able to get with a 13 month old and a slow shutter speed camera
- regardless Molly is adorable!
I put the pictures in a frame [next time I will practice taking pictures of pictures]
Here are the outtakes from our photo shoots- Some of these are really funny, who would have known that holding a large wooden letter and a glittery heart would be such a challenge - ha!
I plan on doing this every year with Molly, however next year I will have her little brother Dom [due to arrive in late April/early May] hold the U and then they can attempt/try to hold the heart together. I think this will be a fun project that I will look forward to making year after year with the kids!

I will have my weekend/vacation wrap up on Tuesday! We spent the entire weekend in New York, at Holiday Valley skiing/snowboarding. As of Sunday our family was on the home page of the Holiday Valley website, we are in the subset picture. Come back to read the recap :)

I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day and you are with people you love!

hello there....

Hello there!

I have missed you all and I'm sorry that I've been in a blogging funk lately. I don't quite know what has gotten into me...

well I guess I do know a little bit what has gotten into me

#1 work has been crazy busy, and I do use my lunch time occasionally to blog/catch up on blogs/relax my brain... and so that hasn't been happening lately

#2 twitter : yes that lovely little site that I have taken a fond liking to, well it keeps me up to date with some of my favorite bloggers, but not everyone, so I feel like I'm 1/2 up to date with what is going on... well sorta

#3 i'm gotten into a routine when I get home from work: gym, dinner, shower, reading in bed. yes you read that correctly - i'm skipping right over the reality tv and going straight to bed. its much more relaxing. this doesn't mean that i don't use my dvr'd shows to keep me entertained while i'm cooking/eating dinner, or that i don't occasionally watch one here or there.. but lately i would prefer to read over watching reality TV! [hell might have frozen over!]

And now that I'm on a reading kick I desperately need new authors. I am finishing up my last Nicholas Sparks book right now Safe Haven, I have Emily Griffin Something Borrowed [which I haven't started yet] and I also bought In a Heartbeat by Leigh Ann and Sean Tuohy [the real story of the Blindside]. Any other suggestions!?!?!

But in the meantime I thought I would catch you up on what we have been doing when I'm not in a routine mode [i.e. the weekends]:

Friday I got a special delivery from Justin in the office
Aren't the just beautiful? I've never had flowers delivered to the office before and I was completely shocked, and even had tears in my eyes when they were brought to me! I'm one lucky girl!

Saturday we had a surprise birthday party for Justin's cousin's 40th. Jennifer [his cousin] is someone who always does something for everyone else, and she was so touched a party was thrown in her honor, she started crying when we sang happy birthday to her when she walked in, and didn't stop crying the entire time. She is just too sweet.

Saturday night we watched this little chunk munk! Its a little hard to take pictures of her nowadays because she is on the MOVE! I had just got her out of her bumbo after dinner.. and she was walking over to me

and after we changed her into her PJ's. She had a ton of toys, but the only thing she would grab for off of the coffee table was Justin's wallet - too funny [smart girl!]!
[i also love these footed pj's - her feet are so small they stop on the right foot at the end of the red polka dot! so cute! they just kinda flop around]

Sunday Justin and I were all ready to cheer on the buckeyes in a victory of Minnesota in basketball and then head to a friend' s house to watch the Super Bowl. Well our plans were quickly changed when we lost power for about 3 hours [not so sure how we made it through the ice storm ALL last week without losing power - but this weekend was a different story]. Thankfully we live close enough to my parent's that we were able to head over there and make my dishes to bring to the game:

Football shaped veggie pizza

and chocolate covered strawberries

I was so happy that the Packers won. My friends joke around that because I'm a browns fan that I'm able to choose a different team during the playoffs since we will never make it :( so i chose my second favorite team the saints... and they were knocked out after the first week - so then i picked up green bay to cheer for for the rest of the playoffs!

I love Aaron Rodger's story, his patience and how he still has the love for football every time he plays. Its like watching someone who is playing for the right reason [if that makes sense?] It was a great game! I'm glad that Steelers came back with a little pep in their step in the 2nd half to make it more of a game, but in the end I was VERY thankful the Packers pulled off the win over the Steelers!

So that's our weekend wrapped up in pictures as well as an excuse as to why i have been absent lately!

What did you do this weekend? Is anyone else in a comment/blogging rut - or is it just me? Perhaps I can blame it on the winter blues :) come on sunny weather!