Baseball fun

A few weeks ago we were invited to go to a Colorado Rockies baseball game with Dave's uncle, aunt and cousin and yesterday was the day we went. Unfortunately at the last minute, Dave's cousin was sick and unable to go and his aunt was going to stay home to take care of his cousin. The good news is that we had two extra tickets and were able to invite my sister, Erin, and her boyfriend, Zach, to go with us and Dave's uncle!

We had really nice seats behind home plate and luckily, the seats were in the shade in the 93 degree heat.

The highlight of the game was when Dodger's player Manny Ramirez was put in as a pinch hitter (boo), was thrown one pitch which was called as a strike which prompted Manny to argue with the referee resulting in Manny getting thrown out of the game (yay!). It was pretty funny. I guess that's what you get when you do drugs as a professional athlete!

Everyone had a great time and I'm really glad we got the opportunity to catch up with Dave's uncle and hang out with Erin and Zach all at the same time! Here's to another successful and fulfilling summer weekend!

This one time, at band camp...

Seven years ago today the phone rang in my dorm room. It was the guy I had been on a first date with the night before; the man of my dreams. We had met a week before at a band camp party - he was a drummer and I was in the color guard. We spent the entire week of band camp staring at each other across the football field, taking water breaks together and hanging out at parties. On Saturday night we went to a couple of parties, together, on a date.

I waited all day Sunday for the phone to ring. To see if he was interested in seeing me again. Because I was certainly interested in spending more time with him! Time seemed to creep by, but finally the phone rang. It was him! He asked how my morning was and what I was up to. Then came the big question:

"So... um... do you want to go out with me, and stuff?"

Eloquent, huh? I wasn't really sure what he meant by stuff, but I said yes anyway, and he said ok and he'd see me tomorrow. The rest was history.

Photo taken sometime in late 2003

Seven years later I'm sure glad I said yes to going out and stuff. That man is now my husband and we're living the stuff everyday. There's nobody else I would rather be doing stuff with!

Bike-In Movie

Last week Dave and I did something for date night that was really fun - we went to a bike-in movie! A local business shows a movie on a big blow up screen in the front lawn of their building. The idea is to bike to the business then find a spot on the lawn with your blanket or folding chair to sit back a relax and watch the movie! We had heard of this for the last couple of years but had never gone until this week.

The movie they showed this week was Caddyshack. We've seen it before, but not for a while. It's always nice to see a funny movie again. And thanks to the people sitting behind us, we heard every line of the movie ten seconds before it played on the screen. I think we'll try to avoid sitting near them next time we go.

Embracing Football

This year there will be a change in my household - I am going to watch football. I know, this isn't crazy or far fetched but for some reason when I was growing up there was a negative attitude towards the men in the house watching sports and I seem to have adopted that same attitude over the years. So I'm going to stop.

I like going to live football games and as a member of the color guard in the marching band in both high school and college I have been to my fair share. I understand the rules and how the game is played and I (mostly) know when to cheer and when condemn my beloved team for a bad play. For some reason my affinity for football just never transferred over to watching games at home - but Dave seems to enjoy it a lot. So this season I'm going to welcome football games (for local teams) on our living room TV.

I look forward to cheering on the Broncos, spending some more time with Dave and maybe even learning more about the game. And, if for some reason, I'm not getting into the game I can always go take a nap ;-)

Look out! We might be contagious

Yesterday was a busy day of Geocaching for us and we were able to indroduce some of our family and friends to the concept along the way. Last weekend we found a trackable geocoin in a Geocache and decided to take it to another part of the state to place in another Geocache for someone else to find and move again. We invited my sister, Erin, and her boyfriend, Zach, along for the hike.Apparently after we invited them Zach researched Geocaching and was really excited to head out and try it.

We picked them up Sunday morning and headed up to the mountains for what turned out to be a beautiful hike. It took us a bit to find the Geocache but we finally located it and deposited the geocoin in it for the next people to find.

This cache had a lot of random stuff in it

Putting in the geocoin

The Geocaching crew - Zach, Erin, me, Dave and Gromit

After the Geocaching part of our hike we continued on to a nice lake where we took a break, ate some trail mix and watched as Gromit jumped in and out of the water and then ran around the lake with Dave chasing him. Good times. Gromit also found a nice mud hole and the bottom half of my white dog turned to black mud. Needless to say he got a bath the moment we returned home.

After a while at the lake we headed down the mountain, grabbed some lunch and headed home. I think everyone had a good time and Dave and I hope that Erin and Zach will come along with us another time in the near future!

Erin and Zach

That night we were able to share a yummy dinner with our good friends Rob and Brianna. We got to talking with them about the hike we had done earlier in the day and about Geocaching. When showing them how the Geocaching apps on our phones worked we discovered there was a Geocache really close to their house so we all decided to go out and try to find it. All of the GPS apps on our phones were taking us to the same spot but we couldn't find a cache. We looked at the description and the clues  about the cache hoping for some additional tips on where to look for it but we couldn't find anything like what we thought we were looking for. It was getting dark and we were avoiding sprinklers and were just about to give up on finding it when I went to look one more time and I found it!

It was nice to be able to actually find the cache when showing friends what Geocaching is all about, you know, so they didn't think we were crazy or something. I think we're going to try going on a Geocaching hike with them and our dogs in the next month.

So, family and friends, look out! We've gotten four people hooked on Geocaching in one day and you may be next!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Yesterday was my dad's birthday and I am so lucky that I was able to share the evening with him! We started the evening off with appetizers, went and had a nice dinner at a local restaurant and then headed back to our place for cake, ice cream and presents.

The big cupcake cake I made for Dad

This year I had to get creative with his present. Usually I can either think of something great to get him or he provides a list of things he wants and are easy to choose from. This year, that was not the case. His wish list went something like this:

• Digital Camera
• Round of Golf
• Tan Pants – Dockers Like w/pleats – Cash or Gift Card Only
• New Casual Shoes Size 10 ½ or 11 (UGG) Cash or Gift Cards Only
• Sandals/not flip-flops – Casual Leather- size 11 – (Cash Only) Brown/Tan
• Gift Cards (visa or master card) are always great

Thanks, Dad; that gives us a lot of options - digital camera, golf or basically money. Lame! So I came up with a plan to give him what he wanted but in my own special way.

A little over a month ago my parents went camping in their pop-up tent trailer. One evening my mom went to go use the shower (she will only go to campsites with flush toilets and showers) and my dad went to bed. He heard a rustling under the pop-up that sounded like my mom going through the cooler, which they leave outside under the bed pop out. After calling out to her with no answer he assumed a neighbor was trying to steal food. He went outside to investigate and found the cooler knocked over. Not thinking much of it he set it upright and went back to bed. When my mom returned form the shower he asked if she had come back to get something from the cooler. She said no but someone told me they saw a bear in the area. So long story short, my dad thought a food stealing camper was getting into the cooler but it was a bear. In the morning they found bear paw marks and a hole, presumably from a bear claw, on the top of the cooler.

Because this has been the big story among my family I decided to play it up. Dave and I decided to give my dad money for shoes for his birthday (per his oh-so-insightful list) so we made the picture below, printed it out, cut along the doorway of the tent and made the cash look like it was coming out of the tent and the bear was going to get it and then we put it in a small picture frame and wrapped it up.

He had a good laugh when he opened the gift and was very impressed with our creativity. He is also looking forward to buying some new shoes this weekend.

A lazy weekend

For the first time in a while we have had absolutely no plans for this weekend. Nowhere to go and nothing scheduled to do. It was such a nice break from being on the go for so many weeks in a row. Since we had no plans we were able to plan some fun activities and get things done around the house - like attack that pile of laundry that has built up over the last few weeks.

On Saturday morning we had time for a nice, long Geocaching hike to a local landmark in our town. Other hikers and mountain bikers were warning us about rattlesnakes they had seen on the trail. Ugh! This was a new trail and I thought I was to be clear of snakes on this hike. We still continued on and luckily didn't see any snakes. It took us a while to find the cache once we got to the coordinates - this was pretty well hidden! But we were successful! We exchanged a Ice Age 3 pencil topper (that we acquired from a box of cereal) for an interesting trinket referred to as a "geocoin". Geocoins come in all shapes and sizes, and can be tracked from place to place when each finder logs it on the Geocaching website. Based on a tracking code on the item you can see where it came from and how far it has traveled. We've never found one before and it looks like this one has traveled a long way. We're planning a trip this coming weekend to take it to another Colorado location for someone else to find.

We spent the rest of the day on Saturday just hanging around, taking a trip to the dog park and enjoying each others company with a little bit of grocery shopping thrown in for good measure. It is so nice to be able to have time to just spend one-on-one time with Dave catching up and spending quality time together. It's definitely something we don't get to do very often!

On Sunday we got down to the business of cleaning and attacking our messy office for a solid two hours. Seriously, that room was in desperate need of some cleaning and organizing attention - there were still unpacked boxes in there from when we moved in almost a year ago! We made a lot of progress and the room is almost clean and organized. I think a couple more two hour work sessions will take care of the rest of the mess. After our clean up efforts I was feeling domestic so I attempted to make a loaf of zucchini bread for the first time and it was a great success! I even added some chocolate chips to the batter for a special treat. Feeling pretty confident, I attempted a Brie en Croute with apricot preserves and brandy soaked dried cherries. Pair that with some grilled chicken and asparagus and we had a fantastic dinner. I felt like such a domestic diva after conquering two baked items in one day - I never have this much success.

Dave's hard work remembering to water Tom the tomato plant has paid off - we have tomatoes! So far we have picked five ripe tomatoes from the plant to use on salads, hamburgers and just as a snack. Yum! There are lots more green and growing tomatoes and we are looking forward to having many, many more tomatoes over the next few months!

I hope you all had a great weekend too. Happy August and Happy Shark Week! Haha!