Garth Who?

For years, my husband and Dana have been talking about how badly they want to see Garth Brooks in concert. He was playing in Las Vegas for a while and they were even entertaining the idea of going there to see him! I let them indulge in the conversation, but we were not going to Las Vegas to see Garth Brooks. I do like Garth, but not that much! 

Then, one day in January, I saw on my trusty Facebook page (see Nate, it is good for some things) that Garth was coming to Denver! He would be doing two shows and we would only have to wait until March! I immediately called Nate and Dana! We scheduled a day to get online to order our tickets. I went to Dana's office (long story short) and we logged into the waiting room with Nate and Natalie on conference call! 

"I'm in!" I shouted, but the tickets would be in the upper 300s. 

But, "Wait!" Dana exclaimed! "I've got eight seats in the lower 100s, row 11." 

And the rest was history! 

Garth works hard to make sure that everybody can reap the benefits of his music. Not only was every seat in the house the same price ($60) but he opened up a total of nine shows as the first ones sold out! 9 SHOWS! 

Our tickets ended up being for the Saturday night show at 10:30 PM. So we grabbed some dinner and hopped on the train downtown. 

 Jer came across a gem called, Spill that would serve drinks for half off if you had Garth tickets!

And we had Garth tickets!

My brilliant friends, Wes and Cara, parked their car downtown earlier that day! This would give us a quick way home and a little tail gating before the show! 

 Finally! 9:30 PM came around and we waiting in line to get into the show. Garth had just wrapped up the 7:00 show so we had to wait a little while outside of the Pepsi Center. We were too excited to care! As we walked in and found our section, we began down the stairs to our seats...row 11! 

Wait...Row 11 is the FRONT ROW??!??!

 Row 11 was the front row and we couldn't be more thrilled! We took a seat and waiting for the show to begin.

Side note: These two were on the kissing cam THREE times during the show!

 Then the screen started counting down! Count down included all things Denver related, including our beloved donkey!

 And then there was Garth!

And more Garth!

 And more Garth!

And Trisha!

 We sang and danced the night away! It was such an incredible show and we had the opportunity to share it with such incredible friends! I'm glad we got to see Garth and I'm glad we didn't have to go to Las Vegas to do it!

Reason #408 Why I Love Cara Syers: She stopped by Taco Bell on the way home!

Just Because I Love Them!

I don't blog nearly as much as I would like to and I don't want to miss a beat, so here are some fun photos of our beautiful children from the past three months.

A pink ATV for Abby!

Elizabeth is too cool!

 My little brownie! Elizabeth has had a blast in Girl Scouts this year. Selling cookies has certainly been a highlight. Elizabeth reached her goal this year, selling enough cookies to cover her summer camp funds! Yes, she will be going to camp this summer. Yes, I'm very nervous! But also very excited for her.

Elizabeth participated in two booth sales during the cookie period.

She even dressed up as a little Samoa!

The Brownies selected Jewish Family Service as their hometown hero and stocked about seven boxes of cookies (among other items) on the pantry shelves.

Elizbeth is here with some of the girls in her patrol.

Our little Valentine!

Enjoying a Coke Float after playing the Par 3!

Abby Cadabby enjoying some Gunther Toody's with Mom on a day off of school!

And Elizabeth too! I introduced them to Vanilla Cokes. I loved ordering them at the diners growing up. The kids seemed less than impressed! 

On a snowy walk home from school.

Abby seems a little more excited about the snow than Elizabeth!

We had hot chocolate after our snowy walk.

But, Elizabeth doesn't like hot chocolate so she enjoyed a chocolate milk with whipped cream. (Some days she'll understand that it's the same thing!)

Abby on a winter walk in the mountains.

And then there were root beer floats. I'm starting to realize that my kids enjoy too many sweets!

Yum!

Elizabeth's artwork was selected to be in the LPS art show this year. We took her down to the showing!

  

And then snow transitioned into rain.

Including worms! Tons, and tons of worms!

Winning in More Ways Than One

In recent months, through Kings Point Pool, I have had the pleasure of getting to know some amazing women from my neighborhood. Debbie and Kristen have become such great friends of mine in such a short amount of time. For so many reasons, I am so thankful to have met them. 

Debbie encouraged Kristen, myself, and three other women to join her team, The Red Hot Chili Steppers to take on the American Lung Association's challenge, The Fight for Air Climb.

I don't have a special connection with lung disease, but I figured that joining would provide me with some of the motivation that I needed to get my ass off the couch and start getting myself into shape. And I was sure I would have some fun along the way! 

I joined the gym that Kristen was a member of and started exercising! On a warm day January, we hit Red Rocks to take in the beauty of our state and get some stairs in while we were at it.

It was incredibly beautiful...

 ...and I was incredibly out of shape!

 After a few more weeks of light training (the stair machines at the gym are not even comparable) we set out to climb the Republic Plaza building in downtown Denver.

1,098 stairs (56 flights) later and my lungs were on fire and I'm pretty sure my heart lept out of my chest a time or two.

But, I made it! It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty, but I made it!

I will be doing this climb next year! And like so many people this year, I will be climbing more than once! It will never be pretty, but I can improve my speed and I'm excited to prove it to myself!

I'm excited to have been a part of this team this year! It was a fun event and I had the opportunity to strengthen two very important friendships along the way!

A very special thank you to those of you who donated the funds towards my climb!

One BIG Happy Family: Introducing Cash and June

In the past, Nate and I did not have the best luck with pets. Our last attempt with Banjo, our hound dog puppy, ended with a re-homing and a rental property that needed some repairs! He was too big for the girls and my patience wore thin quickly. 

So, I was very hesitant when Nate started searching for another dog; but I was willing nonetheless, I couldn't be selfish forever. It took us a solid year to find the right breed, the right situation, the right price, and the right time! All things aligned when Nate found two German Short-haired Pointers (GSP) out at the base in Ft. Carson. The husband had deployed and two young children and two young dogs became too much for the wife. She wanted to re-home her two GSPs to a family. 

And yes, I said two pups!

We took the 90 minute drive up to Ft. Carson to meet our soon-to-be family additions.

Nalla (2 year-old brown pup) and Drake (1 year-old white with black spots) made themselves at home in no time at all! The original owner insisted that they come as a package deal. We...rather I, was not overly excited about having two full-grown dogs in our house. Going from zero to two would be a big deal! 

We couldn't even get them to stay in the back! (As you can see, Elizabeth didn't mind!)

 As soon as we got home we had a friend come over to teach us a few things about training dogs. Dan  Gullickson gave us quite a few pointers (no pun intended) including, how to discourage the behavior you see in the following photo! The training is going relatively well. They are getting better and better at walking on leash. They are amazing with all kids and have fallen into our routine nicely. They were not previously crate trained, but we put them in the laundry room and they do really well! 

After a week of deliberating, we decided to rename the dogs. 

They are known as Cash and June!

One of my stipulations was that the dogs had to be house-broken. Since I work from home, guess who gets to clean-up after dogs during the potty-training time! It would have been me, but these two were housebroken already!

 And the girls adore them!

 Elizabeth took to the dogs right away!

While Nate was on vacation, we took the girls and the dogs up to a quite trail in the mountains. It was a chilly, but fun adventure for all of us.

 And now we are one BIG happy family...all SIX of us!

Washington D.C. By Way of Baltimore

Before working for Premier Cost Recover, I'd never even been to the east coast. The past few months of business travel have taken me to Boston, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. (by way of Baltimore)! 

While it's not easy for Nate, I have really enjoyed traveling. For those of you who know me, going outside of my neighborhood is a stretch, so it has been nice to be able to step outside of my comfort zone (as in the Denver Metro area) and explore other parts of the country. Although the point of travel is predominately business, there are down times like these where we get to take advantage of travel.

On my last business trip to Baltimore, MD, we had some extra time before our flight would depart so we decided to make the hour long trip up to Washington D.C. to do some site seeing.

I had the pleasure of standing in front of the White House! However, they don't even let you up to the outlying gate any longer. We had to stand out on Pennsylvania Avenue attempting to take in the grandeur that is the White House. 

To be honest, the White House was my least favorite structure in D.C. We walked past Constitution Hall and many other Government buildings and across Constitution Ave. to where we could see the monuments up close!

I stopped and developed a better appreciation for the magnitude of loss the United States experienced during the Vietnam War. There was a weight and feeling of hopelessness here that I cannot fully describe. It was powerful to say the least!

I can't even begin to explain the size of the Lincoln Memorial. Not only the statue of Lincoln but the surrounding chambers and stairs as well! The chamber walls were covered in the inscriptions of the Second Inaugural Address and the Gettysburg Address. The history here was palpable in and around this memorial!

Looking out from the top of the Lincoln Memorial you can look out and over the Reflecting Pool and out towards the Washington Monument! 

 I haven't mentioned yet how windy and cold it was!!! It was hard to get through the two hours stroll we took through D.C. We were glad to get in the car to head to the airport.

Again, I really do enjoy traveling. However, I can't help but with that my family is there with me. The experience is never the same without them. I should start photo-shopping their faces into the pictures!

Looking forward to the next city that my work travels take me to!