Weekend Update

Well this weekend was pretty busy for us (again leaving me super tired for work....it must be nice to be able to sleep in every day....ahem! You know who you are!)

We started off Friday night by going over to a friend's house to celebrate a birthday! Cake, drinks, and good people are always a great way to start a weekend off, in my opinion.

Saturday we started off our day by cleaning and donating one of our old tv's to a good cause. The condo Jeff and I borrow from time to time when we are heading up to the mountains! :) For dinner I made an awesome pasta salad with spinach linguini and lemon chicken-we almost ate the entire thing! It was very summery, but soooo good!
Then we made our way up to Central City and Blackhawk for a night of gambling and fun! It was actually another friend's birthday celebration and man, did we do it up right! I think we finally left around 4am, with money still in our pockets. And if I could've learned when to say no I would've had even more.... Ah well, we had so much fun it was worth it. I think this was the most fun we've ever had up in them there hills and I was really glad we decided to go.

Sunday was dedicated to the dogs. We had a home visit scheduled for the rescue smack dab in the middle of the day and it wasn't exactly what one would call 'close' to us. So we made our way up Coal Creek Canyon deep into Golden to visit a very nice family that definitely needs a dog. We decided since we were already out of the way, why not visit some old ghost towns and run down areas of old Central City. The home visit lasted longer than we anticipated, so we didn't get any good pictures since it was dusk by the time we made it to our destination-but it was a great way to end the weekend. And since the theme of the day was also going completely out the way for something, we ended up having Chicago's (http://chicago-colorado.com/) for dinner-yeah-you're jealous. Who wouldn't be?

We came home, full of roast beef and italian sausage sandwiches and chicago dogs. Then proceeded to sit on our couch and watch 2 movies. FYI-Lucky Number Slevin is one of the best movies I've seen in a while. Highly recommended. Highly.

One Down!

I successfully accomplished the first of my 101 goals in 1,001 days over the weekend! Only 100 more to go. Jeff helped me to come up with some of the rest of my goals on New Years and wow-I have quite a few big goals in there, but I'm excited at the possibility of accomplishing all of them!

It's nice to know that 2010 will be *knock on wood* a more relaxing year than 2009. Not to say that we didn't have time to smell the roses (cough-Bahamas-cough).... I'm just saying there will be more moments to enjoy just being. And traveling again too! We are starting out January with nothing on our schedule. Although, hey-maybe Jeff will find a job! But other than that-January is WIDE open. It is so nice to know that there isn't anything that we have committed to just yet. I'm hoping we take that time and finish the little things left over from the house renovation.

Some fun things we have to look forward to in 2010?

CHICAGO in March!
Vail in September for our 1 year anniversary
Another season of disc dogging with our pups

Happy New Years Eve!

Does everyone have their New Years resolutions all set and ready to go? I'm not doing that, because let's face it-I always forget what I was resolving to change and that my friends is pointless. So this year I am entering a new realm of resolve. It's called Day Zero Project and you can find out more here if you would like.

A quick rundown of the project is to reach 101 goals in 1,001 days.

So far I have 50 items on my list and I need to come up with 51 more. I have approximately 14 hours to complete my list as I've decided to start on that list first thing tomorrow morning! It is harder than you would think to come up with 101 life changing and/or memorable goals for my list. I don't want to fill it with fluff that I know I can accomplish, I want to make each one memorable for either me or the person it is aimed at, and also throw some in there that are just plain fun. Hopefully I can find 101 things and be creative at the same time.

I challenge you all to resolve for something this coming new year. Why keep plugging away at life and not try to encourage yourself to do something greater. No matter the leap- whether it be big or small- take it. Don't waste life by just being. Be something better!

I hope that everyone has a safe and Happy New Years eve and New Years Day!

Cheers! Here is to 2010!!

Life is good

We have had a busy few weeks and are happy it's finally calming down. What have we been up to? Let's see.... Shopping for Christmas, wrapping presents, went to Amy's company holiday party, we hosted a cookie exchange with some of our newlywed friends, we tried our hand at trivia (didn't fair so well but had a lot of fun!), enjoyed hanging out with our families on Christmas, did some snowshoeing, did some after Christmas sale shopping...... whew! And now it's now.

Some pics from the past few weeks:

Jeff says hi!

Kim wants everyone to check out this awesome bow!

A normal morning for the O'Brien clan on Christmas. Jeff and Roxy snuggling, and Kipp playing with his toys

Some good old fashioned lightsaber fighting using small children as a shield.

Rockstar showing off the view from our snowshoeing adventure on Saturday.

Kipp patiently waiting with his mom for Dad to come rocketing, errr slowly skiing down the mountain.

It is time to now start coming up with New Years resolutions. I think to start one of mine is going to be to play freestyle Frisbee with my dogs more. :) Maybe I can even get Jeff to come to the park with us and take some pictures!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

Last night Jeff and I stayed up late, watching movies and decorating for Christmas. Since it's a little late to get a real tree, we busted out the old, fake one from hiding and put that up. Upon decorating the tree, I realized we have quite a few horrible ornaments..... Those after Christmas sales are going to be calling my name. I need to come up with a theme, not ugly would be a nice start.

I forgot to take a picture last night, so I asked Jeffrey to send me a picture off of his cell phone. Here is our tree! (With the sweetest dog in the world helping to show it off!)

Yes, it needs more ornaments. But I still like it. :)

I'm off work tomorrow and Monday.....so we will be finishing up our Christmas shopping! Yay!! And wrapping gifts and getting them put under the tree. We are going to bake cookies and take the dogs to the park and drink Pepperment Schnapps laced hot chocolate and cook some delicious food.

I LOVE CHRISTMASTIME!!!

Home sweet home

First order of business? Go pick up Team RK from my pops. He is the best dog sitter in the world and we always have two happy black and white pups greet us when we come home from a trip.

Ahhhh, life is good. We are home and I am loving this contentment. We walked in the door and I headed straight to the kitchen and started cooking. I love my kitchen. We ate some delicious, fresh angel hair pasta with ricotta parmesan meat sauce for dinner. A glorious pot of coffee was brewed and now we're sitting in our living room on our comfy couches and watching Julie and Julia.

I opened all of our Christmas cards that came while we were in Texas; it's one of my favorite things to do. Although, it reminds me that I haven't mailed ours out yet....or written any of them yet either. Hmmmm, I guess I know what we're doing tomorrow!

Texas was good. I really miss my family there and really need to make a commitment to visit more often. It was a perfect treat to be able to see our family and some friends while we were there. We saw the Alamo and the Riverwalk. Xavier got to meet his cousins, Xyalia and Jenessa. We played Uno and dominos just like back in the day when we would visit Grandma. It was peaceful and wonderful to be able to do that again.

Do all kids smile like this? Apparently.....

My boys

No entrance, or exit according to Jeff.

Little mans can smile normally! I proved it!

Dave and X along the Riverwalk.

The fog made for some cool shots around the city.

Apparently I like old buildings, I took plenty of pictures of them.

And doorways. I like doorways too.

Jeff is getting into the holiday spirit. Only 9 days until Christmas people!!

Until next time, San Antonio. You were good to us.

Snowy post

Happy snow days!!!!

I hope everyone is staying warm in this cold ass weather! Keep on keeping on. It can't last forever, can it?! ;)

It's a little chilly, no?

So, today it's somewhere around 10 degrees. Awesome. Well we decided that we've had enough. On Saturday we are out of here and going to TX! Jeff, David, Xavier and I are all flying out to San Antonio to go visit the family and some friends. I am thanking Southwest Airlines for their super duper cheap fares for this one. :)

We come back on Tuesday evening. Man, back to back vacations? Life is rough for Team O'Brien right now! I wish I had taken some pics when Jeff and I were in Frisco and Vail this past weekend, but alas - I didn't. But it was beautiful, relaxing, cold, fun, and just what the doctor ordered! We ate delicious food, walked around and enjoyed the sights, did some shopping, saw some old friends, and had a really nice time. Let's hope the trip to TX includes all of the above minus the cold.

Update on our Piper kitten: She is in her new home. A super nice family with another kitten and a one year old puppy adopted her. The family has 4 kids from 8 years old to 21-so she will get love, love, love, attention, attention, attention and more love from them. The 21 year old who adopted her is sick and stays in bed most of the day. She has sent me updates that Piper has lifted her spirits and keeps her smiling all day, so it really couldn't have been a better fit.

Bye Pipes. We will miss you!

Special Sneak Preview!

Well we went back up to Evergreen on Saturday to take our formal portaits in our wedding gear with a new photographer since our pictures didn't really 'WOW' us from the wedding. Our new photographer, Tamara Murphy, was wonderful. She sent us some of her favorites from the shoot and here they are!

We love them! It was chilly for sure. After a while I think our smiles were frozen on our faces but it was definitely worth it. And our clothes are a muddy mess. I don't even want to know what that dry cleaning bill is going to run us!

New news

Well let's see, since we've updated the blog what have we been up to?


Jeff has been looking for a job - so send those good job vibes his way! :) But in the meantime, he has enjoyed his days off by skiing and riding his new dirt bike! And cleaning the house, although that isn't very exciting to talk about. He has really been getting better on the bike and is pretty proud of himself. Which is exciting since he hasn't ridden one of these bikes in quite some time.

Here she is:

We have also been enjoying the great weather lately (although it snowed last night!) and have been taking the dogs to the park and playing Frisbee golf with our amigos.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house with just my mom, Gary, David, Jeffrey and me. It was a quaint little Thanksgiving feast but a wonderful and relaxing time. We had turkey, green bean casserole, broccoli, loaded baked potato casserole, rolls, sweet potato souffle (coutesy of my momma-dear), cranberry mandarin sauce, caramel apple pecan pie, pumpkin pie (momma again), and pumpkin cheesecake (and mom again!). Then shrimp cocktail and mac n' cheese bites for our appetizers. So yummy! I hope everyone spent their Thanksgiving with the one/s they love.

On Saturday we re-did our formal wedding pictures with our photography company. I will post more about that tomorrow with a little sneak preview from the photographer herself! :) We went up to Evergreen Lake, and although it was pretty dang cold it was fun. I'm excited to see the pictures! I will post the link when I get it.

Oh, and for the sad news of the day we are going to have to find a new home for our little Piper kitty. She and the dogs just aren't getting along. It's not going to work out- so if you know of anyone who wants an adorable little kitty let us know!