Climbin' the hill....

That is what Kora is doing. The whole family, and some of Kora's friends, were able to get together last Saturday to help her celebrate turning 30. I keep telling her that she is so old...but only because she will always be older than me:). I reminded her that times sure have changed a lot because when our mother was turning 30 she was about to have her FIFTH child!!! We had a great time and Kora really enjoyed herself...maybe too much:)

Kora and I started the party off kind of early by hitting up the annual Olympia Food and Wine Festival. We had a great time with just the two of us, chatting and walking around.Water, tequila, wine, and pacifico...what a party!!There is the birthday girl, celebrating Mexican style.Sophia got a little mad about something...she is very dramatic, as you can see.Now she is happy.The whole fam was able to make it and everyone had a great time...especially Kimberly:) Just kidding, she is reenacting Sophia's various picture poses. This is one of the most famous poses that you will find Sophia "striking."Kora is trying to show off our "Adult" stamps from the earlier food and wine festy...but it appears that she was really only scaring me!!This may have been the point where Kora should have stopped with the Pacificos!!! Things were starting to get a bit crazy.

David after the dentist. If you have yet to see it, you must go to you tube right now and watch it...that is the only way you will understand this photo.I think Richie likes what he got:)This is the point where Kora started to tell everyone, especially Richie (who was completely sober) that she loved them!!! Classic drunk birthday move.

We ended the night with karaoke in the bar, where I could have sung the night away. It was so much fun and we really got the crowd going. In fact, I got a couple recording offers, but at this point I only sing for fun, not money.

It was a great birthday party... I wish Kora the best in her 30th year:) Cheers to my sister:)

Crazy Friday Night!!!

This Friday was a CRAZY one!! I ended my work day around 10am, we had conferences all day Thursday and then just a short day on Friday, and spent most of the day hanging with my BFF, Marie. Once we were done running our various errands, I headed home and had a couple beers. Primo was quickly there to join me and he decided a beer sounded pretty good as well. Richie got home from work at about 6:20, where the three of us showed how young and hip we were by watching T.V. I know, don't let the craziness scare you!!!! Word must have spread around Olympia and Lacey that we were having such a kickin' party, because soon my sister Kora called to see what I was up to and she decided it sounded better than what she was doing so she joined us.

This crazy, raging party ended at about 8:45 pm and Richie and I were asleep by 10 pm. As we were drifting off to sleep we started to think back on parties of our past that would usually end about 5:30 am the morning after the party started. We laughed about how old this Friday night made us feel.

Here is Lady at the crazy party!! It was so exciting that she managed to catch some zzzz's.As you can see, beer was the drink of choice at this party. Don't Richie and Primo look like they are having so much fun. Baxter's biggest highlight was when I pulled the camera out and he though he could eat it. It was very odd. Every time he saw the camera, or heard it, he would try to grab it out of my hand so that he could have a snack. He really hates the damn camera:)
This party got really crazy...as you can see from Kora's face. I mean, we even had a computer!! It was rockin'

The Man I Love...

The man I love is often a little goofy. Sometimes he can be VERY hard to love, as I am sure most husbands can be at some points. He is especially hard to love when he leaves clothes all over the house, garbage in the kitchen and by his bed, and the bath mat down after the shower. However, it is times like the ones photographed above that makes it so easy to love and laugh at him:) it even makes the hard times a little less hard. He can always make me laugh, which is much more important than when he is being messy!!!

These photos were taken on one of the last sunny, warm days that we had in September. We were at my parents house, eating dinner on the back patio so we could soak up, what we knew was, the end of summer. All of a sudden we could hear my Dad's motorcycle fire up in the driveway and around the corner came my little brother, Joe, and my cute husband, Richie. They reminded me of "Dumb and Dumber" and definitely gave us all a good laugh. It was a great memory to end the summer:)

Kimberly's Bachelorette Party

For Kimberly's bachelorette party we went wine tasting in Woodinville. I was very fun and Kimberly really enjoyed herself.

Here is the whole group at the first winery we went to, Alexandria Nicole.

This was the last place...as you can tell we were starting to have a really good time at this point:)

I had to miss the Husky game because of the bachelorette party, so I took this picture to let the Dawgs know I was thinking about them. How sad that we lost by two points!!!! I had them winning the whole tournament in my bracket, so this loss really messed me up.

There is the beautiful bride-to-be. We are only two weeks away from the big day!!! I am really getting excited for her.


While we were at the third, and final, winery some of my good friends from high school, who were out wine tasting to celebrate Jessica's birthday stopped by and had a couple tastes with us. I wanted to get a picture with Jessica but my camera died right at that point!! I was super sad because I missed the photo op with Jess and we still had a lot of the party left. After wine tasting we went back to Kimberly's house so we could eat, she needed to open gifts, and we had a few "games" to play. We had a great time and ended up not getting to bed until 3 am!!! There were many pictures that I missed, but I have a mental memory of all of us dancing in Kimberly's living room and of Kimberly doing a fashion show for us with all of the items she got as gifts. It was interesting, to say the least:)

The Devil in Disguise

My sister, Kimberly, has a bridal shower last Saturday and Hershey kisses were scattered about in bowls around the party. The host, my Mom's very good friend Margaret, didn't want to take the unopened bags home with her and was trying to pawn them off on other people. I have been trying to watch what I eat lately so that I don't look like a fat toad at my sisters wedding, so I kindly declined taking any Hershey kisses home. However, my sister Kora, thought that my Dad would love a bag of them because he loves chocolate!! My husband picked Kora and I up from the shower to head back to my parents house. While in the car, Kora conveniently forgot the bag of Hershey kisses in the back seat, where Richie and I found them when we got home later that night.

I was able to resist the temptation of the Kisses for the last few days, but tonight I have not been able to quit thinking about them. Seven is the lucky number of Kisses I have consumed tonight...there goes my good week of diet and working out!!!! The actual spelling of Hershey is D-E-V-I-L!!! These things keep calling to me...I can hear them in the fridge right now:)

Green Beer

Green Beer. That is all I wanted today. I woke up this morning thinking about when and where I was going to have a green beer. I knew that I wanted to meet my bestie, Marie, for spin class at 4:30, but I would be free by 5:30 for a green beer, sweaty, but when has that ever stopped someone from getting a beer.

So today, my friend, Tracie O'neil (as you can see, someone who is very excited about St. Patrick's Day) were text messaging and decided to meet at O'Blarney's (an Irish pub in Lacey), after I got done with spin class. I told her I would be sweaty and hungry, but ready to have a green beer. As the day went on, I spoke with my sister Kora and told her to come and get a green beer with us. She was all for it, as she also woke up thinking about where and when to get a green beer.

Right after Spin class I made the two minute drive from my gym over to O'Blarneys where I was met by an unusually large number of cars parked in the lot. In fact, the parking was flowing into the next resturant and the old movie theatre parking!!! I finally found a spot and ran my tired, sweaty, hungry body through the rain, only to be met by a line. Not a line to get in, but a line to get money out of the ATM so that you could pay to get in. There was also a man walking out saying to someone on his cell phone, "it is an hour wait to get food." I realized that my thought of getting a green beer in an Irish pub was quickly fading and walked away from the pub, looking back with longing, as I heard the bag pipes fire up. I was too hungry and sweaty to wait to get food!!

Thankfully, my wonderful sister was still up to grab a green beer, just at a more low key St. Patty's Day location, such as Ferelli's Pizza:) I called them on my way there just to make sure that they served green beer and was crushed to find out that they did not. However, at this point, my stomach was speaking much louder than my thrist for a green beer. So after a quick call to Kora, who had not left her house yet, we realized with a quick drop of food coloring, we could make our own "green" beer.

This was a St. Patrick's Day that was much more low key than previous years, but nonetheless, was still an Irish day with GREEN BEER!!!!!

Entering the "Blogging" World

I love reading and looking at other people's blogs, so I thought that I should start one as well. I don't know how good I will be about making posts regularly, but I still figured it would be fun to try out. My camera will have to become a regular piece of my purse, so that I can update everyone on what I come across daily:) For example, this week is WASL at my school, so I could be taking great pictures of what we are doing in the classroom after my students are done taking the test, which is watch Balto. Yes that's right, we are not allowed to give the Sophomores homework or do anything "too" stressful for them, so I figured we would watch a fun movie to let them relax after hours of testing.





So that's that, with my life right now. I am going to post a few pictures that I have available to me right now, but they don't really have anything to do with this post:)

I would like to introduce you to Baxter (on the left) and Lady (on the right). These are my two doggies and since I am yet to have children, these two have to fill in. I was never a dog person before I met Richie. He had an American Bulldog, which is the same breed as Baxter, and that was the only dog that I had ever liked. Therefore, a couple years after we were married we decided it was time to expand our family with a new dog...and along came Baxter. Lady came to us in a little different way. I was running a race at the school I teach at, North Thurston High School, when this dog came running at me and finished the race with me. Richie and I looked all over for her owners and even checked the pound to see if she had been reported missing. We had no luck, except for the fact that we got a new dog that is super sweet!!! Now, Richie, Myself, Baxter, and Lady all share an 888 sq. ft. house, which can be very chaotic at times.

This is just a little blog of information to get me started. Hopefully, you will hear from me again soon!!!