Celebrating Ken's 50th Birthday

Our Brother-In-Law, Ken, turned 50 last week, so we went to Colorado Springs last night to celebrate. We went to a great restaurant called Pepper Tree. The food and atmosphere were both amazing. Chase wasn't with us because he was in Hawaii with his dad for spring break. Lucky Regan had a different spring break at CSU and got to hang out with us instead! Here are a few pictures from the evening!

Ken & Deanna


Darren, Ken, and Regan


Ron & Deanna


Regan, Ken, and Deanna


Self Portrait of Regan & Me


Regan & Me


Just The Girls!


The Whole Family! We missed you, Chase! Hawaii probably isn't as fun as this was...


"Heater Boy" aka Darren curled up in Deanna's master bathroom with a blanket and a heater at 2:00 in the morning before we all went to bed!

We Crazy!

Okay, so Darren and I promised each other we were going to take a year off from doing any projects around the house (i.e. ripping out and finally re-doing the rest of the front yard). Well, today, we were at Home Depot to buy some seed and soil so we could re-seed the areas of our front lawn that have been destroyed by voles and overgrown shrubs (because that's all we were going to do this year!), and we saw two beautiful Baby Blue Spruce trees (my favorite!). They were perfect, a good price, and we just couldn't pass them up. So, they now reside in our front yard, and it looks like we'll be re-doing the front yard after all.

Good news is that it's not nearly as large of a project as the back yard was a couple of years ago. Darren is still trying to come to terms with what we've done and what it means (lots of work for him because I, unfortunately, am a wimp!)! It will look pretty when we're finished though. Here are pictures of what we spent our day doing. Say bye-bye to the grass! It'll all be gone by May!

Before'ish....


...And After - Aren't they pretty? More to come! Stay tuned!

Mines vs AF - Baseball - 03-16-10

It was a fairly nice day, for March, to be outside at a baseball game - about 60 degrees in Colorado Springs, but when we got to the Air Force Academy, it was about 5 degrees cooler and windy, so we froze our butts off! Deanna and Chase (Darren's sister and nephew) left about an hour into the game. I took my camera with me hoping to get some pics of us watching the game, but I bailed about one inning after Deanna and Chase left and sat in my car for the remaining 3 innings that Darren and his dad stayed to watch. It was all good though - I texted Kristi and Clair while listening to music on Darren's iPod Touch, so time just flew by, and I wasn't cold anymore.

I think it meant a lot to Darren's dad that he stayed to watch several more innings with him. Here are a couple pictures we snapped before we left, just outside the stands.

The Best Intentions - Well, You Know What "They" Say!

Yes - it's true! I have had every intention of staying up on my blog, but between that, school, work, the occasional hair cutting/coloring, keeping up with my house, and generally not knowing when to say, "No," my whirlwind (as my dad would call it) of a life has gotten the best of me!

I mentioned school - I guess I'm just not happy if I'm not working towards something. Darren calls it crazy..... Whatever the case may be, I started my master's program through CSU (Colorado State) at the beginning of this month. It's an online program through their Global Campus. Freaked out at first, but I am getting used to it now. It's like having a part time job though - it's a lot of work, and it consumes A LOT of my free time! As if I had any of that to begin with - LOL!

The update on the adoption is - There's really no change! We keep praying and hoping it will happen sooner than later. I am optimistic it'll happen sometime next year; while Darren thinks we'll be lucky if it happens by 2012. We will keep you updated (you've heard that before, right?!!).

Anyhow, since pictures are more fun to look at than it is to read a long, boring post, I thought I'd post some pictures of what's been happening in our world in 2010. Enjoy, and thanks for having faith that I'd eventually update my blog!!

JANUARY: Okay, so this didn't really happen in 2010 at all, but nothing really happened in January to speak of, so I had to post something else! Our dear friend, Steve, invited us to attend the annual Toys for Tots charitable dinner, as he does each year. We had a wonderful time. This is Darren and I at the event


Darren, Steve, and Me @ Toys for Tots(the venue was AMAZING!)


Our good friends, Nancy & Randy also attended the event with us:


FEBRUARY: LEGALLY BLONDE - I saw Legally Blonde at the theatre with "the girls" in February - it was SO good, and we had such a great time! Holly made these cute glasses for each of us, and she made Frozen Peach Bellini's to go in them! They were DELICIOUS!


Tiffany, Holly, Angela, and Me


MARCH: BON JOVI! I truly don't know what it is about him - LOVE the music; LOVE him! Just love, love, love this band. Anyhow, my girlfriend, Nancy, and I attended the concert earlier this month and had a great time!








So, now you're up to date! We are on vacation this week (it's Darren's spring break at work), and we have a low key week planned. A baseball game tomorrow; some yard work in preparation for Spring; a trip to Boulder for the day, etc. I'll hopefully have pics to post of our shenanigans throughout the week. :-)