School

This is what Ryan spent most of his weekend doing:

For the past year and a half he's spent most of his weeknights and weekends studying and writing papers for his Master's program but as of today he only has one more week until he's completely finished!!!  He's taking two classes right now and one is his Capstone course which aims to tie everything together that he's learned in the entire program.  He has to write an in-depth research paper for that class and has been great about plugging away week after week.  He's so efficient and effective and soooo not a procrastinator but it's still like he has a day job and a night and weekend job too!  I'm excited to have him back in a week!

I tried to get him all kinds of snacks like gummy bears, chips and guac, and cupcakes (OK, maybe that one was kind of for me too) to power through this final week because I remember years ago my sister-in-law Jaime brought me a snack care package during my home stretch of studying for the CPA exam and it was so sweet and I really appreciated all the handy snacks when I had my head down.

Here's to one more week!  The only thing I have to worry about after he's finished is what he's going to tear into next... 

Before...

and after...



Monsters

Well, Ryan and I have created little monsters.  Why in the pictures below, might you ask, are the dogs circling Ryan like he's a herd of sheep and they're a pack of well trained border collies? 

Well, that my friends, is because he just said the magic word:  "Cheese balls"

We have a giant tub of cheese balls in the laundry room and I started feeding them to the dogs every now and then when I was doing laundry or just getting home from work at night.  Apparently I must have actually said "cheese ball" every time I did it because now we can't even say the word "cheese" at home without everyone getting excited.

It's the funniest thing to see how excited they get and then to listen to them crunch, crunch, crunch the cheese balls up.  Originally, Peanut tried to hoard hers and eat them in private when everyone else was done but that didn't work out so well as Mojo and China would just steal them from her.  Now she holds onto them for dear life!  See the cheese ball in her mouth below?!

Tipping Point

I absolutely love to read.  It is one of my favorite things to do so I thought I'd post about a few of the books I've been reading.  I just finished reading The Tipping Point" by Malcom Gladwell and it was a very interesting and thought provoking book.  It's basically all about what exactly causes ideas, products, behaviors, etc. to become mainstream.  I think this would be an interesting book for anyone that is in any type of sales or marketing.  The author uses real life examples throughout the book to capture your attention, including topics as seemingly vastly different as the midnight ride of Paul Revere to the US teenage smoking epidemic. 

I have also read this author's book "Blink" and enjoyed it as well.  It is about how people think, or more appropriately how we make unconscious snap decisions.  I typically prefer fiction books but these two definitely kept my attention.

Now I'm moving on to The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice.  I had never wanted to read them before because I don't really like anything scary and vampires seem scary to me.  I never even watched the movie they made of the first book "Interview with the Vampire"!  But my friend Sue convinced me the books were not scary so I read the first one and it was really good!  Now on to "The Vampire Lestat".

Some other good reading material and a couple of my all time favorites are "The Kite Runner" by Khalid Hosseini and "The Bronze Horseman" by Paullina Simons (she went to KU!).  I am such a sucker for historical fiction!

Nuggets

My awesome boss gave me four tickets to the Nuggets game tonight so Ryan and I and Dion and Amy went to watch the team take on the Memphis Grizzlies.  It was the first game after the Carmelo Anthony trade and because the trade was just finalized today the team was minus four players on the bench.  Even without them they beat the Grizzlies 120-107!  In the middle of the game a few of the new players arrived at the Pepsi Center and were briefly introduced. 

Oh hey, there's me eating a giant hot dog covered in toppings!  I love hot dogs!  At least this time no one said "Good luck eating that honey!" like has happened to me before. 

Some time after I finished my hot dog but before the game was over, the man behind me spilled beer down my pants!  And it wasn't like he dumped it all over me or splashed my shirt and jeans..no, it's almost like he was aiming directly down my pants! I jumped up so fast and told him I usually like to pour drinks down my throat not my pants!  At least everyone got a good laugh out of it.

What a great night!  Next time we see Dion and Amy might be when we go to visit them after the arrival of their baby!

Cleaning House

So, I've been on a bit of a cleaning rampage lately and am determined to get every square inch of the house in tip top order (and to also "de-shed" one certain dog).  One of my main focuses has been the closet and because I am a bit of a pack rat that is a daunting task so I am breaking it up into small pieces.  Over the weekend I made my fourth sweep in a month through the master closet and one of the guest bedroom closets and came up with over 30 items to donate and also a sizable trash pile.  This is after we had previously filled two trash bags for donations and two for trash.  Who needs all this stuff?!?!  Even after spending this much time I know there are still more items that need to be donated/thrown away.  Baby steps!  It's definitely one of my goals after this exercise to keep my closet clutter to a minimum in the future. 

  
Now, as I was taking the picture above I noticed something amiss.  I looked in the pile and under the brown bags I noticed something I didn't recognize.  So I dug in the pile and came out with THIS:

A brand new Coach bag!!!!  I love me a Coach bag!  I picked it up and thought, "My this seems heavy" so I looked inside and there was a brand new Coach umbrella! 

Do I have the best husband on earth or what?  I never have to be reminded that I'm SUCH a lucky girl but he still always manages to surprise me!  Apparently he must think that if I throw away enough stuff it's only fair that I get a new purse.  :)  Man I like the way he thinks.  (I'm pretty sure the umbrella was an impulse purchase after the torrential downpour we were unprepared for Saturday night - see previous blog).

What a great way to start a week! 

Before I sign off, I have one more note on cleaning.  Ryan is tackling the laundry room and has started putting baskets on the open shelves and they look great!  That was actually going to be the first part of my blog until all the new purse excitement.

Weekend

What a great weekend!  Although Ryan is in his last few weeks of school and is very focused on his final projects we still squeezed in a lot of fun this weekend!  We kicked it off on Friday by meeting our friends Scott and Sue at Buffalo Wild Wings.  Yum!  We love our wings and we happen to live really close to a BWW which is perfect!  Great food and great company! 

Saturday we went to the Colorado Garden and Home Show where Ryan's friend Dion was working a booth for his company.  (We also got to see Dion's lovely wife Amy, who is due any day with their first baby girl!)  As you can see from the pictures, Ryan was very interested in the beautiful landscaping (OK maybe he looks less than excited here) while I was more interested in the hot dog stands.  (Is anyone surprised?).

Because the show was downtown and we had gift certificates, we had planned on going to The Cheesecake Factory afterwards.  We thought we could just walk the few blocks to the restaurant from the Convention Center as it was gorgeous and 60 degrees when we first got to the show; however, when we left it was pouring!!!  We ended up running to the parking garage and getting completely soaked.  Wish I had a picture of that.  We ended up going to the Yak and Yeti, which I LOVE, so all was well. 

Other weekend highlights:

1. This sweet thing (yes in the first picture he is waiting for me to come home from work): 


causes me extreme stress because of the HUGE amount of hair that he can lose in one day.  Like the groomer said,  "Those are called German Shedders not German Shepherds".  Each day he loses the equivalent of a small dog (aka Peanut) and I can't seem to vacuum enough! Well, I found out that the groomer at our vet's office does "deshedding".  I called immediately to get him in and it worked wonders!  Don't get me wrong, he still sheds but it's nothing like it was!  I am so excited and definitely plan to take him in regularly.
2. I found the most delightful little cupcake shop in the Highlands:  Happy Cakes.  I brought home four cupcakes on Friday after work and we gobbled them all up by lunch time on Saturday.  My personal favorite was the Cherry Coke although I thoroughly enjoyed every flavor we tried:  Vanilla on Vanilla, Red Velvet, and Happy Together (chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting).  If you live in Denver I highly recommend!

Anyway, that's all for now as I must get ready for the upcoming week.  Hope everyone has a good one!