Awesomeness

The last week in January was awesome.  It started off with attending the stock show for the last weekend it was in town.  I got to cowgirl up with my new sweet boots.

When we got there we walked through and checked out all the different vendors selling things like cowboy boots, hats, fences, home decorations, clothing, ranch equipment, etc.  We also got to walk through the areas where the livestock were kept and saw several cattle and sheep up close and personal.  In one of the arenas we watched a border collie sheep herding competition.  It was so neat to watch the border collies work with just whistles and verbal cues from their owners.  We only saw one dog complete all the obstacles successfully.  The rest were disqualified because they were taking too much time or they nipped at the sheep.  Oops!  Then we got to watch the rodeo!

I love going to rodeos.  We had one in my hometown every summer and it was an event.  There was a Rodeo parade and everything.  And I love snarfing on nachos and kettle corn.  :)

Later in the week Mark and Wendy were in town for one night for work so we got to meet them for dinner and spend some time together.  We took them to Root Down and they both seemed to like it and we got to visit for several hours.  I love it when family comes to town.

Mark had also brought a package with him from Mom so I got to tear into that later and discover a bunch of goodies:  tea cups to match the teapot my aunt gave me, chopsticks, and a few other items.    To top it all off, when I got home later that night I had a package waiting for me from Momma Sharon and it was FULL of delicious homemade caramels!  What a way to top off my fantastic week!

A Story

Recently Ryan and I were at Petsmart and this is how our conversation went:

Me:  Can I have a cute, fuzzy, little chinchilla?
Ryan:  No.  Chinchillas stink.
Me:  I could give my sweet chinchilla baths...
Ryan:  Water turns chinchillas into gremlins.
Me:  Oh.

So I didn't get a chinchilla.  The End.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Church Lady pics

I realized I never posted pictures of The Church Lady after all of the body work.  Here she is:

Ryan loves this car.  I still haven't driven it.  Ryan thinks that is weird but I think it is self-preservation on my part.  I have run every single one of Ryan's vehicles (except the Batmobile) into a structure (think parking garage walls, telephone poles) and I don't really want to continue that streak.  He was very forgiving with the trucks but I'm not so certain how he'd feel about me smashing The Church Lady up against the side of our garage or against a light pole at the grocery store.  So, I will continue on my merry way and drive Olive and just enjoy being a passenger in The Church Lady.  :)

Football, Skiing, and more Football

A couple days after Clayton and Dorothy left was the Fiesta Bowl, in which K-State played Oregon.  Ryan was out of town so I went to the K-State watch party at the Highland Tap and Burger and Jenny met me out.

It was so crowded we couldn't find a seat and couldn't find anywhere to put our coats but a nice woman that I met said I could put my coat with her stuff and eventually I forgot about it as I wandered around and that nice woman and her son watched my coat all night long, even taking it with them when they found a seat!  Jenny and I decided that only at a Midwest type of event could you trust to leave your stuff like that.  Turns out that nice woman's son was a recent former KSU football player, Adrian Hilburn  They were really kind people.

Unfortunately KSU lost the bowl game and Ryan had to pay up on a bet he had with an Oregon coworker.  And he had to eat crow after posting this picture in the guy's cube.  But I still think the picture is awesome.

Then that weekend Jenny, Ryan, and I went skiing at Keystone.  I was SO much better than even the last time we had gone up.  And this time I didn't get tackled by a man who was skiing out of control. I would like to post some pictures here but I can't get logged into my EpicMix account, which has all my ski records (which slopes I went down, how many times, etc.) and pictures that are taken on the mountain.  Seems like maybe I have too many user names and passwords.

The week after that I got very, very busy at work.  Reminiscent of public accounting type busy.  Not quite the same but still very busy.  It was enough that I wanted to curl up in a fetal position and cry while sucking my thumb.  But enough about that...for the upcoming weekend I was able to score some Broncos playoff tickets!  Even though I worked the rest of the weekend, I made sure we could go to the game.  I was so excited!  And then I found out it was going to be something like 7 degrees.  So Ryan and I dressed up like marshmallow puffs and headed to the game.  OH.  MY.  GOODNESS.  Was it ever cold.  I ended up going to the ladies room and hanging out for quite awhile just because there was a heater in there.  And I got hot cocoa which didn't stay hot for very long.  And it's a good thing we had these because I can't imagine how much colder we would have felt without them.

So we thought, "well, if this game is just a blowout we'll leave early".  But the game wasn't a blowout!  In FACT, it was so back and forth that it went into TWO overtimes!  And after missing the exciting overtime win at last year's Bronco's playoff game I was not going to move from my seat for anything.  And then we lost.  :(  And we walked back to the car and tried to thaw out.  Here's a picture of Ryan.  Can you tell it's him?

Here is a picture we took before the sun went down and we were still halfway unfrozen.