Colorado 2010! (Post Two)

Okay, so we crammed UH.LOT. into one weekend in Colorado, sooooo I have a lot of photos. (I know you're all so shocked by the amount of photos I probably have... hah.. right.) Anyway, I don't want to bore you to tears any more than I need to in a single post, so I'm going to upload pics into two posts. :)

So, last weekend, Eric and I headed up to Colorado! Why? Well, it all started with getting tix to see Michael Fr@nti! Who's that? He's Eric's fav reggae type singer (you might know him from this song)...and was supposed to come to Tulsa last year. I'd gotten tickets (felt very proud of my little surprise) and then the guy had a freaking appendicitis. Lame. (Glad he was okay). Anyhoo, concert was canceled. :( So, when Eric found tickets to see Michael... at RED ROCKS aka somewhere we'd both really wanted to go...and on a WEEKEND, we couldnt pass it up. We found a good deal on SouthBest (hehe) and started to make a little weekend out of it! The rest, my friends, is in photos! :)

These pics start with the concert. I'll upload everything that came before the concert tomorrow.

We'd heard you need to get to Red Rocks super early to get good parking. We followed orders and arrived to find a pretty rocking little tailgate going on. Being out of towners and not knowing about said tailgate, we had our little to-go sandwiches we rocked in the back of our rental car whilst people set up grills, coolers, etc... :)

Gorgeous...
We were in row 29 aka quite close! I opted to stairmaster my way up to the top for some photos... :)

I officially love (1) Colorado and (2) reggae concerts b/c everyone is so.freaking.chill. Lots of hemp, hippies, and happiness. (And more mary jane than I've ever seen! haha!)

Below: my favorite concert-goers..who I called Dancing Hairy Man and Shirtless Hairy Man.

Love the below pic. I loved it before I played with the settings in my new-found photo editing obsession, Picn!k, but love it more now. :)
PACKED!
Love our friend behind us. He was kinda awesome. Just sayin. He was definitely more awesome than the underage girl who'd had too much of something and passed out cold, hitting her head on the cement, causing paramedics to come over. Her friends kept saying "She's sober! This is so weird." Note: Teenagers are really bad liars. hah.. (She was fine btw..and ended up leaving our area)

Came up and sang on the rocks and in the crowd right by us! I took like 45 shots trying to get a good one as he moved around and people swarmed him...

He invited kids up to sing his last song (the one I linked at the top of the post), Say Hey. :)

Absolutely, hands down one of my favorite concerts I've ever been to in the most gorgeous setting... We danced, I took a ridiculous amount of photos and videos, the weather was perfect... *happy sigh*

Here's actually some footage from Fr@nti's site from our concert! And an interview with him! (See video)

The next day and after tons of activities, we were still pretty wiped out. We opted to check out the city and the museum a little...

But first, a photo of Eric on the orange sofa in our hotel room. Why? Do you remember this post when Eric bought his orangeish leather sofas?(link here) (They're admittedly awesome despite my teasing him). He was like "LOOK! This place has orange sofas, too. They must have great taste. Obviously." Photo ensued. We're easily entertained. It is what it is.

I'm pretty sure I wanted a photo with this bear ever since we passed it driving in. And Sunday morning, I think Eric thought he'd pressed the repeat button on something b/c I kept saying "I want a bear photo. Can we go to the bear?"

He humored me and we got to see it. Denver has lots of fun, random art stuff all over the city. The bear is peering into the convention center. :) (I'm pretending to try to touch it's rear. Whatever. I thought it was funny).

After a couple other stops, headed to the DAM (Denver @rt Museum, but I like saying DAM. They had cool shirts that said "The best DAM art" or something. Anyway, fun). Saw the King Tut exhibit that's there til January and um.. if it comes to your area, see it b/c it's awesome.

They don't allow photos, so you should stop by the gift shop afterwards and take a creepy one like I did. *nervous*
The museum was pretty cool and I kept my photo taking to a min since they really aren't allowed most places, I dont think. But, no one stopped me in the contemporary area...*excited face*

This is probably the scariest thing I've seen in um.. a very long time. It makes me have a facial reaction of nervousness.
Upset baby doll in crib needed a friend to mock her. I had to oblige.
Despite some randomness, there were some cool contemporary pieces. Eric's standing in one, meant to be a representation of the country's actual highways intersecting... Cool.
Hello, random ladies, will you take our photo? Thanks, you did a great job. :)
Headed to the airport to fly, fly away back to T-town after a fantabulous weekend getaway! :) Thanks for sticking with me this long, peeps...

Things that happened yesterday

1. I couldnt upload my photos b/c I'm fairly certain my mac, flickr, and my thumb drive all hate me. I wanted to share them with Eric before I uploaded them to the blog/facebook. But that just might not happen... haha..Do you flickr? I've never done it, but I paid for the upgrade and am now having issues uploading photos. *grrrr* I have to upload them like 10 at a time...which is hard for me...since I have 200 pics from Denver.

2. I was driving when an adorable golden retriever walked in front of my car in my neighborhood. Well, you know I can't resist that. *sigh* So, I got out and it came to me. I opened the back door and in she jumped. Sheesh. We drove around for awhile, but no one was out looking that I could see... so she came home with me. The rest of the evening was filled with poster making, etc. Good news though...her owner called me! Family and 12 year old Gretel the dog were reunited around 9pm last night! :) I think I like dogs more than a lot of people sometimes. Just sayin. And I also think I'd almost convinced myself to keep her if I never found her owners. This, my friends, is why I cannot ever volunteer for animal shelters. I would have a zoo at home. 100% sure.

3. Oh yeah.. and um.. Eric's house was broken into. Yeah, you read that right. :( They didn't take a ton of stuff (thankfully), but he's got to make some serious repairs today. I took a photo of where they broke in. Bananas! I won't go into details b/c this is the public internet...and talking about a crime where suspects are still missing is weird...but blah. I feel so badly for him. He's dealing with it much better than I would. But, he deals with a lot of things better than I would.. haha.. (He's way more even-keeled than my sometimes-over-emotional self). I'm so over this crime wave that seems to be happening in our city lately. I know crime heats up in summer, but if you're in the area, don't you feel like it's been so much worse this year?! :(

Happy Monday!

Heeeeelllo and welcome to Monday! How was the weekend?

Mine=fabulous! But, we got in from Colorado LATE last night, so the pics and the bloggage will have to wait.

So, this is random, but while in flight yesterday, I was thinking something... I was thinking how I wasn't really looking forward to coming back to work today.

And that bummed me out a little...

I mean.. who wants to come back from vacation? Duh. But it was just kinda different.

I really like my coworkers.

I totally dig my job.

But I genuinely looked forward to a lot of things about my last job.

And to seeing my work family. B/c that's what they were...

I realize that sounds lame.

And I was definitely ready to move on, past my role at my previous company. 100% certain on that.

Recently, I've just been getting weird lately b/c some of the stuff I was promised isn't exactly coming to fruition and I'm putting a lot of bandaids on things instead of actually fixing the system like I want to...

...which is alright and I don't mind

I think I'm just getting a little frustrated or something...

...and starting to wonder what my next step will be for my long term career path if this is all just bandaids after a few years, ya know...

Ahhh...always going with an eye on the future, huh... Ambitious Jax.. *laughing at self*

So, that's that.. :) Moving on....

Even as tired as I am, guess what came with me to work today----my gym bag! I'm so impressed with myself, people. Getting started is definitely the hardest part, but once I get on a roll, NOT working out feels...well...odd. (And it didn't hurt that Eric mentioned he'd noticed. I mean.. I think I noticed but that could have also been in my head...haha.. But, his confirmation made me want to work out MORE!)

Now that we've gone to Colorado (and had a blast!), I'm switching gears to get pumped for MAUI! It's so weird to start getting excited for something in October. I love summer, so I'm conflicted about getting excited for anything involving colder months! It's kinda comical. I'm like "YAY Maui..wait.. no..I'm not ready for winter...but YAY MAUI!"

Yes, it's lunchtime, but my waterproof camera is practically burning a hole in my handbag b/c I'm so ready to develop my rafting pics! Ah, gotta love the old school waterproof cameras... Planning to blog during the season finale of Bachelorette tonight! Are you watching?! Who do you want her to pick?!

Thursday Things

Happy Thursday..and it's kinda my Friday!!!! (since Eric and I will be in Colorado this weekend! YAY!)

So, I'm blogging randomness I'm excited about and feel the compulsion to share. First thing.. I just realized next week is... wait for it...wait for it... JUST THE MOST EXCITING TV WEEK OF ALL TIME... better known as SHARK WEEK! Okay, maybe I'm being a leetle overdramatic, but I love Shark Week. A lot. Bucket list item: cage shark dive. and not with wussy sharks. with tigers or hammerheads or great whites. Yes, I'm serious.

*imagine me pretending to be a shark at my desk...b/c it just happened*

And Jen blogged about this yesterday... I'd had NO idea. I'm so excited about this! Did you read Sweet Valley High when you were younger?! I read it, I watched the tv show, I was a junkie for those stories! Anyway, the writer is coming out with a "10 years later" book! Love.it.

Do you need hours of entertainment...or at least a few minutes? My friend at work sent me this blog and um.. it's silent-laugh-mode hilarious. It makes fun of all the catalog scenes in things like p!ttery barn, etc. Here: Catalog Living.

Finally, my friend just joined the bloggy world! If you have a moment, pop over and say hello and welcome her to the blogtastic community! (I like saying things like "bloggy" and "blogtastic" and pretty much any other random made up word involving 'blog') :) Heather's blog.

Hope everyone is gearing up for a fabulous weekend! If anyone has suggestions of things to see, do, eat, shop, whatever in Denver, please let me know! We have some things planned, but will still have plenty of free time to check stuff out!

{Girls} Weekend Recap!

I was trying to upload all my pics to flickr to share with the girls, but flickr is being a b*tch for some reason (think 2hrs and only 27 photos uploaded of 90), so I've already got em on the blog and am gonna go ahead and post... :)

So, last weekend, a group of girls...rephrase... a group of very dear friends... set off for the lake to have the first official girls trip we've had in a very long time. All were sorority sisters at the fine U of Tulsa back in the day. While in some ways we all met/became close friends at varying times, we've all come together form a great friend group I'm blessed to be a part of. :)

On a light note, we've been through everything from rush to pledge pranks gone awry to study hours to final exams. On a more serious note, we've been through the loss of family members, the birth of new and adorable additions, first homes, second homes, graduate schools, new cities... I could go on and on.

These girls are the reason(s) I ever even started a blog! When we all started moving apart and beginning our "grown up" lives, it became harder to keep in touch. Kat started hers first and a couple others followed. Since I'm a picture-a-holic, I wanted to be able to post pics of the wedding showers, baby showers, etc, we all were going to somewhere other than facebook and communicate with these girls! The blog was born! Granted, that was my OLD blog which I've since gotten rid of (circa 2005...crazy, huh?!)

So, after many excited tweets and emails, we had a fabulous girls weekend... and here it is...in photos! :)

We've arrived! (Well, most of us...Jennifer was on her way)

Below: Caitlin, me, Jenny, Sarah, Brooke, Kat, Audra.

Where had we arrived? Here! A pretty house situated on Table Rock lake :) We had the whole house... except for the part where the B&B owners lived downstairs.. :)
Relaxing and gorgeous. :)
We brought a lot of this...
And Ashley made us some of these (YUM!!!) even though she couldn't come since she just had baby Cooper... (Thank you again, Ashley!)
5 of the 8 girls have a little one (or one on the way)... so this was especially funny...
Doing the "v" pose. Don't ask. But please look at Jenny's face b/c it's awesome. There's a story behind it (so yes, it's intentional). :) (White shirt, lower right). This is officially everyone who was there. :)
Made dinner and self timed a photo... :)
The rest of the night was filled with some profanity..er...I mean.. old college stories, and lots of laughs about too many things to list. :)

I have no idea. We had a lot of wine.(I have like 10 pics of some our feet like this) I am constantly reminded why I'm glad facebook didn't exist when we were in college.
Breakfast prepared by the fabulous B&B owners! :) Candelit breakfast with homemade food.. dont mind if I do!
Sooo, after breakfast, we set off for the outlet mall. And got stuck in traffic. Sooo what do you do when stuck in traffic? Take photos in Jennifer's hat, of course! (Why did you even ask?) ;)

The hat owner rocking it first... the rest of us after....







And after outlet shopping....

....we went for lunch and to celebrate tequila day (b/c it was tequila day, people. We saw it on twitter. Twitter doesn't lie). So, we had a salt rimmed beverage and then did this...

And then..... we also may have done this...

I kinda wanted to pose funnier, but they're very strict about their old time photos. *nervous face*

Watched some tv.. for about 5 seconds... til we decided to do something different.. but it was cute. I think it was cuter in my head b/c none of our tv watching-all together-photos came out flattering. Whatever.

Then, somone found a puzzle. A 600 piece puzzle. It seemed like a good idea, but Sarah, Jenny, Caitlin, and me weren't into sitting inside and putting togther a puzzle. But, after all the outlet malling, old time photo-ing, and margarita-ing, we didn't really want to do anything else either, so we opted to give them a hard time while they constructed said puzzle... (and got ignored. see below).

Finally, we opted to just join in and make the puzzle magic happen so we could go do something else. That said, in approximately 1 minute, we were all creepily engaged/obsessed in assembling this puzzle... It was comical.

We got to the last piece...and realized it was MISSING. Yes, it really was.
...until Jenny found it. She's very excited. (I actually made her re-enact finding it for this pic..hence the overdramatization... haha)
I have a ton of puzzle pics... the "where is the last piece" pics, the "inserting the last piece" pics, etc.. but I opted to spare you from them and just know we were having a good time with the puzzle drama. And yes, girls weekends are definitely more tame as we've gotten older. Obviously.
So, the night before, we'd gotten a little intoxicated...er... I mean been a little too loud on the patio. The owners were so sweet and didn't say anything, but really.. when we all get to talking at the same time.. in 4 different convos, we start to sound like vuvuzelas from the world cup. Really. Since the owners live below the b&b, we opted to be more respectful and went to the loft area of the main suite.. which is also a jacuzzi tub area. Hilarious!
Sunday morning, we packed up our stuff, signed some of the guest books, and headed back to our respective homes in our respective cities. A little bloated from all the unhealthy food, a little hungover from all the wine (minus Jennifer, who's pregant. On that note, she gets tons of props for dealing with our wine induced stories/volume level...haha). All in all....an absolutely fantastic weekend with some of my absolutely favorite people on this planet. :)
Many thanks to Kat and Jenny for putting last weekend together! It was such a much needed trip and I really hope we start doing it every year! :)