Tag: fun

Easter Fun

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We had a great Easter filled with fun and family. Smarty pants B, upon discovering the bunny balloon she had been eyeing for weeks at the grocery announced “the Easter Bunny shop at Safeway too!!”.

A little baffled by the chick that makes cheeping sounds when you hold it

After mass we headed to my mom’s house for brunch. It was amazing as always and included lots of running on the golf course.

Zoe and B sharing some bubbles – well, in theory anyway

Big kids, little kids and the big kids at heart playing catch

After a little spillage in her dress, she changed into one of Noni’s shirts (which she spilled on) and then enjoyed her gardening themed Easter gift from her buddy Joyce.

Mom’s Night Out Giveaway

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I’m so excited to announce that today I am giving away TWO TICKETS to the next Scottsdale Mom’s Blog Mom’s Night Out!!

The event is being held on Thursday, May 10 from 7:00PM to 9:00PM at the Ice Den in North Scottsdale. Each ticket is a $10 value and includes:

:: a glass of wine ::
:: delicious snacks ::
:: raffle entry & chance to win spectacular giveaways ::

If you’ve not been to a Mom’s Night Out event before, you’re in for a treat! Not only is it a great excuse to get out of the house / work early and enjoy a glass of wine with friends, but the giveaways are AMAZING. SMB draws some really fantastic sponsors like Boon, Giggle Boutique, Rodan and Fields and lots more. All you have to do is sit back, enjoy and wait to win!

 Here’s how you enter: comment below on why you need a mom’s night out. Potty training not going well? Work kicking your booty? Family making you bonkers? Tell me all about it! I’ll randomly choose a winner tonight at 10pm and announce the winner on tomorrow’s post. So get writing and good luck!

If you’re interested in purchasing tickets, send me a message and I’ll let you in on the early “friends only” link!!

Planet Orange

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When I was in 5th grade, the Phoenix Suns were it. They had a winning season and were going into the play offs. Ali and I knew all the players and we watched all the games. We had Suns cups, Suns basketball and painted our nails purple and orange. And it wasn’t just us, the whole town was energized by the team – walls were painted with “Go Suns!”. Our catholic school allowed Suns shirts on game days – picture that: a purple, orange or purple and orange shirt with a blue and red plaid skirt. It was awesome. Charles Barkley still holds a special place in my heart to this day.

When we went to see George Strait at US Airways Center (which will always be America West Arena to me, just sayin), I told Peter I wanted to go to a Suns game. I can’t remember the last time I went to one, but it was at least 15 years ago (at least). Which means it’s about time. It happened that two weeks later, Peter’s firm sent out an email asking if anyone would like the firm’s seats for Monday night. PW snatched those tickets up faster than me at the Nordstrom half year going for the last pair of cute size 11 shoes (ok, 12. That urban legend that your feet grow when you have babies is true).

As we expertly snaked through downtown traffic (it helps to have a hubby who drives it every day) we kept looking at our parking pass, sure that we had passed the garage. We couldn’t really be parking AT the arena, could we? We pulled in, certain they were going to turn us away and the parking attendant handed us a piece of paper with a number. Huh? She told us to just pull up the ramp and hand it to the attendant up there. When we did, he instructed us to back up two spots where he then took out a cone from a reserved spot and waved us in. Like whoa. THIS is how I like to attend sporting events!

We proceeded to walk maybe 50 feet to the entrance of the loge level where we were given all you can drink and all you can eat bracelets and then escorted to our seats. Which were at the very front of the loge level, maybe 20 rows back from the court. A.MA.ZING. Not to mention the food was great, a waitress kept a steady flow of drinks AND the other two tickets went to an associate at the firm and his wife who we love.

Oh, and him? Yeah, that’s Tom Chambers. Like 5 feet from us. THAT’S how good these seats were!!

Happy Second Birthday Cousin Zoe!

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Saturday morning after Pancake Breakfast at school, we mosseyed north to McDonald’s Ranch to celebrate Zoe’s second birthday. We talked up the fact that there would be tons of animals to pet and horses to ride – B could hardly contain her excitment and took off running at the first suggestion of walking to the petting zoo.

The weather was perfect – close to 80 and sunny. Christiane packed a deliciously huge lunch for all the guests and we washed it down with some awesome birthday cake!

Baylor, the birthday girl Zoe and her cousin Simano

Not at all concerned that the goat is waaaay to close…

The birthday girl

“HI GUYS!!!”

Ready to ride

This was no pony. And yet being sooo high up was a blast to Ms.B. She waved to everyone like a beauty queen

Pop!

Noni!

Denver Bound

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We spent this past weekend in Colorado visiting friends from law school and going to the UofA v CU Boulder game. In a word, it was awesome.

When the PAC 10 became the PAC 12, PW began dreaming of snowy football games in CO. And when this season’s schedule was announced, he began putting together plans for a road trip. We get a double bonus for trips to Denver because our friends, Brian and Jeanne are now Denver-ites which means we got to see and catch up with them too. And catch up we did.

Friday night was spent laughing, reminising and filling each other in on life, jobs and the kiddo. We talked over the most amazing meal ever at Osteria Marco. We also walked around Larimer Square – it felt like the perfect holiday location; strings of lights, chilly weather and a warm coat!

After a delicious, greasy spoon cafe breakfast, we headed West to Boulder for the game. Colorado is spectacularly beautiful and getting to go to a small college town made me think of Tucson. We arrived to join the UofA tailgate hosted by a group of friends and PW’s fraternity brothers. It’s always nice to know that some things don’t change.

Check out Grizzly Adams back there…

To sum up the game…it was horrible. The wind was blowing at a steady 40mph and gusting up to 70mph. Worse, UofA was crushed by Boulder (maybe the only team that was worse than the Cats). But the scenery and the company made up for all of it. Not to mention the super cute cowboys on the field that were incharge of running Ralphie the Buffalo down the field.

Seriously, check out my hair in the wind!

Beautiful Boulder

Who runs a real buffalo around??

Saturday night we ordered pizza and opened several bottles of wine and warmed up at Brian and Jeanne’s house. After several sips, Brian agreed to break out the guitar and play. He can literally play anything. He has a huge book of lyrics so that everyone can accurately sing along – and it’s something we did often when we were all broke law school students (or just broke because we were married to a student). It reminded of one of my favorite memories – it was maybe a week before we were moving home to AZ. I had cut out of work early to meet PW, Brian, Jeanne and our other friends James and Tess (Brian and James were roommates at the time). I found them all sitting on the “patio” of the row “house”James and Brian rented (I say “house” because their slum lord probably had the house condemned the minute the tenants moved out), drinking and singing Toto’s “Africa” with total seriousness on their faces. There was no making fun of Toto, it was serious music to be taken seriously. The weather was finally warm, the beer was cold and we sat and sang and drank until it was time to catch the last metro home. It was the perfect way to say goodbye to the city, our friends and to being a student.

Flash forward 4 years, weddings, kids, jobs and many miles traveled later and we were right back to that point. We sat and sang until we realized that we had to get up in just a few hours to catch our plane. And much like I am an amazing dancer after several cocktails, I am also an amazing singer. Sadly for you, WordPress won’t let me upload the voice memo I took of the Billy Bragg and Wilco California Stars  jam session. You’ll just have to imagine the awesomeness in your mind.

A thousand thank you’s to Brian and Jeanne for being such sweet hosts and amazing friends. I see reunion 2012: Spring Training in our future!

Picnik Your Pics

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A founder and contributor of Scottsdale Moms Blog just turned me onto a site called Picnik. They suggested I check it out and use it for my upcoming Halloween Craft post.

I looked into it and it is awesome. You can upload your pictures and then make them into collages of all sizes and layouts. It has picture editing capabilities too. The best part is that it’s crazy easy to use. I was on the phone when I clicked on the site and without actually reading or doing any trial and error, I snapped off a good 4 collages.

It is a free service (yea!) but  with purchase (it advertises it’s about $2 a month) it allows you to upload more pictures at once and offers more option on editing and also creating the collages.

Here’s one I did of Ms.B:

So get on Picnik and see what you can create with your pictures. Happy collaging!

Good Karma

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Remember this post about trying to track down the guy with the parking tickets? Well apparently my attempt at a good deed paid off – at least for Peter any way. Oh, and a side note, the guy from the original post has A. missed a court date for the previous parking ticket and B. gotten two more tickets this past month. I’m waiting for the police to come knocking at my door looking for Dean Wray. If you know him, please tell him to update his address with the city.

So! Back to the subject at hand. And that subject is karma and how my attempt at tracking down the bad parker turned out well for PW. We used to live in DC while Peter was in law school. We rented a house in Maryland and in the last few months we lived there, the landlords sold the house. (Yeah, that was awesome. Nothing like being forced to leave your home for open houses and it’s not even your house! But that’s another blog). The new owners didn’t take ownership until after we had packed up the car and moving truck and headed west. We got our deposit back and we said adios to our jerk landlords.

Flash forward almost 5 years to about a month ago. Peter ordered a vintage belt buckle (again, another blog) on Ebay. We rarely use Ebay these days and  unbeknownst to him, PW accidently shipped the buckle to our old address in Maryland.

Apparently the very sweet couple that bought the house remembered being told by the land lord that the tenants living in the house went to Georgetown Law and were moving back to Arizona. So Mrs. Sweet Lady looked up lawyers in the Phoenix area who went to G-Town and found PW’s profile. She sent him an email explaining that she had received a package and would he like her to ship it to him. Amazing, right? I think its nice to know that there are kind and thoughtful people out there who would go to the lengths that this lady did all because it was a nice thing to do. Karma is lovely that way.

The buckle arrived last night and Peter sent a nice thank you along with the cost of shipping – plus a coffee for her trouble. Gotta make sure Karma knows we appreciate the gesture.

Iced Tea Parties

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In our ongoing quest to stay cool and have some fun outside the house, Baylor and I have tea parties. She gets to take a bottle of water and pour it into her tea pot. Then she gets to pour the “tea” into the tea cups and serve Tome, Bear, Barbie, Mommy and herself. The best part is that she spills the majority of the “tea” all over herself thus keeping cool while having some fun. And she gets some water without me having to add juice to make it enticing. Win. Win. And one more win.

Sadly our host was drenched and therefore stripped down to a diaper by the time I grabbed the camera.

Tome likes Silly Glasses when he imbibes

Bay has to help Bear – without thumbs, tea cups are impossible to hold