Memorial Day Weekend

Last weekend Tanya came to visit us! I was SO excited to have her and her friend Rachel come stay with us for Memorial Day weekend and even more excited that they wanted to spend their time here shopping and exploring Colorado.

They rode in on a train on Friday. I picked them up from Union Station at 8:00 pm then we went home and just chatted.

On Saturday we went down to Castle Rock to visit the outlet mall. I tried my first caramel apple. It was amazing! Oh, I have been missing out. It was so sweet, juicy, healthy and unhealthy all in one! Tanya was one lucky shopper! She found cute stuff in quite a few of the stores. Rachel and I walked away with a single bag.

After Castle Rock we came back up and visited Cheery Creek Mall. It was fun to check out the mall in Colorado's richest neighborhood but it sure was hard to find an item under $600. We did find some yummy frozen yogurt though!

After our extravagant trip to C.C mall we ended up at very favorite store in the whole world. Super Target. I am so ridiculously in love with Target. I didn't buy anything fun really, but I did find some sweet deals in the clearance sections.

When we got home we whipped together a Tortellini salad for dinner. Then we watched the Fantastic Mr. Fox while Gary continued to entertain himself in the office.

Sunday started off with church, just like any other Sunday. We came home, changed and headed out to Red Rocks! We took some pictures there, walked around a bit and headed over to Kent and Jeanette's since Rachelle was also in town for the weekend.

We had Chicken Bundles and fruit. So yummy!!! After dinner we played Quelf. It's a silly game but I enjoy playing it. I don't think Tanya or Rachel enjoyed it much, but I sure did!

We left just in time to drive up to Boulder to show Tanya it's majestic view! I love the drive up, with the green luscious mountains and the green fields. It was pretty. I also enjoy roaming Boulder. There are some pretty unique folks up there but everyone is so kind and welcoming! It's the perfect little tourist, college town. We walked through Pearl Street Mall and watched the performers. That's my favorite part!

Finally we went home and got a few hours of sleep. We got up early Monday morning so we could go check out an "AM eatery" that I've been wanted to try. Kent, Jeanette, Mark and Rachelle all met us at our house and we headed over to Snooze. After our delicious breakfast Gary and I drove Tanya and Rachele back to Union Station to say our goodbyes. I was sad to see them go but we had a great time visiting with them.

Rachelle wanted to go see Prince of Persia:The Sands of Time so we went from Union Station up to Westminster to see it with them. We were thrilled that morning movies are so cheap! I'll admit, I slept through half the movie but I was dead tired from my amazing weekend and early morning.

After the movie Gary was so kind in allowing me to shop TJ Maxx while he sat in the car. It was my first time in there so I took a good hour! Though I was looking for shirts for myself, I came away with a whole new outfit for Gary for just $15! I'm a fan! Oh, and don't worry. I found myself a new outfit later at Old Navy and Target PLUS I got 2 new pairs of flip flops also all under $15!

It was certainly the best Memorial  Day weekend I've ever had!

Gary Gary Gary!

Click on any of the pictures to view full size!

Gary turned one year older yesterday morning. After making him his favorite muffins (orange cranberry) for breakfast we sat to enjoy our meal and he opened his presents. I gave him his gift (Mass Effect 2) the day I bought it because he thinks "If I buy it, why would I then wrap it up and wait to use it"? Good point I guess, though I like the anticipation.

Anyway, he received a nice pair of sunglasses from my parents along with a wireless XBox 360 controller. He was pretty excited!!!

He played Xbox for a while while I read about Gary's childhood. His mother has a detailed journal of what he did practically every day his first year. Then it tapers off to a couple times a week then to a few times a month til he's in middle school. I of course didn't read all of it, but enjoyed reading about his first year.

Then we went to Boulder and spent some time enjoying the Pearl Street Mall. I loved watching the street performers. We also had reservations to eat at a fancy restaurant called Med. I was excited that we got to order half off Tapas rather than a whole meal. We got to try about 6 of their dishes which filled us up for pretty cheap. I loved the lamb meatballs and the shrimp.

Then we went to Glacier Homemade Ice-Cream to try some of their most popular flavors. I was in Heaven!! My favorite was the lemon raspberry gelato! Yum!

Then we went home, watched a movie and waited to hang out with some of Gary's friends that were in town for the weekend. At 12:30 we figured they weren't coming over so we went to bed. Around 1:30 we got a text from them asking if we wanted to hang out. Gary jumped right out of bed and got ready to go! At 2:00 AM we pulled into Denny's for a midnight party! It was fun! We loved seeing some all of them!

Finally at 5:00 we got back into bed again and decided that we'd skip our church which starts at 9:00 and go to the noon one so we could at least get 6 hours of sleep. It was a great day!

Pics of the cool street performances!

Bad luck everywhere but smiles on our faces!

Today alone, I survived off of little to no sleep, I found that one of my favorite shirts has a huge hole in the arm pit and had a water bottle leak in my purse causing all sorts of messes! Luckily Gary's birthday package from my family contained chocolate. Gary kindly donated a piece to me and I'm as happy as can be! I also got to spend my day with two cute kids. We had fun singing silly songs, reading books, played outside avoiding the bees and even did hide and seek!

Yesterday I started off my day by running to Walmart for a couple of items. When I came back Gary said he was about to call the police due to a very offensive, obscene and threatening voice mail from a random guy in LA. Whatever. I handed him my phone since I happen to have Denver police non emergency on my call list. The police said they would come by to see if we needed to file a report. After the officer listened to the message he said we could file a report since it wasn't just harassment but a few threats were thrown in there too.

He said he'd turn it in to the detectives to start an investigation to find the guy and what not. I had little faith that they could or would do anything about it. I am 99% sure the phone number he used to call us was a fake since there are handfuls of reports online of pranks from the same number but from different people. Today however, we got a call back from the officer. He said that the case has been handed over to the FBI because this guy has called some government officials as well. The good news is that when threats are thrown at government, they do everything they can to find the suspect and as a result, I feel safe again.

My life is a secret!

Just to be safe, I’m finally setting my blog to private. If you would like to be a reader, send me an email and I’ll be sure you are on my allowed list! I’d love to share my life with all of my friends and family. I just don’t want those crazies out there to be in on it too.

Thank you!!! And please don't stop reading!

email me at:
laurabdora AT hotmail DOT com

Spring!

Well, Spring is here! I have never been so excited for this time of year! The sun is out, the rain is pouring and tax season is over. We survived!

I was expecting to be working 15-17 hours a day last week to get all the processing/auditing done the last few days of tax season. Luckily, the longest day I put in was 15 hours. It really wasn't that bad either. I loved it! I enjoy having purpose to life.

I have been enjoying my lazy week though! It's nice to have some down time. Gary has a bit of a cold so we've been sleeping and taking things slow. We are spending a little time in helping Gary's dad move offices this week and next. He's moving just across the street practically. It'll be nice to be in a busy, more visible location and I LOVE moving into new places! I can't wait to unpack and get things all settled.

I've been babysitting a bit and was thrilled to schedule about 10 future dates to sit for friends in the ward. I love spending time with kids and having something to do now and then. Other than that, I've mostly been cooking, cleaning and shopping!!!!

My new red purse! Though you can't see all of it....

Speaking of shopping, Tanya and her friend are coming to visit me next month! I'm really excited to spend some time with girls and do some shopping with them. I'll be setting aside that babysitting money to splurge when they arrive!

Well, I'm off to go cook dinner and get ready to go sit! Oh! and I also wanted to mention that this week, we tried Filipino food! We even tried oxtail and tripe. I wouldn't really recommend the tripe but Filipino food is pretty awesome!

Easter Eggs!

Gary's siblings act a little different than my family....

 I guess they just REALLY love eachother!