E.J.'s first trip to Wash Park

Elyse brought baby Elle to volleyball on Tuesday. It was babies first trip, of many I'm sure, to Wash Park!! It was the most of the girls' first time seeing the little one, they LOVED her. It started to storm so baby and mama had to jet, but I think little Elle had a fabulous time!!

Daily Deals

I've been getting out and about in the great cit-ay of Denver lately due to some lovely websites that offer fabulous daily deals.

My favorite is Groupon. I get 1/2 of restaurant coupons, dance classes, memberships to various places around Denver, magazine subscriptions, etc. It's so rad!

I most recently got a year of 5280, a local Denver magazine for $5. My homie from work and I also bought some ariel dance classes. The real point of sites like Groupon and Livingsocial is to get you to try new things. Would I normally buy a punch card to an ariel dancing facility....um, no. but when it's such a great deal on Groupon how can you pass it up?? I am thrilled with everything that I've bought on these sites.

Another one is restaurants.com, this one you just enter your zip code and it comes up with a bunch of restaurants in your area and gives you sweet deals. Not as good as Groupon, but also easier to find and buy. These ones are up on the website for months at a time, not just one day at a time.

Go check 'em out, they have Groupon and Livingsocial in many major cities and restaurants.com in most places period. So, get out there and try new things, places and food in your area!!

Scrabble

I love scrabble. Or at least I thought I did before I realized the rest of the world was playing scrabble online, on facebook, on special scrabble blogs. Me, I just play occasionally, all in real life, not cyberlife. I think all you scrabblers out there (and believe me, there are a lot of you) will like the two scrabble options below!

BACKYARD, DO-IT-YOURSELF, SCRABBLE

This one is a giant, make it yourself, scrabble board you can put outside. What a fun project, I might try it somewhere discreet, like on the side of the garage or something, I don't know, maybe in the middle of the golf course.

SCRABBLE SCRAMBLE

This one I just bought last weekend. I was skeptical when I bought it, travel scrabble, really? Could this be fun? YES! It rocks, I will take it camping with me all the time. everything, including the board fits in the little cup with a screw on lid. Other places I might take it: to work (people there are obsessed with Scrabble and this game just screams "LUNCH HOUR FUN"), Egypt, the park, BBQ's, I could go on and on...basically, I think I'll just carry it around in my purse at all times.

Porcupine who thinks he is a puppy!

Came across this online, makes me want to get Britta a porcupine sister ;)

Outdoor Shower | A Great Idea

I would like an outdoor shower...I don't know why everyone is against this idea?!

The plan would be just to put it on the East side of the house where it will be flanked by two sides of fence and one side of house, with the last side being open...what? who can see over there, come on people.

It's also a practicality issue. I mean, we only have one shower in the house, proving to be difficult some mornings as well as when we have guests...which is alot (all of whom I love, if you haven't visited yet, get your tushy out here!). Seriously, an outside shower would be fantastic!

Baby Elle Pix

Baby Ellie update. Ellie and Lyse and still doing great. I have uploaded some pix from that crazy day, 6 days ago. Unfortunately my nicer camera's memory card became corrupt after Elle's birthday :( Jack is going to try to fix it...but these pix will have to do for now.

stats

Name: Elle Jane Gerald

Birthday: July 13th, 2010 (Grandma Myrt's Birthday)

Weight: 7 lbs 1 oz

Length: 20 inches

Hair: Brown and Mohawky

Eyes: Blue

Cuteness Level: HIGH

Little Elle is getting bigger, cuter, more vocal and wigglier by the day. I cannot believe how much she has changed in 6 days. Imagine the next six and the six after that and the six after that.

I can't tell yet who she looks like, Bret or Elyse She has Elyse's cute little chin and one dimple on her right cheek...but I guess time will tell.

Eric Joyner

Eric Joyner is one of my new favorite artists, he's from San Fransisco and specializes in ROBOTS + DONUTS. I'll give you one guess who turned me onto him...you guessed it, Mark!

This last one is my screen saver on my work computer and people comment on it all the time, donuts and robots...what's not to Love? I'd really like to go see some of his stuff in person and get a couple of autographed prints for the casa, you can check him and his work out here.

A perfect quote for today...

I think Elyse and Bret will have a great life will Elle Jane! This quote made me think of what an exciting time their going through right now and what a wonderful life the three of them will have. I'm so excited to be a part of it, I'm a lucky lady!

RoseBaby

Lysee-poo at Rose Hospital the night before Baby Elle Jane was born.

She started having contractions on Monday morning at 4 a.m at didn't have the baby until TUESDAY morning at 9:32 a.m., that's 30 hours of labor folks.

I went to go see her Monday night which is when this pic was taken (on my computer), she was pretty drowsy, so she pretty much just slept. I got a chance to talk to Bret and he caught me up on the events of the day.

Her nurse, Amy, is actually from Iowa and her husband is my friend that I worked with at the Piano Lounge for 2 years...funny!!! What a small world. Amy was Elyse's favorite nurse and really took care of her before the epidural kicked in...THANKS AMY!!

A Monday with no work=bike riding fun

Bike riding season has officially begun in CO. I know it should have started a while ago...but it didn't. I finally busted out the 'ol bicycle when I had a morning meeting on Thursday about 8 blocks from my house, since then I'd ridden it everyday I had been in town. We rode down to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and met the rest of our gang.

We parked our bikes at the free bike valet and started walking around, checking out the art...and tents where they gave out ice cream sandwiches. Great fair. Good art. Free Heineken Light samples. Overall good time :)

Salmon Lake Hike + Camping

Corey, Britta and I went hiking and camping this past weekend. Corey and I hiked about 20 miles which means that Brit Brit probably went 24 miles or so and the pic above was the end of the second day...she has so much energy.

Salmon Lake is a great hike, long, but good! Another plus is that it's relatively close to D-town. You just go to the Silverthorne exit, go right, take a left at the Wendy's and follow the hill up to Buffalo Mountain Drive until it dead ends, take a right up the hill and look for parking.

We let Brit out of the car, let her off her leash and she was off sniffing and running, SHE LOVES HIKING!/she loves being off leash. I wish she acted so good in the city, I guess there's just too much going on in Denver for her to roam off leash (i.e. squirrels + cars). The first meadow that we came to was FULL OF SKEETERS :( They ambushed us, all of a sudden they were all over us, we walked/ran for 5 minutes....and then realized we were too out of breath to continue at that pace so we slowed down. But the skeeters were still there. They eventually thinned out but never really left us alone, damn mosquitoes! We didn't have very good directions to Salmon Lake and we were in an area that had many trails all going off in different directions. Corey made some very educated decisions and got us on the right path, woo hoo!

At about mile 6.5 we started scouting out places to set up camp and we found one where we thought there were fewer skeeters than the rest of the forest ;)
We set up camp, grabbed some snacks and continued to Salmon Lake (another mile and a half). When we arrived there was nobody else on the entire lake! It was awesome! Before I even realized we were at the lake I heard Brit Brit splashing around in the water. She had run ahead (like she always does) and jumped in the lake and just started swimming around. SHE LOVES SWIMMING!
We had some snacks, tried reading, took photos, played with Brit and fished. Salmon Lake is most definitely worth the long hike in and up. The panoramic were amazing. Corey attempted to fish for some din din (who doesn't love trout pizza?!), but Britta kept jumping in the water and scaring all the fish off...Brit and I thought it was hilarious, Corey on the other hand...he really wanted to catch a fish. We stayed at the lake until mid afternoon, we still had to hike back to camp. On our way back we ran into bunches of people, some had goats carrying all their camping equipment, it was so funny....made me want to get a goat.

Corey had to be creative while hiking with a fly fishing pole and big pack on!

Once we got back to camp we set up or fire pit, made some benches to sit on, did some reading and card playing and then made din din. When we were packing our packs the night before our trip we had some red beans and rice and other "normal" camping food, but then we decided to live on the edge and bring a bunch of food to make pizza with. What a good, fun idea! we cooked all our veggies first, then browned both sides of our pizza crust then put all the ingredients together to make some fabulous pizza. Tomato, Broccoli and Pepper jack pizza while camping, what a refreshing change from red beans and rice or ramen noodles! It would probably be hard if we had a whole group of peeps trying to make pizza (it was a little messy), but for just Hayes and I, it was great.

Once dinner ended it was getting dusk, we put Brit in the tent (she fell asleep instantly) and we stayed out until the fire died checking out the stars that we don't get to see in the city.

The next day we woke up early/Brit woke us up early because she wanted out to go chase ground squirrels. We made some b-fast, packed up camp and hiked over to Willow Falls where we ran into 2 IOWANS, it's a small world out here in CO. At the falls we leashed Britta b/c there were a lot of drop off cliffs....I'm an overprotective doggy mama I guess. When we hiked back to the car Britta ran through the parking lot into a shaded area by our car and laid down and tried to fall asleep, all in about 30 seconds... she was a pooped pup. Her papa was pretty pooped too...so was her mama. I love doing hikes that really take it out of me, they're the best!

Egypt?

Many years ago I found myself in the Giggling Grizzly, a local establishment, with my good friend Ben Jammin'. We were drinkin' beers talking about how much we each like to travel. We decided that in 2010 we were going to go to Africa. This convo would come up every now and then after we'd been drinking, "Hey Liz, you remember we're going to Africa in 2 years, right?!" "right Ben." I'd say, not really giving it much thought.

Then, 2010 rolls around and I find myself at Thai Basil with Ben and Corey discussing...a trip to Africa. Only this time, it's not after 6 beers, it's been planned and we're actually serious :)

We did more than just discuss logistics, like how long we spend in Cairo, cruisin' the Nile, Petra, Jerusalem, etc. We talked about our chances of remaining friends if we traveled together for 18 days...

We spoke frankly with each other; what if we want to stay an extra day somewhere, are we all going to be flexible? What if we need to take a flight from Cairo to Petra and it is $100, are we all down with that if the alternative is a 12 hour bus ride for $3.50??? It sounded like we all had similar travel styles and the same kind of idea of how our trip might go.

I'd rather not go travel with Ben if we're just going to fight about this and that and not be friends when we get back to D-town. But after we talked and discussed how we should travel (ex: with open communication, pre-travel planning, equal input, etc.), I feel grrrrreat about going on a trip with Ben!

I grabbed my notebook and my calendar from my bag....Ben grabbed the books he'd checked out from the public library, his printed maps, currency converters and notes...clearly he'd been looking into traveling to Africa for quite some time. We hashed out some places we'd all like to see, dates we might be able to go (over Christmas) and how long we think we'd like to stay in each place. So as of today, we have a very rough idea of where we're going over Christmas and who we're going with (Amanda said she might be interested...so we're waiting to hear from her!).

I need to renew my passport, it expires in November of this year, check out some of my own books from the library, do some research, get a visa to travel to Israel and BOOK MY FLIGHT. But from the looks of it, we're headed to Africa and the Middle East in December :)

Ill let you know when I buy my plane tickets...that's when it becomes real!

Haircut :)

before

Welp, I got a haircut. It felt like a big deal last night when Amanda came over and cut my hair int the backyard with two dogs running around Amanda's feet tempting fate b/c she had JUST sharpened her shears; which she only does once every 8 months or so...be careful dogs!

after

After looking at the two pix close together, the before and after, I have come to realize that I went through no great feat....it seriously felt like 12 inches last night. I guess it was just a combo of not cutting my hair for 8 months, dogs running around like crazy and newly sharpened shears...

I almost think I should go shorter...what do you think?

Pandas and Tigers and Dogs, oh my!

What a cute panda, right?!

Gotcha! These are dogs made to look like pandas and tigers...I love it!



What should we make Britta Bear into? She's a tiny, black and white GSP, any ideas?