New Venue

Between work and wedding planning, I have no time to blog... to top this... I have finally bravely gone where so many programmers have gone before - website design.
Right now the website is solely wedding geared, but when all of that planning slows down, I will begin to partition off a blogging section. Wish me luck.

With that said - I formally redirect you to www.samandlynn.com until further notice :)

New Hardware

EEEEEeeeeeeKKKKKKkkkkkkkk
Last week we ordered my ring, but sadly my freakishly small hands required a custom order. The jeweler, understanding that no girl wants to wait 2 whole months for a custom ring, has lent me a near replica until my actual ring is ready at the end of January. It too had to be sized down to my 4 1/4 size, but tonight we picked it up... I LOVE it :)

Catch Up

Lots of photos, few words....
Terror in the corn with friends...
First snow of the season - didnt stick...
Broncos game ....

Belated Thursday Weekend Update

1. We initially didn't plan on being festive this year for Halloween. In the past few years we've determined that the least stressful Halloween involves trapping the dogs in our bedroom with us to watch scary movies with all of the house lights out. Unfortunately, b/c the puppies go crazy when the doorbell rings, and insist on pushing through your legs when the door is opened, and because their size scares most children, 'trick or treaters' simply aren't much fun for our situation. Consequently, carving pumpkins just seems pointless.

Now with that in mind, we received a coupon for a free pumpkin from one of the large cut it yourself pumpkin patches - and who can resist something free? So we spent an hour or so hunting for just the right pumpkins and walked out with 4 perfect pumpkins - I guess coupon promotions really do work.

2. The timing was perfect given our commitment to the annual Fondue & Pumpking Carving party that night. Always a blast, and fortunately no major injuries this year like last year (a cement face plant during a game of beer pong, a seared lip from a fondue skewer, and flaming splashing fondue gel to an eyeball to name a few).

3. Sunday was a lazy tv and dog nap kind of day. Sam snapped this shot of a very lazy Pepper dog looking for Animal Planet on TV. Note her most productive action of the day - keeping my feet warm under her rear end.

4. Later that afternoon, I noticed this guy sitting outside our bedroom window. We've seen him before on our neighbor's roofline, but I didn't realize back then just how large he is. We're lucky that our dogs are so large that they can defend themselves. We just had two small neighbor dogs picked off by a pack of coyotes right out of their backyard. We suspect this little horned guy is hunting the plentiful voles from our backyard. He was not phased by me opening the window, talking to him and snapping a few photos. Hallie on the other hand was NOT pleased that he was in the backyard. I captured a short video of her telling him off. She continued to go outside the rest of the night and look for him in the same spot (even though he'd been gone for hours).

5. Sam carved another one of his pumpkins during the week last week and left him glowing at me in the garage when I arrived home late from work. He has such an amazing talent for precision - mine will look more like a pumpkin pie when I'm done with it :)

Three on Thrusday (on Friday)

1. As expected October so far has been a VERY busy work month. Between the beginning stages of 2011 Operating Plan, preliminary 2010 audit work, Q3 close, and the usual bombardment of daily work, I've also voluntarily taken the AP check run process off one of my coworkers plates to try to document and improve the process. Needless to say my hours at work have been insane and included a few full weekend workdays. So you can imagine how delighted I was when our lead auditor Jenn, decided to join me for Margarita happy hour (on the company's dime no less!) on Friday night. She's a great amount of fun (in an empathetic nerdy accounting way); I hope we're able to remain friends after she leaves auditing to pursue her career in industry. I don't have a lot of friends who enjoy talking accounting over drinks... :)

2. Newest addition to the yard: "MJ' - another Winterking Hawthorn to keep "Elvis" company. We received a certificate from the Town of Erie for a tree discount (50% of tree cost up to $125), so we casually waited until the annual fall tree sale at The Tree Farm in Longmont. MJ retails at $370 and we walked out the door at $101 taxes included! Laura was kind enough to lend her truck to us to bring the big boy home, but we didnt realize how heavy he really was!! Sam grabbed the neighbor to help lift the tree out of the truckbed, but getting it down the side yard in a severely broken down wheelbarrow was frightening. MJ will be winterized but not planted until next spring as part of the second water feature design project - woohoo!

3. In light of the crazy work schedule, I insisted on a few comp days at the end of the month to regain sanity and rebuild 'the fuse'. It's been tough trying to make those comp days fit into the schedule, but I believe I succeeded today (despite the fact that I now need to work over the weekend to be prepared for a meeting on Monday) maybe next year will be different. For today's relaxation/rejuvination agenda, I will be meeting my good friend Laura downtown for a spa day... complete with anti-aging facials, swedish massages, hydrating body wraps, and floatation. What is 'floatation' you may ask? I did the same. I found this spa online listed as one of Denver's top 5 spas, and when researching their website learned about floatation (big selling point as they are the only floatation location in Denver). The general idea is this... you lay in a dark pod filled with 10 inches of dense salt water and calm music and let the world move at a fast pace without you. Both of the women at the spa told me that it is equivalent to 7 hours of sleep for you body - which is a great thing since I don't seem to be getting that in my bed at night. I'm anxious to see if the fuss holds any water (pun intended). I expect to come out 10 years younger and ready to take on the world!

< The pleasures and perks of the modern float tank are based on a revolutionary scientific approach to deep relaxation called Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique or R.E.S.T. for short, first developed back in 1954 by researchers at the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) in Washington.

Three on Thursday

1. Went to Zac Brown Band at Red Rocks on Sunday night... what an amazing show. I still don't know the name of the little blues band that opened, but they were equally amazing. We arrived early afternoon and tailgated in the 3rd row of the parking lot for a few hours. You might call it tailgating, but given that I forgot the grill, it was more like a little parking lot party :)

2. Having worked almost the entire weekend, I decided to take Tuesday off work as a comp day to finish some last minute details for the cruise. I spent nearly 4 hours at the gorgeous enormous Cherry Creek Mall, and officially decided that I might be addicted to shoes after oggling a pair of $700 Jimmy Choo's. But I got ahold of my roots and found this amazing pair of sparklies to go with my new dress at a bargain clearance price of only $17.02 (including tax!!). I love Macy's.

3. The cruise officially begins in 3 days... Hurricane Lisa officially started brewing in the western Carribean today. The weather forecast is as follows ( I used fun bubbly icons to keep my spirits up that even T-storms and rain can be fun - so long as I have enough Bonine).

Monday - at sea: Tampa weather 89 deg Scattered T-storms
Tuesday - Grand Cayman: 87 deg T-storms
Wednesday - Cozumel: 83 deg Isolated T-storms
Thursday - Isla Roatan, Honduras: 88 deg Showers Friday - Belize: 87 deg Showers
Sat - at sea: Tampa weather 88 deg partly cloudy

Yup, thats right, the weather starts getting really nice, the day we get back to Tampa and fly home... hahaha.. oh well.. at least it's a break from work.

An Evening with Monkey Rose