Where Has February Gone??

With the exception of last week, this month has flown by so fast! Before I know it, I'm 11 days behind on photos again! Last week was just a stress overload for so many reasons, but mostly school. My lab was due on Wednesday, and while I worked on it every night for hours, i didn't get it figured out and turned in until Thursday afternoon. My professor this semester is something else! I am thankful that Penn State only recommends taking one course at a time. I think they are spot on with this one!

So what else have we been up to lately?

February 11:

My guys relaxing at home on a quiet Friday night. The top of the couch is Pongo's favorite spot to sleep, no matter what couch he is on.
February 12: We went up to Copper to ski with our friends Nick and Carlene. This picture was taken during our lunch break a the car.

The snow wasn't that great, so after lunch, we decided to spend the afternoon tubing instead. It was our first time to try tubing, and it was so much fun!! Here are Matt and Nick going down the "fast track" together.





February 13: A photo of the mountains at Copper. I will never ever get used to the beauty of these mountains!





February 14: Valentines Day!! I came home to find all of this "love" waiting on the doorstep and in the mailbox.














February 15: This is the cake I made for dessert on Valentine's day. We ate it all week, so I figured I could post this as today's picture. It's ingredients include: german chocolate cake mix, condensed milk/caramel topping melted together, crushed Heath bars and Cool Whip on top. I added the raspberries for decoration.

February 16: We went out to dinner for Liz's birthday up in Westminster. Liz and I have ONLY known each other since I was born (I'm 2 months younger), so I couldn't possibly miss another birthday. :)





February 17: I took the puppies for a walk as I normally do after work. Perdi was so impatient for me to throw the ball that she didn't want to take the time to pose for a picture! She just kept jumping for her squeaker tennis ball instead.


February 18: We headed up to Ft. Collins for a little getaway. We went to the Rio for their infamous margaritas. Matt ordered a "mini" margarita. Look how cute it is!!




























February 19: Susie and I worked on our quilts some more. And guess what? We finished them!! Granted it was Saturday night at 2 am. But we were determined to get them done and we did!






February 20
I rest my case that Pongo's favorite spot is on the top of any couch. Here he is, on top ofTed and Susie's couch. Perdi opted for the fuzzy blanket, probably because she was guarding some bones that she buried in it.






February 21: Matt and I ran the furthest distance either of us have ever gone to date. 19.1 miles!! It's hard to believe that to complete a marathon, we will have to run 7 more miles on top of that. We ran an "out-and-back" course, meaning we ran out 9.5 miles and then turned around and ran the same route back. By the time we turned around, we were almost to downtown Denver! This picture is of the socks that save my life on every long run. They keep my feet really dry somehow, and do a great job at preventing blisters. I like how they are marked with an "L" and "R" to mark which sock goes on which foot. I have never had socks where that matters before!














February 22:
This is a random picture I found on Matt's camera from our Janurary trip back to Kansas, but I realized I haven't mentioned this cute little guy on my blog yet! This is my new puppy "nephew" George. He is Alissa's newly adopted puppy, a very cute and sorta shy Lhasa Apso. He enjoys shredding paper and walking in circles. George is very quiet and well behaved. I have to admit that I wish our beagles would take on a few of George's behaviors sometimes! :)




















February 23: This is the strawberry freezer jam that I made myself. I never knew that making jam was so easy! If you come visit us, rest assured that at the very least, we will have lots of fresh jelly for your toast! :)

February 24: Matt and Pongo sleeping are taking full advantage of my finished t-shirt quilt! I love how big it is. It covers me from head to toe. I hate bankets where my feet stick out the bottom when I pull it over my head. A quilt this big was a challenge to sew, but it turned out great, for my first real sewing project! I have a couple more projects in the works already. I will post them as I go!

February 25: I know, so many pictures of the dogs on this post! I rarely ever catch these two snuggling together, so I thought this was absolutely adorable!

Early February Photos

The first week of February was pretty uneventful. I apologize in advance for the lack of creative photos here today.

February 2: Bananas are the one food I eat every single day. However, last week i didn't gt to the store and so we didn't have any around. My body didn't like that much. I will make sure we have bananas from now on!

February 3: I have blogged about my love of doing laundry before. It's so weird and I can't explain it. It's just something that kind of relaxes me somehow. Maybe because it's so mindless.

February 4: Ok, there is one caveot to the whole laundry thing. I hate socks. I would prefer to leave them in a giant pile and never deal with them.

February 5: I went to Ft. Collins for a couple of days of sewing with Susie. The pups came along since Matt had to work. Pongo, again thinking he is human, decided he wanted to do some sewing as well.

February 6: I got quite a bit done with Susie's help. I finished sewing the top 4 blocks on. We went shopping for the rest of the materials and I got some black fabric for the edges, batting for the middle, and some soft gray fleece for the back. I still have to sew the layers together and then cover everything with a bias strip (some quilting lingo I learned). But the darn thing is looking great and it's so big I could barely get it all in one picture!

February 7: Matt made his secret recipe! It was soooo good! He ended up making Shepherd's Pie with Andouille and Italian sausage as the meat layer. It also had another secret ingredient that made the whole thing extra amazing. I think I will keep that a secret for now.

February 8: We got a ton of snow. Some of the snow in this picture is from the previous two or three storms that haven't melted yet. But seriously, our little house might be buried soon if this keeps up!

February 9: We officially planned to head up to Copper this weekend so i thought I would post a picture from the last time we were there, just a few weeks ago!

February 10: Today, I drove all over Denver to sell a couple of tickets to the KSU-CU game on Saturday. We had a bunch of extra tickets to this game and the Nebraska-CU game on March 5 because CU makes the KU fans buy two other games in addition to the KU game. It drives me nuts! But at least I was able to sell these. $45 bucks...yeah!!

Some More Catch-Up

Let's see...where did I leave off?


Jan 27:

I'm not sure why I keep blogging about Christmas presents, but one of Matt's presents was two tickets to the KU-K-State basketball game in Lawrence. We flew to KC for a three day weekend with family, friends and KU Basketball.

January 28: I guess I didn't do a good job of taking pictures because all of the ones I found were from gameday on the 29th. Before the game, we went to eat at El Mezcal in Lawrence, which was one of our favorite restaurants in college. This picture of unhealthy food pretty much sums up our weekend. For lunch on the 28th, we had Oklahoma Joes BBQ after a 12.5 mile morning run. That evening for dinner, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings with Alissa and Anne. Jake and Meredith also met us there, and they are newly engaged! We have a lot of weddings to attend this fall, but that is another post. Then of course on the 29th, we had El Mez. This is a picture of the best cheese dip on the planet. Not kidding.

January 29: GAME DAY!! After a wonderful breakfast and a couple hours of Super Mario for Wii with Alissa, we headed to Lawrence for lunch and the game. We also picked up a few goodies at the Jayhawk Bookstore. KU stuff is hard to come by out here in Colorado! Here is Matt in front of a mural in Allen Fieldhouse.

January 30: We flew back to Denver in the afternoon. Then it was time for me to hit the books! I had a huge work load of homework due the following Wednesday. Speaking of books, this is my huge textbook for this term. Can you believe I lugged it to Kansas and didn't even so much as open it while I was there?!?

January 31: More frantic studying on my part. Perdi tried to help, but she got the same results that I usually do when I stare at the computer too long.

February 1st: More studying. But on another note, we have been getting a little frustrated lately with the lack of running opportunities with all the snow we have been getting lately. It seems like just as soon as it warms up and the snow melts off the paths, the next storm moves in. Sometimes the snow doesn't even get chance to melt before more comes down! We found a decent solution for the short weekday runs, (**Unless the high temperature is -2 degrees, as was the case most of last week). We got these shoe attachments called Yaktrax. They go around your normal running shoe and give you more traction in the snow. They work well for traction, but it takes a lot more energy to run in them!

Well there...I got a little more caught up and finished my first month of daily photo blogging! I have to admit that it is really hard to remember to take my camera everywhere and more importantly, to take pictures! Its especially hard when I get behind...I have got some good photos yet to post of this past week. I will get those up tomorrow. I really like reading your comments, so please add them if you are enjoying following this project!

A Few Days' Worth

Since I left you hanging with January 19's picture, I will get right down to a few photos to try and get myself caught up after a busy couple of weeks. Don't worry...I haven't abondoned my project! I might even sprinkle a few extras in here to make up for my absense. :)

January 20: Not a particularly exciting day. I filled up the gas tank in the Highlander. Ouch.


January 21: Anne flew out to Denver for a visit. I picked her up Friday evening and we downloaded old school Super Mario Kart for the Wii using a gift card I got for Christmas. It was fun to play Mario Kart just like we did during our good ol' college days!

January 22: We drove up to Ft. Collins and took a tour of the New Belgium Brewery with Becky and Jim. That was probably the most beer I have ever gotten during one brewery tour! At the end of the tour, they provide post cards which you can fill out as you sample the last two beers. We took advantage of the free postage. :)

January 23: We took Anne up to Copper mountain for her first skiing experience. Jim, Becky and their friend Scott came along too. Look at Anne skiing like a pro on her first day!

January 24: Poor Anne had to hang out at the house with the dogs while we worked. This picture is actually from Tuesday the 25th, but I am subsituting it for the 24th since we did so many things on the 25th. These are our pretty toes after a pedicure before the CU-KU game on the 25th.

January 25th: We drove up to Boulder for the CU-KU basketball game. I didn't take any pictures because the game was so intense and I was busy being mad at the CU students, who were chanting things that would make me embarrassed to be a CU fan. After the game, we drove back down to Denver and had a pizza dinner at Anthony's near our house. Don't worry...we didn't eat the whole thing in one sitting! :)

January 26: Matt had the day off, so he and Anne did some shopping and Matt bought something he has wanted to get for a long time. It's Andouille sausage and I am really excited to see what he is going to make with it. I'll keep you posted on this one.