I have the best husband and Jason ever!!

Well it is official!!! I have the best life! Friday the 13th was the beginning of the most fabulous birthday of my life!! Chris mentioned he had a little surprise planned and that I should bring a change of clothes to work because we would be short on time. I figured we were going to a show or had good dinner reservations because those are the sort of things that make me a happy birthday girl. A bit of background here: last week was honestly one of the busiest weeks at work EVER and I'd been just beat from the ten hour shifts. In walks Chris an hour before I'm supposed to be off and says he is there to pick me up!! I was confused... And then my boss walks by and says "yep!! Get goin'!". Can I just say that leaving work early might have truly been the highlight of it all, but just you wait. When I get out to the parking lot I am surprised to see Jason in the car with Rufus:

(the adorable dachshund pup that is the subject of my next 100 posts at least).
When I got in the car I figured I would get to hear the plan....but no. We drove to Salt Lake I was confused that Rufus was with us... were we headed to a dog show? We stopped in Clearfield and dropped Roofykins off at Chris's aunt Shelly's house to get babysat (we must be going to a show and dinner, me thinks) As we approach Salt Lake City we take a turn westbound! Ah ha! We are headed to Wendover!! Who could be headlining?? Boys II Men? Willy Nilson? What fun we will have on our trashy trip to Wendover!! As I am naming out guess's of possible C-class performers we could be going to I FINALLY realize that we exited from the road to all things trashy like 10 minutes ago and were now sitting in the AIRPORT PARKING LOT!! Hoooooray! I doubt I have ever been so stoked in all of my life!! The idea of an insta-trip thrilled me big time! Chris finally spilled the beans that we were headed for Denver (one of my fav places) and informed me that we had all kinds of fun things planned! Those tricksters!! We were REALLY pressed for time so we busted over to the terminal and flew out asap. The plane was TINY and as I walked on to it and was looking around I said "this is........ Cute" in a somewhat skeptical voice causing a large Santa looking lady to bust out into an uproarious laughter.... She thought I was REAL funny. don't know why I just shared that... I guess no detail is to small. When we arrived in Denver, we went to pick up our rental car and got a free upgrade.... The trip continued on it's perma-high point. We stayed in a really nice HYATT hotel room, can I just say- I was really impressed with their complimentary breakfast.

The next day we got an early start at all the awesomeness! We headed to the Denver City Botanical Garden's! Chris and Jason have heard me talk of nothing besides the gardens my sisters and I saw in PA and so they decided to treat me to this one! on our way we saw a farmer's market in session and stopped in. I LOVE these markets and was so happy to get to go to this one that totally showed up the one we have here at home. So many yummy foods, this market was no joke! Yumm! So we got a little turned around while looking for the gardens but I didn't mind because it gave us a chance to meander through a really ritzy part of town with tons of gorgeous houses. Denver is so Salt Lake Cityish to me. I'm defiantly a fan.

Anyways, the garden was really a treat! It wasn't quite as exotic as the Pennsylvania garden but that didn't make it any less of a gem. I LOVED it! It had a lot of Indian themed aspects, cacti, zero-scaping-- this garden was very true to it's roots (no pun intended). It was nice to spend some quality time in the outdoor gardens, everything smelled and looked so beautiful.

The fun did not stop!! Next up on the agenda was a tour of Hammond's Candy Factory. They specialize in candy canes and also ribbon candy but do some chocolates as well. I was really excited! A good time was had, but I will say it wasn't exactly the wonderful land of Willy Wonka if ya know what I mean. Chris pointed out that the company did not follow LEAN principals. Haha. At this point we were ready to get our EAT on! We headed for my restaurant pick Cherry Cricket. Hamburgers.Straight.From.Heaven. is what the joint should have been called. These burgers weren't kidding around. Jason was put off by the pinkness factor, but not me.... I enjoyed the ale cart burger topping menu that included cream cheese, fried egg, peanut butter and every other thing! This place was SO good, no wonder it was ranked number one on Urban Spoon. Eat there.


We headed back to the hotel, and later headed out for a lovely walk in the rain to the Denver light rail stop down the street. Quick note: One would think that Chris was the wicked witch of the west with the way he acts about a little rain fall..... He is a bit of a hydrophobic freak, bless his heart. I don't mind a spot of rain.... I find it invigorating. We took the rail to Larame's Square downtown. A super cute nightlife area where we had tickets to a comedy show! surprise after surprise! The comedian we saw was Nick Thune and he was funny! I didn't really know I would care for a comedy show, but I actually really enjoyed it. The lesser known comedians that opened for him were actually funnier. It was really fun, and not something we would normally do. Loved it! It was after 1 am when we got back to our hotel and I was tuckered! The next morning we had a breakfast and then pretty much had to head out. It was such an amazing whirlwind getaway, and I feel so lucky that that was my SECOND trip to Denver with my two best friends in the entire world. Can i just say props to my loving husband who secretly coordinated things at work to make sure I would be able to get away. Jason: wow! you really care about me. Chris: I know we are broker then Jason, so extra thanks to you for spoiling my brains out and reminding me that I am the luckiest girl in the world on a daily basis. I love you guys!!!! PS: I can't wait for you guys to trump this on my next birthday, wink wink!

SISTER TRIP PART 1!!!

Well! I Did it! I went on the most awesome trip ever! My dear sister Lisa recently moved from a house in Souderton PA to a darling place in Doylestown PA. This house happens to have an amazing history. It is located next to an extravagant mansion and was the care takers cottage at one time. On it's lot is a very unique water tower pagoda (of course). Well the house was awesome, and probably older then anything in my entire town haha.



After Lisa picked Kara and me up from the airport we drove around Philly for a while (it looks to be a very neat city with all kinds of artsy entertainment available.) We went to this really cool indoor market that had all sorts of vendors with different food ethnicity's. I had some delish Indian food with a yummy Lassi I had never tried: cardomom. I LOVED it. When we got back to Lisa's place we helped with some moving of items (she is still getting settled) and just spent some quality sister time. High lights included Kara and I both smacking our heads on the ceiling near Lisa's stair case, Kara coveting lisa's roller blinds, Lisa's levitating furniture, and squeezing the luxurious air mattress down the stairs. We then had a wonderful goldengirl-esque moment around the dining table-late at night- eating cheese cake!

The next morning was kind of leisurely. We just puttered around and eventually packed up the kids and all of the overnight stuff in a car and hit the road. We ate lunch at Wegmens. The most glorious grocery store you could ever dream of! It was wholefoods-ish but on a way bigger scale. I got sushi for lunch and really enjoyed the tofu that I got. YUM! We wondered around the store for much longer then anticipated and marveled at the cheese selection, meats, chocolates. Almonds in honey, every variety of caviar, nut and berry encrusted cheese, double devon cream and much much more. It was grand! We then continued our journey towards DC! We decided to make a stop at a garden that Lisa's was considering getting a membership to (fun events and concerts are scheduled there). It turned out to be THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE ON EARTH! Sorry to be blasphemous but I have a feeling it trumped the garden of Eden. It was on a huge, rolling piece of land and went on a stroll towards the conservatory. Well it was well AH-MAZ-ING! The only flaw was our own, we showed up 20 minutes till close :( . Well, we took in as much as we could and then had to leave... promising to return. Days later we were able to but , ALAS, we showed up 30 minutes till close! No regrets though, it was fun to get more time at the garden but it would have taken days to see all we really wanted to see. Here are some photos that do NO JUSTICE WHATSOEVER!
One of the advantages to coming just before close, BOTH times, is that no one was really around, it was our own Secret Garden!
Here is a picture of a vertical garden surrounding some elevator doors. Is that not amazing??
There were endless hallways that looked like this:
Here is the outside of the main conservatory. Beautiful!:
We only saw the tip of the iceberg of this gorgeous garden. Lisa purchased a membership for her and her family and it included a guest pass so go book a trip to visit her right now and you might get to see this!
This was a highlight for me. It was called "the Silver Garden" and was filled with silvery plants mostly cactus's (cacti I guess). Some of the plants were as high as the ceiling (A really high ceiling I might add). It was really an interesting take on a garden. I think Lisa really liked this part. IT looked "silvery-er" in person :)
Each section had it's own weather. Each room had it's own theme. Tropical. Desert. Forest. Jungle. We missed the whole Fruit garden and a whole lot more :(


Here Lisa and I are infront of the vertical garden.


After leaving the garden (the first time) we drove for quite a while. And finally made it to DC! It was dark when we arrived but we decided to take a good look around. We drove around and saw many of the memorials, all lit up in splendor, from the car. We got out of the car and walked up and saw the Washington Monument and spent quite a bit of time browsing the World War II memorial. Being the bad guests that we are, we arrived at Song's house at 11 PM. Song is my beautiful cousin who lives in Virginia (right outside of DC). She was so kind to stay up (with her fabulous husband Mike) and visit with us. Her house was lovely and her food was yummy! The next morning we headed out for a glorious day in DC! Well at this rate there is going to be like a sister trip part VIII. I will try to summerize on the next few posts. This is it for now.

WOW! It has been a LONG while! I just feel like my life is way too boring, and therefore un-blogable. After reading back on my last post I realized a few things have actually happened since then! Ya see, that was my plan. Let enough time go by so it seems like I have all kinds of news :) This is gunna be a massive entry. Let me just say that there is some poor photography issues and some weird layout issues on this post but I just want to post it as is so I can move on to more current junk soon! Welp, HERE-GOES!

I'll start out with an update on my quilting shananagons!
You know how I got a sewing machine for my birthday? Well I finished my first quilt and 3 others!!!! This is quite something, because let's be honest, I'm a quitter. My loving husband admits that he never thought he would see those scraps of fabric become a blanket. So supportive. Haha. Well, here is my first quilt eva!

Then I made this orange and brown one for Lisa's birthday, (I can't write this without it being underlined for some reason....why?)

I made this smaller lap blanket for our living room with Chris's help one night when we were bored. I am loving it!!!Below is a picture of Chris's pumpkin he carved! Utah state all the way!!! It looked way better in person!

Chris and I had such a fun time traveling to Houston to visit Chris's aunt and uncle and family! Shelly and Eric were the most amazing hosts as usual. They spoiled us rotten taking us out to fabulous restaurants for every meal, taking me to various upscale candy and cupcake shops, treating us to a comedy show, and more! I loved Texas's take on Thanksgiving dinner! The smoked turkey was the bomb-diggity! Love you Shelly, Eric, Adam, Marley and all of Eric's fabulous family!!!! Thanks for being so good to us!

Then it was on to Christmas!

FYI I stole the below pics from my sister Kuru's blog. And since most (if not all) of my viewers probably read her blog too, you've probably seen this before... but here-goes anyway. These photo's are from our mock Christmas Eve party. We had our annual party a bit early so that my darling sister Lisa could be present (while in town from "Tran"silvania.) We had your standard run-of-the-mill Lebanese dinner. It was AH-mas-ing! A huge shout out to my endlessly talented sister Kara for all of the delish main dishes. Menu items included pita bread, spanakopita, several varieties of hummus, spinach fatayer, lamb sfiha, fruits and veggies, ful mudammas, tabouleh....... (don't worry, I don't know how to spell or say any of that stuff.... I DO know how to use cut and paste from Kara's blog though). I particularly enjoyed the nativity scene this year. Aren't those kids darling??

Here is a picture of my favorite Christmas decoration! My talented granddad made this for me! It is a puzzle where all of the nativity scene fits inside the manger. Pretend the lamp is a shinning star (haha)!

Here's our Christmas tree!
Anyone who is reading this probably already heard about the most amazing Christmas miracle! My boss's at work surprised me with an iPAD as a Christmas bonus!!!! I have never been more thrilled! I have LOVE LOVE LOVED it! This is the picture I texted them afterwards so they would (hopefully) know how much I love it! Thank you SO SO much!!! Receiving such an amazing gift made me feel like a million bucks!
Here is a picture of Chris ( a common scene at the cook household where Chris rigs up a situation to work on homwork and watch various sporting events all at once) that was instantly transformed with one of my various fancy ipad apps!

how artsy!

The highlight of the Christmas season was when my darling sisters and I went to The Nutcracker! Afterwards we went out for a fancy dinner and talked for hours! It was such a treat.... an amazing gift really. There isn't a "christmasier" feeling then the feeling you have at the Nutcracker. A close second is watching Meet Me in St. Louis with your man by the Christmas tree. Lucky for me I did both this year! I am certain there isn't a luckier girl on planet earth.

There have been a lot of changes at my work place! One of the more exciting changes is that Chris now works there part time. He has the fun job of following up on denied medical claims and other various billing tasks. I love seeing his cute self around the office from time to time! I am really enjoying my job! I have been working as an assistant to the doctor(s) for quite some time and have had the opportunity to do a lot of learning. It has been such a good job even excluding the ipad!
I have seen a lot of really good movies lately! Here's a little taste:
My dear friend/co-worker Emily shares my love of musicals! I was telling her my sob story about my desperate search for two musicals that have all but vanished off the face of the planet! Anchors Aweigh and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. I was shocked when she told be that she owned both of them! She holds a secret weapon (a cutthroat yardsale shopper for a mother). Can I just say that the two hottie's pictured below melt my heart big time!
The Unsinkable Molly Brown isn't amongst the best of musicals but it's still good stuff!We of course went to see True Grit. LOVED IT!!!! There is hardly a Coen Brothers movie that we don't own (for good reasons too!) I love me some Jeff Bridges!!!
Chris finally got to go on his trip to Italy that has been after months of anticipation! I will be posting on that next time! Be excited... Be very excited! While he was gone Jason and I spent some quality time together! We watched Pride and Prejudice together! Not the wimpy short little two hour version with Keira Knightly. The 5 hour long A&E version that makes me swoon for some Collin Firth! All I have to say is.... "MR. DARCY!!"

In just 3 short days I will be leaving on a trip with my fabulous sister Kara to visit my fabulous sister Lisa in Pennsylvania!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We will also be going to DC and New York! This trip is going to be EPIC!!! I will let you know all the saucy details soon! I will leave you now with another sexy basset picture: