For the 5 people who haven't lost faith in my blogging abilities...

...I share with you the pictures of snow!!! I know, it's been well over 2 months since you have last heard from me, but here I am again. I am going to make a very concerted effort to be better at this whole thing and add to the blogosphere rather than just enjoying what others are sharing.

Apparently it is big news that Denver is getting up to 2 feet of snow over the past couple of days. I, however, have been at work a lot of this time so haven't gotten to enjoy much of it. Here are some pictures, though. We went out and played with Trucker in the snow this evening and got some video so I'm working on editing that to put it together (I have never edited video before so that may take a little bit). When I measured with a tape measure in the backyard this afternoon I got measurements anywhere from 15 - 18 inches. I'm not sure that I was all the way to the ground and I think the official measurement was closer to 2 feet, but I'll just go with what I measured. Needless to say, I didn't get snow like this growing up! And by the way, Atlanta would be shut down for days with snow like this!! But man is it fun!

View of the house from the corner

Trucker didn't quite know what to do with himself - or where to go to the bathroom - when I first let him out because the snow was so high

Historic Denver

As most of you know, we bought this house in a state of 1980s nostalgia about 20 months ago. We had lots that we wanted to (and plenty we had to) renovate and Mike had amazing "vision" for the process. One of his biggest visions was for the main floor bathroom. While it's not the only bathroom in the house, it is the only one that gets used now since the shower and the rest of the bathroom are in two separate places in the basement (and they are quite gross looking, really). But the bathroom did not start out usable. So like it or not, we had to start from scratch. Seriously, we used the bathroom in the basement for the first 5 months we lived in the house!

The most important thing in the bathroom vision was that we chose "period" style items including unpolished (i.e. impossible to keep clean) black and white mosaic floor tile, a subway tile surround in the shower, bead board, and a pedestal sink. And what's incredible is that other than the air conditioner register and the tub we had refinished, every thing else was bought new, and most at big box stores but really did look period. The only two things we had to order special were the flooring and the glass block window.

We shop a lot at the Habitat for Humanity Home Improvement Outlets when we are looking for house stuff. On one of our visits, we saw a poster advertising a contest sponsored by Historic Denver that was looking for historic homes renovated to keep the historic feel. Our cute little bungalow was built in 1925... and we had been doing a lot of renovations... so I picked up a flyer knowing that really, only our bathroom qualified, but hey, it was worth a shot, right? When we entered the contest in May, we had to choose only 5 photos of the entire renovation. I have gazillions of pictures of this house renovation and paring down the choice to only 5 to include before, during, and after? No way! But I did my best. I wish I could remember exactly which 5 I chose to send in, but here's an example of what I may have sent in (this is even 3 more than the judging panel got and I still feel like I haven't given a good enough idea of what went in to this makeover):

We had a great time doing all of our house projects, but it would be very exciting to be recognized for our efforts as well. In doing the bathroom in particular, I learned to wear gloves when using black grout lest your patients and their families think you don't wash your hands before work, how to use a nail gun, how to use a jigsaw, and that sometimes your first paint color doesn't work out; Mike learned how to use a gas powered saw to cut through brick to re-open a window that had been bricked over sometime in the past 75 years, how to lay subway tile, piece by piece, and when to stop and let someone else doing the grouting around the tub.

I hear that the judges have made a decision, so hopefully I will have some official news to pass on in the next few weeks!

Loads of updates, starting with Moose

A lot has been going on in the past month or two so I'll definitely split our updates in to multiple posts. We are "just" getting home from Hawaii and I'm still getting pictures organized. I'm trying to learn how to use Photoshop Elements but it's kind of a lost cause at this point in time. So alas, I will have to just post them the way they actually look... ugh. In looking through all the pictures, I'm surprised that we only took about 200 shots. I figured we had taken many more than that, but I realized that there is only so much you can actually capture on film.

One big update we have is that Moose is much better. Sometime in June we took him back to the vet for one of our "every couple of weeks" visits. He had continued losing weight (his last known weigh before getting sick, from last November, was somewhere around 20 pounds and the lowest he got during the liver failure was just over 11 pounds) and his eyes were still yellow. Seeing Moose go through so much was really quite awful. There were a couple of times that he would start getting better only to get worse again. Mike and I both honestly thought we were going to lose him. Here is how we fed him for almost 3 months (he came to hate it when you walked towards him with a towel knowing he was about to be Burrito Moose):
Our first visit to the vet was April 28th and our last appointment was June 17th. We took him to the vet every two or two and half weeks for that entire time and he was getting VERY slowly better, but not much. On our June 17th visit, the doctor decided to try an injection of corticosteroids as a last ditch effort. He said he had seen once before a cat come in with hepatic lipidosis and after 10 days of seeing no improvement, decided to try steroids with good results. Because we had been seeing minimal improvement each time, the doctor kept putting off the steroids (which, can I say, was by far the least expensive med we gave him throughout the ordeal) which can have sequelae in the way of lowering the immune system or bringing on diabetes for a cat who is already on the brink, among other things. Within a day or two though, Moose was eating through any amount of food we would put out in front of him. We left him in the bedroom with his food, water, and a litter box for a couple weeks just to make sure he was the one actually eating his food (since we saw Trucker and Oliver both eat it at some time or another) and by the time the second week of July came around, we transitioned him to eating where he previously had been in the basement.

One of the things I was most worried about was having to leave him when we went on vacation if we were still having to force feed him. Luckily, Lou didn't have to learn how to force feed the cat. When we got home last week, Lou said that everyone had been eating well and I immediately checked Moose's eyes for the awful yellow color. I'm happy to say that Moose is back to normal, eating any and all food put in front of him, and snoring away just like the night I brought him home... and just to try to prove the point, compare his ears in the two pictures below:

Moose in May - very icteric ears and scrawny with no energy at all

Moose tonight - I could barely keep him still enough to get a picture. Notice the non-yellow ears

A Surprise for Me

Following the amazing dinner that my husband made for me on Friday of last week, my actual birthday, I spent the next day NOT cleaning the kitchen (this is important later) and went shopping to try to find something nice to wear because I knew that we were going to be going out to dinner and then meet up with our friends somewhere to celebrate my birthday. I knew no more than that. Mike had been telling me that he made reservations for dinner somewhere (wouldn't tell me where) then we'd go to Wynkoop for a couple of beers with everyone. For the record, we hadn't been out downtown in ages, but hey it'd be fun.

Saturday morning, Mike was working out in the yard getting the last little bit of rock cleared out and made a trip to the dump during the day. I didn't think this was at all odd because that's what he does - the man cannot stop moving if he had too! He kept telling me what all had to be done - washing the dog, mowing the yard, making planter boxes... all kinds of things that had to be done in addition to his schoolwork. I, of course, kept telling him that it would fine - we could do it all tomorrow. I thought I got him to quit doing yard work and to go do schoolwork, but somehow I don't think that was actually the case.

So I get home from a very unsuccessful (read: frustrating) trip to the mall - seriously, I couldn't even find a cute new top to wear with jeans or a skirt, nothing - with just enough time to get ready (and try on everything in my closet at least once) before it was time to leave to go to dinner. Again, I'm thinking, "Mike, why on earth are our reservations so early? It's only 5:00 and this is Denver and it's summer and no one will be there..." My questions went essentially unanswered but we ended up at Izakaya Den (owned by the same brothers who own our favorite sushi restaurant, Sushi Den and conveniently across the street from said sushi restaurant) for a fabulous dinner of sushi and Japanese and Global tapas.

While at dinner, Mike says that we need to stop by the house on the way to meet up with our friends because there is a group present for me that he left in the garage that he wanted to bring since our friends had all gone in together on it. OK, whatever - I'm still not thinking anything too odd is going on. It would have made more sense to remember to pick up the gift on the way out when we left 2 hours before, but whatever.

So we get back to the house, the garage door goes up and I notice the Christmas lights that we have strung up from our rehearsal dinner last year are lit up. I asked why and Mike said he must have been playing with them and forgotten to turn them off. So then, I'm focused on finding the present to see what it looks like (I know, I'm awful, right?) that I don't notice that Mike is trying to steer me towards the backyard. When he opens the door to the backyard from our garage, I notice that someone has put streamers and a Happy Birthday banner up on the patio. Do I notice that 15 of our friends are hanging out to the left of me? No, that'd be too easy. FINALLY, I hear "Surprise" and tons of noise makers and notice that our friends are there, there are lights all around the backyard (good thing I cleaned up all the dog messes earlier in the day), there are bins of drinks - all the makings of a party!

So can I go back to the fact that I had at least 15 people (with more arriving later) at the house and I KNEW that the kitchen had looked like a complete wreck when I left for dinner, much less the rest of the house, and I was thoroughly embarrassed. So what's the first thing I do? I head straight for the kitchen. Did I think I was going to do the dishes? I'm not sure, I just knew I had to see what it looked like. I have amazing friends though who when they first showed up to get the party started, went straight to the kitchen and washed all the dishes. Luckily, no one cared that 90% of all the clothes I owned were strewn around my bedroom and that mail was sitting on the built-ins. And if I had only spent less time on my awful shopping trip and more at home picking up the house, I would have only been embarrassed because there was a surprise party in my backyard for me!!

You can fully appreciate the green grass!!

Harper was thrilled to partake in her first surprise party

A yummy red velvet cake - Matt and Emily did an awesome job!!

A Red Plate Night

From what Mike told me, when he was growing up, his family had a red place with the words "You are special today" on it. When Mike was home in April, his mom had found one of these plates at a consignment store and bought it to send home with us. We had the first option to use the plate for my 30th birthday.

The story goes that when something big happens in your life, you get to use the red plate. Then, on the back of the plate, you write what the special occasion was and what the date was. Mike said that his family ran out of room on the plate so they have a separate piece of paper with the rest of the special occasions. There is actually an entire blog about the red plate - go give it a visit. And if you are interested in getting one for your own family, I did a quick search and found them on eBay. The pen that comes with it seems to be a normal Sharpie, but I don't know for sure if that's the case.

For my 30th, Mike made me an amazing dinner inspired by one of my favorite meals growing up, Broccoli Chicken Fettuccine. Mike went so far as to call my mom and step dad to find out what my favorite meal was! Growing up we never had it with white sauce (unless I had it at Scalini's, which I often did on my birthday) but Mike went all out and even made homemade white sauce! I'll say I was quite impressed!!

Below are pictures from the meal. The first one is my original plate (before we remembered we were going to use the red place). Then you'll see Mike's plate of food... interesting how organized my plate is versus Mike's plate. Finally, the red plate.

I'm coming!

I have plenty to update everyone on but I'm currently trying to get my pictures downloaded and organized. I had a wonderful 30th birthday with some great surprises - but more on that later. Stay tuned - I'll be back soon!

All I want for Christmas...

You know you are getting older when any of the following things happens:

1. All of your birthday cards remind you how much older you are (and thanks, everyone, for that)
2. You realize you are one of the last ones without (at least) one child
3. You actually enjoy doing laundry (and might I say - not only do I enjoy doing laundry, I am quite particular about the way it is done - that could be a whole other post altogether)
4. All you really want from your husband for your birthday is for the housekeeper to come back and make the house as gorgeous as it looked 9 months ago for your wedding

Yes, today is the day I'm offically older, not becuase I'm 30, but because all of the reasons listed above.