Twinsies

Christmas Eve 2011 brought us twins in the form of my dad and Eric. Playful posing quickly went from this:

to this: 

I still am unsure about what happened here, but it gives me a good laugh.
Dan also joined the white T trend on his own terms

Obviously it's been a very good year. Happy New Year to all! Hopefully regular posting will begin again soon :)

Sitges

On one of the days before our cruise, Dan and I took a day trip from Barcelona to Sitges. We had a slight incident at the start when we randomly took a train that we thought was heading to Sitges, but actually flew right past it. It wasn't our finest moment of the trip, but we figured it out fairly easily and it was the only time that we got lost for the remainder of our time there.

One of a million window shots I took along the way.

Sitges was awesome.

They have over a dozen public beaches to choose from.

They all run into each other and there is a really great overall atmosphere to the place.

Plus the beach pretty much had the softest sand of any place I have ever been. Seriously, I still think about that sand months later. Is that weird?

Since it was the first of many beaches we would go to on our vacation, I didn't really appreciate it as much as I should have. Who knew almost every other stop would have rocky "sand".

After beaching it we went up to the old church that overlooks the water.

And no, we didn't go in. Dan's motto for the trip... once you've seen one church you've seen them all.

I feel pretty certain that even though we went to Spain, Italy, Greece and Croatia which are pretty much church meccas we only went into one the entire trip.

We did catch the end of a wedding though.

We only spent half a day there, but would definitely go back and are so happy that we ventured outside of Barcelona when we had the chance.

Remember

When Melissa's eye got all red

and she walked around in sunglasses for the entire day?

 but then accidentally took them off in the subway?

yeah... me too.

Did anyone end up buying this photo?

It makes me laugh.

Tigers in Denver

Dan and I spent the weekend in Denver a few weeks ago, so that we could fully enjoy the Tigers series. It's the first time that they've played here since we moved 6 years ago so we were really excited.

See... Dan gives Tigers weekend two thumbs up.

We bought tickets to the Friday night game and I was able  to get free tickets to Saturday's game through work.

Dan thought the guy in red behind us in that photo looked exactly like Lou Holtz.

We got to see the Tigers up close and had a ton of fun even thought they lost both games that we attended. I blame the altitude adjustment. Hopefully they will come back again soon. :)

Summer Cleaning

In preparation for our European vacation, Dan and I went through his clothes this past weekend to determine what he had that still fit and looked good, what needed to go to the tailor, what could be donated and what could just be retired to the trash.

Somehow the stars aligned and we were both fully gung-ho about going through his entire wardrobe! It's a good thing too, since I don't think we've done a major clean out in the entire 7+ years we've been together.

We took some breaks to really admire some treasures from Dan's college days:

But overall we stayed on course and ended up with a huge donation to the local Goodwill :)

Now we know exactly what he's got, and where we need to focus our efforts on the shopping front :)

Poor Monty!

A few weeks ago Monty had to go for a little ride to the mechanic.

It turns out that when you're 11 years old, things start to fall apart a little bit.

Don't worry, he's back up and running now, but not exactly good as new. We have some upgrades to make on the poor guy and we may be trading Dan's car in and letting him drive Monty exclusively in the next few months. Which means, I'm in the market for a new ride.
I've already let Dan know that because we are saving for our future beach house I will sacrifice for a few more years and avoid putting myself in a Cayenne.

I'm pretty sure that makes me girlfriend of the year, right?

Seriously though, what should I get? I think I am leaning toward a lease and I kind of like the idea of a smaller SUV, but since I have not been thinking about getting a new car at all, I am sort of open to anything.

Getting excited!

So many good things are coming up including 3 glorious days off of work!!! I heart government holidays. Especially this one, because it's the official kickoff to Summer!

Besides that, Dan and I have plans to catch the Hangover 2 in the next day or so. We're also going to head up to Boulder on Sunday so that bright and early Monday morning we can run the Bolder Boulder!

It's pretty munch the biggest race that I've ever participated in and I've wanted to run it for the past 2 years. It's a 10K and over 50,000 people are signed up to run it this year! It's the biggest 10K in the US.

Besides being in one of our favorite Colorado towns, we'll know a bunch of people running it this year, so it should be a great time!

Even though my training since the Colfax half has gone a bit down hill over the past few weeks, I am still hoping that I can PR in this race. I never was able to write a post on my first 10K back in April, but I'll try to get to that before this race happens. I also have a 5K to write about, so I'm a bit behind.

Basically though, in order to PR I have to run this puppy in less than 57:46 (a 9:19 pace). Dan is also going to run it, so I'll keep you posted on how he does :) I'm sure well, because his training has pretty much consisted of yoga classes, swimming and an occasional light quarter mile jog with the dog!

On the agenda today: Work, 5K treadmill run, BodyPUMP, then perhaps a movie date!

Also: Happy Last Day of School Dan!! (I'm just slightly jealous, but when you're on your 8th summer of this, it gets a bit easier) :)

Do you have any plans for the upcoming holiday weekend?

San Diego, Take Two

While I did not get to go see Shamu in San Diego, we did head over to Balboa Park one afternoon. It was so pretty!

I think this was the biggest tree I have ever seen! Unfortunately our photo in front of it made us look like ghosts.

The Spanish style architecture in California is so beautiful.

The buildings throughout the park were completely amazing.

Unfortunately we went to the park on a Monday, and we found out that pretty much everything inside the park is closed that day of the week.

We were able to get inside of this open air greenhouse though.

Seeing these photos again after over a month makes me want to head back.

Dan pretty much wanted to pack his bags and live the life of a beach bum during this trip, so I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

However, next time we are definitely going to see Shamu.

A Giant Ship with Fighter Planes aka... A Boy's Playground

So with all of the running talk and training that has been happening, I have neglected to post about some of the other stuff that I have been up to over the past few months.

While last year's Spring Break trip to Cabo will be a hard one to beat, we still managed to have an awesome vacation on a much more limited budget. This year, we spent part of the week in beautiful San Diego. What a great city! Neither of us had ever been before and we loved it! We pretty much ate and drank our way through it and had the best time. Our friend's Mike and Anne were out there with us and we had so much fun. One day, while Anne was at law school, the boys and I went on a tour of the USS Midway. It was a H-U-G-E ship (a crotchety old man got upset with us when Mike called it a boat), and it was interesting to see how people lived aboard it as it floated around from war to war.

Just to warn you, Dan and Mike had a lot of fun with make believe during this tour.

These are the bunks that crew had to sleep in. I felt really bad for anyone with even the slightest bit of claustrophobia, because there was not much room at all.

Of course, Dan got locked up in the ship's Brig

and had fun taking the wheel where ever possible.

we thought this slogan was funny.

Look at how pretty San Diego is!

don't I look good in a captain's chair?

I think Mike is telling Dan to watch out for a giant iceberg in this one ;)

who knows ;)

If you ever are out in San Diego, I would totally recommend going to see this cool piece of US history. Just be sure to bring a bunch of guys. They make it much more entertaining.