As 2013 Comes To An End

As 2013 comes to an end, I find myself thinking a lot about the past year and a lot about my New Year’s Resolution.  Last December, I forced kindly invited Joey to recount all the fun we’d had that year and forced kindly invited him to do the same this year when I suddenly realized it was the end of the month already (where did December even go?!).  I thought I’d take a moment to do so here as well.

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In January, I started the new year with the resolve to be more open and say yes more.  I also saw a bajillion movies in preparation for award show season, made fancy pancakes and got honest about how January basically sucked.

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In February, I enjoyed Denver Restaurant Week, the Oscars and my first time at the Boulder International Film Festival.  Oh and helped throw our second Super Bowl bash.

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In March, I said yes to a trip to Arizona with Joey’s family, celebrated the arrival of Spring (hello, warmer weather) and said yes to a promotion, which turned out to be a lot less scary than my unrealistic mind had imagined.

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In April, I celebrated another Rockies Home Opener, dyed my hair red(ish), took Joey out for his 26th birthday (Linger & Little Man, for the win!), took my sister out for her 21st (!!!) birthday, said yes to another summer bowling league (why?!) and got in a Twitter fight with Robert Irvine.  Yes, seriously.

April was a good month!

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In May, I celebrated my (future) Mother-in-Law’s 50th birthday with a surprise party in the Coors Field Warning Track suite!  Followed by our 6 year anniversary and a trip to Vegas, baby!  It’s called Vegas, baby!, NV, right?

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In June, I participated in the Denver Heart Association’s Heart Walk, drew up an epic Summer Bucket List, joined a CSA, celebrated Jenn’s birthday and got sick for the third time in four months.  I now legitimately have a fear of colds.

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In July, I celebrated the 4th of July, my own 24th birthday and my best friend’s engagement within the first 10 days of the month.  Excitement overload!  I also said yes to being her Maid of Honor, although that was the easiest thing ever to say yes to 🙂 The end of the month was spent celebrating my dear mother’s birthday.  July is just a month for celebrating, I guess!

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In August, I said yes to a weekend trip to Joey’s family cabin.  Turned out I’d be avoiding something I ended up loving! Go figure.  Then… WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!  My mind is blank of anything we did after that 😛

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In September, we celebrated our first homebrewiversary (and haven’t brewed a single batch of beer since…), Colorado flooded 😦 and… WE GOT ENGAGED.  I said yes in a BIG way!  My mind is blank of anything we did after that too 😛  P.S. I swear that ring is on my left hand… stupid camera reversal!

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In October, we (sort of) settled into our house, (sort of) settled into wedding planning and took a trip to New Orleans, where we got to forget about needing to get settled into anything but that vacation mentality.  I also experienced my first Halloween, full of trick-or-treaters, as a homeowner!

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In November, after a grueling 9 hour wait, we reserved a public park for our wedding ceremony and officially had a wedding date! We also tackled a bunch of house renovation stuff (okay this was more Joey than me…), attended an engagement party thrown in our honor, finally got to see our engagement photos and enjoyed two fabulous Thanksgiving celebrations.  I ❤ Thanksgiving.

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In December, I revealed our mini bathroom reno (I’ll leave it up to you to decide if mini is describing the bathroom or the reno), bought a new fridge and range, changed up our KBCO Studio C tradition, got totally spoiled at Christmas, had my first out of town guest at the new house (my cousin is still here actually!) and… said yes to skiing! <—More on that at a later date, though 🙂

In case all my underlining didn’t tip you off, I’m pretty happy with how my New Year’s Resolution went.  I honest to goodness kept it in mind all year and tried to be more open to trying things I might normally say no to.  Most of them paid off, one of them didn’t.  I’m never bowling again 😛  And although some were really easy to say yes to (I think you know which), others weren’t and I’m proud of myself for being more open.  2013 was an amazing year and yet, as amazing as 2013 was, I think 2014 is going to top it!

Happy New Year!

Extra Exciting Weekend Things

Yikes, where do I even start?

On Friday, we woke up and headed to our house closing.  It was a perfect sunny fall morning and I was feeling pretty ready to sign my name a billion times and get into more debt that I’ve ever been.  That’s how my mom kindly described buying a house 😛

And I’m happy to report that it went off without a hitch!

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This is me giving Joey the “I’m NOT doing that jumping in the air picture with you” face.

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We went with the good old key dangling picture instead, because that’s slightly less cheesy and overdone.

And then this happened.

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My face in that last picture just says it all, doesn’t it?

I obviously said yes.  Or maybe something more like “OH MY GOSH, YES!”  But the details are a little fuzzy because I was in a dumbstruck state of pure excitement and surprise.  I didn’t see it coming at all but I couldn’t be happier.

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This was the scene inside our house.  Instead of going to bowling as I’d thought, Joey had apparently spent the entire night doing this.

Proposals are obviously very personal and unique to each couple, but I can honestly say I couldn’t have dreamt up a more perfect way to get engaged.  And then out of nowhere a puppy showed up.  I have no idea who it belonged to and I haven’t seen it since but we thought it was a hilarious ending to such a special moment.

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As you can imagine, our plan to have a productive packing day was completely blown out of the water, as we just spent the rest of the day wining and dining in celebration.  It was probably for the best considering I couldn’t stop shaking for what felt like the rest of the day.  We took ourselves to lunch — And saw Kenneth Faried!  Guys, Manimal and I both ordered pizzas! — then later had dinner with our families.  Then more dinner with more family on Saturday!  Any more celebrating and I won’t fit in my jeans anymore.

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I’m really hoping to put up a post about all the house stuff that’s going on, but this seemed more important.  I’m so stoked to marry my best friend and spend an eternity driving him insane by making him pose for pictures like this 🙂