My dog Quincy

So, as I travel with Dan today to Atlantic City, I am filled with so much sadness. Yesterday I had to put my dog down to sleep. Quincy was my man and also very much mom's too. He was her companion through many difficult times. I will post more later as I am too sad right now.

Vegas Baby

So, as you can see I'm not too good at updating weekly as I had hoped. I do however want to still caputre all the amazing moments that I am having during this amazing year.

With that being said. I just returned last weekend from my Fall Conference in Las Vegas. I'm so lucky that Dan was able to join me for the entire week. Tough twisiting his arm to do that of course! There were three places that I really wanted to see while we were there: Treasure Island Pirate show; Freemont Street and the Paris hotel inside and close up. We were able to do the first two and are saving the last for our next trip to Mandalay Bay (one I won of course).

So, the TI Pirate show.....NOT SO MUCH! The only thing missing were stripper poles and the ability to stuff dollar bills. This amazed me how tacky it was. I get that Vegas is tacky, but a show in the middle of the strip that aims at families too. It was absurd. So, let's see if the video will work this time!

Then Freemont street, what an awesome expereience. Give or take the 1 1/2 hour bus ride down there. But always nice to see the local wedding chapels and of course the Howard Johnson Hotel that is still booming! They had the most amazing light show down there with music. It was a different crowd and the minimums were definitely cheaper and thank goodness for that. It was our last day and we were running out of money. Keno wasn't our friend either at this point.

Overall, the week was tough for obvious reasons, but having Dan there was really cool. We went to the Mandalay Bay Shark Aquarium, gambled quite a bit, saw Danny Gans and The Jersey Boys. The music in that was awesome!

The funniest part of the trip was that we were totally suckered into one of those timeshare talks! All for the FREEBIES! What I have done to this poor man. For 3 hours of our time out of the casino we got $150 cash and two cruises, lunch and transportation. Not too shabby I might say and was fun to see how "we work" in that situation.

So, now we are both broke. Didn't win big all week, though he did come in 4th at my company Poker Tournament. Time to save for the next gambling trip to Atlantic City in December! I think I need to stop winning these trips to gaming destinations.

Now we are gearing up for Thanksgiving. I'm so excited because his parents are coming and I love when they visit. And I get to see his nephew and I get to see Oliver, MY NEPHEW after Thanksgiving. So all in all it'll be a great holiday I think.

A Piece of History

November 4, 2008

Truly a day that I will never forget and how amazing that one day, when I have kids, I'll be able to tell them all about it.

This fine evening Barrack Obama was elected as our 44th President. President-Elect Obama had an amazing speach and I can't get over how many young faces I've seen at the polls and his gathering in Chicago.

I am confident that Change WILL happen and am so excited for my future and the future of the United States. I have never been more proud of my country and state than I am today. VA pulled it out and what an amazing feat.

One note of saddness was that while watching the returns, Tim Russert wasn't there to tell us viewers what was happening. I have to say that NBC and MSNBC did a phenominal job but no one can ever fill his shoes. Boy, he'd love what just happened last night.

I look forward to waking early and getting my spot along that parade route to keep making history!

Celebrations

So, it's been a year since Dan and I had our first date and met and we celebrated in high style! I took him to see one of his favorite musicians, David Sanborn at Blues Alley. I had never been before and what an amazing experience. I loved the music, venue and especially the company.

The next day after celebrating Dan's birthday and our anniversary we headed down to Roanoke to visit his parents. I have never been there before, expect to drive through on my way to Tech to visit Rob. It was a gorgeous day for a drive. Sure enough his folks were waiting for us in the door when we arrived.

Their house is GORGEOUS and reminded me a lot of our old house in CT with the trees, grass and having property.

Over the weekend we went to yard sales, ate at an awesome pizza shop and found the most amazing book store that we could have spent hours in! It was so nice to spend time with his parents. We even watched the Red Sox play and Dan and his mom both began to teach me how to play piano! That was the neatest and as you can see I have a lot of learning left! (video to come; having trouble posting)

It's amazing how quickly time flies and I'm so excited for more celebrations. Now, I just need to get the sheet music to keep learning this song so I can have a real recital playing an instrument!

Nothing Like Being the "Nanny"

I realize that I'm 30 and that it isn't old, but boy oh boy did I feel old this past weekend when the oldest of the kids I was a nanny for got married!

It was a gorgeous wedding and I was so proud and excited to see her and have all the kids together in one room.

From left to right are Ellen (freshman in college), Elizabeth (senior in college), Emily (getting masters degree and newly married), and Andrew now living in TX and a graduate of JMU.

I was sitting there watching this family and couldn't help but think how amazing that I was a part of it and still am! I have seen them all grow before my eyes! So, now I officially feel old!

A Pirate's Life For Me

So, anyone who knows me understands my obsession with Jack Sparrow. I adore him and was so excited to find out on Thurday that apparently he will be earning $56 million to reprise his role in #4! Amazing....I can't get over that amount of money. I wish I had just 1/2 of a million of it, even less really and I'd be thrilled! Can we say, hello no debt!

So, Jack sighting with SuperMom in Seattle; Jack sighting with SuperMom in Florida the year before (I think SuperMom brings me luck); Jack sightings at the Renn Festival (thanks Courtney for stalking him to take a photo with me); and future Jack sighting at my own house....

I'm also psyched becuase the halloween costumes I ordered are starting to come in and Dan has no idea what he's in store for! This is one year that's going to be tons of fun for Halloween. Not to mention that the 1st of November is my countdown day until I'm back in my own house again! I'm so psyched! I think the first thing I'm going to do is clean out my entire closet, if I've dealt without the clothes for the past three months I don't really need them all.

Double Convergence

So, I had to post this as I was just talking to my best friend and realized that we needed a serious DB trip!

We came up with this over the weekend as she met me at the Fairfax C*stco to meet Nicholas Sparks, the author who wrote the Note.Book. He is my favorite and I've been wanting to meet him for a very long time. We got there two hours before he began signing and he arrived early and took photos with all of us! I promise to post one soon. It was a great time catching up and girl talking for 2 hours and honestly, we both had no idea where the time went! Then it was on to lunch at Coast.al Flats and we went out separate ways.

Now back to planning this double convergence of ours!