I love Bret and Jemaine!

Flight of the Conchords is one of the coolest bands ever. Really.

If you've never heard of the Conchords, they're a New Zealand folk comedy duo (Bret and Jemaine). They've had a couple of seasons of an HBO series, also titled Flight of the Conchords, and they're awesome.



And I got to see them in concert on Saturday!!!!

But first I had to cook lots of yummy food for my sister's graduation party. Because Salem graduated from college!!


She was excited:


For some reason, I didn't get any pictures of all the food and decorations, but I really did make a lot. In fact, all the work made my back hurt worse than usual, so I borrowed George's inversion table to stretch out. It's pretty much the best machine ever. I'm going to buy one.


The machine left me feeling refreshed, and I was able to rejoin the party. We ate food, played a little poker with the kids, ate food, had some drinks, ate food, and even had a little sing-a-long as my dad played the piano.


I think it was a good time for all, but most importantly for Salem. And it's a good thing my back was feeling better, because I still had a concert to go to!

There are certain things about living in Colorado that are just really cool. Getting to see shows at Red Rocks is definitely one of those things.


If you've never been to the venue, you'll just have to believe me when I say that it is one of the best out there. It's definitely my favorite. Listening to music in the cool, mountain air, while looking out over the city, is just amazing. I can't even begin to describe it.

In addition to the Conchords, there were a couple of great opening acts. The first of which was Iron & Wine:


He's a favorite of a couple of our best friends, John and Anna, and we thought of them as we watched his performance.

The comedian Arj Barker, who plays Dave on the FotC TV show, was also an opening act, and he was pretty funny. But nothing was to compare to the awesomeness that is Bret and Jemaine.


They put on a really good show. And they played "Jenny," which is my favorite song. So it was tons of fun, and I'm really glad we went.

Yay for Mommies!

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. For the mothers in my family (my mom and my two sisters) I made my first attempt at paper-crafting and card-making.


I'm pretty proud of what I pulled off. I didn't really have much to work with because a lot of the tools and cute scrap-booking decorations cost a lot of money. So, I cut out all my own letters and decorations by hand with tiny scissors. Very time consuming. Once I get more into this, I'll have to purchase some cool stuff.

We went over to my folks' house today to spend some time with my mom. We had fun hanging out and laughing at the baby. She's getting much better at grabbing and holding on to things.


Salem had way too much fun putting the bottle just out of her reach, so she had to work for it. It was pretty cute.

I think it was a nice, relaxing day for the moms in my family. Hopefully, it was the same for all you moms!!

Musicians are da coolest!

I wish I was an awesome, talented musician. Like my dad.

On Saturday, my dad had a solo gig at a bar in Littleton, so we headed down to see him play.

Salem and Matt. (Salem's friend, Mark was with us, but he's not in any of my good pictures.)

Everyone loved my dad. Things were a little slow at first, until the local production of Bat Boy:The Musical got out and most of the cast came into the bar. Then it was just CRAZY. Everyone was singing along -- in harmony. It was awesome. And a couple of the ladies were really liking my dad... that part was a little creepy actually.

My dad and his fans.

For fun, Salem got up and helped my dad with a couple of songs. I was actually up there too, whispering the words to Salem and probably looking stupid. But Salem was way cooler than me.

It was pretty fun. We don't go out to bars very often (or ever...), so it was cool to get out for a bit. Plus, it's always fun to see my dad play.

I also got to baby-sit a couple of my nieces for a bit on Saturday. That was fun, as well.


Ah, good weekend...

Say goodbye to the old apartment...

We've been living in our new house for a few weeks now, but we hadn't really dealt with our apartment yet. We just kinda got all the essentials out and tried to forget about it. But this last weekend we had to get in there and clean the place up. My main task for the day was the kitchen, and I'm honestly not sure that it was ever that clean in the time we lived there.

Sparkling clean.

You know, our apartment really was a great place for us (for a short time). There are a lot of things I will really miss about the place. The pretty hardware and light fixtures (unlike our brass EVERYTHING), the loft space (it was nice to have Matt really close whenever he wanted to get on the computer), the pretty white kitchen cabinets (instead of our current "meh" oak), the awesome red wall in the dining room, and our cool open stairs (though I think the kitties will miss those more than me... they really loved laying on them and watching what was going on below).

But there are a few things I won't miss. Like the HORRIBLE wobbly stairs that I fell down, and the whole parking situation (carrying groceries across a parking lot and up 2 flights of stairs is not fun).

Plus, there's all the not-fun stuff that comes with apartment living... like really close neighbors. Smoking, partying neighbors with barking dogs.

But overall, this place was good to us. We had many fun times there. Holidays, anniversaries, parties, and lots of time just hanging out with the cats. This is the first place we lived as a married couple; we moved days before the wedding and came home from the honeymoon to this new apartment. It was our first "home."


I know it's silly, but I get pretty sappy about things like this. So I was very sad to close the door on this place.

Our last look at our old home...

But on to bigger and better things.

Friends are cool!

Ah, what a nice weekend! Snow, rain, slush. Being stuck inside for hours. Lovely...

It really was a great weekend, though. A couple of our good friends drove hours and hours to visit us. Because of the lovely weather, we spent a lot of time inside the house. But just getting to hang out with these guys was awesome.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. (What a cliche phrase...) Last week, before our company arrived, I held a huge spider! The Butterfly Pavilion came to our school and brought Rosie the Tarantula with them.

This is not me holding the tarantula. But this is the tarantula that I held.

It was pretty awesome. And I got a sticker.

Everyone knows that stickers are awesome.

I was very excited when some of the kids at school made me a cubby in their room!!

As a Special Ed. para, I go all over the school working and playing with all the SPED kids. So, I don't really have a classroom of my own. One of the rooms I work in decided I needed my own cubby for all the art projects they make me. I thought it was very sweet, and it made me really happy.

The weather was beautiful last week, which made the oncoming storm even more dreadful. The flowers in my front yard were looking gorgeous.

Before the awful rain and snow ruined them.

Our cool friends got in on Thursday night, and the rain/snow/awful mix stuff started on Friday morning. We got out for a short amount of time Friday to try and show them the awesomeness that is Denver. It didn't work very well. The storm wasn't awful, but it was not a lot of fun to be out in. The snow was heavy and wet, and (at least for a while) the flakes were HUGE.

But they got to see Matt's office and a little bit of downtown before we retreated to the comfort and warmth of our house.

Just to give you an idea of how crazy-heavy this snow was, this is our tree outside after a few hours of snow.

Matt thought it would be fun to go out and shake off the tree. What can I say? We were bored...

It ended up being beneficial to our poor little tree. Once the weight of the snow was shaken off, it bounced back.

That was pretty much our entertainment on Friday... We spent a lot of time playing board games.

But like I said, just hanging out and talking with these awesome friends of ours was fun. However, we were still very anxious to get out of the house on Saturday. Luckily, the snow turned to rain, and we were able to trek back downtown to the Art Museum.

We saw some cool art, had a nice lunch, and saw a little more of the city.

It's really too bad the weather was so crappy because we had great plans to go up in the mountains and do wonderful summer-like things. Oh, well. Next time...

The Magenta is GONE!

We've officially been in our new house for a few days now, and we've been going crazy trying to get settled in. One of the first things we did when we got the house last week was get rid of the awful magenta fireplace!

The before:


And the after:


The gold color matches the walls in other parts of the house, so we think it's a much nicer look.

We did a lot of painting and moving of small things last week, but the big move wasn't until Saturday. It was a very traumatizing experience for my poor kitties. There was plenty of meowing and running around and hiding, but they found comfort in each other.

My kitties hiding and cuddling together behind a mattress. They never cuddle like this, so it was pretty cute.

More pictures will come, but I'd really like my house to be clean before I show it on the internet for all the world to see.

So sleepy...

Well, it's almost bedtime, but if I don't post something now, I'm not sure if I will anytime soon. This last week has been pretty busy, and I haven't had much of a chance to update. And I only have a little bit of time before I pass out from exhaustion so: quick post, and then to bed.

First, the weekend before last, we went to a Colorado Rapids game. This was going to be a post of its own, but new house stuff has monopolized my time. So I'm a little late. But it was pretty awesome. Neither Matt nor I had ever been to a soccer game, or really gotten into the sport in the past. But now we both are liking it.

Dick's Sporting Goods Park

We won! 2-1 against the Kansas City Wizards. It was kinda fun to be rooting against Matt's brother's team.

Matt's hat was probably confusing to people, since we were playing KC. But I promise he rooted for the Rapids.

I was very, VERY cold. But it was fun.

Last Tuesday, WE CLOSED ON OUR HOUSE!

At the closing.

We got into our house for the first time Friday night. And I'm warning you, the following picture of me is extremely frightening, but it captures the exact moment we first stepped into our house, when Matt carried me over our threshold. So... don't make fun of me too much because it was very exciting.

I brought bread and salt because my aunt told me about some tradition involving bread and salt. It was fun.

That's a better picture of us in our new house.

Since then, we've been spending all our time at our new place. We won't officially move in until this Saturday, but we've been changing light fixtures and painting, etc.

We spent some money at Home Depot. Mostly on light fixtures.

And Matt got a nice, giant grill that he put together this weekend. He was very excited.

I'll have many more house pictures over the next few days. We've already gotten rid of the magenta fire place, so I'll be excited to show you that picture soon!

And finally, I'll leave you with a picture of a good-looking fireman. The fire department came to my school today. The kids loved it, and so did most of the women teachers. A little too much I would say...

And now, to bed.