Monday, May 05, 2008

OH dear... Blame the baby brain...

As most of you know, Brian and I are expecting a little addition to the fam this coming July... and because of this, I have started a new website/blog about my experiences as a preggo, complete with belly pics and ultrasound pics (that make our baby look like an alien- sweet!). So, please meander on over to baby's very own website at your leisure:

houle.mytinybaby.com

Of course, I should have posted this on this blog about 5 months ago.

Enjoy!

Monday, October 01, 2007

Text Twist

I'm addicted. I can not stop playing. Help!!!!

Monday, September 03, 2007

This week.

This week is the wedding!! I can't believe it's finally here. It literally still does not seem real. I don't think it will until I'm actually saying "I do." Beginning tomorrow, the influx of out-of-town guests arrive and chaos ensues- I can't wait!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Nothing drives me to blog more than something that really ticks me off...

And I'll get to that in a moment. First of all, I had a great weekend. Friday night we joined some friends and attended the Denver Modernism show. It took place in a warehouse type of building and was a glorious spectacle of mid-century furniture, artwork, and household goods. I oohed and ahhed over the Mies, Noguchi, and Saarinen. I think I just about drooled on every Eames chair I walked by. The event was complete with a Tiki bar (which had some amazingly strong drinks) and a hilarious retro slide show presented by the fabulous Charles Phoenix.

Saturday we had a classy night at the theater to see the Pre-Broadway production of The Little Mermaid at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. We went to dinner before the show at Kevin Taylor's at the Opera House. Kevin Taylor is probably Denver's most famous chef. Like a local Bobby Flay or Emeril. Because of this, I was expecting a fabulously divine and interesting meal. I've also been watching a lot of Top Chef lately, and I think this has made my expectations extremely high. Anyways, the meal was definitely good, but somewhat of a disappointment. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but I really thought for the reputation and prices, this meal should have kicked some major butt. After dinner we headed up to the Opera House to see The Little Mermaid.

It appeared that everyone, adults and the little ones dressed in their Disney princess costumes alike, overwhelmingly enjoyed the show, due to the standing ovation that began immediately when the ensemble came on stage to take a bow. Call me an uber-critic, but I don't give standing ovations to just anything. I was a bit confused when the mass public rose before the main characters had come out to take a bow. They were giving a standing ovation for the actor that raised the sail for 5 seconds in the beginning of Act I and the actress that handed Ariel a towel after she got her legs and washed ashore. Really? Were these actors deserving of a standing ovation? Did they really knock the socks off of us viewers so much that we (when I say we, I mean everyone in the theater aside from Brian and I) stood up the second they ran back out on stage for their final bow? Experiences like this, in a way, make me lose a bit of respect for my fellow theater-goers.

Don't get me wrong. The musical was quite entertaining. I was blown away by the sets- it really gave the illusion of an underwater landscape. And the transition between under the sea and up on land was quite smooth. The actress who performed the part Ariel had a killer voice and looked remarkably like the Ariel in the original film. My main complaint was the ending, and I will not give anything away, aside from the fact that it jumbled, quick, and all too-easy.

This brings me to the something that ticks me off. To give the illusion of floating or swimming, the actors wore Heelys: you know, those damn shoes with the wheels in the back of them? You see kids (and now adults) gliding around these on sidewalks, through the grocery stores, on their way to school, at the mall. Yeah, I HATE these shoes. I LOATHE them. But, I think that they found their one appropriate place to be worn: on stage in the production of The Little Mermaid. Makes sense. Does anyone else hate these shoes? I hate them so much that I hate the parents that buy them for their kids. I think I hate these shoes even more than Crocs (Which, as Colleen proved in Las Vegas ARE actually comfortable. Still not attractive, but comfortable). Actually I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I hate these shoes twice as much as Crocs. We were at the mall the other week and saw a Mom and child wheeling around on these stupid shoes, getting in our way, zipping in and out of the crowd nearly knocking over mothers holding babies and old men with canes. I exaggerate, but I have never seen something more ridiculous than a 40-some-year-old woman on Heelys. Ok, rant over.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Yikes.

It's been a looooong time since I've blogged. Definitely not due to a lack of fun and exciting things to share, but more because of the insanely busy past few months. The summer has been great, though, and is definitely passing by ridiculously quick.

I can barely remember back to June, but I do know I was in Dallas for a week for work getting ready for a HUGE meeting with one of our customers and also our biggest trade show of the year. The huge meeting went extraordinarily well, so all of the hard work and travel was worthwhile.

Early on in June, a college roommate, Deborah, was in town with her husband/film writer/producer/director for his movie's premiere at the Breckenridge Film Festival. We drove up to the mountains to meet them one evening and had a lovely night in Breck- my first time there too! Unfortunately, we had prior commitments during the afternoon, so we did not make it in town to see the actual movie's premiere, but we did get our very own DVD copy of the film which now I'm thinking I should have made Sean autograph for kicks.

The end of June brought us to the Chicagoland area via a roadtrip. I do believe I could be a truck driver if this whole graphic design thing doesn't work out. I started out at 630pm driving out of Denver and didn't quit till about 3 in the morning. I love roadtrips. Brian took over for a couple hours till we were almost to Illinois and then I grabbed a hold of the wheel for the final few hours into Chicago. We arrived at my parent's house about 9 in the morning on Friday and began our week-long whirlwind visit to Chicago. We attended my college roommate's, Daniella, beautiful wedding in Arlington Heights on Saturday. It was a blast and I got to catch up with a ton of Bradley folks that were at the wedding. Some I had not seen in years (like since graduation!), others I had seen just weeks before (Deborah in Breck)... It was totally fun and gorgeous and Daniella looked absolutely amazing.

On Sunday, my wonderful bridesmaids threw me a shower at my parent's house. We had quite a few people attend, including many of my family members from New England, Brian's parents, and of course a lot of locals! I was completely overwhelmed with the generosity of everyone. Such a wonderful day; it really made me feel like a bride!

The rest of the week was somewhat a blur, but I was able to catch up with friends downtown and in the burbs, Brian's parents, and all of my family that had came into town from RI and MA. The only bummer of the week was that we didn't make it to either Portillo's or Dunkin' Donuts while we were in town. :(

I know I'm really skimming over things here............. And I do apologize about that! After the wedding, I surely will have more time to blog! Anyways, the rest of July was fairly quiet, had a brief business trip to Pittsburgh. No, not Pittsburgh- Hermitage, PA. I just flew into Pittsburgh, then drove an hour to the little wee town of Hermitage, PA. Filled with VFW's and little cute New England looking houses, and itty-bitty stores. It really was darling; however, I spent 90% of my time inside an aluminum can factory attempting to do a press check on our Cantu Oil Sheen Can. They had some major issues there matching our colors, and me being the pickiest of pickiest, I absolutely would not approve something that was the slightest bit off. I ended up spending 11 hours at this factory sitting in their windowless customer lounge, drinking a ridiculous amount of Diet Coke. I did venture out here and there, donning safety glasses and ear plugs (sexy) to explore the factory a bit. That was the fun part- seeing how the cans start (looks like an aluminum hockey puck), then extruded, brushed, decorated, palletized, etc... interesting stuff.

And finally, my latest and greatest adventure has to be my bachelorette party in Las Vegas the first weekend of August. I had 5 great girls join me in Vegas and I'm pretty sure, from what I can remember, we had a blast!! We stayed at the Venetian, while the guys, who were having their own bachelor weekend, stayed across the strip at Treasure Island (yes, I know, now ti). We ended up meeting up with the guys quite a few times for drinks, dinner, gambling, etc. But during the days, we lounged by the pool, did some shopping, and slept in. Friday night we went to Tao for drinks and appetizers (HUGE disappointment with customer service there), drinks at the Wynn, then a late night/early morning dinner at Grand Lux Cafe. We called it a semi-early night at 2am in order to rest up for our Saturday night-o-fun.

On Saturday we lounged by the pool during the day, bumping into Kate Walsh from Grey's Anatomy who was also attending her bacherlorette weekend. :) That evening we went to Battista's Hole in the Wall for a delicious Italian dinner and then moved on to Tangerine at TI for some dancing and drinks. After losing the majority of my girls at Tangerine (most had early Sunday morning flights and/or were quite tipsy), Danielle and I headed out from there and bumped into the guys (or did I call them??) playing poker at TI, got the key to the guy's room that was full of beer and drinks and ended up hanging out up there for a while for some free drinks (not that free drinks are hard to come by in Vegas). After that, we went back to the Venetian and had a late night/early AM snack at 6am or so at Grand Lux Cafe. This really sobered me up... a bit... and then we found the guys and did some gambling at the Venetian, others played in the 7am poker tournament. I think I ended up getting back to my room around 830 or 9am. It was a LONG night!! But totally fun.

Our return flight to Denver was not till Sunday evening, so I struggled to get through the day without passing out mid-stride walking about the strip, at the booth at Denny's, and in the massage chair at Brookstone. We went to the airport early, with my newly purchased travel blanket from brookstone, and I slept in the fetal position curled up on an airport chair for about a half hour. After my little nap, I felt the need to devour some food and drink some more beer, so we hit up a little Mexican restaurant for dinner before getting on the plane back to Denver.

So, this kind of brings us up-to-date. Aside from another trip to Dallas, the past couple of weeks we've been taking care of final wedding plans and now we are 17 days away from our big day. I'm absolutely beyond excited and am just trying to savor every moment!

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Freak out!

Yup, it's been a gazillion years since my last post. But I have excuses. Tons of them... First of all, I officially moved into Brian's, errr, 'our' house. Secondly, I've gone on three trips in the past month! We went to Seattle the last weekend of April for Brian's friend's wedding. It was a very quick trip, and both of our first times in Seattle, but we were able to sneak in visits to Pikes Place Market, the original Starbucks location, and the awesome Archie McPhee store. The wedding was really nice- the reception was on the bay or lake or whatever they call the water around Seattle. Weather was decent- not too much drizzle, not too cold. Honestly, at this point (a month later and 2 other trips later), I don't remember many of the details, I apologize. I will not ramble on about the uninteresting memories I do still have!

We came home for just less than a week and then were off to Dallas for a business trip/wedding trip combo. Brian had a meeting in Dallas for the first part of the week and as most of you know, my office is in Dallas, so I went down to work for the week from the office. The wedding we attended that weekend was for coworker of mine. Her wedding was absolutely gorgeous. And hands down, THE most fun I have ever had at a reception. The ceremony took place at a gorgeous church near downtown Dallas (in Highland Park) complete with a nearly 40 person choir. Immediately following was the reception at the Four Seasons in Las Colinas. The cocktail hour was accompanied by delicious passed hors'deourves (give me a break, I don't have time to look up the correct spelling), and was followed by a delicious dinner with wine pairings for each course in the ballroom. The ballroom was decorated spectacularly and Brian said us attending this wedding was 'trouble', as I kept getting more and more ideas and thinking about more stuff we could add to our big day. We danced the night away to the fabulous sounds of the Emerald City Band (who are apparently famous and performed at Bush's inaugeration!) which was followed by a DJ later on in the night. I seriously was a little worried about this wedding, mostly because Brian didn't know ANYONE, and I really only knew my coworkers that were attending, but in the end it was a seriously awesome time.

After being in Dallas for a solid week, we were definitely ready to come home and attempt to attend to the multitude of boxes and furniture strewn about the house... Well, I should be honest and say we're STILL trying to attend to this.... But, we're getting somewhere. Where that is, I don't know. But it is coming along. Also, my birthday was a couple weeks ago, and in my grand tradition of making birth DAYS into birth WEEKENDS, we had a great weekend full of baseball games, dinners out, shopping, and sitting outside enjoying the sun.

Last weekend was the third and final trip of the past month, and that was to Florida (Boca Raton/Fort Lauderdale area) to visit Brian's parents and sister/bro-in-law/new baby! Actually it was more than just a visit, it was me meeting his parents for the first time! The weekend went quite well and we had a great time. Brian's new niece is absolutely precious- all 8 pounds of her... and I couldn't get enough of holding her! Such a cutie. Brian's aunt from New York was also in town and it was great to meet her as well. We ate seafood every day, I got my Dunkin Donuts fix, and stocked up on Dunkin Donuts coffee beans. I couldn't ask for anything more. We also went to the Hard Rock Casino where Anna Nicole Smith died and I doubled my money on some poker slot game that to this day, we still don't know how it worked and how I won. One afternoon we went to the pool for a bit and soaked up some rays. Not too many rays though, since I get pink in like 15 minutes, I was in the shade not too long after we arrived at the pool! On Saturday evening, we went to dinner with everyone, then down to Fort Lauderdale to walk along the beach and enjoy the salt air.

Ok, so that just about brings us up to date... And THIS very date marks the day that we are officially 99 of those days until the wedding. Double digits, baby. And yes, I am freaking out a bit... Just about what's left to do and how little time there is left to do it! This weekend I'm hoping to assemble the invitations so that's out of my hair. Oh, but here's my little vent. With the postage rate hike (no, I'm not going to crab about the extra 2 cents a stamp costs), and apparently the post office not anticipating the rate hike (give me a break), they have 3 choices for 41 cent stamps at the moment. We're talking about that ever-patriotic Flag stamp, the historical Liberty Bell Forever Stamp, and the just released Star Wars stamps. Well, I need to get my stamps to put on the RSVP envelopes and these are my choices. So, when you get your invitation and see Yoda or Chewie on your RSVP envelope, you'll know why and where I'm coming from! It'll add a nice touch of kitsch to our classy invitations. :)

Monday, April 09, 2007

My cat.

Lola is addicted to Turkey. It all started Thanksgiving when I thought it would be cute to give her a little turkey. Well, every time we had leftovers she was always undertoe meowing for a tasty tidbit. Now, Brian has turkey sandwiches for lunch nearly every day and she constantly harasses him for a turkey sandwich of her own. Today she even resorted to batting Brian on the leg, even after she got several turkey bites. We have created a monster. A Kitty-Cat Turkey-Eating Monster.