New Orleans

So, I am about 2 weeks late on this post, but I figured better late than never. Kevin and I went to New Orleans for the weekend of 1/9-1/12. The sole purpose of our trip was to go to the Celine Dion concert, but it is always nice to have an excuse to be in "The Big Easy". We originally had tickets to see Celine Dion in Denver, but she postponed the show in Devner to a date in which we will be out of the country, so we arranged to go to New Orleans. These tickets were a Christmas gift for Kevin in '07 so I made sure we were still able to go to the show. We had a fantastic weekend, and look forward to going back very soon!

Sipping Hurricanes at Pat O'Brians

Walking around on Bourbon Street

This is the Leprechaun we saw last year in New Orleans on St. Patrick's Day...

...And here he is again, one year later!

Here we are eating 12 lbs of crawfish with my good freind Buffy and her boyfriend Bruce. So delicious!! (Buffy used to babysit me when we lived in New Orleans - we go way back).

Right before the concert started. We were both so excited and Kevin was extremely greatful!

Celine Dion!

We went out on Bourbon Street after the concert and spotted 3 of Celine's Band members. Kevin seems to attract famous people.

We are leaving for Sydney and Singapore on February 19, so stay tuned for updates from those trips!

Happy Holidays!

Well, I figured it has been a while since I posted and I thought now that the holidays are over and things have slowed down, I would catch you all up on our holidays.

The first holiday we celebrated was Kevin's Birthday. I was so happy that we were finally able to spend his birthday together this year. In the 4.5 years we have been together, Kevin and I had never spent his birthday together, until this year, so I tried to make it special. I made him a candy poster and decorated the house with a saran wrap "red carpet" and hershey's kisses all over the floor. It was nothing extravegant but I think Kevin really enjoyed it. We also were able to go to the Broadmoor and eat dinner at the Tavern. This was a treat for all of us, not just Kevin. It was a great weekend!

Kevin and his poster

At the Broadmoor

Then came Christmas....

We had a great Christmas this year. We celebrated with my family on Christmas Eve and with Kevin's family on Christmas day. My parents bought Kevin and I Rock Band for Christmas so we spent a good bit of time playing that on Christmas Eve, and for the rest of "Break" as well! We had Christmas dinner with the Branford's good friends Pete, Nancy, and Kris. This is a tradition they have had for years, and I am glad that I have been able to be a part of it for the last 5 years.

SORRY! NO PICTURES FROM X-MAS!!!

After Christmas was New Year's. This was the 3rd year that we have had a New Years Eve party, and although we did not have nearly as many people this year as we have in the past, we still had a great time! We decided this year to have a theme, and decided on an Ugly Sweater Party. It was very fun to see the different variety of sweaters! We chatted and played the Wii, and at midnight we watched the fireworks on Pike's Peak. It was a great time!

Kevin and I made our sweaters. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Of course interspersed in all of the holiday fun are the wonderful reunions with old friends. This is probably one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. Every year we are all able to get together and it feels like no time has passed. I do consider myself pretty lucky, because I have some great friends!

Nick and I with our 1/2 yards of ale at the Golden Bee.

The Crew at the Golden Bee - Nate, Kim, Nick, Gent, Me, Amy and some random guy!

It was a great holiday and I look forward to the New Year!

As far as travel plans for the New Year go....Kevin and I are leaving for New Orleans on Friday. wW will just be gone for the weekend, and then we leave for Sydney and Singapore on February 19. Stay Tuned and have a happy NEW YEAR!

Better Late Than Never

This picture is very much overdue! This is Kevin and I with the Koala Bear in Sydney. I finally scaned it onto the computer and wanted to post it. I would put it in the Sydney folder, but I wanted you to see it, and I didn't know if you would look at that folder anymore. So here it is!

At the Taronga Zoo in Sydney

Santa Claus

I told you I would post the picture of us with the Macy's Santa Claus, so here it is!

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Barcelona Part 2

On Saturday we took the underground to the Sagrada Familia. This is a gigantic church that Gaudi started building in the 1880's and still has yet to be finished. Gaudi died in 1927 but other builders and architect's have continued to build the church and follow Gaudi's plans. It is beautiful. Once it is finished (estimated to be finished in the 2080's) it will hold upwards of 40,000 people! That gives you an idea of the size! It towers over alot of the buidlings in Barcelona.

One entrance to the church

The other entrance to the church. You can kind of see the incredible detail!

Mandatory self portrait

This was taken with the tripod, before they yelled at us and told us we couldn't use it. It was a very stupid rule that applied at other places as well.

Some of the columns inside the church. They are supposed to be like trees. Gaudi's designs were always based on nature somehow. Just look at all the incredible details!

Beautiful stained glass from the inside of the church.

More stained glass from the outside of the church.

After exploring the ground level of the Sagrada Familia, we took a lift up into one of the many spires. It was very cool.

Self portrait from the top. You can see all of the construction gear in the background.

Kevin going down the very long spiral staircase in the spire.

Once we finished at the Sagrada Familia, we went to another Gaudi building called La Pedrera. This is a building originally built as an appartment complex. The outside of the building is very typical Gaudi architecture, but the really cool thing about the building are the smoke stacks on the roof. Each smoke stack is a Gaudi sculpture.

The outside of La Pedrera

The smoke stacks on the roof top.

Just me!

A view of the Sagrada Familia from the top of La Pedrera. You can see how it just towers over the rest of the city.

We walked back to the hotel from La Pedrera and walked around La Rambla again on Saturday evening. The shopping was great and it is always fun to people watch. We went back to the Irish pub for drinks and dinner and then we crashed at the hotel.

We went to the ship on Sunday and stayed in the La Rambla area again for the remainder of the day. There were tons of people! It was probably the busiest day we saw. There were even more street vendors out and we did some more shopping. We went to the Irish pub for dinner again and then went to the hotel to pack and get ready to leave on Monday.

On Monday, we flew from Barcelona to Munich, Munic to Chicago, and Chicago home. We didn't have any problems with our flights, other than a small delay in Chicago and not getting our luggage in Colorado Springs. We did have a great suprise in Munich though!

I bought a book in the gift shop and then went to the restroom before we boarded our 10 hour flight. When I got back to Kevin, he asked me who the foreign doctor was on ER. We remembered his character's name was Dr. Kovac, and then Kevin said he is standing in the gift shop! Both of our hearts started pounding. We were so excited to see him. We waited for him to come out of the shop and asked if he would mind taking a picture with us. He said no problem and we chatted with him for a little while. He was on our flight to Chicago.

Kevin with Goran Visnjic - better known as Dr. Luka Kovac on ER

Dr. Kovac and me! I like to refer to him as McHottie - Sorry wrong show!

Thank goodness I had my camera. Kevin always gives me hard time for always having it with me...maybe now he will lay off a bit!

So we are home now. We got back around 11:00 last night. We still don't have our luggage, but at least we are home! We do not have any other big trips planned until January, when we go to see Celine Dion in New Orleans, since the concert here was postponed and we will be out of town during the evening it was rescheduled.

I will keep posting some of the other fun happenings in our life! Thanks again for keeping tuned in! Stay posted!

Barcelona part 1

Now here comes the good stuff! We got to Barcelona around noon on Wednesday and went straight to the hotel. Our hotel is located on La Rambla, which is a very famous area of Barcelona. This area has tons of shopping and restaraunts, and seems to be open 24/7 - hence the earplugs we wear when we sleep. We have had a really hard time adjusting to the time change so we took a 4 hour nap before we explored the area. We woke up around 5 pm and went to a restaraunt near the hotel for dinner. We had tapas (spanish appetizers), paella (spanish rice dish) and sangrias (spanish drink make with red wine, orange juice and carbonated water/soda). It was delicious. After dinner we wondered around the area, admiring the Christmas decorations and doing some shopping. We went back to the hotel around 10pm and finally fell asleep around 3 am.

This was a cool statue of Christopher Colombus.

This means Happy Holidays in Spanish. The architecture here is simlar to what we saw in Rome and Venice - lots of little alley ways.

We ended up sleeping until about 2:30pm on Thursday so we stayed in the area of the hotel again for the evening. We started off at an area called La Boqueria. This is a market where you can buy all kinds of meats, fish, fruit, nuts, candy, etc. What was interesting, is that they do not waste any part of an animal. So they were selling cow tounge, brains, livers, stomaches, sheep heads, full chickens, pig ears, pig heads, full bunnies, every part of an animal! It was quite a shock, but cool to see!

The entrance to la Boqueria

Some of the full chickens and bunnies :(.

After the market we went to this fountain called Font de Canaleles. Supposedly if you drink from this fountain you will return to Barcelona, so of course I had to take a sip!

We roamed the streets and did some more shopping and exploring. We found this Irish pub that had a happy hour special so we spent some time in there as well! We had a good day and looked forward to more fun to come!

On Thursday night, we had some trouble sleeping again and slept until about 12:30 today. We got up and started moving so we could go to this neat area called Parc Guell. This is a public park with architechture by Gaudi. It was incredible!

At the entrance of the park

The famous lizard by Gaudi

Kevin being goofy!

We are holding up the pillars

This bench was incredible and huge! The view was not so bad either!

Gigantic Cactus

The view from the very top! It was breath taking. The Sagrada Familia is in the back ground. More of that to come tomorrow!

And what better way to top of the day than with a goofy tourist picture!

We are having a great time and I can't wait to see more in the next few days. I will try to post once more before coming home, but if I don't get to it, look for more on Tuesday!

Lisbon

This entry is very short because we did not really do anything in Lisbon. We got to Lisbon around 5pm on Monday and left at 9am Wednesday morning. We spent 5 hours at the ship on Tuesday and did not venture out into the city. I took a few picutres off the back of the ship, but that was it. Maybe we will be more adventurous next time!

The archithecture that I could see was typical European.

Self portrait with part of the Lisbon city skyline.

A statue of Jesus across the river.