Hello, 2010.

If you know me, you know that I take New Year's pretty freakin' seriously. Not nearly as seriously as June 7th but seriously enough that I had poor little Linzi freaking out on the drive back to her house NYE thinking we weren't going to make it in time. "I just cannot be in the car at midnight. I'll freak out without champagne."

Yeah, this is one of two days a year that I'll accept it if you call me high maintenance.

A few years ago, I decided that I liked being out of town to celebrate the New Year. Vegas is like the second destination for celebrating but as a local, it gets pretty overwhelming and you can't drive anywhere. So the past few years have been spent at cabins - Brianhead, Lauren's Mt. Charleston - so we kept with the theme this year and headed out to Denver (Pine, CO to be exact) to visit the Wicklers in their new house.
It was here that we toasted to 2010.

This photo just gets me every time because Lauren just happened to make another 2010 toast at the exact moment I was trying to capture the Wicklers' New Years kiss. Totally typical of us.


The trip was great. We spent the first day (NYE day) meeting Andy (cousin) and Michael (Linzi's brother) for lunch and then we headed to Bakers St. Pub for some mid-day beer and darts. By 7 p.m., the excitement of New Years had already gotten ahead of me and I was forced to drink water (HOW AWFUL!) to sober up before the big night. The evening consisted of a house party hosted by Linzi's family and then a champagne midnight toast (see Linzi, we totally made it back in time, everything is fine!) at the Wicklers followed by a few hours of Cranium and lots and lots of LOLs.

New Year's Day was spent RECOVERING with my good friends from JERSEY SHORE. I can't think of a better way to spend the first day of the year than watching The Situation and Pauly D fist pump and watching Snooki get punched out for the 15th time. That evening we headed to a Mexican restaurant for margaritas and dinner and then out to the Denver Botanic Gardens where for $1 you can purchase 3-D glasses that change all the lights into bells, snowflakes, snowmen, etc. This made for some GREAT photo ops.



Saturday brought something I never thought I would LIVE TO SEE THE DAY. You guys, this is a photo of Lauren and I on the way to the mountain to SNOWBOARD.

Say WHA?!? I know, I know. I was shocked too but what was NOT shocking was what a natural she is. After just two runs she's like "Sure, I'll go to the top." It took me like THREE years to get to that point and then she was riding her TOE EDGE. This girl just OWNS everything she puts her mind to. This is why she is AND MORE. But seriously, to be at Keystone with Andy, Linzi, Josh and Lauren...have I mentioned how awesome I think 2010 is?!?


Then it took us 5.5 hours to get back to the house from the mountain but we kept ourselves well entertained with a game or 65 of 'Would You Rather' (there is an app for that).

So far, so good. I'm totally feeling this whole TWENTY TEN thing. And with Lisa Marie arriving tonight for a Vegas weekend...it's just going to keep getting better.