The Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs

I'm a little behind on my blogging but I'm determined to catch up so don't you worry! Let's jump back to Valentine's Day weekend shall we? It happened to fall on a Saturday this year which was very nice. My lovely boyfriend semi-surprised me with a night at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. Apparently there was some V-Day special going on so he cashed in :) And I was very glad he did - the place was fabulous!!! As the website states, it is located on "3,000 lush acres under the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain". The whole place reminded me of a fort. A very romantic fort I might add...

I wish I could have stayed a week but unfortunately we only had 24 hours. We toured the premises, walked around a very pretty lake, over a bridge and saw a bride and groom post-wedding. Went to dinner at a cute English Pub called 'The Golden Bee', where they actually throw bees at you....beware.... Drank some nice wine from my Napa Valley trip and all in all had a fun "mini-vacation".


The only bummer of the experience was all the grief our friends and family were giving us...If only I would have demanded $5 from every person that asked me "do you think he is going to propose to you?", I would have made at least $50! Poor Derek, he just wanted to do something different, fun & romantic for Valentine's Day and then we both ended up having to deal with crazy wedding talk before and after the weekend.... oh well...we survived and still had a good time!

Nieces and Nephews

I went home to Ankeny, Iowa in early January for a belated Christmas celebration with the fam. Thought I would record on my camera what a typical weekend day is like at my parent's house! I'm sure we all loved to run around in circles at some point in our lives....but I really don't remember doing it :)

Anyway, they sure are cute and this video makes me smile everytime I watch it! It features:

Jaden - age 7, and her sister Kaylie - age 2.5
Ty - age 4.5 and his brother Alex - age 3

Missing from this video is Gabby - age 1 (she doesn't even know how to run yet, so that's ok!)

Enjoy!!

For Peer Pressure and Mouthwash

Almost every night Derek and I rinse our mouths with Scope mouthwash. I never used to use it, but now that I live with him and he's a user, I feel the roommate pressure to partake. I can't let him be the only one in the house with sparkly fresh breath can I?!? It's almost a competition of sorts....except he doesn't know that he's in one - I hate when I do that....! I seriously wouldn't normally use mouthwash unless I knew I had really bad stinky breath and was trying to get rid of it. But because HE uses it all the time, now I have to use it all the time. And I have the same horrible reaction every time I use it! My eyes start to water, my mouth starts to get tired of rinsing and then I end up spitting it out with such disgust and hatred that I vow I won't do it again for another week. By the time I'm finished spitting it all out of my mouth, I look like I've just been crying for an hour! The red watery eyes, the sad pathetic look on my face....ugh...

Derek just laughs at me. Then he'll proceed to ask me why I do it if I hate it so much. And this will be the thought I'll think of every night before I go to bed... how sad is that? Who wants to go to bed thinking about mouthwash and peer pressure?!?