Mark & Mandy

Only a month late on this post…For Valentines Day Mark took me to the Aquarium for dinner and a night tour. Dinner was great, but the aquarium was even better. The tour leads you through different environments like you are in a disneyland ride (misting water and playing bird sounds when you are in the rainforest, having rattle snakes rattle and his just as you walk by) – they also have an impressive tank holding quite a few sharkes…

Here is Mark at the entrance…

Saying hello…

Electric Jelly fish (can’t pass this up)

Mandy trying to feed the rays (these hungry little bastards have teeth)…

Happy Valentines day last month!!

Today is one of those days that you can’t help but think about something going on too far away. A day when you have that pit in your stomach because the stakes are so high, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Today our very close friend Julie is going in for surgery. Doctors discovered Julie had an aggressive form of DCIS 6 weeks ago. Since then Scott and Julie have been in patient survival mode – running tests, keeping the pressure on their doctors when things weren’t getting done. And all the time keeping up a blog to communicate with friends and family (a lifesaver for all of us who aren’t nearby).

Julie is one of those people for whom cancer seems most unfair – as if she wasn’t dealing with enough in her life. I think we all have unfair examples like this, so if there’s any reason behind who gets cancer, it is obvously hidden from me. But as one would expect from Julie, she is being so impossibly brave about it. I’m sure it gets exhausting being so brave all the time, and I’m so happy that she has Scott there to catch her when she lets herself go.

We hope that anyone reading this will focus all their positive thoughts on Scott and Julie. We’re thinking about you today.

This year Mark and I are trying out different ski area’s to help us pick which pass we would like to get next year. This past weekend we headed up to Beaver Creek – we had an amazing time. We drove up Friday night to meet Jessica and Yancey (and Emma). When you come into Beaver Creek you have to drive through a private gate that checks if you are cool enough to enter – fortunately they let me and Mark through. We stayed at the Charter which is right on the mountain so you can have ski in / ski out access.

We used our Carve Diem passes from United to get a free lift tickets – which was sweet at $81 a pop. We got up Saturday and headed up to the Mountain – not a cloud in the sky, but only about 10 degrees (brr).

We were happily surprised that the mountain wasn’t very crowded. We spent much of the day skiing the Birds of Prey runs - which were covered in all different sizes of moguls. This was great for me – I don’t love giant trenches to ski in, but Mark does and we were happy to be skiing together.

The Charter had a great spa service so Mark and Yancey had arranged for us ladies to have massages after skiing – which rocked!! We had a lovely dinner and played some hearts – Mark and I whooped Yancey!

Beaver Creek Rocks!

A couple of weeks ago Mark and I hosted a wine tasting night at our home. We decided to focus on Rhone Style wines mainly because I am addicted to all things Syrah/Shiraz. We gathered up some friends and decided to taste 8 different wines from France, California and Australia. Our participants tasted and tried to identify each wine with the region and price. We opted for 3 flights of three – to allow everyone to taste in comparison to 2 other wines. We had 12 guests which meant we needed 36 wine glasses.

So in typical Mandy and Mark fashion we headed to Ikea on one of our business trips and bought 36 wine glasses and transported them home. We were able to get 6 glasses for $2.99 ($.50 per glass) – we couldn’t even rent glasses for this price, and the Ikea glasses actually look good.

I created some collateral – tasting notes and wine descriptions. Because we had nine wines to taste I had to settle for the brown paper bag wine covers – it added the touch of class that I was definitely hoping for.

We finished most of the 9 bottles, but we managed to hold ourselves together (we must be getting older and more responsible). Jessica was the Grand Prize winner and Josh was second place. Yummy Wines of the Rhone!

Saturday morning we woke up to a cool surprise – Lola featured on the Daily Puppy and Cricket featured on the Daily Kitten. I submitted their photos because I didn’t want them to suffer from Second Child syndrome (like me). Crenshaw made his debut as Mr.October 3rd in the 2003 Edition of 365 Days of Kittens Calendar.**

To Top off the publicity, Our wedding is currently being featured in Brides Magazine’s Receptions special addition*** – if you are in the supermarket take a peak, its a great spread of some fun details of the wedding (2 1/2 years later).

Hope everyone had a happy weekend!

** These guys have their purchasing model down – the parents of the kittens send in the photos. If the photo is selected the Calendar company sends out a letter congratulating the owners and encouraging them to buy calendars to send to family members to show off their kitten. You get a discount for buying in Bulk! Yes we fell for it.

*** I always wondered how these weddings got into the bridal magazines, now I know – its the photographer. They send out their photos hoping to get them published which ups their wedding prices even more.