Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas this year was fantastic. On Christmas Eve, the whole family came over to the Rosens where Daniel and I are staying. Julie made her traditional Cuban meal of pork, yucca, black beans, and rice. Christmas Eve in Cuba is called Noche Buena. It was absolutely delicious! My whole family, Daniel's whole family, plus Evan's girlfriend Kristy and her mom, plus some Rosen family friends were here. We had 18 people in all. It was a blast. Nicole and I had to leave around 6:15 to go play bells at church. The service was lovely, though not as impressive as usual. I really enjoyed seeing some people I haven't seen in quite a while. After the service, we went to the Bamboo House for dinner with all the usual church people. This time, Sarah met us there and Evan and Kristy came too! I wasn't really interested in eating again, but it was fun to visit with our friends. I was already getting so tired. We left around 10pm and went back to my parents' house to open some gifts. My mom had to work at 5am the next morning, so we just opened a few presents. Daniel and I collapsed absolutely exhausted around midnight.

This morning, I was the first one up! The Rosens are late sleepers on Christmas. Everyone slowly gathered in the kitchen and we got some breakfast while we waited for Evan to drive up from Tempe. When he got here we opened presents! This was the first year I wasn't in my parents' house on Christmas morning. It was kind of weird, but fun too. I missed my family and the feeling of familiarity and predictability. But, as I told my sister, things will never be the same anymore. We're all adults and more and more we will have other obligations. Soon we'll all be married with kids. Daniel and I got so many nice gifts. As a Rosen tradition, we all went to the movies. We saw "It's Complicated." I thought it was really funny and cute, but most of the guys didn't like it. Julie and Daniel liked it though. After the movie we headed back to my parents' house. My mom got off work around 2 and we finished opening our presents. We got more very nice gifts. My brother in particular gave us very nice gifts. My dad made me book ends that are beautiful. He used glass cups and put a picture in one side and filled them with colored sand. Then he poured wax in the top to seal in the sand. They are so beautiful and will be perfect to hold up my textbooks above my desk. I think that's my favorite gift this year.

Around 3:30 we all drove to Grandma and Grandpa's house where we met George and Shirley. Daniel's parents also met us there. We opened presents and had an absolutely delicious meal of prime rib roast, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole! Yummy!! After 3 hours, we started talking politics so that's when we knew it was time to go :-) The Rosens have very different political views from my grandparents who also have different political views than my Aunt and Uncle. So... we try to stay away from that topic if we can help it. Anyways, Daniel and I spent this evening packing up all our gifts. We had to fit everything in two large suitcases.

Tomorrow my whole family including my parents, grandparents, Aunt and Uncle, Nicole and Mike, are driving to Hollywood. There we will meet my Uncle and Aunt, their two daughters and their husbands. So it will be quite the reunion! We're going to Disneyland, the Magic Castle, Santa Monica pier, the Reagan library, the Long Beach Aquarium, etc. Then on New Years Eve, my family is dropping off me and Daniel at the pier before they drive back to Phoenix. Daniel's parents will meet us there where we will board our cruise ship! We are going to Catalina Island and Ensenada in 4 days. We are going kayaking and maybe ATVing or horseback riding. I'm so excited! Both trips are going to be really fun. I'm a little nervous about California. Being around my family nonstop for 6 days will be a little difficult at times I'm sure. This whole holiday has made me really appreciate that Daniel and I have a wonderful house where we can have our own space and our own time together. I won't have a computer for the next 10 days so.. happy new year!

Vegas Baby!!

I'm back in Phoenix after an incredible weekend in Vegas. We flew in on Friday morning and checked into our hotel- the Flamingo- while waiting for Daniel's parents, brother, and his girlfriend Kristy to drive up from Phoenix. Around noon they arrived and we all went down to the lobby to get some lunch. They had flamingos in a little garden outside! It was so pretty. We also couldn't resist peeking in the wedding chapel. Don't worry though- we didn't elope! After lunch we began walking up the strip. I was appalled by the hoards of hispanic people standing on the street handing out cards with pictures of naked girls on them. We stopped in the Venetian, the Wynn, pretty much every hotel in that direction. The Venetian was my favorite. It reminded me of Venice, only more Disneylandy. Everything was beautifully decorated for Christmas. We window shopped and took pictures. We stopped in one of the hotels to play a little video poker. Robert taught us how to play. It was just a penny machine, but I did end up breaking even. The girls had tickets to Chippendales that night, but the guys didn't so they stopped at a half price ticket booth to see what they could get. They ended up with tickets to Cirque du Soleil! We were so jealous. It was called Zumanity, and it's supposed to be the sexy, sensual cirque du soleil. The acrobats were almost all naked! But we knew that we would have fun too. We all got up very early that morning so we headed back to the hotel about 4pm to rest until our show that evening.

The girls got all dressed up and we went to the Rio for our show. Kristy wasn't 21, so they wouldn't let us in early. Before the show, it's just a bar. So we went to a nearby bar on the casino floor, and again they turned Kristy away. So Julie and Kristy went to window show in a nearby store while Nicole and I got some drinks. The bartender tossed the bottle around and did all kinds of crazy moves to make our drink. It was so cool! Finally, it was time to go into the theater. It was a small theater set up kind of like a club with tables and chairs around them. There were about 10 guys in the show. It was very different than what I thought. I did not realize how pornographic it was! I thought it would just be guys dancing around on stage. But they like acted out sex scenes! Nicole ended up in the front row which put her in the fortunate position to be taken up on stage! I was screaming the whole time. She was wearing a cocktail dress with a little jacket over it and the guy pushed her up against a wall and untied her jacket. Then he led her to the center of the stage and sat her down and all the guys danced around her. At one point, one of the guys actually dragged his finger from her ankle up her leg and lifted up her skirt an inch! It was crazy. Throughout the show, they also came down and danced with all the girls in the audience. One of them came up to me and danced with me. He asked where we were from, and I said Phoenix. Then he asked how I like it there, and all I could think to say was "It's really hot" lol! I guess we know where my mind was.... One of them also kissed Julie on the cheek. We all had a fabulous time. At the very end, you could pay $20 to get a picture with all the guys. One of the ushers told Kristy that she could get one for free! He led her up on stage so she cut everyone in line and got a picture with the whole cast for free. We have no idea why. The guys really enjoyed their show too, though they couldn't get us to stop talking about ours all night! It was great.

We walked back towards our hotel and stopped at the Bellagio to see the beautiful fountain show. Later that night, me and Daniel sat down at a Blackjack table with Robert. The lowest minimum they had was $10, so Robert gave us some money to gamble with. The 3 of us started with $100 and on the second hand, Robert won $125! He bet $1 on the lucky lady which means if he gets 2 queen of hearts, he wins 125 to 1. It was so crazy! But within an hour we lost all $125 and our original $100. It was fun anyways. And let me tell you, free drinks is awesome! That is the best part about Vegas.

The next day we slept in and walked the other way on the strip. We also stopped at the M&M store which was really fun. We saw the huge lion cage in MGM and they even had two cubs there! We went in Mandalay Bay which I only wanted to see because of the amazing race. We also went in Excalibur, Caesar's palace, the Luxor, and New York New York. We found a $5 blackjack table this time and Daniel and I played with $50 for a long time. Nicole played with $35 and we all did really well. We got a 3 foot drink to share and that got us all pretty wasted. Evan and Daniel actually took a shot of 151! Then they got a Jagerbomb (not sure about the spelling). So they were all pretty drunk. We played at the slots just long enough to get more free drinks. It was a great night. Eventually we headed back to the Flamingo and I got an hour nap in before dinner. Then we found out that our show was cancelled on us. How disappointing. We had tickets to a magic show that night but they just cancelled it. We went to this incredible sushi and seafood buffet at Planet Hollywood for dinner. I am really beginning to love sushi. It was delicious! I ate so much of it too. Then the kids split off from the parents and we went to the Bellagio. They had an incredible Christmas display inside. There were polar bears made out of flowers and reindeer made out of pecans! We played quarter video poker and I lost $4. I spent surprisingly little. I think it was under $100 for the whole weekend on gambling and drinks. Daniel's parents were so generous. They paid for everything else, and even some drinks too! We actually went to bed pretty early that night. We were exhausted. The strip is so overstimulating, I was so tired at the end of the day.

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and drove back to Phoenix. We stopped at the Hoover Dam and took the tour there. It was pretty interesting. I had no idea how important it is to deliver our electricity and water. I am so glad that I went to Vegas. I think it's a great place to go right after you turn 21. There was so much to see and do. I loved it!

Daniel's 21st

Last night we celebrated Daniel's birthday and it was a blast! Around 8:30 some of his fraternity brothers came over to our house. Some of them just got back from abroad so we haven't seen them since the summer. It was so great to see our friends again. We went to the liquor store earlier in the day so we had a fully stocked bar. We started off with mojitos and within an hour or two the guys were taking shots called slippery nipples. Daniel really likes Baileys so he had a lot of drinks with that in it. He took a shot where he wasn't allowed to use his hands, so he had to pick up the shot glass in his mouth and lean way back to swallow it. I don't know who comes up with this stuff! We sang happy birthday and had cake and ice cream- the cake was delicious! Everyone but one guy was over 21, but we wanted that one guy to be able to go out with us. So we went to the same place we went for my 21st birthday called the Cherry Cricket. Most of the guys took a cab and the rest of us rode with the designated driver. I stayed behind a few minutes and rode with the DD. When we got there, everyone was in the parking lot. Daniel showed the bouncer his ID, and he wouldn't let them in! Even though it was already his birthday and he was already officially 21, they wouldn't let anyone in. He said it looked like they had been drinking already. They had been drinking, but not so much that they were all drunk and disorderly. They all were standing there completely silent waiting to go in. So it was kind of strange and ridiculous. We walked down the street and found a place called miniBAR. We went in and it had a very cool atmosphere so we sat down. After we ordered drinks, and they gave Daniel a free drink, we started to look around and realized that there were A LOT of gay guys there. Daniel went to the bathroom and when he came back he said a guy hit on him very obviously. I asked our waitress and she said that it wasn't a gay bar per se, but a lot of gay guys hang out there. While we finished our drinks, some of the guys went outside to see if they could find another bar. We ended up right across the street at a place called Earls. Our waitress was really nice and she told her other tables that it was Daniel's birthday so they all wished him Happy Birthday. By this point we were all into our 3rd and 4th drinks, so we had a great time. Nobody got too drunk, and everybody had a fabulous time. We took a cab home and called it a night about 1am. I think it was just perfect- we had some drinks and had a good time, but nobody got completely wasted and we were all still responsible about it. The best part was being able to see some of our friends that have been abroad the past 4 months.

When we got home and got ready for bed, I felt like there was something in my eye. I kept blinking and rubbing trying to get it out, but it wouldn't come out. I figured if I went to sleep that it would come out in the middle of the night and I would be fine in the morning. Well, I wasn't fine in the morning. It was so irritating I couldn't sleep all night. It felt like a grain of sand in my eye! I tried putting contact solution in, but that didn't help so I made an appointment with the health center on campus. The doctor that saw me was so nice. He listened carefully to what I said and examined my eye. He put some dye in it and then held up some kind of UV light, but he said he couldn't see anything in there. He thought it was probably a small abrasion on my eye itself that would heal on its own. He referred me to an ophthalmologist near campus, but they couldn't see me until tomorrow. The ophthalmologist told me to get some artificial tears and use them once every hour until my appointment tomorrow morning. I don't do very well with eye drops. Even though I wear contacts and I can touch my eye, there's something about drops that make me very uncomfortable. I have to lay on the couch and hold my eye open while Daniel squirts the drops in. He got mad at me because I kept closing my eye and he couldn't get the drops in. But anyways, it helped a lot. I took a nap this afternoon and when I woke up around 4pm my eye felt so much better. When I cooked dinner, I cut up an onion and that really irritated it again. But now it's feeling back to normal so I'm going to cancel my appointment tomorrow. It was the weirdest thing; that's never happened to me before. But I'm so glad it's better. My biggest fear is that it wouldn't go away and I had to spend my entire vacation in Vegas with a grain of sand in my eye.

Tomorrow we clean and pack, and then on Friday morning we're leaving again! I'm so excited!!

It's so good to be back in Denver!

Well we're home :-) The drive wasn't too bad, just under 13 hours. And we even took 30 minutes for lunch. Jackson did great, he slept the whole time as usual. When we got home, around 6:30, our roommate had dinner cooking! That was a wonderful surprise since we certainly didn't want to get back into the car to get dinner and neither of us felt like cooking after getting up at 5am that morning. While Paul finished cooking, we unloaded the car. This was quite a treacherous task because there was about an inch of ice covering our driveway. I can't believe we fit everything in our car! We got so many Christmas presents early because they were big and we couldn't fly with them. We just piled everything inside and then ate dinner. Paul had to go to work (he deals poker for corporate Christmas parties and stuff like that) so Daniel and I cleaned up dinner. Then we got to start opening up our gifts! We hung our mezuzah on our front door (it's a Jewish tradition). Then we opened up our nativity and set that up. We are a truly multi-cultural family! We opened up all our Christmas presents and reorganized our kitchen a little bit so it would all fit. And finally we unwrapped our rug and put it in the living room. It looks so nice! We poured ourselves a glass of wine and lit the Hanukkah candles. Before bed, we started a load of laundry. It was a very productive evening.

So now we're back home and I am so happy. We were pretty cramped in a tiny guest room at my parents, so it's nice to have a closet and a big bed and our own bathroom now. Jackson has settled in nicely as well, he's been sleeping all day. We still have a lot to do in the next five days before we go to Las Vegas. We have to clear out an entire room full of stuff for Hope to move in, and move some of our storage around. This will be more difficult because Paul has a friend staying in our guest room which also happens to be a lot of our storage area. But that's okay, we'll make it work. We have 2 1/2 weeks worth of mail to go through, and we have to prepare for Eric to move in. A bunch of his furniture will be arriving by mail in the next week. On top of that, Daniel's birthday is on Tuesday and we're going to have a party here! Many of our friends are back from studying abroad so it will be so nice to see them after 6 months. Most of them are over 21, so I think we'll probably be going out that night. I'm going to bake a cake for Daniel in my new kitchenaid mixer! I can't wait. We also have to go grocery shopping because there is no food left in the house. On top of all that, Daniel wants to get a few good days of skiing in. He went up to the mountains today and skiied for about 3 hours. That's all he could handle because it was a brisk 0 degrees today. The weather warmed up down here on the front range today; it's a beautiful 50 right now. It's kind of funny to go outside and feel the warm weather, but there's still a good inch or two of snow on the ground. I guess that's Denver! It should melt fast as long as the weather stays like this. Oh, and we have to pack for Las Vegas/ Christmas in Phoenix/ California family reunion/ Cruise to Mexico. I'm having a hard time figuring out what to wear. I need a dress for 1) Vegas, 2) Christmas Eve, 3) One night in California, and 4) 3 nights on the cruise including New Years. Of course I can double up on a couple of those. I can't believe my winter break isn't even half over! I'm loving it :-)

Early Christmas

Last night we had a little mini Christmas celebration at Daniel's parents' house. Since we are flying back to Denver after Christmas, they want to give us some of the bigger gifts now. That way, we can load up the car with lots of stuff and it doesn't take up room in our suitcase. We got so many great things for our kitchen! A coffeemaker, bakeware, and knife set. We also got a beautiful rug for our living room and a dog bed for Jackson. It felt kind of like a wedding shower instead of Christmas. My parents also got us a kitchenaid mixer! I am so thrilled because I love to bake and it's so difficult to use a hand mixer and hold the bowl and everything. I can't wait to get home and put everything in our house. My dad also bought me a nativity set that I've been wanting for a while. Setting up the nativity was one of my favorite parts of Christmas, so I really wanted one for our house. I feel so completely spoiled. We have such a generous family.

I can't believe I forgot to write this earlier, but I got my grades and I didn't get a D in chemistry. I didn't even get a C in chemistry, I got a B! I'm so thrilled and I honestly can't believe it. I was ready to give up when I studied for finals, but I didn't and it really paid off. My final exam score was higher than both of my midterms, so it replaced one of them. With the curve, that was enough to put me up to a B in the class. I am proud of myself for studying so hard for finals and not giving up. And I think I learned a valuable lesson about studying hard for my midterms and not letting it get to the point where I have to do so well on the final exam that I'm stressing out about it. I got all As and Bs this quarter, even in my labs. My GPA is still a 3.5, so I am very happy!!

I got an email from my future employer yesterday outlining the conditions of my employment. They offered my $8 an hour, even though I asked for $10. Daniel thought I should ask for more, but I don't think I will. I'm so nervous about this job. I'm afraid the extra hours will make me so busy that I will be stressed out. And sharing a car with Daniel will make driving back and forth difficult. I'm trying really hard not to think about that and to focus on what a great opportunity this is. I will get to be involved in important research and learn a lot about respiratory illnesses in a real lab. I am taking less credits this quarter, so that should help. I just hope we can work out a schedule that I will be happy with.

We leave for Denver in two days, and I am happy about that. I will be glad to have my privacy again and some space. And our nice queen size bed! A full size just isn't big enough anymore. Hopefully it's warmed up a bit- last time I checked, it was -15 in Denver. As in, 15 degrees below zero! Crazy!

Thanksgiving break

I know it's been such a long time since I've posted, and that's because I have been so busy! My vacation is just as crazy as the school year.

Since I last posted, we have had family visit us in Denver, a road trip back to Phoenix, Thanksgiving, and lots of time with family.

Daniel's mom, Aunt Barbara, and Abuela drove all the way to Denver from Phoenix to see our new house. We spent hours cleaning and making sure the house was perfect and it was all worth it. We had a lovely time all together. Before we all left to drive back to Phoenix, we did a Native American "smudging" that uses burning sage to bless our house. Abuela couldn't help throwing in some holy water for good measure. So our house is doubly blessed! We stopped the night in Moab, Utah at a beautiful ranch/vineyard. Poor Jackson still has a hard time "going" while he's on a leash so it was a very uncomfortable trip for him. We arrived in Phoenix Wednesday evening, just in time to meet up with some friends and my sister for dinner.

Thanksgiving was perfect. It was the best Thanksgiving I can remember. Daniel and I had lunch with my family, dinner with his family, and then dessert with both. I got to see my brother for the first time since he joined the army, and I got to see my cousin Ceadar, her husband, and her 1-year old baby girl Chloe. At Daniel's house there was quite a variety of people too, and most of them weren't actually related. I was so glad to see our families mingling and enjoying each others' company. I'm sure the wedding will go just as well.

Since Thanksgiving, we've just been hanging out with our families. We have been trying very hard to balance spending time with both sides, and so far it's gone well. It's getting more and more difficult to stay at my parents' house. I miss having our own space and privacy. But I also love having so much time with my parents, Daniel's parents, and my grandparents. We also spent quite a bit of time with Ceadar, Rafi, and Chloe while they were here. We will see them again just after Christmas when we go to California.

Jackson has been extremely well behaved. He hasn't eaten another TV remote, and has stayed off the furniture for the most part. He hasn't even been jumping up on people. The worst problem we have now is that if he gets out, he runs. Twice now he has dashed across Thunderbird, a very busy street. The first time I didn't even know he was gone! Daniel called me and told me that a lady was in the front yard with Jackson. She found him, lured him into her car with french fries, and called the phone number on his tag. It was so frightening that we didn't even know how he got out! Daniel spent some time with him in the backyard and discovered that he had gotten into the garage and jumped out a small opening in a window. He is just too smart! The second time, my mom was leaving out the door and he slipped out. He went straight for Thunderbird. We really have to work on that, it is so scary. But other than that he has been so well-behaved. He gets lots of attention from his grandparents and the other dogs in the family wear him out.

A few days ago, Daniel and I finally came to a conclusion about our wedding. We have been discussing where to have it since we got engaged and it's been a very difficult decision. Daniel wanted to have it up in the mountains of Colorado. He thought that all of our college friends wouldn't have the money to travel to Phoenix. And he made the argument that Colorado is our home now, so we should have the wedding there. I wanted to have it in Phoenix because there are a lot of church friends that I want to attend and I don't think they will be as willing to fly to Denver, rent a car or find transportation up to the mountains, especially not if it's snowy and icy. So we finally settled on a compromise: Denver. It will be easier for people to fly into and they won't have to rent a car or drive another 90 minutes up to the mountains. It's where we live now, and it has special meaning. We both would love to have a snowy wedding and although Denver doesn't always have snow, it is a possibility. And if it doesn't have snow, it's very easy for us to drive up to the mountains the morning of the wedding with our photographer and take some pictures in the snow. We also decided that we want to have it on campus at DU. I don't like the idea of having the wedding at any old place- I want it to have meaning. DU hosts weddings quite often, and they have some absolutely beautiful places on campus. We would like to have the ceremony in Joy Burns Plaza, and the reception in the HRTM school. Joy Burns Plaza is the lobby of the music school. It has marble floors surrounded by columns and there's a balcony that wraps all the way around. A grand staircase goes from the balcony down to the marble floors. To see a 360 degree photo, go to http://www.du.edu/events/popQBurnsPlazaBanquet.html.

The HRTM school (hotel, restaurant, tourism management) hosts wedding receptions regularly. They also host fundraisers, banquets, wine tastings, etc. They have a 5 star restaurant that caters events. The location can seat 120-150 people for dinner. It's decorated in the Tuscan style with stone floors and a wine cellar on one side. There's also a grand staircase, a dance floor, and a patio area if the weather is nice. I think it can be really beautiful. To see a picture, go to http://67.199.119.112//denverbrass.cfm?Action=ViewDetails&ItemID=226&Category=45 and click on the picture to see it larger.

We also moved the date to December 3, 2011. That means it will be in 2 years! I will already have my B.S. in biochemistry, and Daniel will be just 3 months away from his MBA. Since it's over winter break, there won't will a lot of students on campus. And we will have time to go on our honeymoon before Christmas. So it sounds just perfect! I'm excited already.