Central America

I shopped in an open air market, swam on a private beach, hiked through the jungle, climbed an amazing waterfall, and swam with beautiful fish through crystal clear water in Panama... took a CRAZY ride through the back country of Costa Rica... and swam with sharks and sting rays in perfect water and drank 60 cent beer in Nicaragua. i had an AMAZING vaca!

I took WAY to many pics to put on here but if you want to check them out you can go to my travbuddy page and look at them. http://www.travbuddy.com/kre0123

SuN MoRnInG HiKInG iN aRiZoNa

Nathan and I have started working out again and every Sunday morning we have been going hiking rather than hitting the gym. We will do this as long as the weather permits so if ya want to come just give me a call!

My birthday in Colorado

I am officially 25... wow! I can't believe how fast time is going! It seems like time is going by much faster than it use to! One good thing about being 25 is that I can rent a car with out paying 50 extra bucks a day, hahaha!

So for my birthday Nathan and I decided to get out of town. We had Tues. through Sat. off and since we had never been to Colorado we decided, why not?!?! So we left after I got off work on Tues on our way to Durango. It took us about 7ish hours to get there. There was snow all over the place and it was freezing by the time we got there but it was so beautiful. We stayed at the double tree hotel, which was very nice!

On wed morning we got up and kinda wondered around town until about about noon. It is a very very cute town with a beautiful view. We got back on the road around noon headed up to Denver. The drive was long but so amazing! We drove through 2 mountain ranges on the way there, it was sooo beautiful! There was so much snow but the roads where clear. It was probably the prettiest drive I have ever been on.

DURANGO

DRIVING TO DENVER

We got into Denver around 5 and meet up with Nathan's friend Mickey that is working on a hotel up there. He was able get us a free room at the hotel he is working at. We ended up going out wed night and getting a little bit CRAZY! We hat a great time but we regretted it ALOT Thursday. So for most of Thursday we hung out around the hotel just relaxing. Friday was my birthday so we went downtown. We wondered around down town all day. There are a lot of little shops and cafes all over the place. It was freezing though and late in the afternoon it snowed. It was so beautiful to see snow falling in the city!! That evening we meet up with some of the friends that we had made during the past few days and of coarse Mickey and a few other the other guys for dinner. After dinner we went to a hookah lounge and hung out for an hour or so. We called it an early night because we had to drive home early Sat morning. We had a great little trip and I can't wait to go back and spend a little more time up there. Denver has so much to offer and is so beautiful, we just didn't have a lot of time to experience it all. We will definitely go back.

DENVER

HaPpY NeW YeAr... 2009 baby!!

Did you know that 2008 was the worst year for the stock market since the great depression?!?! Thank god we made it out alive! I can't believe all that has happened over the past year. What a CRAZY mess it was! However with all the craziness it really was a lot of fun and I have some amazing memories from it. Nathan and I decided to celebrate the new year at the Tempe block party with a few really great friends. We have been twice now and we always have a really good time. I hope everyone had a very fun new year and I can't wait to see what 2009 has in store for us!

ATTITUDE
by
Charles Swindoll
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes"

I really like this and I thought it as a good way to look at the new year. If we all set out every day with a good attitude the year will be one to remember!!

Christmas 08'

Nathan and I had a great and hectic Christmas this year. We spent Christmas eve at my mom's house where she cooked dinner for about 15 people. We watched the kids open up a few of their Christmas presents and all just kinda spent time together. We really had a great time!!

We spent the night at my mom's Christmas ever and had Christmas morning with my Mom, Martin, Rachelle, and Ricci. We ate breakfast and opened presents there that morning as tradition goes and hung out for a few hours.

We didn't do a lot during the day and at about 4 we headed over to my sisters house to hang out and have deserts... yumm! We ended up playing rock band most of the night... it was a blast, i suck at the drums but I am getting pretty good at the guitar!!

On the 26th I had to work in the morning but in the afternoon we all (sisters, brother, spouses, and kids) went over to my dad's house to have Christmas with him. Every year we all play white elephant game with a theme. This years theme was Christmas DVD's. Every year we also pass around a gag gift that is a Chi chi CHIA pet and every year I have some how avoided it. This year however fate took hold and I ended up taking it home with me. I have some great plans for what I am going to do with it for next years white elephant. We always have a lot of fun and since we are all so competitive the game normally gets VERY interesting!! We also watched the kids open up all of their presents and we all played with them after they opened them all. We had a great time! We are not all able to get together as much as we would like so it was really nice to be able to hang out with everyone!

st. louis missouri with kami

I went to Saint Louis to see my best friend Kami. We have been apart for the last 4 months and I am so excited to see her and get the weekend started!

We started by getting a much needed pedicure followed by dinner, shopping, drinks and a movie. This is going to be a great trip!!

We spent most of our first day being tourist. We toured the arch and walking around some beautiful parks. St. Louis has some shady parts but there are also some very beautiful areas too. I love all the green, it is so different from AZ! After a long day of walking we checked into our hotel and got ready for the night. We ended up going to a dance club on the landing strip called Club Buca. We had a lot of fun and drank a bit to much...
all-n-all we had a really great day!

We had a kinda hard time getting on sun... but once we did we decided to go check out the zoo. It was really nice and a great way to spend the day! I flew out in the early evening not really ready to go home... but i guess all good things must come to an end. I had a great time and can't wait until Kami and I are back together permanently!