Vegas Baby (and more)

Excalibur! - I'm pretty sure this was the oddest looking hotel on the strip, but it was our hotel none-the-less. Corey and I joined Mark, Sheri, Bekah, Lucy & Kyle in Las Vegas Friday thru Monday and it was a blast. It was my first time in Vegas and I definitely will be back.

Um, we don't exactly have a lot of pictures as there was a lot of drinking and late nights, so the camera wasn't exactly our focus. Our camera wouldn't fit into our pockets. Hopefully Beks or Sheri & Mark may have more. Anyway, here's a shot of us all ready and heading out for dinner. After dinner, the girls hit up the Thunder Down Under - Yum!

We spent our days at the pool drinking buckets of beer, swimming, and watching basketball. It was so relaxing! Again, no pictures at the pool, but this is us either before or after. I did discover that I really could care less about gambling, but there was so much more to Vegas than that. Corey got in a good 10 hour stint of poker though. He played with $100 and ended up winning $50 after 10 hours from 3am to 1pm the next day. Breasts of Hazzard - Volley to Beat Breast Cancer

As many of you know, we had a volleyball tourney to raise money for our DuBar Dolls 3-day team. Here's my team! We played well, but couldn't make it to the finals. At least we look good, right?

Here are the actions shots.

And our little guy. Maddox survived his first time away from both of his parents. It was my first time ever not seeing Maddox for a day or more. Even during the 3-day I would get to see Maddox each day and he was with Corey, so this experience was definitely strange, but Maddox did great and had a pretty terrific time with Grandma & Grandpa - Thanks Mom & Dad!!!! He's said multiple times today that he misses you both and Uncle Scott.

Happy Birthday! This month we celebrated Auntie Jenna's 26th birthday. We went to a drumline show to reminisce and then headed to our house for appetizers and cake. It was a relaxing day.
Maddox slept thru the whole party until the end, but then did get to enjoy a plate full of yummy food.

Chicken Pox? Not sure what we had going on here, but it's gone now.

Dinner gathering - Corey's friend from high school, Peter, and his wife Julie came over for dinner the other night and brought their little 1 1/2 year old Evan. Maddox and Evan had a great time on Maddox's new skateboard. Here they are hugging. Maddox sort of looks like he's giving the choke hold, but it's all with love, right?

Cheese!

Sweet Home Colorado

Well, since I haven't blogged for over a year, and everyone has been asking to see the pictures from my little snowboarding adventure in Colorado, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to jump back into the blogesphere. (I think I used that term correctly)

2/24/09: Day 1 consisted of waking up early (4:00am), loading up Mark's Ford Escape and hitting the open road.

Few of you may know this, but February 24th is actually National Pancake Day, so of course we had to make a pit stop at the International House of Pancakes (that's IHOP for all of you breakfast lovers) where they were giving away free short stacks. We found an IHOP just outside of Des Moines Iowa and stopped in to show our support for N.P.D, but who can eat just a short stack, of course you have to order a side of eggs, bacon and orange juice to complete the meal. With our bellies filled and our minds in the mountains, we jumped back in the car for the next leg of our 15 hour ride.

2/25/09: Breckenridge Colorado, Mark (left) and Seth (right) riding the gondola to the base of the mountain. Mark lived in Breck for a year after graduating college and still has a few friends living there who were gracious enough to give us a place to stay after arriving in to town.

"Top of the World"

This is an amazing picture of my right boot, oh yeah and a couple of mountains in the background.

"Roads, where we're going we don't need roads"

Sometimes if you want to get the fresh tracks, you have to hike a little bit. Scroll down to see where we're headed. (Did you notice the absence of trees? We are roughly 12,000+ feet above sea level)

"Diamonds are a Man's Best Friend"

So this is where we were walking to. I haven't seen this many diamonds in one place since I was shopping for a wedding ring.

"Chef Coreyardee"

After a long day on the slopes, we checked in to our condo. Way too nice of a place for us three snow bums. We also did a little grocery shopping, which I have to admit, is a bit amusing watching us three guys walk around a grocery store trying to think of everything they need for a week. Let's just say we had to make at least two more trips back to the store to purchase things we forgot. In the picture above, you can see our first nights dinner. I whipped up a little Three Cheese Stuffed Shells, garlic bread and Cesar Salad.

2/26/09: This is how we all felt the next morning. A combination of the altitude, a day on the slopes and possibly a little alcohol, it was a rough start to day three but, we were headed to Vail, so it didn't take too long before we were back on our feet and ready to go.

"Are We There Yet?"

If you have never skied/snowboarded out West, the runs are quite a bit longer then we're used to in the Mid-West. Mid slope breaks are quite common, here's Seth and I catching our respective breaths preparing for the rest of the way down slope.

"Lover's Leap"

Ummm......yeah. So, we went down this run, and although it's sort of difficult to see, that is about a 5 - 8 foot vertical drop on the right side of the picture which is the start of this shoot. After that, it doesn't get too much easier, but boy was it a blast.

2/27/09: Beaver Creek - Oh how I could go on and on about Beaver Creek, but I can pretty much sum it up in one word - AMAZING. It was snowing like crazy this morning and the wind was howling which is a brutal combination at 11,000 feet, but we were able to find some relief on a run on the back side of the mountain called "The Glades"

"Who Goes There?"

So about half way down the run, we noticed this little sign. Oops. We actually missed the GIANT sign at the top that said something to the effect of "You are now entering an un-patrolled area, ski at your own risk...blah...blah...blah.

"I Didn't Know Darth Vader Snowboards"

So at this point it was snowing so hard, that by the time we went down the mountain, road the chair back up, all of our previous tracks were filled in with fresh snow. I have never boarded in powder like that in my life, it was unbelievable.

"Is That All You Got?"

Ok, so there is a long story that goes along with this picture. It's a story about a man, his snowboard, a tree and a cliff. I won't go into all the details, but as you can see, I made it down. We'll leave it at that. If you ever want to know the entire story ask me sometime, just make sure Heidi is not around.

Later in the day the sun came out and it was absolutely gorgeous. I highly recommend Beaver Creek to anyone that is making a trip out to Colorado. Plus, I hear it's the new hang out for movie stars, which I'm sure people mistook us for while we were there.

2/28/09

"Roll Back The Clocks - It's For a Good Cause"

As I mentioned above, Mark still has some friends out in Breckenridge and they happened to have signed up for a benefit to raise money for Cancer research. They had some open slots on their team and asked us if we wanted to join. We said sure, little did we know that their team name was "Breckenrad" and their theme was a throwback to the 80's era of skiing. We found a used sporting goods store and helped outfit ourselves and the rest of the team in some radical once piece snow suits. I have no explanation for the pink hair.

"Fly Like an Eagle"

Here's Mark doing his best Spread Eagle, the ultimate in 80's freestyle skiing. Although you can't see it in this picture there was probably at least 50 people standing at the bottom of this hill watching his Gracefulness catch massive air.

You know how after a trip to the casino, people say that breaking even is like winning. I would have to say any ski/snowboard trip that you can return from on your own two feet, was a successful trip. There were some bumps and bruises along the way, but all and all we pretty much came home unscathed and had a fantastic time in the process.

That pretty much says it all, of course I left out the boring parts and the parts I don't want want published on the Internet, but other then that, there ya go a blog post.

Corey

3rd Annual Boogie!

Hello Family & Friends -

Our 3rd Annual Boogie to Beat Breast Cancer event with live music, drinks, dancing and of course the silent auction will be held at Grandpa's Event Center April 25th in Cannon Falls this year.

Since some of you have donated items to our silent auction in the past I thought I'd put up a post to see if anyone would like to do it again. We're trying to do themed baskets this year for the smaller items (ie: Coffee Basket, Movie Night Basket, Spa Basket, etc - get creative so we have variety), so if your interested in donating a themed basket or items to go in one or just interested in donating a larger, stand-alone item please leave a comment, email me or call me or anyone on the team.

We also hope to see lots of friends and family at the event - more info to come.

Thanks! Heidi Sue

Check out our blog!

Hi everyone-

The DuBar Dolls are gearing up for another Breast Cancer 3-Day walk this year. The blog has been updated and there will be new content a few times a week. Angie's blogging about her "Couch to 5K" journey! If you want to join her and others to train for our 5K June 13th, join us and get into shape!!!

Angie said it best: Stop by, drop us a line and -- most of all -- consider making a donation to one of our walkers! My mom will be thrilled (read: bawling hysterically) if her husband and all three kids can be by her side at the finish!

http://dubardolls.blogspot.com

Lots of Love & Thanks!
Heidi Sue

What have I done?

Alright, mister independent now thinks he can head to the bathroom, pull down his pants, and pee all by himself. Needless to say, he's not exactly tall enough to get his business above the rim, so it's quite the mess, but he's so proud of himself when he's all done. He comes running out and yells, "I did it!". It's hard to punish the behavior since it is what we've taught him and it's so funny. I got him a step stool yesterday at Target, so he went this morning by himself when I was rotating the laundry and most of the pee actually made it into the toilet. Progress, I hope.

Accidents this week+ have been none during the day at all except two poops - all pees were in the toilet (or at least around it anyway - see above). We haven't had any peeing accidents since the 25th and we've only had 2 total since potty learning Valentine weekend. He's got that down. The pooping thing has been hard for him though, so I have now bought the poop presents yesterday too. I'll let you know if that helps. We've also had 2 incidents around 2:30 am where he woke up wet. This is a first for him. Both times were evenings when he had a lot of fluid right before bed, so I'm hoping that won't happen in the future if we make sure he doesn't have a ton to drink at bedtime. We'll try to make sure he doesn't have much about 2 hours prior to bedtime and pees right before going to bed to see if we prevent it from happening again. Here's to progress...

Oh, sorry no pictures yet, but Corey was in Breckenridge, Colorado for a week and had the camera. I'll make him post his trip and start taking pictures to post soon.