Mondays off are odd....

I just feel a little weird on days off

4th Annual Sibling Christmas Eve Eve Party

Vince and I in hooded footie pajamas. I am the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and he is Mickey Mouse.

Because of  my need for traditions I started our own new tradition (which is hard to do.) I host an annual sibling Christmas Eve-Eve party with white elephant gift exchange. I am just an honorary sibling since I'm an in-law and my own sibling/family do their own thing without us. The first year we were going to watch Muppet Christmas Carol but somehow it lost the vote to Muppet Treasure Island and an odd sing-along tradition was born.

Vince was overjoyed at getting wooden puzzle brain teasers.

As the years pass its harder for all siblings to get together. This year a spouse was added and she& James had to work late. However, we were all together for at least 20 minutes. This years White Elephant included a set of Chuck Norris joke books, a bag of ball pit balls, mustache coasters, a handheld skiball game, wooden brainteaser puzzles, and a gag box that looked liked a chest hair shaving design kit but was a Mario goomba hat. Last years best gift was a tie between a singing Justin Beiber toothbrush and a set of suicidal sea monkeys.    

Somehow another odd tradition came to be. Katie shaving James' head and us playing pictionary on it.

Inside the Gag box was this Mario Goomba hat.

The Gag box made Katie believe she received a chest hair shaver/design kit.

Reflective Christmas Thoughts

Don we now our Christmas apparel... falala lalala la la laaaaaa

Poor neglected blog.
Maybe I'll update more in 2013. No promises.

We've been pretty busy around here for the holidays. I had to send my packages out late, sorry family. Well, except for my Grandpa, whose present I bought online and almost spent more on 1-day shipping than the actual gift iteself. Yipes! Luckily, our cards went out nice and on time. I can't take credit for that- I did the lazy girl thing and had the company who printed them send them out with postage for me. I didn't have to address, seal, or stamp a thing. Merry Christmas to me!

This Christmas I decided to take a large portion of my gift budgets and put it towards giving kids in need a good Christmas. This wasn't a charity that helps children, this was my own project I took on to help children who I see regularly and know personally. I see their faces and I know their stories that range from hunger, loss, neglect, and having no place to call home. Most don't have gloves, socks, etc for winter. What really kills me is how few of them have an actual book (let alone bookS) at home. I changed all that for them this Christmas. By not buying gifts for friends and cutting waaay back on family gifts I was able to provide fun Christmas gift bags to twenty-eight children aged 5-6. The gift bags were beautiful and I made sure they had the proper big bows and tissue paper- that alone made their little eyes go WIDE with excitement.

Each bag contained 6 books, a pair of extra soft gloves, a hat, a scarf, a wooden ornament to decorate, a holiday themed wooden mask-on-a-stick to decorate and color, a big box of crayons, coloring paper, pencils, writing paper, socks, and a pack of tissues. I couldn't do this all alone. A complete stranger heard about what I was doing from someone and donated to my cause. A couple who is very dear to my husband and I also made a very generous donation to this project. There are AMAZING people in this world, and I am humbled by the help I received to give these children a good Christmas.

Apart from this I was able to see Toys for Tots in action this year. You may have seen the bins for donations, you may have even donated yourself, but how many of you have actually SEEN the children receiving the toys? It made me think, "28 years of life and for the first time I'm REALLY seeing Christmas".  Next year I hope we are in a situation to help even more. However, I don't want this to be a Chrismas thing, I want to help always. 

Renaissance Festival (late post)

I just realized I never showed off my cute costume from the Renaissance festival this summer. Well, here it is. And you even get a Frank-da-Pug cameo for good measure.

I had my hair done at the fair, because we all know I even fail at my own ponytail attempts. The design was called "Princess with Fireworks"- so of course I found it fitting. Trish, Bruce, Vince and I spent more time shopping than actually going through all the entertainment. Sometimes it is dangerous to have Trish when there is shopping that can be done. Remember the 3-hour "we just needed some velcro" Walmart shopping trip?

It was a hot day, we drank lots of pink lemonade and thank goodness we had umbrellas for shade. (was that almost a poem just now?) I really enjoyed watching the bagpipe players and the drummers, but I also got to see an elephant up close which for some reason became the highlight for me.

Wicked

I have not yet caught on to this whole "blogging regularly" trend yet. To feed your curiosity of what we've been up to I'm posting this photo of us on the stage of Wicked. I'm sure you are wondering how we managed to get on stage during such a high-energy scene. We are just THAT good. Or, ya know, its one of those souvenir green screen photos you can get. If I had scanned it you would be able to tell, but a low quality photo-of-a-photo makes my first story almost believable.

Wicked is, hands down, our favorite musical. It was great to see it again (Thanks, Grandpa!)

You're never to old...

You are never to old to play dress up when what you should be doing is cleaning up the messy office you have behind you in a photo.

True Love Is...

True Love is...

taking out the stinky or heavy trash without being asked. I was going to do it (2-3 days ago) but avoiding it seemed like a better solution at the time.

Xoxo.

Happy Valentines Day!

I give my husband a lot of crap and snide comments about him not being romantic. He just isn't in the traditional sense. However, "in the traditional sense" doesn't describe us as a couple at all.

For Valentines day he got me a mini box of Sees candy that was the same one I got each year growing up from my Dad. (He gave the mini boxes to my sister and me and large version to my mom). My "real" present isn't here yet, but he ordered one of our wedding photos to be printed on a large canvas! LOVE! We don't have a single wedding photo up in our house because we ordered them as part of an uber fancy professional album. I wish I had ordered large prints when we got married, but I figured we have a gazillion other pics up. Then digital photos happened and I haven't had a real copy of any photo in years.

I told hubby I got us a groupon deal for a restaurant called Tony's. I kinda let some info leak out that I will be driving us to a secret location where we will be taken to the restaurant by way that involves animals, the deal includes transportation, dinner, and dessert and I had to make a reservation. That's all I'm going to say in case Vince checks our blog at work. But this surprise is more than meets the eye... or more than I've revealed in my hints I guess. I'm REALLY surprised he hasn't caught on to the "catch" yet. I wonder if anyone reading this has.

It's almost my Birthday.. ba ba ba da ba BIRTHDAY!

I decided that we needed to have an excuse to par-tay! At first it was going to be a Murder Mystery dinner, then it was going to just be dinner out with friends, and now it's a Wonderfully Wacky Tacky Birthday Party! Held at one of my favorite places, Petries Family Games, and it will be a casual get together of friends, eating chocolate-chocolate covered cake, and of course playing board games and large-group party-style board games!

One tradition I've carried over from my childhood is having a helium-filled mylar balloon for the Birthday person tied to their chair at the dinner table. As you can see, this year I picked out my own HUGE balloon. It has hot pink, polka dots, zebra print AND a feather boa trim! I am IN LOVE! Have I mentioned how much I love tacky things? This is the pic from my party evite:

Holy Cra-zay game night!

We're both uber tired today. That might be due in part to gaming last night until 1am. I've said it a hundred times but I seriously love the friends we have in Colorado, they are SO much fun. Geeky game people are their own special brand of awesome. We were at a new friends house with a bunch of mutual friends and it was just fun to have so much gaming and socializing going on, such a change from living under that rock thing we have done previously.


If I can get a photo of it (many were taken by many people, just not me) I'll post the cake. It was a My Little Pony massacre.. Ernest is our lil' Bronie (bro' who loves ponies). I'd let the pic speak for itself if I had one. Kinda reminds me of the cake we got a few years back for my friend Kevin when we asked the cake people to spell everything wrong, give us a smooshed reject cake, and then we put pretty princesses in it. At the time it went well the party theme of "everything thrown together last minute from mixed dollar store finds" but looking back now I bet the fine cake people at Safeway thought we were high on something (besides life).

I married Santa...

I married Santa and ya know what? He's pretty dang cute!

Thanksgiving- Always be grateful

We don't have very many Thanksgiving traditions beyond avoiding family drama, but making the dogs pose for ridiculous pictures is a tried and true tradition at its best. We're thankful for eachother, our pups, our wonderful careers, our house, and our amazing friends!

October means Murder Mystery Dinner!

One annual event we look forward to each year is Petrie's Murder Mystery Dinner. Sarah has hosted many of these types of parties in the past, so its nice to be in some where she isn't planning (and cheating by reading the revealed murderer early). Here's our costumes this year for Death of a Highwayman:

Sarah is a barwench who is friendly with all the men, and Vince is a highway man who lets his wife (played by Shannon- LOL!) do all the fighting and tough stuff for him.

Last year's costumes:

Sarah as Little Red Riding Hood, Vince as Sherlock Holmes, and Benny as Long John Silver.

We sadly didn't remember our camera for the first one. Sarah was an alchoholic 20s flapper and Vince was a loveable traincart hobo.

Second Honeymoon at DISNEYLAND!

While we don't vacation often, when we do the hubs goes ALL OUT! We flew first class to and from California and went all out in between. I don't think there is any desire/want during the trip that he didn't fulfill. We ate at fancy resteraunts, bought fun souveniers, and had the time of our lives in Disneyland! Hubs surprised me with a character breakfast but we also ate at Blue Bayou inside the Pirates of the Carribean ride- seated right next to the water! To see the new World of Color show at California Adventures Vince planned a dinner package where we got the fanciest meal of our lives and after VIP reserved seating. The only thing between us and the actual water of the show was..nothing! We were RIGHT THERE at the edge not even in the first row- special VIP platform ahead of it... and we got wet- but luckily had ponchos! AH.MAZ.ING.

We got our photos taken with some of our favorite characters like the Queen of Hearts, Tigger, Eeyore, Baloo, etc..and of course MICKEY! Mickey was the first thing we ran into on our first day. What a way to start a vacation!

11 days and counting...

We will be at the Happiest Place on Earth in just eleven days- I can't wait. I feel the blogs been a bit neglected since we've been so busy this summer getting every ounce of fun in we can before "the semester of doom" starts- when Sarah is teaching 3rd grade, finishing her teacher work sampling portfolio, and taking grad classes at night!

There aren't any pics of our recent adventures.. So just imagine a big happy smile on our faces and that will be the mental image we can leave you with.

Heres some pics of us from our last Disney adventure (DisneyWorld)

Required Post

It's father's day. I hate it as much as mother's day. But I guess its a requirementin in the blog-universe to discuss it. So here goes:

My dad blah blah blah dadness blah blah required photo:

Yeah, you can tell I'm his kiddo. I have SO MANY of the typical "Burney genes" my sass, height, and redhair come from the Burney genepool- well the redhair I have when I haven't dyed it a million times. (my dad used to be more auburn..his beard was always a bushy mountain-man red)

His name is H.R.D. it means His Royal Dadness. Salut!

CWG at Petries!

I have a gazillion words about how great CityWideGaming was this year. But since we all need to catch up on sleep from 2 days of non-stop fun here's just some pics of your two favorite game hosts.

We ran Munchkin, Catan, UberCatan, Betrayl at House on the Hill, Killer Bunnies, Civilization (well we planned to but UberCatan ran long), and Sarah and Shannon did the last event- The Pajama Party PartyGames! PartyGames included Telestrations, Thanks-A-Lot, and Balderdash to name a few! SO FUN.

Family Portriat

Last weekend Vince's family decided it was time once again for the much dreaded (by the kids) family photo. I'll post some more, but for now heres a nice one of just our family- dogs included. I love how Penny is so proper up on that little stool, its just too cute!

Belle of the Ball

This past Saturday we went to a charity steampunk ball that raised money for an artist who had fallen very ill. Steampunk is "the history that never was" mixing victorian styles with technology- lots of clocks, gears, etc. Here is a quick pic of part of my costume- the bustle!

I will need to track down someone who snapped a pic of my full outfit at the ball. With so many amazing costumes cameras were going off all night. I did get awesome shots of others but forgot to lend my camera to someone for my own pict

ure. Here's one of my favorites I captured of Vince:

And as I was getting ready I even let Frank in on the fun. I called him "Professor Von Pugsnort"!

*pic coming soon*

A Very Berryman Easter pt.1

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Growing up I remember asking our elderly neighbors what the Easter Bunny brought them and the old couple told me that the Easter Bunny (and Santa..) don't visit houses without young children. I thought this was horrible, and I still remember it so clearly- I guess it scarred me for life. Well, I'm proving those old crazy geezer wrong because ALL the holiday spirits/characters/etc come to our house throughout the year. Why should kids have all the fun?

This was my masterpiece I created for Vince for Easter. That big brown blob in the lower left is our beanbag... I know in this photo it looks like exploding carpet since it matches. This project took the largest spool of thick string I could find, over 250 easter eggs (including ones with suction cups on mirrors, glow-in-the dark, hanging from the ceilings, etc), small candies, and a lot of getting tied up and tripping as I created it! It went all over the house and was an amazing mess of Easter Web. (Maybe the Easter Spider came instead of a Bunny..?)

Here's Vince at the start of the "trail". Since there is no way I could do this with him at home I did it while he was at work on Saturday and so his Easter started a night early. He was given the instructions to use the Mickey basket (cute, isn't it?) and follow the string in order, no cheating. Frank and Penny were very willing to help- especially since any Easter Eggs falling off the line meant "floor-candy". Don't worry- they didn't get any and there was no chocolate! We are VERY careful about puppy safety!
I love this picture because, as pointed out to me by a friend, it looks like the eggs are planets against the dark wall and the light is a bright sun! Also, you can see a hint of amusement and frustration on Vince's face as he realizes "what- there's MORE in the basement"!
Next time I want to use a brighter string and more eggs. Of course, for how long this took I don't think there will be a next time. Maybe down the road if we have kids, or neices/nephews, or for any of the kids who have "adopted" us... but not for a few years!

So heres the end shot of Vince and his loot. The candy from the eggs, small toys that were hiding in some of the eggs, goodies wrapped up in the web, and the giant nerf gun that was at the end. Not pictured: A build-your-own-mini-wooden-TARDIS kid and one of those toy snakes that grows in water. I think I did pretty good with a $20 budget. And a whole holiday with no boardgames (Sorry, Petries).





If you're wondering why I am not in a single pic its because 1) Who do you think took the photos and 2) Vince is currently putting together my Easter. He needed extra time since he works and I'm a sneak who would have searched the house for clues. More to come. Stay tuned.