Ugly Sweater Party

The Dolomites Crew had an Ugly Sweater Party! It was complete with vodka soaked gummy bears, jello shots, beer pong, and champagne punch. Ben thought for sure he would win the ugly sweater contest with this beauty, but alas Marshall took the cake with this outfit!

Katie won the women's portion of the contest with a decked out sweater dress! Here is the winner's circle.

Brian & Mitch were pretty styling as well. Brian wearing a women's sweater and a turtleneck and Mitch dressed up as Cousin Eddie.

Finally, the whole crew....

Date night for a Degree

As you may know, I have been going to Seattle University for the past two years to earn my Master's of Business Administration (MBA) Degree with a specialization in Leadership. This December I handed in my last (20 page, ugh!) paper and said goodbye to Pigott Hall! Seattle U has given me many things in addition to a great education. It has rooted me in the community and provided access to great, intelligent people. I can't imagine feeling as connected to Seattle as I do today without this program. Yet, even still I am still excited and proud to say, I have officially GRADUATED!!!

As a wonderful husband would, Ben took me out on a full day extravaganza to celebrate. We really have had little time to be together with school occupying much of my time, so it was great to have a whole day to spend trolling around in our cool city.

Our first stop was at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) for a stroll through the Asian exhibit called Luminous. We especially enjoyed an interactive exhibit that had an arch way that had birds suddenly fly away as you walked through.
Next we headed down to Pike's Place Market. It is beautiful this time of year with all the decorations and the hustle and bustle of Christmas.

Third, Ben surprised me and took me to Coastal Kitchen for dinner. I have been dying to eat here since we moved and it did not disappoint! This restaurant has a constantly changing menu moving to a different coastal city every few months. They redecorate the space and serve authentic food to the location. This time it was Venice! I enjoyed a real Italian meal just like we had back in Sept in Italy. The tiramisu and limoncello were just like I remember them!

As if that weren't enough, Mr. Ben had more in store! We headed back to Belltown where I thought he may take me to Gameworks where there were many Santas outside for the Santacon celebration. Luckily that wasn't the case;) Instead he had tickets to Arthur Christmas! (I love Christmas movies:) So we settled in to a cute story on the real meaning of Christmas.

It was a great day & a wonderful way to wrap up all the hard work I put into getting my degree!
Did I marry a keeper or what?!

Merry Christmas!

Well we don't have any cute kids or pets to put on our Christmas card this year, so it's just us! And our house:) It's been great to be able to have a home to put up decorations and a tree this year.

We even have some lights on our front porch...Ben may post those later.

A couple weeks ago we even had some friends over to make and decorate Christmas cookies. Since I didn't have any fancy cookie cutters, they were all circles which made for very creative cookies!

Merry Christmas from us to you!!!

Thanksgiving

I'm only one holiday behind now! So as many of you know, Chrissy left me on Thanksgiving to go back to Minnesota. Sad, I know. Just kidding. She did leave to go back to see family and for a wedding but I chose to stay back since we will be flying back for Christmas. I know all of you were "worried" about me spending Thanksgiving and the break alone, but need not worry. I had a great time and ate like a king:

That's right. Don't be jealous of my turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and corn dinner (don't forget the 2% milk). Sometimes it's just great to have some individual time to just do pretty much nothing. It was fantastic. Don't get me wrong, I love doing things and going places. However sometimes it's nice to just be lazy. I ate a lot and watch the Packers destroy the Lions. Then Antoni came back home later that day and we play video games pretty much the rest of the night. We even set a record and were ranked globally at #449 out of ~90 million people. That means we beat little gamer boys in Japan. You don't have to be a gamer to know that's incredible :)

Me and Antoni and Andy also set up two TV's side by side so we could watch the Badger game and the Oregon Ducks game. All of this while drinking beers and eating spicy wings. Don't be jealous. Afterwards we worked on Andy's new car, a 1998 Acura Integra. We wired and installed some foglights and clear corners. It was fun to get my hands back on a honda. It's been awhile since I had my Integra. So at least we were productive.

I also went for a photo shoot of the city from West Seattle. It was a fairly clear day, which made for some great pictures. Seattle is a beautiful city, even when it's cloudy.

I also did a mini photo shoot of my car since it's been awhile.

As well as a mini shoot with my other Evo's.

I also did some testing out of low light conditions to see how they would turn out.

I came across another spiderweb as well. I know I know, more spiders, gross. However this was one of the most beautiful webs I have ever seen. The light reflected off of the web like a ton of diamond strands. The light rolled by in sinusoidal waves as the air moved past the strands like a fingertip to a guitar string. Waves, strings and light are what make up our entire universe and this was an elegant example of it. I love physics.

Catching Up

So before we left for Italy, we were back in St. Paul for some great family time. Amy, Aaron and Alexis flew back from Utah. My parents drove up from Madison. Brad, Heidi and the 5 kids drove up. It was a full house of fun!

It was also my birthday which made for an excellent celebration. Momma Meier even made me a funnel cake birthday cake. Que deliciouso! Along with the funnel "cake" we had our Evo "cake" which was our back-up cake for the wedding. It was Chrissy's wonderful present to me in honor of our 3rd family member. Though the fondant was not very good, it made for some great play-do time.

Another reason we came back was to celebrate the wedding of my old roommate and good friends Jason Cooney & Andrea Northrup. I was in the wedding so I got to get all dressed up with some sweat suspenders.

The wedding was held at Dre's sister's husbands house, aka Akradi Farms. This is less of a house and more of a mansion. Imagine 5 farms, a small lake, a river and a prairie. Now imagine them all being on the same piece of property. Yeah, it was huge and beautiful.

They own about 7-8 different horses. The stable these horses live in would put a modern persons house to shame. The even had their own gold plated name tags on their stall. Beautiful!

The wedding was amazing and heart touching. It was also a whole lot of fun! They had the #3 DJ in the world on the 1's and 2's. He was playing a dance mix that seemed to never stop. I swear I lost about 10lbs that night.

After we got home the next night from a movie with Mikes, we almost ran into this on the back porch:

Kind of creepy but pretty cool to see. The next day it was off to Italy! Oh what fun we had. Can not wait to do it all again in a couple weeks (minus the Italy park of course). Looking forward to it!