Arizona: The Land Of Hot Dirt... And Traffic

Last weekend we had a great trip out to Arizona... why, you ask? Visit Round Ball Round Bat for the details, including a link to our photos from the trip {fyi- if you are not our contact on flickr yet you will only be able to see the baseball pictures and not all the other cute shots of Gigi and her cousin}.

Also, here's a cute video I finally edited that will give you a little hint as to why we went to the desert (if you don't already know).

Vote For Al-Buddy Again

Again my super-talented brother has some t-shirts up for voting.

These are 3 seriously awesome shirts, people. All you have to do is click the links to vote for each shirt.

Shirt #1: Phonograph

Shirt #2: Rewind

Shirt #3: Arizona
Arizona is my favorite. :) I think they are all equally as good or better than all the funny shirts that come from one of our favorite e-tailers, Busted Tees. So please, go register (it's real quick) and vote!!

And speaking of Arizona, we leave Thursday for Spring Training. Next week we'll have a recap over at our baseball blog!

Get Your Baseball Fix

I think by now everyone knows how much we love baseball in this family. So you probably won't be surprised to hear that we started a new baseball blog!

Please check it out and spread the word to other baseball fans! Click the button below to visit roundballroundbat.com!

Crazy March!

March was a crazy month for us. The first two weekends we were in Florida and then we had visitors for the rest of the month (Dears, Jann, Pavones) each weekend. It was a great month though and now we are sad that we have no visitors this month. But hey, at least there's baseball!
Speaking of baseball, we got the MLB package on DirecTV and David is in hog heaven to say the least. We can watch 8 games at once on one channel, and choose the feed for each game which means for the Dodger games we can almost always hear Vin Scully and see the Southern California commercials (those blasted In'n'Out commercials are painful though) so we sort of feel at home. Now the only bummer is that most games don't start until 8pm here which makes them end a little late.We had a great time with my parents and Gigi's great-grandma. My dad & I went skiing/snowboarding on friday and Gigi did awesome staying home with Yaya & Grandma and poor David had to work. :( Saturday the guys played golf on a beautiful day-- then we woke up the next two mornings with snow!
Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157604375408751/

We also had a really fun visit with David's Aunt Jann, who we got to spend Easter with! She and I took Gigi to the Zoo one day and she got to visit some of her other friends in the Denver area too. Here are all the rest of the pictures from March...
Click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157604261306676/

It's Official!

It's baseball season! To celebrate Opening Day for the 2008 season, David got up at 4am on Tuesday to watch live the game which was in Japan! Talk about devotion to the game. Actually he said he did doze in and out of the game, but he was very happy to have at least, mostly, experienced the long-awaited (well, 5 months-awaited) first game of the season. Now, just a few more days of anticipation before the Dodgers have their home opener!!

Home from Vacation

We had an awesome time on our trip to Florida. It was hard to come back to cold, brown Colorado after a week in warm, green Florida! Here's a synopsis of our trip...

Saturday, March 1~
We arrived in Orlando, and headed to Downtown Disney to have dinner. We had yummy fish 'n' chips at an Irish pub and a yummy cookie from the sweets shop (we always used to love those cookies from Downtown Disney CA!). We were hoping to meet up with my cousin who lives nearby but unfortunately her work schedule changed at the last minute. From there we headed to Melbourne, FL where we stayed for free at a brand new Marriot, using the points that David had earned on his work travel!

Sunday, March 2~
We drove south down Highway 1 (just like in CA!!) to Vero Beach, where we went to our first Dodgers game at Holman Stadium at Dodgertown. It was awesome! We sat on the outfield grass which was perfect for Gigi to crawl around on the blanket and play with her toys. She felt the grass for the first time and did not like it!! Then we met David's parents at the campground where we were staying, in nearby Ft. Pierce. There were lots of "snowbirds" there including many from Quebec, and I enjoyed saying "bonjour" to them and little more French here and there.
Monday, March 3~
We went to Dodgers game #2 at Dodgertown, with the Bennetts. David & his dad "played golf" at our campground- it was 3 holes - sort of between mini golf and regular golf. :)
Tuesday, March 4~
Dodgers game # 3, also at Dodgertown! This was a night game; we had great seats and got free pint glasses given away! We got there plenty early to be able to watch some practice and we got James Loney (1st baseman)'s autograph and manager Joe Torre's. We also got interviewed by a local tv news reporter about our trip to Dodgertown! (we never got to see it though). Before the game that day, David & Dan played golf (lots of water hazards = not very fun game), and Jeri and I took Gigi swimming at the campground.

Wednesday, March 5~
We drove to Port St. Lucie to see the Dodgers play at the Mets. I got Nomar's autograph, and David got Tommy Lasorda's! After the game we packed up the camp and headed up to DisneyWorld, stopping for a yummy southern dinner at Cracker Barrel.

Thursday, March 6~
We spent the day at Epcot which was very fun (despite a little sprinkling of rain) and then came back to our campground, Ft. Wilderness, for a very entertaining dinner show. When we got out of the show, it was pouring rain!
Friday, March 7~
The guys played golf once more- this time had more fun on a very nice course! Our last baseball game (#5) was a Braves/Tigers game at Disney's Wide World of Sports, a huge sports complex, that includes the Braves' stadium, lots of sports fields and the gym where Alex & I both competed for cheer nationals back in the day. Memories! We then headed to a cool area called Disney's Boardwalk, made to look like an old fashioned Atlantic City- like waterfront area. We ate at the ESPN Club, which is like a smaller, slightly more intimate ESPN Zone- when we first arrived there were some real ESPN people doing a broadcast in the restaurant! Then we walked around a little bit and got another yummy Disney cookie!
Saturday, March 8~
Bye-bye, Florida!
Check out all our pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157604081230124/

Fire and Ice

While wildfires are raging in Southern California, our Colorado weather has been quite chilly (29 degrees this morning!).
Please pray for the firefighters and residents in SoCal (specifically please pray for my Dad and his department!) as the fires continue with no end in sight yet- it's really scary.

But on a happier note, we enjoyed our first snow (on Sunday)- except when it made our satellite TV signal go out (but at least it came back on for Game 7). Here are a few pictures.Our house in a blanket of snow!

Driving in to our neighborhood after church.

The beautiful view out our living room window.

Our pretty, snowy tree!

Quick Gianna update: Gigi has been exploring the orange veggies this past weekend! She loves carrots mixed with rice cereal (see her "I want more" expression below) and also tried sweet potatoes today, and liked them pretty well too! She is sitting up better each day and scooting/rolling around like she really wants to crawl. So we're officially in the market for baby gates.
Oh, and as much as I like Dice-K and the Red Sox, I've got to cheer for the hometown- so Go Rockies! It's Rocktober in Denver!!!

Young & In Love

Gigi's Yaya (my mom) has occasionally asked me whether Gigi has "found her feet yet." Well, I'm here to report that not only has she found them, she is in love with them. She is almost always grabbing them, with socks or not- she doesn't care, and occasionally sucking on her right big toe (I once even caught her sucking on a sock, which seemed a little gross). It's pretty funny. But as I was explaining to our little friend Brooke today, it's not as if her feet are dirty, since she doesn't walk, so hey, go ahead, Gigi, suck away on that big toe while you can, before the inflexibility that you're bound to genetically acquire develops!

P.S. On a totally unrelated note, Gianna went to her 6th MLB game on Monday night (with friends Tom & Dominick from David's work), to see an amazing 1-game playoff between the Rockies and Padres. It was such an exciting game and it was fun to see the hometown team win as everyone was going crazy!! (Sorry to my SD peeps.)

We love Boston!

We got home from our little trip to New England on Monday night. We really loved Boston- it is a great city- we think we even liked it better than New York City! As most of you know, the reason we went there was for a Red Sox/Yankees game that David won tickets to. We finally had our standing-room tickets emailed to us the day before we left! They turned out okay though; other than sore backs and legs, the standing room area had a great view, and we really enjoyed the game.
David was amazed at how Boston is truly a baseball town. Everyone talks about the Red Sox, from the lady we shared a taxi from the airport with, to our Duck tour guide. You see people in Sox paraphernalia everywhere, whether they are going to the game or not. We were happy to have the Red Sox win the day we went to the game even. The crowd was amazing, it was like a playoff game, totally sold out with people 4-5 deep in the standing area. Everyone cheers when they should without being prompted, there are no banner boards that tell you to "Get Loud" or "Make noise," because everyone does it at the appropriate time on their own (i.e. everytime there are 2 outs & 2 strikes, etc). We met up with our friend Jeff from HB, and ate at the Cask n' Flagon (a Red Sox fan haven) and I had the BEST fish and chips of my life!We went on a really fun tour on Saturday morning called a Duck tour (thanks, Pete Merandi for the recommendation). It is an old WWII vehicle that goes on land, and then drives right into the water to become a boat (with very entertaining tour guides)! Between that and the Freedom trail, we saw a lot of Boston, including lots of our country's heritage and history. The Freedom Trail we did on Sunday with David's high school friend Katie, who lives in Boston. It is a 2.5 mile walk through town hitting all the historical landmarks like Ben Franklin's grave, Paul Revere's house, the Old North Church, etc. The old brick buildings and uneven roads are so cool.
My favorite part of the city (besides Fenway Park) was the North End, which is where Katie lives. It is the "little Italy" of Boston, and it is so quaint and cute with cobblestone roads and an infinite amount of Italian restaurants and pastry shops. We tried cannolis for the first time- delish! We also walked around Harvard which is beautiful, and I think we feel a little smarter just for visiting. :-) We also had some authentic New England Clam Chowder at the much-recommended Legal Seafood- it was delicious.I hope you enjoy our pictures and I hope you all can visit this awesome city someday! Oh, and Gigi did a great job on the trip overall!
See photos (make sure to click the "i" if you are watching the slideshow so you can see the captions!): http://www.flickr.com/photos/bennettars/sets/72157602084527531/

Waiting (im)patiently

I'm about 38 1/2 weeks now... I've been having stronger contractions the last couple of days, but they are still very irregular- sometimes close together, sometimes very spaced out. I go to the doc tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully I will have made some progress in the dialation category.
We're still trying to do a lot of walking-- went to the beach on Monday, and last night we had a nice dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (we had to bring dessert home because dinner was so good!), and then walked around the mall a little and around our housing complex too.

I also wanted to post some pictures from this season's first baseball games! We've been to 2 Dodger games (one with my brother & cousins), and an Angel game with one of David's old co-workers, Wes & his fiancee, Daphnie, and we met Dodger Andre Ethier and got his autograph at a furniture store (after waiting in line for 2 hours!)-- he was really nice.

Oh, and for those of you tracking David's spectacular radio-prize-winning skills, you can add one more to the list, and this one might top them all (even the $400/ea Dodger Dugout Club seats). Yesterday morning David won 2 tickets to ANY regular-season sporting event in the contintental U.S. and 2 round-trip plane tickets to go with it! We're contemplating going to a Red Sox/Yankees games at Fenway Park in September, but haven't decided yet for sure.

Nesting & Baseball

So I experienced a bit of the "nesting" bug yesterday; this is how it manifested itself: I spontaneously went to Babies-r-us to get a crib sheet so that we could see how cute it looks all put together with the adorable bumpers my mom made, I made cookies, I finished making peanut butter balls that had been waiting in the freezer since Christmas, and then I made dinner. I was feeling a little crazy to say the least. I have been having Braxton-hicks contractions like crazy lately, and I'm happy to have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, to make sure everything is going well.
Also, I wanted to post a couple of pictures from our spontaneous trip to Arizona for a couple of Spring training games-- Gigi's first baseball games in the womb! We saw the Angels beat the Padres and the Royals beat the Cubs. The weather was beautiful (it felt great to be out in the sun), and it was a fun little "baby-moon" for David & I.