Surprise - It's your Birthday

Sorry for the long delay in posting; we've been travelling for business and pleasure and also been sicker than dogs, but we are back on track.

For my birthday - March 5 in case you were wondering - My Husband and my girlfriends threw a surprise party for me. The party was actually on the Friday after my birthday, hence the suprise.

As you can see, I was surprised. I think JR was glad to have all the hush-hush stuff done. Everyone worked very hard to make this a memorable birthday. My sister-in-law Mary flew in from Chicago to spend the weekend with me without me knowing in advance and that was a great gift. My girlfriend Jill came in from Frisco just to see me and announced she was moving to Montana in less than a week! Talk about surprises! Sandy and her son Joey also came and my GNIs - Aileen, Anne, Paden, Laura and Dawn were also in attendance. Aileen's husband Brian, who may have been a little frightened by the amount of progesterone in the room, made Creme Brulee which was a HUGE hit. Aileen made my favorite cake - Red Velvet. A good time was had by all - so much so in fact we really forgot to take pictures.

The next day, our daughter Katheryne suprised me - my last gift - and we got to spend the rest of the weekend together. It was wonderful having Mary and Kat together in our home. That evening, Kat, Mary, Dawn, Brian, Aileen, Anne, JR and I watched a double feature - Hairspray - both the John Waters version and the musical. There was much laughing, food and fun and I enjoyed my birthday weekend very much.

Thanks to all who busted their collective butts to pull off something of this magnitude. As I said that evening, it really means a lot to me that you all went through the trouble.

What doesn't kill you....

Well, this is one day after we did the Run the Republic. The Republic is the tallest building in Denver with 55 floors or 1,098 stairs, as they repeated over and over before we started. I haven't been able to work out for 3 weeks what with the bad back, the wedding, the budgets and the silly training in Boston so I wasn't at all sure of how I would do. Our friends Aileen and Brian were on our "team" as well as some people from JRs office and a friend of a friend, who was just delightful. This is the part where I give JR tons of kudos as he beat the 27 and 28 year old males in our group (it only took him appx 12 mins)! This is also the part where I cursed him for numerous floors while I climbed by myself. As luck would have it, one of the FOAFs hung back with me as he has Asthma and wasn't sure how he would do. We took our time - to be exact we took 1.12 secs per stair - and got done in appx 20 mins! Yippee for us. I can't thank Bobby enough for hanging with me; although he will tell you I hung w/ him. Aileen, Brian, Bobby and I all crossed the finish at the same time, and believe it or not, it was lots of fun. We all went out to Hot Cakes for a much deserved breakfast and then went home. JR and I read, watched golf and then watched the first 4 episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Aileen and Brian were right - It rocks!

On Friday, we saw Vantage Point which was fabulous - ignore the pundits as they are wrong. It's a thinking man's film and was really put together well. On Saturday we saw Michael Clayton and liked that as well.

I'll have a team picture soon.