Costa Rica

Aside from the parties, cooking, eating, shopping, wrapping and singing I also traveled to Costa Rica for business. We are gearing up for our sales incentive trip in March so we HAD to go down and take a look at the place and all the surroundings to make sure it was the best fit for our group. And it was. :) It was of course just beautiful. We enjoyed all the food we could absolutely eat, we did the zipline tour and toured the town of Tamarindo. The property is just beautiful! I can't wait to be back in March.

Oh and there are monkeys just chillin on the side of the road - very weird!

Parties, Parties, Parties

As probably most of you, we've been busy this holiday season. We've had several parties for work and with friends. It's always fun to get together with everyone and most importantly it's always fun to eat!

Company Christmas Party, Downtown Nashville

Department Cookie Exchange and Dirty Santa

Welcome Home, Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas Get Together at the Stephens' House

Cause I'm a Pothole

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjMUfIKktWU#watch-main-area

I am loving this commercial! I have seen it a hundred times but I am crying over this right now.

K - bye!

Gobble, gobble, mooo

I can't believe Thanksgiving has come and gone. I started the Thanksgiving holiday on Wednesday with a breakfast of champions with Pat Summit and Rick Insell. The Lady Vols and Lady Raiders matched up on Wednesday evening but started out with a breakfast celebrating women's basketball. I was invited by some of my great friends at the new Embassy Suites in Murfreesboro. I had a great time, thanks for the invite. I did go into work afterwards but it was pretty much a wash-out day. Then we traveled east to celebrate Thanksgiving with my side of the family this year. We had a delicious meal and of course probably too much but it sure didn't compare to the 10 or so 6 ft. tables of food we had at Mark's family last year. :) It was a nice low key day eating, napping, playing with Drew, conversing and watching football.

Mom and dad actually came back with us on Thursday night because mom and I like to shop here on Black Friday. So we all looked at the paper to plan our day. This year was a bit different as we didn't really have a purpose or mission. But nonetheless we still got up and started about 6am. It was, as usual, an all day event, getting us home about 4pm. We had a great time and did find some deals even though we really weren't looking for anything in particular. We've had our tree up for several weeks and the shopping is pretty much complete so we're definitely ready to celebrate this Christmas season.

When mom and dad came to our house Santa paid us a visit too bringing us a new deep freezer for our cow. Mom works with a guy that raises cows. Mom and dad have bought a cow for several years and I just love the meat so we thought we would give it a try. We split a half with my uncle so we purchased a fourth of a cow. We have enough steak, ground beef and roasts to last us for probably well over a year. We knew we were going to have to buy a freezer but we were fortunate enough to have Santa bring us one. Yea! Thanks Santa!

Love Someone Tonight

Saturday I participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Brentwood. Our office has been raising funds for months now for Race for the Cure. We have had several activities such as "Real Men Wear Pink" day, buy a pink bracelet and wear jeans all week, we had a cookout with executives in the dunk tank and raised money for employees to dunk them and on Friday we had a chili cook off. As a company I believe we raised over $70,000. We had a team also participate in the 5K walk/run on Saturday. It was an early and cold Saturday morning but well worth it. I can't even tell you how many people were there - there was just a sea of people everywhere you looked. It was a great event for a great cause. One thing I was looking forward to most was meeting Delilah and I did that first thing! I was so surprised that the Mix 92.9 tent was right next to ours so it was very convenient. The line wasn't long and I got to meet her right before she took a break - whew, good thing. Here are some pictures from the event. I was also glad to see at the Y today that for every mile that's ran or walked on the new pink treadmills they will donate 10 cents. So I will definitely be doing my part on the pink treadmills.

Me and Delilah!!


























Only part of our team















Me and Becky



















Becky and her hula hoop team -
they hooped the entire race!

Visiting the Mouse

Since I was attending the conference in Orlando Mark decided to join me afterwards for a few days of fun in the world of Disney. We enjoyed Epcot, Magic Kingdom and Universal Studios. Neither one of us had ever been to Disney World so we decided to experience this together. (I did visit Magic Kingdom for one day about 7 years ago, but I don't count that. :)) We started off at Epcot and had so much fun. Since there were no lines and only the two of us we whizzed through those parks so fast. We were usually finished by 5pm or 6pm every day, we did what we wanted and got out. :) We did go back to Epcot to see their fireworks show which I will say was GREAT! I was very impressed, it was definitely more than just fireworks. They also had a food and wine festival going on so it was interesting to see the foods and wines from all the different countries. It was an experience.

We went to Universal the second day. The best thing was the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit Roller Coaster. It was awesome! We both love roller coasters and it was probably the best one we've ever riden. It was also very neat to see all the movie sets at Universal.

Magic Kingdom was the last day. This is surely a very magical place and the more kid friendly park. Next time we will definitely have kids in tow. To be honest we were a little disappointed in the parks. We thought we had made the decision to visit the more "adult" parks but they were still very much geared toward the kids, which I understand is the point But we left wanting to visit Six Flags or Kings Island for some roller coasters. :) We did have a fun time and highly recommend going when kids are in school!!!

We did play putt-putt one night too. Mark beat me by 1 point - I was ready for a re-match!

2 days with a gator!

My company exhibited at a conference last week in Orlando. As part of our booth promotion we decided to have a live gator in our booth in conjunction with the customer event we were holding at Gatorland. We were the best booth in the exhibit hall. We had over 375 guests come have their picture made with our gators, Izzy and Pearl. We had the best time and it was definitely a creative concept. Holding the gators was a little scary but I was brave.

Congratulations to the Lemley's

Whew I am so behind, I can't believe it's already October.
September 12th we got to celebrate the marriage of Laurie and Greg Lemley. We enjoyed a beautiful wedding and a beautiful reception at the home of a family friend in Murfreesboro. The weather was great, the lighting and scenery were wonderful. We wish you guys a life full of happiness, friendship, love and fun.

Mr. and Mrs. Lemley

Surprise Date Night

Labor Day weekend got off to a great start. Friday night Mark had planned date night for us. I knew we were going out but didn't have a clue of what the night included. We had reservations to stay at Union Station in downtown Nashville so we got checked in and changed for our night on the town. He surprised me with a delicious dinner at The Palm and then enjoyed a night at the theater watching Wicked. I cannot express how GREAT this play was. The talent was AMAZING! I definitely recommend it to everyone. This was definitely rare occasion. It almost felt like a night in New York City. :) Thanks honey!

Spring Break '09

No wait, I was in PCB but it wasn't Spring Break. Me and girls took a trip to Panama City Beach a few weeks ago and stayed in my friend Katie's grandparent's condo. It was a very nice way to say goodbye to summer. We had three full days of fun in the sun. It was so relaxing to spend the days by the pool and the ocean reading and chatting with the girls. We definitely got our seafood fix at dinner and also enjoyed music by the very talented Mike Van Elsen. We also had a photo shoot on the beach, that we thoroughly enjoyed. :-)

Thanks for such a fun trip girls!

On the drive down, Laura and I made a stop at Peach Park.

The first night we ended up at Tootsies. They had a

screen where we could see what was happening at the

real Tootsies in Nashville.

Meet Mike