"The One Where...Tanner Turns One"

Today is my nephew Tanners' first birthday! I so wish I could have been there to celebrate with them!

Happy Birthday my little Tan Man :)

"The One With...Exciting News"

While I was at Rudy's enjoying my margarita this evening, I received a text/picture from my sister-in-law Rachel. It was a pic of my niece Joslyn and on her shirt there was a saying - it read: "I'm going to be a Big Sister"!

This can only mean one thing - I'm going to be an Aunt once again :) My new little niece or nephew is due in July and I am so very excited and happy for my brother and his family!

"The One With...Another Happy Hour"

After a long, drawn out, crazy day at work, a few of the girls retreated to our favorite Mexican restaurant - Rudy's - for some margaritas and food after work. Our friends Camille, her baby boy Savero as well as Nikki all came out to join us as well for the festivities. We had one too many margaritas and ate way too many chips - as usual :) It was a fun and much needed evening!

"The One Where...I Voted"

Election Day is finally here - thank goodness! I am getting tired of all the election ads and political talk at work and on the streets.

I set my alarm for 5am and decided to try and beat the crowd by getting up early and getting to the Civic Center by 6am to vote. I arrived at 6:10am and ended up waiting in line for over 50 minutes. Seems as if everyone else thought they would get there early also and "beat the crowd"!?! I didn't mind standing in line for that long however. I was actually very excited to be there exercising my right as a US citizen and casting my vote. I hope you all got the chance to get out there and experience the whole voting process also!

"The One With...Halloween"

Halloween....one of my most favorite times of the year. I just LOVE the fall colors, smells, decorations and the fact that Christmas is now less than 2 months away :)

I spent Friday evening with my neighbors while Shane spent it inside relaxing. All of us from the cul-de-sac got together in one of the driveways with a firepit and 6 full baskets of Halloween candy. Linda made a huge pot of chili and we all brought a side dish to share. The trick-or-treaters stopped coming around 9:30pm and we ended up staying out way to late chatting, drinking wine and digging into everyone's leftover candy baskets! It was a fun evening and we all enjoyed seeing all the kids in their costumes!

"The One With...The Sunflower Showdown"

KU: 52

K-State: 21

Ahhh - Victory is sweet! Sorry K-State fans....better luck next year :)

"The One Where...We say "cheese"

This past Sunday - after I attended the Holiday Mart - Shane, me and the "furry-children" met my co-worker Mark out at the Arboretum to have professional pictures taken. It was an extremely windy day but was absolutely beautiful with 65 degree sunny weather. The dogs weren't as cooperative as I would have liked but we did manage to get some really nice photos. I got the proofs today and here is a sneak peek of what was taken:

This somewhat reminds me of an engagement photo :)

"The One With...Holiday Mart Festivities"

Today I met my friend Margie and her little girl Isabella out for an afternoon of shopping at the Holiday Mart. For those who don't know, the Holiday Mart is a 4-day event that is held annually at the Overland Park Convention Center. It features over 200 specialty retailers and attracts over 22,000 shoppers. It is an upscale holiday shopping extravaganza that over the last two decades has become a fall tradition to many in the Kansas City area. This years' Holiday Mart benefited children's literacy and has helped to raise more than $5 million for Kansas City community charities overall.

We enjoyed the afternoon browsing all the merchandise, holiday decorations, sampling food, coffees & teas, listening to holiday music and even made a few purchases!

Attending Holiday Mart always puts me in the mood for the upcoming holiday festivities. Just incase you were wondering...Christmas is only 60 days away! Or better yet, there are only 8 mores weekends left to shop before Christmas :)

"The One Where...We Rock with Metallica"

Saturday night found us getting together with our neighborhood friends Ken & Keri. We started out the evening at their house enjoying a few cocktails and then we made our way down to the Sprint Center to take in the Metallica concert. We had decent seats and watched a pretty good concert while enjoying the evening with our friends.


Pictured: Keri & Crazy Ken :)

"The One With...LL Cool J & Janet Jackson"

This evening me and my girlfriends Heather K and Maria went to the LL Cool J/Janet Jackson concert. We started off at our favorite Mexican restaurant (Rudy's) and enjoyed margaritas and way to many chips & salsa. We later headed into downtown for the long-awaited concert.

When we found our seats we all agreed that they were in an awesome location! We ended up sitting 12 rows away from the stage and had a great view of the entire performance. LL Cool J started off the evening and played over an hour of all his greatest hits. All 3 of us agreed that we could have left after his performance and have been fully satisfied with the show. He was the bomb diggity! A little dissappointed that we didn't get to see his 8-pack though :( He wouldn't lift that shirt of his no matter what the entire performance. Oh well....he was definitely worth seeing, despite the no-ab-visual!

Next up was Janet! She is such a great performer and entertainer. I saw her 10 years ago during her Velvet Rope tour so I knew we were in for a great show! I had heard that she was singing 36 songs on this tour of hers and she did not dissapoint! She awed us for over 2 hours and had at least 6 wardrobe changes and many more stage changes. It was worth every penny spent! Here is a little teaser of what we took in:

"The One With...Dinner with the Girls"

This week was "Restaurant Week" down at the Power & Light District. My friend Melissa invited some of us from the neighborhood as well as a few of her friends out for the evening to take part in the festivities. Despite the torrential downpour of rain, we managed to all make it - minus 2 - and enjoyed the evening with good food, good wine and good friends. Thanks Melissa for getting us all together and for the photo op :)

Pictured L to R: Heather, Christy, Stacey, Melissa & Lindsay

"The One With...Rock Band 2"

October 19th is finally here. Shane & I have been anxiously awaiting this day for months! Today is the day that Rock Band 2 for Playstation 3 was released and in stores. And what did we do first thing this morning? We raced to the nearest Best Buy to buy our very own version of the game. Yes, we are adults and no, we don't have any children and with all our "toys" one would think we did have children but we couldn't wait nor resist the temptation to let this game pass us by. So you can imagine how we spent our afternoon into the early evening? Oh yes - we played Rock Band and battled each other with me on guitar & vocals and Shane of course playing the drums. We had SO much fun and had to finally stop due to "dry eyes", the development of carpal tunnel in the wrist and the amazement that 5 hours had passed us by :) We can hardly wait to invite friends over and have our own Battle of the Bands at the Taylor household! Rock on...