Vacation Time...

We are going on family vacation today and I am pretty excited about it. We are going to Montrose, CO. We are going to do a lot of fly fishing, some golfing, hiking, kayaking (maybe), and a LOT of just hanging around as a family.

We are camping it up at the Pa Ko Chu Puk Campground. Seriously, that's the name. Nicole and I got a bunch of camping equipment from my folks a few years ago for Christmas. We have NEVER used it...not once. Of course, Nicole blames me for this, which is probably true. She has never really been camping before...LITERALLY never been camping. Now we are going for 10 days.

She has been asking me "Are there going to be bugs for real?" and "How do we make sure that NO bugs get in our tent?". Also she needs to know very important things like, "Are there mirrors in the bathrooms at the campground?" Gotta be doing your makeup while camping for a week and a half. :o)

So our trip takes us from Las Vegas to Beaver, UT tonight. We are staying at the KOA campground there in one of the cabins/igloo things. Saturday morning it is up early and on to Montrose. Our doggies are going to LOVE this trip!!

On another note, Nikki got a haircut last night. It looks really good. She is a nervous recipient of haircuts as she is sure that some 9 month pregnant lady will be doing the job, go into labor and pretty much shave her bald. So it didn't help last night when her lady at the salon was 2 cm dialated. In any case, she made it through without error and looks more beautiful than ever.

he says he has no time...

I don't have a lot of time to blog...which is not true, I have plenty of time, but why have 2 blogs really, especially when one is way better. That being said, go check out Nikki's blog and get the update on our very exciting life...VERY EXCITING!

nikkidee1.blogspot.com

A new post...

Here is to proving Nikki wrong, who thought I would never blog again. :o) BUT b/c I don't want to be mean spirited, I am blogging about my wonderful little wifey.

p.s. I totally stole this from our friend Annie and Talon. So, you know...thanks guys.

What is her name? Nicole Lynn Dee

Who eats more? Hmm...probably me, though Nikki can pound it when she needs to. She eats WAY faster.

Who said I love you first? I honestly don't know, but I gotta guess it was her. She was kind of aggressive ya' know.

Who is taller? Me...barely!

Who is smarter? Pretty much Nikki is smarter than everyone. Seriously, I don't know anyone smarter than Nikki. I mean some people are like genius smart, but those people mostly know a bunch of stuff that no one cares about and that is kind of, well useless. Nikki is smart at all the important stuff. I, on the other hand I am dense as a brick.

Who is more sensitive? Uh let's think about this. I have choked up one time in the past 6 years. Nicole has probably choked up 6 times today. One time, she walked in a room at the VERY end of a move called "Homeward Bound"...you know the dogs and cat that get lost? All she saw was some old dog come over a hill on his way home...started SOBBING! :) You want to see a spectacle, come to our house on Sunday evenings and try to watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Nikki can't see straight for hours. HA! She is so cute. Crying for Nikki is like breathing or blinking for most people. It just happens...it HAS to happen...she can't go on without it.

Who does the laundry? Pretty much Nikki. I don't mind putting the stuff in. Moving it, not so great. Folding isn't my strong suit. BUT let's be honest, our family owns a dry cleaner. We pretty much wash underwear and jeans.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? I do.

Who pays the bills? Nicole pays them mostly. I pay the car payment and the current rent, soon to be mortgage, WHAT WHAT!! Yesssss!!

Who cooks more? Nikki fa sho.

What meals do you cook together? Hm, we cook spaghetti together, like twice a year. Or when we BBQ usually Nicole will make brownies or something.

Who is more stubborn? NICOLE!! Ha. Nicole is about as stubborn as they come. I am probably pretty stubborn too, but I like to believe it isn't true.

Who is the first to admit they're wrong? In spite of the fact that I think it is me, it is probably Nicole really. Maybe that means she is just wrong more. LOL! :) Kidding, she is just a lot nicer than me.

Who is more clean? We are both kind of procrastinators on the clean thing. Although she is a much better cleaner than me. She is like greased lightning, especially when she is upset about something. Woman can clean the house in about 10 mins flat when I do something that upsets her.

Who has more siblings? I do...6 brothers. I know, I know, my poor Mom.

Who wears the pants in the relationship? You know, all jokes aside, I think Nicole and I have a really open and great relationship. I think we both compromise really well. I know what she loves and vice versa. We really try to take care of each other. Of course, all of this just means Nicole wears the pants.

What do you like to do together? We basically do everything together. We have moved a few times since getting married. Never made friends really. Very sad, but we plan to change that in our new house. Nicole is basically my only friend within 5 hours. Good thing we love to be together. What we do not like to do together is shop for house stuff. Can you say "Argument waiting to happen"?

Who eats more sweets? Probably me. Nicole is a salty person more than sweets.

Guilty pleasures? TMZ!! Loves celeb gossip. She can tell you any celebs second cousin's pets names. No seriously, she can.

How did you meet? Through a good friend. Nicole and I actually met on LDS Singles. Seriously. Took me a very long time to be ok with saying that. Probably still am not totally ok with it actually. But it is what it is. We are happily married and I wouldn't change anything about how it all went down...yeah, went down, like a drug bust or something.

Who kissed who first? As I said before, Nicole was kind of aggressive in her "pursuit". She bugged and bugged for like 3 hours one day, and so I plopped a Dee smooch right on her. Once she was on the train, there was NO getting off. Ha! :)

Who proposed? I did. I thought it was pretty romantic, but some things are only meant to be shared with a limited audience.

Her best features? Nicole is magically babe-a-licious. I will leave it at that in an effort to stay PG in this blog.

What is her greatest quality? Nicole is a lover. She loves the people, she loves the animals, she loves the planet. We are opposite in a lot of ways. We love to talk about stuff b/c of that. We like to kind of "debate" each other. I can't possibly win these debates, b/c I don't want Nicole to be mad at me all night, but we still just love to talk, especially on road trips to AZ when the talks usually turn to politics.

LOVE YOU HONEY PUMPKIN LOVER!!

Update

Nikki said I was NEVER going to update again...SO, here ya go. UPDATE.

No but seriously folks, more coming very soon. Maybe.

Catching Up...

Okay blog, it has been like 3 weeks since my last post. Basically I went to AZ for a week to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family and never posted again. I am always so bad at keeping up with this kind of thing. I am going to try harder though. Blogging is kind of fun. SO, that being the case, how about we play the catch up game? Let's do it... So, like I said we went to AZ for a week to be with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was so much fun. I just love spending time with my family. It's kind of a funny thing actually. You see, I have 5 older brothers. I really was only ever "close" to one of the five when it came to having a relationship. My 4 oldest brothers are quite a bit older than me. Basically I never was "friends" with all of them until about a year or two ago, after I got married, moved away to Utah and then moved back closer to Las Vegas. I am just starting to realize now how much fun it is to be a part of a big family. As we all get a little older and start to have so many things in common, we just really enjoy spending time together. So, while I was down in AZ here is a list of some of the fun we had:

• Went with my brother just older than me and saw the Bourne Ultimatum at the dollar theater

• Had a family bowling tournament, complete with a real bowling pin give away to the winner...it's a good thing my beautiful and talented bowler wife Nikki wasn't in town at that point b/c she would have cleaned up and walked away with the pin. We are going to make this a family tradition over the Holiday's and go every year, and pass the pin along to whoever wins.
• Thanksgiving day we of course ate our brains out. We had massive amounts of turkey, honey baked ham, and even prime rib. BUT, even better was that we had our traditional stickball game before dinner. We were short on time this year and had more players than usual, but it was a lot of fun. My team won...WHAT WHAT!!
• After dinner on Thanksgiving day we decided to have a Nintendo Wii tennis tournament...with the entire family. Nicole and I brought our Wii down and everyone got a chance to know how fun a Wii really is, so we broke the family into brackets and teams of 2. Needless to say, my brother Mike, who organized the tourney tried to rig the outcome by giving himself a very good team and very easy competition. They didn't play a team with a member over 8 until they got to the finals, which was against me and my niece Kirsten. Unfortunately, I did have to down my little wifey Nikki along the way, but it was necessary so that me and Kirsten could put the hurt on my brother Mike and cousin Mitch. And oh, WE DID! The game went the distance though, being best of 3 sets with best of 5 games per set. In the end, cheaters never prosper and in this case they don't even win as Kirsten and I reigned victorious and captured the first WimbleDeen title. BOOYA!
• On Saturday, my Dad and all brothers but one who had gone home to Utah went out golfing. This is always one of my favorite events when we go down to Phoenix. I and my brothers are all terrible at golf, but we love going out to knock it around every now and then. I usually suck the least and come out with a "W" but the last 2 times that hasn't been the case. I started off slow as usual, being down by 3 or 4 shots by the time we finished the second hole. My Dad, who was driving in my cart with me but not playing was getting noticeably worried. I kept on telling him that I always pull it together after 4 or 5 holes and then stay pretty consistent which gives me plenty of time to watch everyone else fall apart. He wasn't convinced but nonetheless, things progressed according to my evil plot. I like telling this story as though I am the Emperor from Star Wars. So, in the end, I played like I do, terribly... and everyone else played a little worse and I ended up being able to come out of the a big winner. Who cares right, I just really enjoy being with my family.

Work is busy as usual. I am doing a lot of things right now to get ready for big changes that need to be ready by the end of the year. Tell you what, trying to get people to do things on a tight time table this time of year is like pulling teeth. I traveled to Minnesota last week to enroll a company in a new 401(k) plan. All I have to say is that MN is CHILLY this time of year. Apparently everyone thought I brought the warm weather with me though b/c it was practically 20 degrees the day I was there, where as the night I left it was supposed to be 20 BELOW! I got a pic of the flight departures while in MN. My flight was the one at the very top of the list. Exciting stuff...


One last thing, we got a new car on Saturday. I took a quick photo a few days ago but there will be more to come later. We are pretty excited. It is very fun. A Cadillac CTS. Thanks to the help of family we were able to get the car for a very reasonable price.

MORE PHOTOS to come of all the festivities in AZ. We got a lot of really fun photos.

Oh, and I almost forgot, my Sis. in law Rachel who goes to school at Ole Miss found out yesterday that she did very well in all of her classes in her first semester at college. Congratulations Rachel!! We took her out for Sushi last night to celebrate. It was a lot of fun. She is great.

A fun filled Saturday...

So, yesterday was a pretty good day. For starters, anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a huge Phoenix Suns fan. I mean, I am border lining obsession. No matter where I live, the Suns will always be my team. I mean, how can you not love the following: Amare Soudemire (STAT), Shawn Marion (The Matrix), Steve Nash (The Nash Rambler), Grant Hill, Boris Diaw, Raja Bell, and my personal favorite Leandro Barbosa (The Brazilian Sensation. or Brazilian Blur depending on who you talk to). Also, let us not forget Marcus Banks, who is Nicole's favorite.

Anyway, back to yesterday, first of all the Suns smacked the Houston Rockets around. BUT, even more exciting is that while I went to bed very early on Friday night with a major headache, my little wifey, who happens to be an artist extraordinaire stayed up until nearly 5 am making a painting for me, as an ode to the Phoenix Suns. Dead serious!! She took the Suns colors and made me a totally unique and awesome art piece to hang in my office at work, which was until now, admittedly dull and colorless. Now, I can have an office worth being proud of...THANKS HONEY! Following are pics of the art piece Nicole made for me, as well as a few pics of her other stuff hanging in our house. Enjoy!!So, the colors are obviously those of the Phoenix Suns.
The winding lines are the road to the championship.
On the right you have a basketball, headed for the very hard to see hoop below.
On the left she painted in what looks like a big foam #1 hand.

This is the artist herself. The art piece on the right is nicer
then the one on the left. WINK!

This is me and my mad hoop skills. Steve Nash better watch
his spot in the starting 5.

This is my office now looking much more lively with the colorful
addition. The room now bursts with Suns pride.Okay, so this is another of Nicole's art pieces. She painted this
back before she was LDS, but had read this part of the Book of Mormon.
Pretty cool thing for a convert to have painted before even being converted.I am pretty sure Nikki calls this one "Bombs over Baghdad".
I don't know that this one has a name, but I sure do like it.

Roughing it in Brianhead...

Nicole's parents have a cabin in Brianhead, UT. It is really beautiful up there, and I always look forward to going up. We went up over Labor day, or something like that, back in September. I took some photos with our new camera while there, and thought I would post them for everyone to enjoy.

Cabin Front


















Great Room








View from back balcony













A tree carving Nicole and I made back in 2005













The off-roaders. These are such a good time. I could spend all my time at the cabin just to ride these things.