Spoiled Rotten Birthday

As most of you probably know, I LOVE birthdays, so I was looking forward to mine for quite some time (although I tried not to be obnoxious about it haha, hopefully I succeeded). My 27th birthday fell on a Sunday this year, so the whole weekend kind of felt like a celebration to me. On Friday, one of the families I nanny for got me a scone for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and a gift certificate to our favorite bar/pub in Boulder. I was psyched, and so grateful. It was very kind of them to think of me. On Saturday, we started off the day by going to REI's garage sale and I got some socks. I know, so super exciting haha, but SmartWool can be expensive, and they were cheap :). Then we went to our friend Kelsey's graduation, and afterwards had a really nice brunch, just the two of us. We were super hungry and ordered basically the whole menu ha. After brunch we headed back to REI where Tim got a new snowboard that was actually one he had be thinking about getting, and I got a really nice sweater that was originally $135 for $19.83, I'm a sucker for a good deal. That night we babysat for M, and M's parents gave me a Le Cruset pot! I LOVE them and have wanted one for a long time, so I was pretty psyched! It's beautiful and red, and we are making stew with it this weekend. My amazing in-laws sent me Mint M&Ms (my fave), beautiful earrings, and a cookbook. My wonderful parents sent me beautiful flowers and a birthday balloon. I. AM. SPOILED.

So, after all the fun pre-birthday things we did, on Sunday we were planning on heading up to Breck to go skiing. We stopped and got a Moe's bagel and Starbucks, and then headed up to the mountains. Breck had gotten almost 2 feet of snow in 2 days, and so for my birthday I was treated to my first Colorado powder day. It was amazing! I had the best time, and was giddy skiing in all that snow. The only low points of the day were getting hit in the head with the chairlift and the four hours that it took to get home. Other than that, best birthday! All I can say is that I think 27 is going to be a good year! :)
And now for some pictures:

Brunch - told you we ordered everything on the menu!

Flowers from Mom and Dad

My new Le Cruset pot! Thanks Allison and Rob and M!

Skiing in powder

Looooook at it all!

My hubby and me on my 27th birthday!

Thanksgiving in Breckenridge

I thought I'd share a little more about our vacation to Breckenridge for Thanksgiving. It was SO nice to get away for a few nights, and to actually be at the mountain in the morning when it was time to ski! Hubby found an amazing condo within walking distance to one of the ski lifts, which was especially nice when Thanksgiving day turned out to be frigid cold! Skiing was awesome, although cold the first day. The temperature (thankfully!) got progressively warmer each day so by Saturday we were actually warm skiing! On Friday we met a really cool guy from Vail (originally from Austrailia) on our first lift, and skiied with him the rest of the day. Skiing out here is SO much different than the East Coast, I am not used to actually skiing on snow instead of ice! We have been trying some challenging terrain, and I love it! Perhaps next season I will invest in some powder skis, seeing as how everyone we meet says I need them! :) Other than skiing, there was a nice hot tub which was great after the cold slopes, and we were able to walk everywhere, which was super nice. We had dinner at the Breckenridge Brewery on the last night, which was fun and delicious, except that I should have remembered that Breck is 9,600 ft. in elevation. Two beers+sharing a sampler of beers with Tim = me being very silly in high altitudes!
Needless to say, we had a blast on our trip and are seriously considering doing something similar for our anniversary! Now on to some photos:

A portion of our condo: in total it had a full kitchen, wood fireplace, bedroom, two baths, dining area...Tim rocked at finding a place to stay!

A friendly fox that we saw more than once!

Outside of some of the Pine Ridge condos at dusk

Me and Tim on Thanksgiving - it was bitter cold!

Gorgeous view of the mountains behind me!

Us on the chairlift!

Dale (the Austrailian) and I on the slopes

Imperial Bowl Chair - most exposed chair I have ever been on - it was kind of freaky!

On the top of Imperial Bowl - super high in elevation!

The weather report on Thanksgiving morning - needless to say we weren't in a rush to go outside!

Why Happy Hineys, You ask?

Happy Hineys [HD]

Ok, so two posts in one day may be lame....however, I thought you all might want to know why we are the Happy Hineys. I believe it got started when my father-in-law, Paul, used to answer the phone "Happy Hiney Residence" to torture Tim, Lisa, and Sarah. However it started, it stuck and the Hine Family has become the Happy Hineys. At our rehersal dinner for our wedding, the Hine family with Joe P. as guitarist and Peter M. as slideshow man, sang us a rendition of Happy Hineys to the tune of Free Fallin. I am pretty sure my sis-in-law Lisa was the one who reworked the lyrics (correct me if I'm wrong!). Anywho, I thought I'd post the video for all of you who havn't seen it yet, because it is pretty hilarious :)

I hope this works, if not...it is on my facebook page under videos! Enjoy!

Thankful...and starting a blog :)

Well, this has been quite a year so far. Tim and I were hiking a few days ago, and were chatting and I said that I wanted to start a blog for our family and friends so that they could know what is going on with us - so here it is folks!  As many of you know, Tim and I got married in February, came home from our honeymoon and packed up to move to Colorado. Not knowing where exactly we would land when we arrived here, we had gracious offers from high school friends to stay at their place until we landed on our feet. We anticipated staying with Emma and Adam much longer than we did, but instead we found our own little place in a great location in Boulder within a week of arriving. Almost nine months later, we are still in that little place, and it is feeling more like home. Tim is the owner of his own residential construction company, so he has been working jobs related to that, as well as traveling for our friend Rod's company where he shows customers how to set up storage containers (he has an official title, but I am blanking at the moment!). I was working at a local gym in the daycare, but after about 6 months there decided that the schedule/management wasn't working for me, so after much consideration with Tim we decided that it would be better for me to do something else. I was blessed with a job very quickly working as a nanny for a family with a now 10 month old on MWF and I was already nannying for the best little now 7 month old on TTH, so it was a perfect match. This new job has enabled me to be much less stressed and have weekends free, which has been wonderful. Now we have time to do the things we love here - hike, SKI (now that it is ski season, 5 days so far - get your behinds out here to ski with us!), climb, and spend time with friends.
Overall, the move to Colorado has been a great one for us. It has been ridiculously hard at times knowing that our favorite people, our family and our close friends, are so far away...but thanks to cell phones, skype, and the internet, it hasn't been too bad most of the time. Plus, we live in such a cool place that people WANT to come visit us! :)
Thanksgiving was weird being away from family, but we had our own Pre-Turkey day dinner with friends here that have helped make Boulder feel like home. And we spent an amazing three days up in Breckenridge, where we got to ski and walk around the town. We had a blast :) We are looking forward to spending Christmas in CT!

So that is our life in a nutshell right now - we are just enjoying starting our life together and learning what God has in store for us in the future! Keep checking our blog for updates on The Adventures of The Happy Hineys!