Happy New Year!

Well, we made it to 2012. Yippee!

Our annual New Years party was very mellow this year... we had a lot of people who couldn't make it due to illness, death in the family and prior commitments. In all honestly, with both of us being as sick as we were the last few weeks, it was nice that it was a little mellow. Even so, it was still a lot of fun... I think the best part about our pig roast is the whole part leading up to it, from the arrival of the pig through the carving. People stop by the house all day long to have a beer, pick off some pig skin and hang out.

At midnight there were a total of four of us left at our house:

Last Four Standing

The pig turned out amazingly as always. We had tons of yummy side dishes and I really think everyone had fun.

The Pig of 2012

Check out my Facebook page for the rest of the pictures!

I'm not making any resolutions this year... I'm just going to continue working on adding to and checking things off of my bucket list. I already know there are a couple big things coming - the marathon and climbing the mountains in France. I think that will probably do for now... We'll see how tired I am after those.

Did you make any resolutions this year?

First Long Run

Today Kati and I ran our first long run for our half and full marathon training. We did five miles out on the American River Trail - there's pretty much not a more fantastic place to run, if you ask me. Mike and I have done several bike rides down there and this is where most of my very long runs will be. The trail extends almost 30 miles, so there's plenty of space to run without having to do loops or repeat. The other nice thing is that there are mile markers every 1/2 mile... so if you forget your Garmin, you can still tell how far you've gone.

I did discover something fairly shocking... bananas are my post-running food of choice. Many of you know my general disdain for food I have to break into and bananas specifically due to some bad experiences in my swimming days, but this thing tasted fantastic after today's run.

The rest of today I will spend cleaning up the house and perhaps enjoying an afternoon nap.

In other exciting news, the pig showed up for the New Years party! I love how I make it sound like the pig walked up to the front door and knocked. Actually, it was a little more "Godfather" than that:

This Year's Pig

Let the festivities begin - I can't wait!

Welcome 2011!!!

Let me start by saying...

THIS IS MY WEDDING YEAR!

Holy cow. I can't believe it's 2011. In fact, today is 1/1/11, the last time for another 1,000 years!

Yesterday was our annual Blankenheim New Years Eve Pig Roast. As always, it was a smashing success.

The day began with Mike, Tim, Shane and Raymond getting the pig ready to roast. It's quite the process. They have to get the pig onto the spit (a lot easier said than done) and then get it stuffed and all sewn up. It's stuffed with potatoes inside, for flavor and to absorb. Some people claim to be able to eat the potatoes (Raymond) and some claim that they give you the trots (Nancy). Since it was New Years, I decided to air on the side of caution and skip them. Here are the pictures of the pig being prepped:


Putting The Pig On The Spit



Stuffing The Pig



Ready To Roast!

Once all of that prep work is done, we basically wait for eight long hours. Over that time period, lots of sauce is poured on (made up of white wine, garlic, onion, spices and hot sauce), many beers are consumed and lots of cooked pork skin is picked off to be eaten. We basically had people coming and going all day long!

Adding The Secret Sauce

This year, we were really luck to have one of our friends, Chris, make the beer for the party. He's started a little home brewing operation, and let me tell you, it's delicious. We had a pale ale, a pilsner and a wheat beer. They were fantastic!

Finally, the pig was ready to come off, which is followed by one of the best spectacles of the night. At this point most, if not all, the people at our house empty out into the garage to watch four guys with electric carving knives take the pig apart. This year, aided by beer (maybe it's not the best idea to give four guys with electric carving knives beer?) we got some pretty funny pictures:

Mike & Sean Whispering Sweet Nothings To The Pig Ear

We had a wonderful time. We played Wii, hung out down at the bar and around the fire outside. The rain managed to hold off until early this morning, so it was just really cold outside. At midnight we still had a pretty decent contingency of people (some years we do, some years we don't) and we had lots of noisemakers and party horns.

Nancy and Nicki even got a birthday cake for me (they started the "tradition" last year). Miss Skyler played "Happy Birthday" on the piano for me and everyone sang along. I can't believe I'm going to be 30 tomorrow! More on that in tomorrow's post!

To see more pictures from the party, click here.

Welcome to 2010

Wow, I honestly can't believe it's 2010... I know I keep saying this, but I remember being little and thinking how far away and futuristic 2010 sounded. I thought for sure we're be flying around in Jetson's cars or time warping. So far, all we have is the iPhone (which, let's be honest, is just about as cool as time warping!). It seems so crazy to me!

New Years was a complete blast! Every year Mike hosts a huge pig roast, and this year was no exception! The pig weighed in at 116 pounds and we had a full keg of Guinness! Mike put the pig on the spit at about 10:30am... and by 7:30pm we had a fantastic meal (in fact, I'm pretty sure that we're going to be eating pig for the rest of 2010)! To the right, you can see Mr. Piggy doing his thing on the roaster. I know he looks scary, but he sure did taste good! We had a lot of Wii playing, some singing, far too much beer and more Irish Car Bombs than I need to see for the rest of my lifetime (yes, a very valuable lesson was learned). It was a fantastic New Years and once again, Mike's party was a hit! I can't wait to see how great the 2011 party is going to be!

My birthday was pretty fantastic too! As always, since it's so close to Christmas and New Years, it generally gets drawn out over several days (I'm totally not complaining!). The beginning was at the New Years Eve party... Nicki got me a delicious chocolate cake. Everyone at the party (seriously, like 50 people) sang to me... which in turn made me turn a lovely shade of red.

On my actual birthday (Saturday), I got to sleep in and spend the day totally relaxing with Mike. Those of you who know me know that I don't have those days very often, so it was definitely wonderful to have some down time! Then in the evening we met Mom, Dad, Oma, Kati and Nate at the Olive Garden for dinner. We had a fantastic dinner (with more singing... even though the waiter wanted to call me "Alma") and even more cake!

Today was another mellow day... I started to get a horrible headache last night, so this morning was like a migraine hangover... Mike and I watched some football and went to Lowe's to investigate the fence that we're going to build for Shadow (so he has lots of space to run!). Tonight I'm at home, relaxing and watching tv... not a bad way to end a three day weekend!

Party of Two

New Years was very interesting this year. My parents had a bunch of friends over to play games and have a little potluck. I didn't really feel like going out somewhere, so I invited some of my friends over. As it turns out, only Brigitte showed up, but we had a blast watching movies all night (who knew I would like Will Farrell so much?!). It was nice and relaxing. The bonus is that while all of my friends were hung over and sleeping this morning I watched the Rose Parade and walked the dog. :)

Here's Cody thinking he's a person:

And here's Brig and I just before midnight:

I plan on spending the rest of the day being lazy, napping and watching movies. It's my last day of vacation - I might as well enjoy it! Tomorrow is my birthday and we're planning a ton of fun stuff. As it turns out, I share the same birthday as Brigitte's youngest sister, Delinna. Her family has tickets to tomorrow's Kings game, and the girls and I bought tickets as well. Both of our families are meeting up at Chris Webber's restaurant before the game for a joint birthday dinner. I can't wait! I'm also planning on meeting up with my broker to finalize the house stuff. Hopefully. Keep your fingers crossed for me! :)

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2006 and Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a very fun but very safe time last night! I went to an awesome party - it was basically a mini high school reunion and turned out to be a ton of fun. The neighbor called the cops three times (they weren't really that upset though, after all, it was freaking New Years Eve). Seriously, who calls the police on a New Years party at 11:45pm on New Years Eve? I could understand if it was out of control, but honestly, it definitely wasn't. Just a bunch of people having fun. Oh well... just goes to show that there are party poopers everywhere.

I'd love to hear what everyone else did - please add your stories to the comments section!

In other news, we're having a major storm up here. Storm Number 2 for the year. I love it - a little thunder, a little wind and a lot of rain.

Oh yeah, and I had one hell of a computer virus. SUCKY! I finally have my machine up and running again after three days of troubleshooting. PAIN IN THE ASS!!!

Hope you're all having a wonderful New Years Day!