A Quiet Weekend at Home

I'm sitting here in my PJs eating little wedges of a giant Rome apple that we brought back from North Carolina and drinking a glass of Riesling called "RELAX".  The house is quiet except for the hum of the laptop and Shredder's purring every once in a while.

Terry is probably just landing in Las Vegas for his annual Football weekend with Greg and Mark. Unfortunately, Kent couldn't make it for this 18th (or is it 19th) annual getaway. The guys will get into town tonight, get settled, filled and rested for their 2-day marathon.  Saturday they'll get up relatively early to have breakfast, then snag a good set of seats at their chosen casino sports book. They prefer the ones that have personal monitors at each seat so they can select their favorite games to watch thru-out the day. That is a personal monitor in addition to the 2 or 3 DOZEN HUGE TVs filling every inch of the walls of the room.

Once they get settled into their seats for the day, they'll try to keep track of ALL the college football games going on all over the country. They may bet a little on a few of them. When the crowd cheers, they'll search the screens to figure out which game just had a great play and watch the replay. Once in a while they'll take a break (one at a time so as not to lose their prime locations) and maybe go play a little video poker or slots or grab a quick bite to eat. They'll probably trash talk about their picks and compare notes to see who might get lucky and have a good day, but mostly they just enjoy the camaraderie and the annual overdose of  uninterrupted football.

After the majority of games have ended they'll leave their posts and head out for one of the amazing buffets along the strip. Then on Sunday morning they'll start the routine all over again with the NFL football games. Oh and they'll probably sprinkle in a few NBA or NHL games as well.

I don't even think that they talk much about their lives, even though they usually only see each other this one time each year. Once Terry came home and I asked him for an update on the wives and kids and he said they never talked about it.  He tries to get at least a little bit of info for me now because I gave him such a hard time about it that time. Maybe we should try to plan a get together with the husbands AND wives so we can find out what's happening in everyone's world.

Well, I told him to win a lot of money so we could go to Ireland next year.  Do you think there's any chance of that?  I always fall back on the fact that Terry's brother, Ted won $20,000 on the 2nd Keno card that they ever played! Can you imagine?  Wow! 

As for me...Shredder and I have the house to ourselves. Even though I love spending time with my hubby, I also enjoy these quiet weekends when I can do absolutely anything that I want. I could stay in my pajamas all weekend if I wanted to (but I won't). I can get projects done, go hang out with my girlfriends, go shopping, read, stay up late, blog, sleep late, watch chick flicks all weekend or whatever in the world I want. Not that I couldn't really do any of these things when Terry's at home, it's just different somehow. When he's home (especially on the weekends) I want to spend time with him and that's my priority, so personal projects get set aside more often. I'm glad these weekends don't happen too often, but I enjoy it once or twice a year.

So maybe I'll get caught up on some of my blogging this weekend. And I'm already planning an outing tomorrow with a friend. I do need to get going on some Christmas shopping too. I'm sure I'll manage to fill up my time before I know it.

What do you do with your alone time?

Have a great weekend, whatever you're doing.

Cardinals update:

We were able to sell all the tickets to friends, so the 8 of us (Thrushes, Faddis' and Jones') are going to the game early to tailgate and take in the excitement. We're told that they should also have about an hour of pre-game festivities in the stadium so we're excited to see what you don't get to see when watching the game at home.

As mentioned before, it's a busy week so I may not get pictures up right away, but after the 23rd it's smooth sailing for a while and I can get caught up on my blogging!

Hope someone is still left out there to read them.

Stay tuned!

THE ARIZONA CARDINALS ARE GOING TO THE NFC CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!


And we are going to the game on Sunday!!!

I have 9 drafts of various posts still to complete but this one had to rise to the top of the pile because I'm VERY EXCITED about it!

For those of you who don't watch pro football, you may not be aware that this seems to be a year of upsets in the playoffs. Our underdog AZ Cardinals beat the odds yesterday by winning against the Carolina Panthers on the East Coast where they hadn't won all year. And today the Philadelphia Eagles beat the top-seeded NY Giants, so they're coming to Glendale to play the NFC Championship game on our home field.

We have never been to any AZ Cardinals' games since we moved back nearly 5 years ago. In fact, the last time we EVER went to a pro football game was on our honeymoon in December 1977, when we saw the LA Rams play the Atlanta Falcons. (I know, I know, what an awesome wife I must be to go to a football game on my honeymoon ;-)

Anyway, it's been a long stretch in between, BUT Terry and I decided that this is probably a once in a lifetime chance to go to a playoff game and watch the Cards, so we took a huge gamble and Terry got online at 2:59 pm today (for the 3 pm sale) and bought 8 tickets in the end zone - row 17. Andy and Julie are buying 2 of the tickets and we're in touch with a few other friends to see if they want to buy the other 4. We're really looking forward to an amazing time with a tailgate party and all!!!

The good news is that the game sold out in SIX MINUTES and we have 8 of those seats. So, if we don't sell the tix to friends, we'll put them on the ticket exchange where our area is selling for about triple what we paid for them. Woohoo! Of course, Terry's still worried that we won't be able to sell them, but he worries about all that kind of stuff. I'm sure we'll be fine.

By the way, did you catch the article about Kurt Warner and his faith in the AZ Republic this week? What a cool guy! Definitely someone that worth cheering for.

So if you're going to watch the game on Sunday keep an eye out for us in the end zone, row 17. We'll probably be wearing Cardinal red like everyone else. LOL If you miss it you'll be able to catch my recap with photos and all right here soon afterward.

Another amazing bit of trivia...if they win they're going to the SUPER BOWL! That's unbelievable.

GO CARDS!!!

News of the week:

Do these guys look familiar? You're right. They don't look like anyone special to me either.

That probably explains how Eli Manning and his whole offensive line sat about 10 feet away from us at dinner last night and we didn't even know it was them until we asked someone.

Now, understand that we knew they had to be on a football team or something because they were all massively HUGE, except Eli, but they just looked so young that we had no idea they were professional football players bulking up for the biggest game of the year and for some of them, the biggest game of their lives!

Can you believe it! How random for us to happen to be in Chandler of all places, meeting a friend from California for dinner. I think we've had dinner in Chandler maybe once in the last 30 years.

It was kinda cool, even though I really know nothing about that team except that they beat our friends' beloved Packers (sad). We were at Firebirds (Wood Fired Grill) restaurant by the Chandler mall. I would have taken a picture with my cell phone but it was too dark.

We enjoyed catching up with our friend, Steve B and the food at the restaurant was pretty good too.

This is Eli Manning...doesn't he look too young to be a pro quarterback?