Surprise, surprise. I did it again. I fell off the bloggin’ wagon. I won’t bore you with excuses here. I just blame it all on what we call LIFE!! You know how that storyline goes. Always changing. The past week, the setting of my story has changed from east to west. Chelsea to Upper East Side. From the 1-2-3 train to 4-5-6 train. From dessert to snow. And from this beautiful Arizona sky to a gloomy, dark New York City sky.

Since we last chatted, I have changed jobs (more to come on that one), been to Arizona and back, become part of an AU-some National Championship Family, and started a daily routine of freezing my tail off  on the streets of NYC. So for my body to thaw out, let’s think dessert.

A week ago today, Stan and I boarded a plane just in time to miss the NYC snow storm and land in Arizona. We headed  out a little early for the National Championship game  so we could first head to Tucson for the weekend to spend time with my aunt. It was a LONG day of travel. And right upon arrival I greeted her (and mom and Andrea) with hugs before sneaking away to her lovely backyard. Why? I was eager to snack on the goodness of her citrus trees, while she shared with me the new architectural plans of her soon to get under construction guest house addition. It’s grand and lovely. I pictured it in 3-D. I already hug the curtains, made the bed and booked my next ticket to come out and break in the newness. I am just thinking I will be one of those “old snow bird” types, who jet sets half way across the country to escape the cold.

Aunt Nancy is the ultimate hostess. The bedroom was stocked with fresh fruit and water. Fresh flowers adorned each and every single flat surface in the house. Candles burned. The sheets were soft and the pillows were fluffy. Jars of almonds and cranberries sat on the counter. Fresh juice and tea filled the fridge. And best of all the view out of up into the foothills from her back windows. It doesn’t get much better than that. Take a look for yourself:

We dined at the luxury and historic, Arizona Inn where my dear cousin served us up one of the most fabulous dinners that has ever graced my mouth with it’s presence. We even indulged in prickly pear margaritas (made from the “the yellow catusy thing” pictured below) and a little duck appetizer to tease the palate. [Yes, we were feasting on our football enemies for that upcoming Monday, The Oregon Ducks.]

Early Saturday morning, we rose early to hit Sabino Canyon for a morning run. We ran the canyon. It was a little chilly, completely populated with cacti and from all the warning signs I saw…lots of no so friendly wildlife.

We left the canyon in really high spirits. We were shining like the sunflowers left on the bedside table back home. The day was great. The company was even better. Despite that face that Stan was stuck in the car with 4 girls, we managed to laughed to be lovin’ life. Then Aunt Nancy’s iphone makes a beep/buzz/ding, or something. It is a local news app on her phone, alerting us of some kinda of shooting down the road. We kinda hit rock bottom. What? Where? It’s the Safeway, my cousin Michael always shops at. Is he okay? We were saddened. We were informed the entire area was closed off. The roads that direction were all closed. Traffic was being completely rerouted. Talk about hitting close to home. This one did. What kind of person would (or even could) think of taking innocent lives? Slowly as the day goes one, the facts start to spill out. We’d just been by University Medical the Night before. We were looking at the UofA Campus, and hearing from my cousin’s fiance about her upcoming masters work she’d being doing at UM. The excitment for the upcoming BCS bowl game, and the mini-vacation to Tucson was saddened by this crisis, literally just around the corner.

We went to the Mission, on the way to greet my other family at the Tucson airport. And we lit a candle and prayed for the fallen and injured.

My sister sent me this picture. Were just a few days later she went with Mom and my Aunt. Within just a few days the ground was completely covered with balloons, flowers, posters, candles…Just thinking about this awful tragedy, and how “real” it felt brings tears back to my eyes. So I digress…

…let’s try to smile a little and think happy thoughts.

we ate, smiled, took lots of pictures, and i even took a pretty really rough fall at the La Paloma resort before finally making our way (caravan style) to Scottsdale.

Sweet Denise, my Aunt’s dear friend, housed us all at her home in Scottsdale. We spent the night in great company at her house. We ordered in. Made a BIG ole’ salad. Poured wine…and waiting for the BIG day to come. It did, and brought about a lot of orange and blue spirit! Just take it all in for yourself here:

So this goes without saying, We WON! You just need to look at those smiles on our faces and all the confetti flying in the air. For those of you who are not sports fans, well just get this one right. You need to understand one thing: WE WON, YES AUBURN WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP by a field goal. And with that, Good Night!

this right here speaks for itself. you people have got to be CRAZY.

i mean yea, it’s a once in a life time experience. Agree!!

and i feel really lucky to be going for well under the $500 mark. but almost $8k?? and bidding still has a bit longer to go. all i know is this auburn family has got some’ DEEP, DEEP roots!

Hi my lovely readers. I am completely embarrassed to look up, and look you in the eyes. Why? Well, I have completely deserted you the last month, and have no excuse – except life got busy. Since I last posted, Christmas came and went, and we embarked on a brand new year. A time to start fresh. The slate is wiped clean, and we are given not just a new hour, day, week, or month, but WHOLE NEW YEAR!! However, before I start completely anew, I want to give you a little recap of what has been going on.

I spent a whole week home before Christmas. It was greatly enjoyed, and and desperately needed. I slept in and stayed up late, went to the gym with my sister LOTS, ran errands with Mom, visited with family, baked cookies, assembled Christmas cards, went to movies, saw best friends, got a haircut (last one was in June), drank a glass of Cakebread, treated myself to manis and pedis, ate yummy homemade dinners, ate out @ Amsterdam, Arricia, Panera and Big Blue [some all time favs], laughed hysterically as I watched my brother put together their new bugaboo, sang Christmas songs at the Christmas Eve church service, watched snow fall on Christmas night, and soaked up every single minute of everyday.

As the festivities came to an end, our fun was just beginning because my family was accompanying me back to the City through New Years. Well, Christmas night our flight was cancelled for the following morning. To our dismay we wouldn’t fly out until Tuesday. After a long headache with Delta, we finally got rebooked. Hallelujah! Flying into NYC was a pretty sight.

The flight was a breeze, but we were not sure if the cab ride was going to be so safe. We passed lots of snow covered abandoned cars on the side of the NJ Turnpike. The traffic was insane, and the snow was mucky. As our cab driver jumped lots of curbs, in an effort to avoid the LONG line of traffic entering into the Holland Tunnel, he assured was this is how “New Yorkers” do it. He followed that by, “No worries we are in a brand new 2011 mini-van with 4-wheel drive. Now I don’t know how you feel about that, but I was not completly convinced that was suppose to give me a peace of mind. Good news, we made it…almost! We could not get to the front of my apartment (clean up was and still is a slow and still in the works process), but we trudged 1 block through the sloshy ickiness with our rolling bags. I might add I had on flats. Not a good idea. Needless to say, I lived in my Hunter Boots this past week. There is no hope for looking to stylish in this weather. So you are thinking…snowy and cold, what do you do in the City with weather like that? We had not problem staying throughly entertained. We laughed our way through the snow. It took double the time to walk anywhere because of the mounds of snow and deep puddles of slush blocking our pathway. We managed to make it over to Stan’s (fabulous) new office one evening after dinner at a favorite-The Harrison. His office has a 360 view of Manhattan. On the south-eastern edge there is a fabulous view overlooking Ground Zero, and the construction of the under-construction Freedom Tower. The void in the Cityscape is pretty moving. And the view is absolutely magnificent!

We also stumbled upon another pretty magnificent view in Soho. It was a little smaller scale, and was found on the entrance doors to the Soho Under Armour pop-up store. All I can say is “War Eagle” because Auburn really is “the best players in the game”!

Now to go on a complete ramble. We had fun!  We ventured in and our of lots of design showrooms. Where I decorated a dream house. I fell in love with this tile…

and this faucet…

We took the subway to my new office (come next week!). We ventured into fabulous antique stores. I bought a rug a fabulous rug at ABC Carpet & Home. We shopped @ fabulous NYC boutiques. We ate at some of my local favorites: Warren 77, Locanda Verde, Cafe SFA @ Saks, The Hummus Place, and Le Pain Quotidien. And we probably laughed again, and jumped a few more slushy puddles of melting snow. Last night we rang in the New Year on a more local style, completely avoiding the chaos and misery of crowds of midtown (aka Time Square). Sadly this morning, the fam packed up and left me behind. I found myself in tears of sadness. I wanted to rewind the past two weeks, and relive them over and over and over again. I recapped the fun we had over the Christmas holiday, and just wanted that back. Life must go on. Back to the daily grind, but it just reminds me that memories are better than anything money can buy!!

Happy New Year!!