Christmas 'Vegas Style'

We were all wrapped up in the Christmas spirit that we didn't take as many pictures as we'd hoped...but here are a few to warm the cockles of your heart - Cheers!

This is the first year we put lights up on the house - first time we stayed home and not go to Michigan. So, in a 2-story house it's good to have a friend who has a 'bucket truck' to lift you up and staple lights to make it beautiful. Mover over Griswalds - the Remlings have moved in the neighborhood!

Little Barley couldn't wait for Santa to come..she always liked to sleep under the stockings making sure they didn't go anywhere....

The dogs discovered 'Stanta' sneaking gifts under the tree for all the good puppies...

Edd (Big Edd) & Dottie looking quite dashing at the lights display inside the Wynn! Say "Lakewood Park"...

Stan and Bets in the Wynn Winter Wonderland...

Nothing like some good ol' daughter and mother in law bonding in front of a christmas tree! Any more presents?

Halloween Masquerade Ball in Vegas

As usual - the Stan & Betsy Halloween show survived in the desert of Las Vegas. We had our 4th annual Masquerade Ball and once again - had plenty of booze and memories to fill a red plastic cup! Enjoy the couple of pictures from the night...





We were Thing1 & Thing2 from Dr. Seuss' childrens book 'Cat in the Hat'. By the end of the night - we looked more like Thing Zombies with our makeup smeared and running and blue wigs flying at half mast!















Our dining room (AKA - the spider's den). Once again Betsy turned a perfectly fine room into a creepy crawly spectable of fear. Nice work!











The ladies of cell block 6 were released for the night for good behavior. The bad news is after the night - they aren't allowed out until next year's Ball. Who says alcohol can't get a party started?









Rod (little head) The Bod and his Southern Gypsy make a dashing couple. A couple Pear-tini's later and they're in the graveyard looking for treasure.

Our Little Baby - Barley The Beast

Little Barley is growing up and turning into a sophisticated, belching dirty beast of a St. Bernard. She's still adorable and has us wrapped around her humgonous paws! Hope you enjoy a few pictures of her as of tonight - we need to get more animated ones of her (she has a great personality - she must take after us!). She is just about 185 lbs and is standing about 5 feet tall and 9 feet long...well, if you believe me you need to get off of the computer more often, she's a St. Bernard puppy not a baby Dinosaur! She's pushing 85 lbs and can barely fit under the crotch!




Say P-U-P-P-E-R-O-N-I !!!












Look Alive Barley! Okay - we got a decent side shot of her - what else do you want?











Little Barley loves the "give me pouty" look... I think she gets it from her mama.

Trip to St. Paul

We recently just made a trip to St. Paul for one of Betsy's friend's (Kimberly) wedding...we had a great time even though it rained almost the whole time but made it to the Mall of America, had some good Irish food, ate at Mickey's Diner..oh, and partied at the wedding!



This was the view from our hotel room on the 15th floor overlooking the Mississippi River - you can see the river boats on the left (where the wedding reception was held - Very Fun!)











The Petoskey Girls reunited on the River Boat...Mighty Nice!











Betsy and Megan are sporting the latest fashions of St. Paul - wedding panchos... they are the latest fad of the midwest sweeping the nation.. one wedding at a time.










Stan and Kelly pulling Dino's tail - also sporting their fashionable wedding panchos. It's fun for the whole family.

4th of July...Where's the party? Where's the fireworks?

Our first 4th of July in Vegas was a hot one - it was a balmy 117 (I think it was a record). We had visitors - James and Brooke from FL and then Dawn and Greg came out from San Jose for a few days to party it down. It turns out that there are more parties than there are fireworks in the desert on the 4th - who knew?!?

James brought his secret Cuban Mojito recipe with him - so it turned out we had Mojitos 'in the Morning...Mojitos 'in the Afternoon...and Mojitos 'in the Evening!

The Sparkler Sisters! Coming to a casino showroom near you...

The Ladies of Polyesthers posting before the night gets started...Watch out Charlie's Angels - there's a new trio of Poly-Party'ers in town.

The crew lounging at our VIP Area in the 80's area of the club. Anyone up for a game of Ms. PacMan? What about another drink?

Who Visits Vegas in the Summer?

After Easter, we've had quite a few visitors from Cousins on both sides to friends from all over...it's been great having a houseful of guests and fresh meat for little Barley! Remember, if you plan to visit - let us know ahead of time so we can reserve a bed for you. Also keep in mind that the summers in Vegas can go up to 120 or so... but it's a "dry heat" which means you don't sweat as much - it just feels like you're being baked in an oven.


Cousins - Jodi and Mike ventured to the desert for their wedding anniversary - back to the place where they tied the knot... can you say Hoover Dam, KA, Mystere and SpamAlot..? All in one trip! Now that's a Dam trip! Detroit Rocks.



A slieu of cousins came from FL and LA - Mickey, Carla, Margaret, Mike and aunt Faye were in town for Margaret's dancer of the year competition (and she brought home quite a few trophies!) A week later Matt, Maggie, Lizzie and Rebecca flew in to party... we had a great time, ate cake and walked the strip!

James "Rev" and Brooke ventured from FL to experience the 'dry heat' and make sweet lovin' to the plastic indians we have here in Vegas. HOW!









Cousins Mandy and Barry flew in for a trip without the kids - first time Vegas Visitors - and we found beer pong tables at O'Shea's!

This was after Mandy had played one game - drink up!

I think you're supposed to leave the ball in the cup...

Life With Barley

As expected, our life changed a bit when we got little Barley - our 50 lb - 4 month old St. Bernard. Even though she eats and poops more than us combined (well maybe not combined) - we are so happy to have her in the family!

She is growing faster than we could imagine - over 3lbs a week and getting smarter day by day. We've had 3 puppy training classes at PetSmart and she will now come, sit and lay down on command. Other than an occassional pee accident when she's excited, she's trained to do her business outside.

Here are a few pictures of our little hairy girl. Hope you enjoy!

Barley loves the "monkey" slipper...all you have to do is say 'Go get monkey' and this picture says the rest.

Barley can now just walk right up on the couch which is forbidden territory for her - except when mama needs a cuddle.

Betsy got Barley a 'flat cat' playmate and after about 20 minutes - the cat lost his tail and a foot. Barley loves the flat cat!

It will be soon when Stan cannot even pick Barley up. She loves being in laps but she's already so spread out and heavy it's difficult to even fit her in the lap.

Car ride anyone? Ginle the keys and Barley goes running to the garage door. Open the garage door and Barley runs to the back of BiggKat to go for a ride. She sits in the far back and likes to get up and look around while crusing. She can't miss a thing!

Thank You for your Support

We would like to thank everyone for their support whether - it was through flowers, plants, cards, emails, voicemails or gifts of sweetness. It was a shocking event that we experienced that blind-sided us.

The good news is that Betsy has started working full time as of May 7th - having completed her speech therapy and pleasantly surprised her neurologist and cardiologist with her recovery progress. In early June she will have another MRI for the stability of her brain and may even be taken off of the coumadin (blood thinner medicine) at that time - which is awesome!

The other night we were discussing how fast the clot in her brain affected her life and on the flip side how fast it was removed and she recovered. It almost feels as though it was a bad dream.

Throughout this ordeal we never lost focus of those things in life that are important: family and friendship. A life without the love and support of family and friends isn't worth living - and it was a testament to how much love was sent to Betsy by how fast she recovered.

So thank you for everything - it would be difficult to include pictures of all the well wishes but here are a few.

Easter in the Desert

We hosted our first joint-family, post-marriage holiday gathering this year for Easter. We had Stan's parents, his brother and his nephew along with Betsy's Dad and his girlfriend. We had a spread that spanned the ages including ham, turkey and all the southern fixin's. While in town, the whole crew did a little site seeing at the Red Rock National Park and the free-range desert in our backyard. Hope you enjoy the pics!

The puppy has arrived!

Stan is in VA for work for the next couple of weeks so he is leaving the blog up to me. I am definitely not as witty as Stan is but I'll try. On Saturday we arrived in Albuquerque to pick up our new puppy. We have decided to call her Barley. She is a cutie! Once you take a look at that little face you just fall in love. I weighed her on Sunday and she is about 20 pounds. I always think the scale is off on the heavy side, so we'll go with around 20 pounds.

Barley seems to have taken to our house rather well. She has lots of toys to chew on and she seems to like shoes as well. So all of our shoes are on tables or counter tops!

Well enough of my blabbering..what you really want is to see the pictures anway....so here she is!

This is Barley asleep in the car on the way home. She did very well in the car.

This is Barley enjoying a rawhide treat. She loves chewing on this bone.

Who can resist this face?

Just hangin' out in one of our game chairs.

This is Barley on a walk. She does really well on a leash so far considering this only her fourth time out. She loves sniffing everything and exploring the new terrain.

Remodel Project #2 - Guest Bedroom

For all of you who want to see are latest remodel project we basically just repainted our guest bedroom. It was plain white and boring. So we painted it a pale blue color with a chocolate stripes around the top. Stripes are a pain when you have textured walls...just an FYI. So here are the before and afters of the guest bedroom.

Before

After

Remodel Project #1 Complete

We have completed our first remodelling project as home owners! Thanks to about 25 visits to Home Depot/Lowes and some paint supplies we received from Jen/Rick as a Xms gift and some taping expertise from James(Rev) - we are now finished with the main-level bathroom! You can't see it in the pictures but we removed the old vinyl flooring and put tile down.

We experienced quite a bit of difficulty when installing the new faucet and sink - we ended up having to buy new pipes and then a new valve that would fit our faucet lines but in all it was a great learning experience - and now we are moving on to the guest bathroom upstairs - we have it about 90% painted and getting ready to put the tile down this weekend!

Enjoy... S&B Home Improvement LLC

We're Going to be Parents!!!

Betsy and I are expecting an addition to our family - a little girl St. Bernard (you really didn't think we were going to have a human baby, did you?). We have been talking with a breeder in Era, TX who had a litter born on January 2nd - Betsy's birthday. We thought that was a sign and the family that breeds and raises these puppies appears to be great at it!

The puppy's birth name is Codie (after her father Dakota). She has similar markings as her dad - a white speck on her ear and a brown spot on the top of her head.

We plan to meet the breeder in Alberqueque, NM the weekend of March 3rd to pick up our new little addition - but from all the books we've been reading at 8 weeks old she'll already be about 20 lbs.

We are debating on her name at this point - so perhaps you can weigh in with your comments...we thought either Kota (short for Dakota after her dad) or Barley (beer, beer - more beer). What name do you think fits her best??

Hope you enjoy these couple of pictures. Soon we'll have some before/after shots of our recent remodelling projects - 2 bathrooms and a bedroom redesign.






Codie - around 3 weeks old.
















Codie with her big honkin' pops-Dakota.














Codie taking a nap with her brothers and sisters.