Friday night started off pretty relaxing, with some pasta for dinner and a couple of drinks. Then Mike and Christie came over and the euchre games began. I would advise never playing euchre with Christie as she gets more loner hands in one game than I have ever had. From there we headed down to The Levee for additional drinks, some dancing, and great times!

Saturday was spent cleaning up the apartment and rearranging the office in preparation for a new computer desk that can hold my growing home network. I finally got the new computer on the network, and the process of transferring files has begun. Later in the evening we hosted a party for the recent engagement of Christina, one of Kim’s coworkers, and Taylor. The party eventually shifted down to O’Dowd’s, where Tanner Walle and friends were putting on a show. It was nice to see them again, even if they were playing only cover songs. Hopefully we can make it out to another show soon.

Yesterday we took the kids out to the movies and saw Dreamer. It was a nice family movie that everyone seemed to enjoy. We then spent a little time at a pet store and called it a day. I was able to play hockey last night even though my toe is still a little sore. We won once again and should now be in first place in the league.

After work last night we planned on staying in to clean up the apartment, unpack from the trip, etc. Instead we ended up at the Brooksider where a large crowd was gathered to watch the Missouri vs. Kansas basketball game. We stuck around to watch the end of the game, since it was such a good one. I’m not sure how many people actually watched the game (besides those who live around here) since neither team is ranked, but I guess it was on ESPN so I’m sure some of you did. The Brooksider crowd was very happy since most of them are all Missouri fans. What a finish though! I’m glad we stuck around to watch it.

I’ve added our NYC pictures to the site. There are lots of touristy pictures and only a couple from the show. I think some of the foggy ones from Friday turned out really cool though.

I just got back from a dentist appointment. As per usual, they told me that my teeth look great but that I should be flossing more. Maybe I can make that a new years resolution…

Our flight to Newark got slightly delayed because of fog but we still landed before noon. From there we took a new jersey transit train to Penn Station, which cost a little more than I remembered ($14) but was very easy and pretty quick (less than a half hour). Once at Penn Station we met up with Fighty and Sharkey and headed over to the hotel, La Quinta Inn. We were a couple of hours ahead of check-in time, but luckily our room was ready. We dropped off our luggage and began day one of the tour.

Fighty led us most of the day and did a great job. We first walked down Wall Street, an area I had never seen before despite two previous visits to NYC. Next up was Battery Park, which is supposed to have a nice view of the Statue of Liberty. We knew walking over that we weren’t going to be able to see it because of the fog, but we went anyway. At the waters edge we couldn’t see more than 20 feet in front of us, I would say. Slightly disappointed, we headed off to the World Trade Center area. Not much has changed there since the last time I visited, but Kim hadn’t seen it before. After some time there we moved on to Chinatown and then over to Greenwich Village to have dinner and drinks at Torilla Flats. By this time we were joined by our friends Pat and Kristen, and the margarita pitchers were flowing. We polished the night off at a couple of other bars, including the hotel’s roof top bar.

The fog was gone on Saturday, but the rain had arrived. We tried not to let this ruin any of our plans, so we headed out to Times Square and then over to John’s Pizzeria for lunch. We ate a bunch of pizza while in town, but this is the only place I can remember the name of. From there we walked over to 5th Avenue and Rockefeller Center, where we caught a glimpse of the Stanley Cup and Mark Messier. From there we walked through part of Central Park, but by this time we were getting pretty soaked so we headed back towards the hotel. Soon after the pre-gaming began and before we knew it show time had arrived, a sold out show at that! The show was absolutely amazing! I’m sure I will never forget it, and can only hope for shows to come close to matching it. Words really cannot explain it, so hopefully I’ll get some of my pictures up soon.

We spent the rest of the time in NYC hanging out with so many of my friends. It was great to see everyone, although I wish I had more time to talk to everyone. It’s hard with such a large group though. Before we left we did take one last trip back down to Battery Park, despite the freezing temperature, and this time we could see the Statue of Liberty! With that my trip to NYC was complete and I could head home.

We are back to our early morning workout routine. Before yesterday morning, I don’t think I had been to the gym in months. Now I have been two days in a row. Waking up early means going to bed early as well, which is drastically cutting down on topics to write about.

I spent most of last night uploading pictures onto the site. There are a bunch of pictures that Kim took while in Cincinnati for Christmas along with a ton of pictures she took at the party over at Christie’s this past weekend. My favorite album is of our trip to Perfect North while in Cincy. Kim’s brother Chris did a great job with the camera that day!

Friday night was the Great American KC office Christmas party. Kim did a bunch of planning for the event and I was happy to hear that we were heading back to the New Theatre. I bought tickets to this dinner theatre a couple of years ago and we both really enjoyed the evening. This time was no different. The food was great, the play was funny and entertaining, and I think that most of Kim’s coworkers and guests would agree. Afterward we headed to George Brett’s to polish off the night. I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of this bar/restaurant, mainly for it’s location (one of the closest to our apartment) and the fact that it is rarely overly crowded. Their happy hours also have some pretty good deals!

Saturday we got haircuts, ran a couple of errands and then hung out with the kids for a little bit. We went to a community center and spent most of the time playing basketball. I am happy to announcement my first place finish in the around the world competition. I was trying to play nice but Kim kept trying to win everything. Later on we headed down to Christie’s apartment for another Christmas gathering. Other than the gag gift exchange, it was just another party with a bunch of our friends here in KC. It was nice to finally see everyone again. It seems like everyone was on conflicting schedules for the whole month of December.

Sunday got started a little later than we were hoping. We did some shopping in the early afternoon and then headed down to the Brooksider to watch some of the Bengals game. It was like a mini Steelers nation in there, so we left before half time. Actually I had to leave early due to the poor scheduling of my hockey league. The good news is that we are finally back to winning! With the start of this new session we have a website for the league at kchockey.com, which is complete with standing, stats and schedules. I got credit for a goal last night, but I don’t remember scoring. Oh well.

We attempted to start another session of volleyball last night, but the other team never showed up. I guess that’s one way to start off the season three and zip. From there we went over to Joel and Amanda’s place to watch some of the Orange Bowl. We had to leave before the game was over, but I’m sure Amanda was happy with the results, I know my boss was.

My brother told me over the weekend that my blog was incredibly boring and that I only ever talk about fantasy football, so this is for him, the last fantasy football post. If you remember from before, I already announced my 4th place finish in one league. I now am proud to announce another 4th place finish and one 3rd place finish! Go me!

My mom has been busy compiling her 406 pictures from this past weekend. I think she was also hoping to add Nancy’s pictures as well. Hopefully Yahoo! doesn’t catch on to her multiple account schemes. :)

The drive to Cincinnati was uneventful, and we arrived around 2AM EST. We quickly got some rest, in preparation for a busy weekend.

Friday morning came too quickly, but there was much to be done. We started off at Sears where Kim and her sister Bobbi had arranged to get a group photo of the six Hais children. It was going to be a Christmas gift for their parents, making it even harder to coordinate. Overall it went pretty smoothly, and turned out to be a great gift!

From there, we spent the afternoon at Perfect North, our first snowboard outing of the season. I picked up where I left off at the end of last season, and went an entire day without taking a painful fall. I still fell pretty often, but never had one of those sudden falls that makes you wish you never even attempted to snowboard. I cannot wait to get back out and do it some more.

After Kim’s brothers were sore enough, we dropped them off and then headed over to my parents house. We had a lovely Christmas dinner provided by Chipotle and then opened gifts. :) Afterward, my dad, brother, and I headed down to Paxton’s where my buddy Ken was bartending and Jon was drinking. We closed down the bar and then headed home to rest up.

Saturday started off with a little last minute shopping that Kim needed to do, along with lunch at LaRosa’s. We then headed over to my Aunt Stef’s house, to hang out and watch the Bengals game. Of course my goddaughter Emma was there. She is getting so big already, and can almost walk all on her own. It was a great time! I just wish the same could be said for the Bengals game…

My dad and brother were both at the game, along with just about all of my cousins on the Paff side. This made for a very interesting Christmas party after the game, one that will be remembered for years I’m sure. :) We went from this party to another one over at Kim’s parents’ house, for the Hais family Christmas. Since only a couple of people had been at the game, this party was much livelier. We even had some air hockey and ping pong tournaments going on in the basement.

Christmas morning was spent opening gifts with Kim’s immediate family. Later on in the afternoon we headed to my Grandparents’ house for a kegger…I mean Christmas party. My family had an extra keg that was still leftover from Pig-Fest and it made a very welcome addition to the Busch family Christmas party. We had to leave in the middle of the gift exchange there to make it to yet another party. This time it was at Kim’s aunt and uncle’s house for the Diersing Christmas, which was another great party!

Yesterday morning we woke up and soon enough we were back on the road to Kansas City. The nice thing about this drive was that it was completely free. We got so many gas gift cards for Christmas that we should be set, at least until next year!

My mom has some pictures of the various parties on her site.

We woke up on Thursday to about a foot of snow. We couldn’t let this stop us from making our trip, since we had booked a hotel on priceline and could not get a refund. We did wait until after rush hour and then started the drive. The hardest part was just getting out to Interstate 35, which would take us all the way to Oklahoma City. We eventually made it there around the middle of the afternoon, and quickly checked in to the hotel. From there we walked down to the memorial and walked around the outside. We got there just before sunset, and stuck around to see the lights come on throughout the various parts. We were too late to enter the inside museum, so that would have to wait until the next day.

From there we walked back over to the Bricktown area. We had dinner and drinks at Coach’s and then headed over to the Myriad Gardens to check out all of their Christmas light displays. After we were completely frozen we headed back into Bricktown and went to our second micro brewery of the night, Bricktown Brewery. The beers here were much better than at Coach’s, at least in our opinion. Not wanting the night to end there, we headed to one last bar, TapWerks and then called it a night.

We got up pretty early on Friday to go back to the memorial, this time to check out the inside museum. We had heard that you could walk through all of it in about an hour, but we found ourselves still on the first of two floors two hours after starting. There is so much to read and see inside that you could easily spend half of your day there. The entire memorial is very well done and truly an amazing thing to see. I’m not sure that my pictures of the outside will do it justice.

From there we made the hour or so drive down to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, the oldest refuge in the U.S. I found this place online before we left for Oklahoma, when searching for places to see buffalo in the wild. Sure enough we saw plenty of American bison (what is often called buffalo), sometimes they were only 10 feet or so from us. We also saw many longhorn cattle and a few rocky mountain elk. The bison and longhorns were not afraid of cars or people at all, but the elk were more like deer and would flee the instant they were spotted. Besides all of the wildlife, we also drove to the top of Mt. Scott, the third tallest mountain in Oklahoma. The scenery in the preserve is beautiful, I can only imagine what it would look like in some of the warmer months. We were both really glad that we made the drive down to the refuge.

After a few hours there we headed back to Oklahoma City and went to see the Blazers hockey team defeat the Fort Worth Brahmas pretty easily. It was one of those “we went to a fight and hockey game broke out” type of games, especially in the third period. It was nice to see a game this season, since I probably won’t see another one.

We then spent the rest of the night out at Bricktown. We tried to go to a place called Half-Time Sports Grill, but quickly left after a fight broke out. The hockey team must have made their way over to the same bar. :) We then made our way over to the Biting Sow, the only place to have live music seven days a week. It turned out to be a Blues Bar, but it was pretty entertaining for an hour or so. We finally ended up at City Walk, one of those megaplexes of bars where they try to offer something for everyone. After paying an $8 cover we made our way to the dueling piano bar, only to realize that no one else was there. It was nice being able to request every song we wanted to hear, but I think it cost us quite a chunk of change. I still haven’t found a place that compares to Crocodile Rocks down in Myrtle Beach.

We made the drive back to Kansas City on Saturday and spent the rest of the night watching movies. We watched Cinderella Man first, which we both enjoyed a bunch, and then Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which was okay. I fell asleep towards the end of the second, but I was pretty exhausted from all of the driving. Kim said that she had already seen the movie before, but couldn’t remember it, if that tells you anything about it.

Yesterday we did some more Christmas shopping and we now have just about everything done. We then went over to Doni & Phil’s so that the girls could make cookie baskets for their agents, while Phil and I watched the Chiefs blow it in the end. We later ate some Stroud’s, which ended the weekend well. Well I shouldn’t say it completely ended the weekend, since I did have a hockey game at 9PM last night. We won the game, even though one of our better players was playing for the other team. I scored the game winner! :)

I updated my visited states map to include the 30th state, Oklahoma.

I’m back to winning the majority of my fantasy football games. I edged out my brother in one game, to win by two points. In another game I crushed my buddy Will who must have forgotten to set his lineup. I couldn’t win all three though, and lost the third one because of some lousy quarterbacks. Bledsoe (who I played) racked up a whopping 1 point, and Favre (who was on the bench) pulled in -2 points. I was screwed regardless of who I played. I now sit at 25-14, not too bad.

Last night we hung out with Dominique and Bianca again. We didn’t get to do anything too exciting though since I had to login to work for a couple of hours. We had to get something in with them, since we’ll only be in KC for a total of three days this week.

I’ve added some pictures from the Chiefs game over the weekend. We forgot to bring our camera to the game, but many of my co-workers had theirs. I stole all of the good ones and put them up here for you all to enjoy!

I had a busy and short day of work on Friday. The company closed 4:30 so that everyone could make it out to the holiday party by 7. Everyone started off at the Buddha Bar on “Martini Corner” for drinks and appetizers. They also gave away some gifts using a raffle format. I won one of the better prizes of the night, $100 cash! Once our private party ended at 9, many of us headed across the street to the Velvet Dog, which I spent most of my winnings buying everyone’s drinks. It was a great night out with my co-workers!

I was a little slow to get up on Saturday, but by early afternoon I was ready to get some lunch. We had a slight problem though, our car was still at Martini Corner. So we caught the bus and then walked a few blocks to the car. From there we headed out on our day full of shopping. I think it’s pretty safe to say that we finished over 75% of our shopping in one day, mostly at two or three different stores. Once we were both exhausted, we headed over to Cupini’s to pick up dinner. We watched a couple of movies and ate some great food that we finally got a chance to try. I think we will definitely be heading back there sometime soon!

Sunday we had to throw on many layers of clothes and head out to Arrowhead to tailgate for the Chiefs game. We had a group of 25 people from work all heading out to the game. We partied in the lots for a couple of hours, and had a catered brunch as part of our package. The game was a good one, despite the freezing temperatures. We had to leave a little early so that I could make it to my hockey game, which we finally won. As a note for those of you coming out to KC for the Bengals and Chiefs game, it is going to be hideously cold. I’ve added these items to my list of potential items to take to the game:

• Piece of carpet to stand on
• Heated and padded seat cushion
• More socks
• Lots more alcohol (a must)