Enjoying sweet time with the Ericksons

Of the many things that I have to be grateful for, good neighbors is one of them. Several months ago, Angie (one of my sorority sisters from Wash U) and her husband, Kevin, moved from Phoenix to Dallas and luckily, ended up in our neighborhood! They are also attending the same church that we have been going to in 2012 (Providence). We have really enjoyed spending time with them. After years of seeing each other only once a year, we now get to share a meal with them every week... and I couldn't be happier about it!

A helicopter ride through heaven

This week I had a photo shoot for work in Scottsdale and Sedona. While I hate being away overnight from Reese, I have to admit it was a gorgeous place to have to travel for work! If you want to know what types of things we "shoot", usually it's seasonal occasion shots (such as this family road trip) that we later showcase on our newspaper inserts, billboards, bus wraps, etc. Exciting stuff.... I know : )

While I was there, I was able to dine on some amazing food at Cowboy Ciao in historic old Scottsdale. I also had the opportunity to take an amazing helicopter ride through the red rocks of Sedona. It was quite scary and windy (as they decided to take the doors off the helicopter - yikes!) but it was so incredibly gorgeous... definitely something I'll remember for life!

We love our community group

Our church community group had to break up due to geography at the end of 2011, but we still love the couples who were in it so much! We've been trying to keep up with all of them as much as possible. We recently had a play date with the Brazeals and Keys, and this weekend we brought food to the Wannemachers (and visited their new home and new baby Blake!) and then visited the Rutledges in their new home. Although I'd enjoyed some nature walks with Cayce during maternity leave, we hadn't seen John since he left for Tokyo several years ago. It was a relaxing weekend and so nice to catch up with loved ones!

Discovering downtown Plano

Of all of our dear Texas friends, Carl and Kelley Loredo are two of our favorite. They are just so sweet and fun to be around. The Loredos introduced us to a new part of town (downtown Plano) for dinner on Saturday. It was adorable! We love downtown McKinney with the old historic square and great restaurants, and this had a lot of similarities with lots of restaurants, boutiques and an old town feel. We ate at Zanada, which had a fabulous roof top restaurant. We're thinking it would be fun to go back there or to Urban Crust sometime when the family is in town!

Happy Easter!

Our 2012 Marketing Offsite trip

Dana and I just returned from our annual Marketing dept offsite. We spent 3 days at a beautiful resort (the JW Marriott) outside San Antonio listening to some really terrific speakers. It was a little bit tough because it was our first time leaving Reese with someone other than family for a few days (and of course, tornadoes just had to hit in Dallas that week). Still, we made the most of it and had a lot of fun. Here's a picture of Christine and the girls at a ranch one evening during a Texas-themed awards dinner (what you can't see in this photo is that she got to rock her red cowboy boots!). Dana won an award for the great work he's done launching the Doritos Loco Taco at Taco Bell.

We had a wonderful time in Carmel, CA with Dana's family this past weekend. Dana's brother, Sam, and his fiancee, Sheena, were able to fly in from Hong Kong for the visit, as they were doing wedding planning for their October wedding in Napa. We visited the Monterey aquarium and as always, ate great food at Little Swiss, First Awakenings and Tarpy's.