Goodbye 2007, Welcome 2008!

I hope everyone had a safe, healthy and happy New Year. We rang in the New Year in style....by not even making it to midnight. I know, I know....we're so adverturous and spontaneous. But really, New Year's has never really been a big deal for us. In fact, I try to stay off the roads at all possible. I know I'm usually safe and have a DD, but it's the other people I worry about. I'd like to survive long enough to enjoy the New Year, make resolutions, and then 2 months later totally give up on them.

2007 started off with a bang. I had introduced my friend Amy to a musician named Jason Mraz. I love, love, LOVE his music. Although he will never replace DMB, he's definately a very close second favorite. Anywhoo, Amy found out that he was playing in Tahoe in Jan. We decided to plan a girls trip with some friends of hers. I won't go into all the details (think lots of libations and debauchery), but we had a great time and the concert was awesome!

2007 was quite spectacular for us actually. Brian and I both got to leave the country for the first time (no Mexico and Canada don't count as leaving the country) and the best part about it was that it was all expenses paid - well sort of. We both had the luxury of traveling out of the country for work. Unfortunately, we weren't able to go together. I got to visit England for 2 weeks, while Brian went to Germany and Switzerland - twice. But believe me, it all wasn't fun and games trying to leave either. Neither one of us had needed a passport before, so we both had to expedite our passports so we would have them in time. For me, I had about 2 weeks notice and on a regular expedite, it takes about 2 weeks to get it. But lucky me, Jan 2007 initiated a new law that required people to have a passport to go to Mexico and Canada. So while I'm waiting for my passport, everyone that has a trip to said countries is now rushing to get a passport too. Needless to say, I wasn't too confident that our government would be able to do the paperwork in time, and was prepared to postpone my trip. But by some miracle, my passport arrived the DAY before I was to leave. I never want to stress over that again - good thing passports are good for 10 years. Brian had a bit more than 2 weeks, but it was still pushing it. He got the fancy new style passport with cool pictures on every page. Yes I'm jealous. Apparently, 1 month meant the difference between the old boring passport and the fancy new one.

The next trip was a girl's weekend to Yosemite. I had never stayed in their cabins on the valley floor - let alone in the winter with snow on the ground, but man was it beautiful. It was so peaceful and not crowded at all. If there's one thing I hate about Yosemite it's the Yosemite valley floor during the summer time. Holy crap there's a ton of people. It's not even worth it. It feels like I'm at an amusement park - you wait in line forever but instead of getting on a ride, you get to see a waterfall. To me, that's just not nature. Nature is when you can hear the birds, the streams, the little critters rustling in the bushes. Nature is not when you hear kids screaming, cars honking, and can't find parking to save your life.

Next up was wine tasting in Paso Robles with the Bonds clan. Um, yeah....we so need to do that more often. Brian was a good sport and went even though he's not a wine drinker (whoo hoo! DD!) We tasted so many good wines that I had to buy some from every place we went to. Altough, I'm fairly new at the whole wine tasting thing (hey, I went to Chico, so I'm more a beer afficionato ok?), i could definately get used to it. Yes, I know I live near the heart of wine country, but they tend to be overcrowded. I don't know, maybe I just didn't go to the right place. But in Paso, it was totally laid back, the wineries were little cottages instead of huge mansions, and the people were super friendly. My all time favorite wine now is Grey Wolf. Every single wine I had there was oh so good. I highly recommend their wines.

Mixed in with all of our fun trips were a few tradeshows that I had to do for work. Our biggest show is always in Vegas. Then our two smaller shows were in Anaheim and Orlando. These shows were by far the largest shows I've ever been responsible for. My last company did tradeshows, but our booths were only a fraction of the size of these shows. They are a lot of work and I am usually exhausted by the end of the trip, but I really enjoy doing them. I get to design the booth, set it up, bond with my collegues and hear the praise from the big cheese (and bigger cheese) of how great the show was and how good the booth looked. It truely is rewarding.

June 2007 marked our 1st wedding anniversary. It's amazing how time flies. People kept warning us about how difficult the first year or two of marriage can be. But to be honest, it's been great and if this is the worst it can get, I can't wait to see what the future will bring. We decided to celebrate with a long weekend to Tahoe. We didn't really do too much, but we were together and got to have some relaxation away from our crazy work schedule.

And by the middle of summer, we couldn't believe that we were going to be homeowners. It happened by a fluke accident really. We had been eyeing the market in our area and noticed that prices were starting to come down - some by about $100K! But then the inevitable happened - our apartment, after 4 years, finally decided to raise our rent. So, we decided to take the plunge and talk to a loan person to see if and when we would be able to buy a house. Our credit was fantastic and the timing was just right. We were struggling on whether or not we needed a real estate agent. But then there was a house we wanted to look at that never had an open house. So we went to a house on the same block that was open and decided to have that agent arrange to show us the house. We really liked her and decided to make her our agent. She, in turn, put us in contact with our mortgage broker (we liked her so much that we dropped the company that gave us our pre-approval). We kept looking at houses and decided that they were a bit out of our price range, so we started looking at townhomes. We called our agent and told her we wanted to place a bid on one. Two days later, she called us and said, "Hey, I know you really liked that 1st house that I showed you. Why don't you just put in a low offer and see what happens. If they don't accept, we can still put a bid on the townhouse." After much deliberation, we decided to go for it. What did we have to loose? If they said no, we'd just put an offer on the townhouse as originally planned. Turned out the seller countered, but only $10K higher than our bid. We had 3 days to make a decision. Talk about stress! We must have called our mortgage broker 20 times in two days. In the end, we weighed out the pros and cons and decided to go for it. Less than 30 days later, we were officially homeowners with keys in hand. Without our real estate agent and our mortgage broker, we wouldn't have the beautiful house we have today. So, if you are looking for an agent or broker in this area, let me know because ours are AWESOME!

In 2007, our dear friend and fellow groomsman, got married and had a baby. They had a reception in Chico which we were so happy to attend. Congrats on the new family Eli, we love ya!

Thanksgiving finally came around as did the annual SF International Car Show. We spent Thanksgiving day at the show and Brian's mom joined us. The next day, I got to host my very first Thanksgiving. Luckily it was just the three of us, so if I screwed it up it wouldn't have been such a disaster. Turns out I can make a pretty mean Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was moist, the mashed potatoes were seasoned, the stuffing was flavorful and candied yams were sweet to perfection. Aside from a couple of broken plates and a mangled wooden spoon (appetizer disaster), I think it went very well. And my apple-carrot spice cake was so good, that no one touched the pumpkin pie.

And now we're back to the present. I actually thought that we had a rather boring year, but as I look back, we had quite a year. Traveling, working, family gatherings, buying a house..... I can't wait to see what 2008 will bring to the Burke household. Hope your 2008 is everything you hope for.