holiday party bus

this year we held our 3rd annual holiday party bus...lots of christmas lights, funny times with karaoke, and lots of good friends made for a really fun night on saturday.  i'm so happy that you could all join us, what a great time!!  i didn't get a lot of pics, but hope to add some good ones as they are sent to me by all of you...

christmas!

jay and i had a wonderful christmas - time spent in tulsa at my brother's house with my family and time this weekend in fort worth with jay's.  it was a great time, lots of games, eating and even a two-hour flag football game with my brothers, dad, nephews, and lots of friends!  i didn't get a lot of pics, but some really cute ones i thought i would share.

caroline, the youngest of the seven, got a "style station" for christmas.  she wanted to style all of our hair, but really, really loves jay...and wanted to style his most.  hilarious...

woof, woof!

dallas is in the works for a new dog park, and it sounds like it is going to be nothing short of greatness! the name of the park is "unleashed," it will be in east dallas.

Next February, the Acrees are scheduled to open Unleashed, a 50,000-square-foot indoor dog park on Interstate 30 near Ferguson Road in East Dallas. Unleashed will sit on 6.5 acres that includes more than two acres of wooded land that will be developed with trails, benches and a picnic area for an added outdoor dog park.

In addition to an indoor, climate-controlled open-play area with agility equipment, Unleashed will offer doggy day care, grooming, bathing, pet supply sales and a cafe.

see the full article here, in the dallas business journal.

i know two pups that will definitely be making regular trips to unleashed. i'll speak for nomran and mckenzie and say that we can't wait! ;)

congrats, sammy!!!

oklahoma's all-star QB won the heisman tonight!  congrats to you, sam bradford, and BOOMER SOONER!!!!!!!!!!!  you deserve it, enjoy every moment!

YAY - the death of the cancer stick is upon us!

finally, the citizens of dallas are catching up to the rest of america. dallas is currently the largest major city in the U.S. without a smoking ban. bring it on, i say!! the rest of us don't want to inhale that filthy garbage, you can take it outside, smokers! oh, and stay 15 feet away from the door, please, while you are at it...

After months of consideration and debate, the Dallas City Council is poised to ban smoking in bars, billiard halls and most areas within 15 feet of a business entrance.

read the entire article here - 'city council poised to approve smoking ban'

i will say when i read "poised" to ban smoking i was a little disappointed. jay had sent me the article and i wrote back, "poised? i don't want poised, i want DONE!"

can you tell i am just a teeny bit excited about this?!?

***update - as of 3:30pm today, the dallas morning news is reporting it is official! the smoking ban passed!!! holy moly i am happy!

i should live in vegas...

or so my dad said after i told him this - if you will, look back to a post i made over a year ago, where i proclaimed that i predicted oklahoma versus florida to be playing in miami for the title this year. pretty amazing, huh? it must be that sixth sense i have...i swear, i live in a state of deja vu on a daily basis. or maybe it's my obsession with all things college football, i'm not sure...

anyway, we watched with great anticipation the bcs selection show yesterday evening. as sure as we felt about the outcome, after this crazy year, i just wanted to hear it live. moments later, we both got calls from our dads, who were equally, if not more excited (is that possible?). it's so much fun having a family (or set of families in jay's and my case) that can enjoy all this energy and excitement over the sooners together. jay and i were talking about memories of the mid-80's and bowls of oranges scattered amongst ours and our family friends homes. it's all very familiar feeling...and it feels very good! funny to think back then i still lived in tulsa, jay lived in fort worth, and sam bradford hadn't even been BORN yet!! ha! needless to say, loving the sooners is a family tradition that jay and i plan to carry on for years to come. now, i need to go to the grocery store and pick up that bowl of oranges...

go sooners! bradford for the heisman!

3-PEAT!!

congrats to the sooners for their third consecutive big 12 title!! we are making plans for miami and so excited!!

i will be watching the below intro video on repeat for the next month until the game...granted, it's better on the gigantic screen at owen field, but wow, it's even motivational on youtube!!

BOOMER SOONER!!!

beat florida!

BCS and the sweet, sweet sooners

in order to "answer" the facebook messages, dirty looks, and many emails...yes, i too think the bcs is crazy. in the scenario that has played out for the big 12 south, there was no way that anyone was going to be happy. a three-way tie sucks no matter how you get around it. i think i mentioned a while back how much i love the book, bowls, polls, and tattered souls, a book by one of my favorite writers, stewart mandel. if you feel confused at this point, i highly recommend it. i think if anything, it helped calm me down the years that i felt OU was the one getting screwed.

of course i am happy. and of course i can argue my case for why we deserve it. and of course if the shoe was on the other foot, i'd be ticked off, too. there is just no good way to solve it. and now the pressure is ON the sooners. do i think they can do this? yes. does that matter? no. it's college football. the reasons we love it are some of the same reasons we hate it.

so if any of you care to hear it, i will share my two cents for the best way to solve this whole mess. first, the ncaa needs to either eliminate or require conference championships for all conferences (and if notre dame ever gets good again, they would have to play an extra game if others did - someone, anyone...). and in the event of conference championships, i believe that the top two rated teams should play for the championship, regardless of "north" or "south" divisions (ie, in this case, OU would play the longhorns again for the big 12 title, not mizzou).

second, i think a full-out playoff would just end badly, lots of kids getting hurt, etc.  what would work best after the conference champions were decided would be a plus one scenario, with two games between the teams ranked 1-4, then a final national championship game.  

thoughts?  

there is no way to sort this out and make it 100 percent fair.  but i will say, of the three-way tie, OU did have a very strong case for coming out on top, regardless of how it was decided.  we had the only big-game win on the road.  we beat more ranked teams than any other (#11 tcu, #13 cincinatti, #7 texas tech, #14 oklahoma state) and beat them all soundly.  it's a biased argument, but it's all i have - i am not a computer nor am i a voter, so it's more of a "i'm just sayin" kinda thing.  at this point, i think the most qualified team is going to the big 12 championship. whatever happens up in kc, one of the two best teams in the big 12 will go to the national championship.

we will see how it all shakes out.  friends that are longhorn fans, i agree.  you got the short end of the stick on this one.  but no matter how you slice it, tech fans have an argument, too. they now have to sit and watch after beating a texas team that is now ranked above them and poised to go to a bcs bowl (strangely familiar, huh?). what do they have to look forward to after their excellent season? not much. however, as my ut friend said this morning, "all we had to do was win out and we lost..."  obviously this argument could be made for any of the teams, so in the end, it came down to who had the best entire season.  we all lost one game, and we all should have won out - so really, none of us can say that we deserve it over another.  now i just hope and pray we can go out there, despite our injured players and all the chaos surrounding this week - and take care of business this weekend. let's go OU - represent the big 12 as it should be - the powerhouse conference of the year!!

hopefully at some point the coaches and players will have a voice and all this can be put together a little more fairly - but hey, at least it's better than it used to be...when there was no national title game at all!!   

BOOMER SOONER!!!