New Year and Anniversary Fun

New Years Eve was too much fun this year! I was in a VERY grumpy mood because Tyler was not being oh too helpful that day but then our friends Pattie and Brain invited us to dinner with them and things started getting better. We had a waitress who was grumpy (like I had been) and she did not appreciate my honesty. When I told her I would be "stealing" Tyler's soup she immediately informed me that I would not be getting any refills. I guess we started off on a bad foot with her because I put the high chair for Ben at the end of the table which apparently was very dangerous. Ooops! Steven really had fun though because he got an ice cream sundae. And it was HUGE!! And he ate it all! Plus the people at the table next to us thought he was adorable and chatted it up with him.

After dinner we went to Tyler's parent's house where Steven "played" the Wii with his cousins, got even more junk food and ran away from some loud fireworks. It was fun to watch him and his 3 cousins screaming "Run away, run away!" and going to hide under the piano. It was also funny to watch him hold a sparkler and back up as though he was getting himself further away from it. Steven is really at a good age (finally) where holidays are WAY more fun because of him! Ben is not at the age yet. He slept through everything. Lame ;). Not like Steven who stayed up until 1am (must have been the junk food).

It was the perfect start to 2011!

And then on New Years Day Tyler and I celebrated our 5th Anniversary. Our real anniversary is Monday but I have to go back to work so we figured we would celebrate it on a better day. We went to dinner at the very fancy restaurant Alto Ristorante located at the Hyatt Regency in Scottsdale. That would be the place where Tyler proposed to me over 5 years ago. It was fun to revisit and remember. We even got to go on the gondola ride and be sung to again. Although, this time it was MUCH colder and our singer was a lot less social and he sang us an Italian song that he said was about a man trying to get his lover to return to him (Appropriate for the situation? I think not.) . But still it was really a nice, relaxing, and romantic evening. We ended our fabulous date with some hot chocolate at a Starbucks in Barnes & Nobles. A perfect night!

Here are some pictures I found online of where we were:

Here is a picture of the hotel grounds

See where the water is coming down? It's on top of that structure that Tyler proposed to me

This is the Gondola ride- only it was dark and FREEZING when we were on it last night!

I managed to find a picture of the EXACT table we sat at. We sat at the one in the foreground (which was also in the middle of the room, Tyler thinks they wanted to display the white trash that was visiting their restaurant ;) )