Happy New Year!

Last week was Christmas, so we made the 14-hour drive back to Panama City to be with our family and friends during the most wonderful time of the year! We took the whole week off and were able to be in town for about eight days, which was really nice. (Yes, Garrett thinks it’s funny to make faces in family pictures.)

Other than the opening of the new Shrimp Boat restaurant and the downward spiral of the economy, not a whole lot has really changed. What we did notice, though, is that it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Although it’s still where we’re from and where most of our family and friends live, we definitely felt like visitors. They say “Home is Where the Heart is,” and I think our hearts are now in Dallas. (We still send a lot of love back to Florida, though!)

It was GREAT to be back around our family and friends. The five months we’ve been in Dallas is the longest I’ve ever been away from my mom. I don’t care how old you are – sometimes you just want to see your mommy.


The whole family stayed at my parent’s house (including their dogs) so it was fun to have all the hustle and bustle of the holidays around us. We got to see most of the family and catch up with them. Plus, we saw my cousin Tina’s new baby, Addison.

Christmas night we went to the movie and out with friends after all the family stuff was over. We saw The Spirit, which had mixed reviews from everyone, and then went to our favorite local bar, Mrs. Newby’s.

I even got to see my best friend's little boy, Keegan, a few times before we left. He is so stinking cute!! He remembered who I was, which made my day. I was so worried when we left that he’d forget me.

On Saturday we made the drive back home, with Garrett’s brother following us. Then that night after we got in, Garrett’s mom flew in from California to drive back with his brother. It was great seeing her, too!

We hope you had as wonderful a Christmas as we did, and an even better New Year!

Love,

Michaela & Garrett

It's Freezing!

We're definitely not in Florida anymore! Last night we got sleet and today many of the school districts are starting late because of "black ice" on the roads.



We layered up, scraped the ice off the truck and went to work, though. The whole time we were counting down the days until we get to Florida. Only 4 days to go!!

P.S. In case you're wondering, that is a CD case Garrett is using to scrape the ice off his truck. I guess we need to buy ice scrapers. We never thought we'd be doing that!

Love for Kids

Well, another weekend has passed and we’re another weekend closer to Christmas!

Garrett shot a Christmas event put on by a local charity, called Love for Kids, for underprivileged children on Saturday. They had over 3,000 kids come and over 700 volunteers. The kids were from Dallas ISD schools and had to be nominated by their teachers to attend. He said he’s never seen kids that are more appreciative or deserving of what these people are doing for them.

Love for Kids was started by a volunteer in 1975 to help with Christmas for the impoverished children after Vietnam. Their annual Christmas party is at his ranch in Grand Prairie and starts in the morning when over 60 school buses full of children arrive at the ranch.

There’s music, games, food, inflatable rides, and everyone gets to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. (This year there were so many kids they had to have three different Santas to be able to get to everyone.) Some children want normal things like video games, but the special requests get noted and actually filled. For instance, one girl asked Santa for a dress so she could be in her church’s children’s choir. That request will definitely be heard.

While the kids are playing, volunteers go onto the school buses and put presents at all the children’s seats so when they get back on the bus to go home they have something to open. For some children, this is the only present they get and they look forward to it all year.

The saddest thing, though, is that a majority of the kids arrive at the ranch in the cold with no coat. Before they go play, they line up and are given new coats for the winter. One kid cried because he had never had such a great coat and was afraid that when he went home, he would get beaten up for it.

When Garrett got home Saturday night and told me about his day, I couldn’t hold back the tears. Yes, the economy may suck. Yes, we may have a house in Florida that we are going through hell with. Yes, we may be driving 14 hours to get home for Christmas because flying is too expensive. But, we have a Christmas tree, and it has presents underneath. We have jackets and sweaters. We even have gloves and hats. Honestly, what more could we ask for? We have so many reasons to be thankful.

It's Snowing!!

It is snowing RIGHT NOW at our house. This is only the second time I've ever seen snow and it is so cool!! Actually, it's really cold!

Happy Monday!

It was another busy weekend at the Dollar residence!

Friday night Garrett worked late to shoot video footage of Katie Mariah (seen in the previous post), performing with some other local bands. I took the opportunity to do some shopping and finished buying everyone’s Christmas presents. Yeah!!

Saturday we saw the new Punisher movie. I thought it was great, but Garrett only thought it was okay. He just thought the villains were too cheesy. My theory behind him not enjoying the movie as much as me is that I was eating popcorn and he wasn’t. We all know how good movie theater popcorn can make a movie!

Saturday night was my work Christmas party. We had a pretty good time.

I got to introduce Garrett to everyone, and he got to drink a few Shiners…

I got to give Jean her 10-year certificate since our boss was unable to attend. Here’s me, Jean (in the red shirt) and her twin sister, Tina at the party.

Sunday was game day, so you know what that means! Grocery shopping! I know it sounds crazy, but everyone here is such a big Cowboys fan. At Albertsons, if you wear your Cowboys jersey on game day you get 10% off your groceries. That is a deal! So, usually on game day our routine consists of brunch, grocery shopping, and then the game.

Unfortunately we lost the game yesterday. At least my favorite player, T.O., got to score a touch down on his b-day…even if it was the only one scored. Happy 35th birthday T.O.!

During half-time I got Garrett to take some pictures of me in some new knits that I’ve finished. This one is a cowl neck warmer that I made to keep my hair under control on the motorcycle.

This top is knit out of yarn that Garrett brought back from one of his trips to Key West. I’ll have to wait until spring to wear it, but it turned out really well.

Thanks for tuning into the Monday edition of Dollars in Dallas! Have a great week!!

P.S. Only 12 days from now and we’ll be in Panama City!

Garrett's Music Video

Here's a link to the music video Garrett just helped shoot and edited. Check it out! It is awesome!! (That concrete wall behind them is his office in the bank vault.)

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

Man has it been busy! We’ve been so busy with work that we haven’t been doing too much on the weekends worth talking about.

Last weekend we cleaned house and I raked the yard. Our yard really isn’t very big, but we have the two trees that are supplying the whole neighborhood with little brown leaves. We had so many leaves, I swear I think our neighbors are raking theirs up and dumping them back in our yard. It only took me 30 minutes to rake, but then it took us two hours to bag them up. We ended up with 13 big garbage bags full! I’ve never seen so many leaves in such a small space!

On Thursday we went to my co-worker, Jean’s house for Thanksgiving. Everything was sooooo good! She made one of the prettiest and juiciest turkeys I have ever seen. We had such a great time. Plus, the Cowboys won their game!

Friday we did a little bit of shopping and then put up the Christmas tree. We even have presents underneath!

The long weekend was great because it gave us a chance to relax and catch up on our movie-watching. On DVD we watched the Golden Compass, Southland Tales, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Bond), Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and P.S. I Love You.

We also went to the theater and saw Australia, which was fantastic! It was such a good movie. It had action, romance, was shot beautifully and the actors were great. Plus, it showed Hugh Jackman with his shirt off. What more could you ask for?

Last night, Garrett got to shoot his first music video. He was so excited! The shoot went really well.

I was on dog duty for the evening, which didn’t go so well. Willow didn’t move when I got home, even when I was yelling for her. I had to get down on my hands and knees and poke her. She finally woke up after I had a mild panic attack. By that time Rowdy was so hyper he ate his dinner and then stuck his head in between the couch cushions to throw it up. That was my night…

Well, so long for now! Only 18 more days until we’re back in PC for Christmas!!

Love,

Michaela

How could I forget?!

I can’t believe that I forgot to mention this! Garrett had to work late this past Friday night because he was shooting footage at the Dallas TV series 30th reunion party! He had to put microphones on all these old Dallas stars and make sure their audio was okay while they ate dinner together at the House of Blues.

The night was a little crazy, but all in all he had a good time. His favorite actor from the show was Larry Hagman, who played J.R. When Garrett told him he needed to put a microphone on him he ripped open his shirt and started unbuckling his pants! He said the whole night he kept telling jokes and walking around to the other tables introducing himself. Oh, that J.R.!

The next night was the big event at the Southfork Ranch, where the show was based. Luckily, Garrett didn’t have to work that because we had friends in town. From what’s been on the news, though, it looks like he missed a good time!

Nerd Fest '08

This weekend was a blast!!

Mike & Julie came in from Austin to hang with us for the weekend and go to Wizard World Texas.

It was Super Nerd Fest 08!

We did see some cool people, though. Like this guy with the Mohawk… He’s an artist named Marco Djurdjevic. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce it.) He did some cover art for Daredevil that Garrett had signed.

We also saw Cory Feldman…

…and Danny Trejo!

Danny was super-cool! We talked to him some. We didn’t talk to Cory, though, because his line was too long and his handlers were jerks. He seemed nice, though.

After the convention, we got Mike to go on a motorcycle ride with Garrett.

They were so cute!

That evening we went to Sam Moon Trading Co. for some shopping therapy for me and Julie. Although there were so many purses I got a little overwhelmed and ended up leaving empty-handed and more stressed than when we actually went. Julie got some cute stuff, though!

Then we went to The Magnolia Theatre in Downtown Dallas (they have a martini bar!) to see the new Kevin Smith movie and had dinner at the Taco Café. The movie and dinner were both so good! At one point I thought we were going to get blown up, though. I asked them to turn their outside heater up and the gas kept clicking and not turning on. All these guys speaking Spanish were crowded around it trying to relight the flame and I couldn’t understand whet they were saying…it was a little scary.

Sunday we just hung out and ate a bunch of food. It’s been so nice having friends (somewhat) close by. They are a blast!

Well, that was our weekend! I hope you had a great one too.

Love,

Michaela

Yes we did!

Okay, so I’m a day late with this post, but we had other stuff going on so what can I say?

Tuesday night was a BIG night for us! In case you didn’t know, we’re pretty “blue.” Although in the primary elections, we originally supported another candidate to represent the Democratic Party, it was clear afterward that Obama was the right choice. As the election grew closer we began to like him more and more.

So Tuesday, we both got home from work and settled in with our fried chicken to watch the states get colored in. We weren’t going to bed until we knew who our next president was going to be.

Since Garrett used to work in news for an ABC affiliate, we’ve grown attached to Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer, so we kept the TV on ABC and Garrett checked other networks online to see if they were forecasting the same numbers.

FOX news seemed to be the only one forecasting lower than ABC…

After Ohio went to Obama, we knew there would have to be some crazy turn of events at the rest of the states for McCain to win, but we wanted to hear the words, so we waited.

Then at 10 p.m. Charlie Gibson announced the last polls were closed, and in the same breath that Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States. Garrett and I just looked at each other, speechless. We knew that we’d tell our grandkids about that night and exactly where we were when we got to be a part of history…in the bluest city of the reddest state.

Hi-ya!

Happy Monday!

Time for another weekend update from the Dollars! This weekend was a little more low-key than some of the others we’ve had lately. Friday night (Halloween) we went to a local restaurant whose employees were having a costume contest. We didn’t wait around for trick-or-treaters because the dogs get so freaked out with kids coming to the door, especially Rowdy. It takes him forever to calm down. We just turned our light off and left. (I know…we sound awful.)

Saturday we saw Changeling. It was REALLY good. It was one of those movies where about half-way through you think to yourself, “Wow, this is a really good movie.” Especially because it’s a true story, not based on a true story. The writer, J. Michael Straczynski (who is also one Garrett’s favorite comic book writers) spent years researching the story and even went through it with lawyers to make sure it was as accurate as possible. It’s estimated to be 95% accurate. Everyone deserves high praise for the movie, but Angelina Jolie was incredible. She is such an amazing actress.

That night we stayed up late to see Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live, only to find out that he’d cancelled earlier in the week and John McCain was taking his place. It was bummer, but we watched it anyway. McCain was still pretty funny and Ben Affleck was hysterical!

Sunday we got to go see Mindi’s new baby, Logan. He is such a cutie! Too cute to even put into words, so here are some pictures!

They’re such a cute family!

After that we watched the Cowboys get beaten pretty badly by the Giants. It was sad, so I won’t say anything else.

We’re really excited about this upcoming weekend, though! Mike and Julie Pedro are coming into town and we’re going to Wizard World Texas. We’re going to also do some other super-cool stuff so we’re super-pumped and can’t wait!! I’m sure they’ll be plenty of pictures to post next week!

Have a great Monday!

Love,

Michaela

Harley-ween

Happy Monday!

We had another awesome weekend here in the Big D! Saturday we took the bike over to the big Harley Dealership. We stopped in front of a Dallas City Limits sign to try to get some good pictures of us, but this is all we came up with…

I’m sure the people driving by were wondering what the hell we were doing.

We actually went to the Harley dealership because they were having their Harley-ween party. It was pretty fun!

The staff were all dressed up.

And some bikers had their face painted.

There were vendors with cool biker-leather stuff.

And there were also Hooters girls dressed up giving bike washes… Which Garrett loved…

Here’s our picture on the Harley “Wall of Flame” when we bought our bike. (Top, second from the right)

Along with this guy, who's been riding for approximately 150 years.

And in honor of Halloween, here’s the bike that Blade rode in the television series. (In case you didn’t know, Blade is a "day-walker" that hunts vampires. And he rocks.)

After Harley-ween, we went in the boot store next door and tried to find some “authentic” Texan apparel.

I decided I need a tan before I can buy boots. Oh, and $250…

Harley-ween was a blast! After the ride there I had to sit on an ice pack my booty hurt so bad. We’ve already started talking about how our “next” bike will need a bigger seat…because I have a bigger seat – if you know what I mean.

Sunday ended up being pretty good when the Cowboys won, too! Here I am my new T.O. jersey. Please ignore the awful face… and pose... and hair.

Go Cowboys!

Love,

Michaela