Happy Thanksgiving!

The long weekend is drawing to a close, and I feel ready to get back to work.  I don't think I could handle another day of holiday preparations.  At some point during the weekend we misplaced the camera, so no pictures until it resurfaces.

Kristen and I had originally planned on visiting her cousin Cassie and family for turkey day.  That got canceled at the last minute, and instead we met up with Katie and Jordan in Denver.  They were in town for the Broncos game on Thursday.  We met them downtown and ate way too much turkey.

Katie and Kristen went shopping early the next morning.  Jordan and I met up, and decidedly did not do any shopping.  We went for a run, then met the girls at The Med for lunch.  They weren't quite done yet, and took off for another round of shopping afterward.  They were pretty excited about their finds, claiming that they had "won at Christmas".  It looked pretty exhausting to me, they both ended up with blisters, but luckily no black eyes.

The four of us met up with Bruce and Teri the next morning in Hudson for breakfast.  Later in the day Joni showed up to give Kristen some pointers on her new sewing machine.  They seemed to be excited, the sewing machine will do some pretty fancy stitching.  I spent most of the day doing some top secret Christmas fabrication in the garage.

Sunday involved yet more shopping, this time around I needed to pick up some stuff for Kristen's birthday, and a few Christmas gifts.  I also snuck in some snowboard gear purchases for myself, which is my nature.

I really hope that my shopping and Christmas preparations are about complete, I'm not sure how much more of this I can take!

Calm before the storm

This was the last weekend that Kristen and I have to ourselves before the holiday season really takes over.  We headed out Friday night with a few friends to grab dinner and see "Men Who Stare At Goats".  It's no "Big Lebowski", but it was still enjoyable.  It's hard to see Jeff Bridges and not instantly think "The Dude."

Kristen and I got a lot of Christmas shopping done on Saturday.  Kristen must be wearing off on me, I'm not usually this prepared so far in advance.  Kristen did a bunch of wrapping afterward, the Christmas box is slowing filling up.  We also picked up some fabric for various tree house items.  Now we just need to find the sewing machine so we can make a few storage curtains and table clothes.


Sunday involved sleeping in, and running to town for some grocery shopping.  The following is not a picture of some under-ripe tomatoes, those are huge under ripe persimmons! 

Several weeks have passed...

And we don't have a lot to show for it.  We've gotten bad about not taking pictures that often, so you'll have to settle for lots of text.

Three weekends ago Kristen and I laid pretty low.  As far as we can remember, we didn't do a whole lot of anything.  If we did, our collective memory apparently only goes back 2 weeks.

Two weekends ago we headed out on Friday night to the annual Warren Miller movie showing.  We had about a dozen friends show up, and there was a lot of talk about ski trips, both past and future.  It appears that we'll have some new blood hanging out with us on the slopes this year, which always livens things up.

Saturday I headed into work for a few hours to prepare for the upcoming Portland trip.  Kristen met up with sister Allison and nephew Maddock and headed to the museum.  They watched an IMax movie about sea monsters, and generally checked out the museum.

Sunday I headed up to university hill with Nate to try to offload an old couch of his.  We grabbed lunch at the Sink.  I had a burger named the "Fat Pig Burger":  Bacon, smoked ham, pork brisket, all on top of a burger.  I didn't feel so well afterward.

The trip to Portland went well.  The big bosses didn't shoot us on sight, so we must be doing OK.  I didn't seem to piss off the corporate developers as much this time around, so I'm marking that up as improved people skills.

This last Friday Nate and I headed back up to the Hill to see Hell's Belles, an all female AC/DC cover band.  It'd been many years since Nate and I hung out at the Fox Theater, we had a lot of fun reminiscing about past misadventures there.  Hell's Belles were great as always.

Saturday Kristen and I headed out to do a bit of shopping.  We stopped by Westminster Mall, which definitely has one foot in the grave.  Half the store fronts were empty, and the stores that were there weren't offering the greatest of wares.  The place really had a mid to late 80s vibe to it, so we bought an Orange Julius and hung out at the arcade and Spencer's Gifts in order to get the full effect.

That evening we headed down to Golden to meet up with Ted, Kathy, and their new baby Ellie.  It was snowing like crazy on the way down, and the drive back was pretty exciting.  Ellie is very cute, and it was good to catch up with crazy Ted and Kathy.

It continued snowing throughout the night, which prompted Kristen and I to skip the annual Panicking Poultry race on Sunday morning.  The race went on without us, I can't imagine running in sub-freezing temperatures through 5 inches of snow.

The ski slopes are opening at a pretty good rate with all this recent snow.  It won't be too long before we make it up the hill.