It was a beautiful weekend, with the weather staying in the 80's for most of it. On Saturday Kristen's mother Joni came down to Boulder to celebrate Mother's Day a bit early. We ate lunch at the Med, and wandered the Pearl Street Mall for a bit. We came back to the condo and worked on the garden.



I built a quick frame for our zucchini and cucumbers to grow on, Joni and Kristen planted a few tomatoes, peppers, and marigolds.

Saturday evening Matt, Nate and myself headed into Louisville to grab a bite to eat and have a few beers. Matt's wife and kids were out of town, so we stayed up late talking about guy stuff in the garage.

Sunday morning I checked in with Ma, to make sure she was still kicking on Mother's Day. It sounded like they had a full day of packing ahead of them, and then possibly a trip up the South Fork. A little later I met up with Mike, Nate, Mary, and Karissa to fly planes. Unfortunately during a high speed series of flips, I folded one of my wings, and had an exciting crash from about 300' up. I ruined a battery, but I'm hoping the rest of the juicy bits held up OK.



The cats had sponsored a Mother's Day lunch for Kristen, so I took her (on their behalf) to a local cafe and had a wonderful brunch. We decided to stay away from the "All you can drink mimosas". A little later we went on a run around the reservoir. The Bolder Boulder is coming up quick, so we've been pretty good about getting our runs in.

For dinner I made a salad from the garden (and a bit of help from the grocery store). I also tried a grilled asparagus recipe from this months Fine Cooking, which turned out great.



Kristen and I have found a house that looks promising on the web. We're hoping to go take a real-life look at it in the next few days. It's outside of Boulder by a few miles, but is on a 3 acre lot, and is up in the hills a bit. It's the most promising one we've found so far, so we're a bit excited.

Ah, the hectic pace of spring, when everyone's excited to be outside, and the traditional events come in rapid succession.

Wednesday night we had a going away party for our collective boss at work. Matt smoked up some of his famous barbeque, and we ate and drank ourselves silly. It was a lot of fun, and it thankfully never devolved into dancing on the picnic tables.


Friday night my friend Brent came down from Casper for the Kinteics weekend. Kristen's sister Katie was also in town, so we had a full house. Nate, Brent, myself and Morrissey headed out for a night on the town.

The next morning came awfully quickly, and we were all signed up for the Kinetics race at the reservoir. We dragged ourselves to the race, feeling pretty rough from the night before. Morrissey suggested that we sprint off the start line, and see how long we could stay in front of the real runners. That lasted for a good 100 yards or so, and had the crowd laughing pretty hard. We struggled along for the rest of the race, and were hurting pretty badly by the end.


The weather was better than expected for the Kinetics festival, but the crowds were still pretty small due to the weather.



Nate's team took first place for the 5th year in a row or so. They've really gotten it down to an art, although they were being pressured by the second place finisher, which was a guy on a mountain bike with inflatable pontoons.



We had another crazy night Saturday night. Luckily Sunday was laid back, and we were able to re-coop a bit before the work week started.

I put a new faucet in the kitchen, since the old one was getting harder and harder to turn off. It was one of those deals where it seemed silly to pay someone to do it. It seemed that way at least until I was halfway through the project, cursing the busted knuckles, the water soaked cabinets, the wrong fittings, etc. Luckily it all turned out OK in the end.

Finally, a spring-like weekend. We'd gotten snow a few hundred feet above us mid last week, so it was nice to have some warmer weather this weekend. We spent a good portion of the weekend outside and both got a little sun. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures for most of the weekend. I'll try to be better in the future.

On Saturday we did our group run in the morning. I opened birthday presents shortly afterwards. I couldn't help but notice that both Becky & the Parents send me the exact same card. Sinister plot, or coincidence?

I then met up with Mike to fly planes for a bit. He had a new motor set up in his, there were a few very near crashes, but we both escaped unscathed.

Kristen took me out for dinner to "The Kitchen", which was recently voted Boulder's top restaurant. The food and wine were great, we had a very enjoyable time. We randomly ran into some friends at the Rio.

Sunday was a flurry of activity. Kristen spent a good amount of time in the morning cleaning up the patio, and planting a few herbs. The patio is much nicer, hopefully we'll be spending some time out there as summer approaches.




Kristen and I headed into Boulder to eat lunch. Unfortunately the wild boar sandwich didn't sit well with Kristen. I hung out on the mall a bit and people watched. The temperature was in the mid 80s, and there were a lot of people out enjoying the weather.

Once we made it back home, we spent some time in the garden planting broccoli and onions. Kristen's been growing some zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, and cilantro under some grow lights, but we decided to wait until mother's day to put them out in the garden. We've joined ranks with the thousands of other Boulderites who have grow lights! ;-)

Later in the day we went for a run. The wild boar was still haunting Kristen, so her run was a bit curtailed. We have a big race next Saturday, which is right before the big Kinetics event. We have a few guests from out of town staying at the house, it ought to be another busy weekend!

I've been updating the blog for one full year now! It's been a fun experience, and it's great to be able to go back through the archives and see what's happened in the past year.

Kristen and I had a full week of running and family related activity. Kristen's brother Clay turned 21 this weekend, and her nephew recently turned 1. We ended up at two different parties for Clay and Maddock, which kept us busy on Saturday. We also experienced the worst service at a restaurant I've ever seen. It was impressively bad.

Katie and Jordan showed up Saturday night. They came in from Grand Junction to celebrate Clay's birthday, and to find some good running shoes. They've both been running quite a bit, and hope to do the half marathon with us this fall in Moab.

The four of us signed up for the Earth Day 4k, which is our traditional first race of the year. All four of us did well, although Jordan was suffering from some shin splints. Hopefully the new shoes will help him out in that area. Kristen neared a 10 minute mile average for the race, which is her personal best. I averaged a 7:27 mile, which is also my best. It was a great way to start out the race season!

Becky and the parents are heading off to Germany in a few days. I expect to see some great pictures when you get back!

It was another laid back weekend. A few more of these, and we'll actually be bored.

It was supposed to snow 14" on Friday, but the storm was a no-show, we didn't even get any rain. The weather on both Saturday and Sunday was beautiful, hitting 75 degrees on Saturday, and 80 degrees on Sunday.

Kristen and I made it to our running group on Saturday. We did a fairly long run, and both felt like a million dollars afterwards. It's amazing how much easier these runs are this year as compared to last.



We ate a big lunch, and then slept it off. We drove around a few neighborhoods looking for appropriate houses for sale. Every one we found that we liked was horribly out of our price range. The search will continue.

On Sunday we worked on our taxes, and finished those up. We spent a bit of time on the front porch with the cats, who weren't very brave about coming out of the house.


Kristen spent some of the day doing work stuff, we did a bit of gardening, and I did some programming. Things should pick up next weekend.

Happy Easter!

We had a laid back weekend. It stayed below freezing all day on Saturday, and finally warmed up to about 40 degrees on Sunday.

We didn't do a whole lot of anything. We skipped running on Saturday since it was so chilly. I did manage to get a few things done around the house, and Kristen worked on the taxes a bit. I got a bit of bot work done in the garage.

Sunday was more of the same, bot work in the garage, Kristen did some house work. She cooked a wonderful Easter dinner with home baked bread, turkey soup, and a crumb cake for dinner. It was very tasty. Those cooking magazine subscriptions are being used!

The weather was great this weekend. We were doubtful, as we awoke Thursday morning to 4 inches of surprise snow.

Kristen and I made it to our running group on Saturday for the first time this year. We'd missed the two previous meetings due to inclement weather and scheduling conflicts. It felt good to get out and run early in the morning, and we both felt a lot better than we did last year when we started. We both dropped down to a slower group, so hopefully we'll both be running with people more our speed.

In the morning, I built up our garden plot a bit, trying to level it out a bit. I was mostly successful.



I then spent a bit of time in the garage working on planes and robot stuff. Here's a picture of the 50 pound drum that will be on our 220 pound robot:



Sunday morning I met up with Mike and Nate and his family to fly planes. There were no crashes, and a new battery I had bought made all the difference in the world in terms of performance. I was able to get a few flips in, a few barrel rolls, and a lot of my confidence back.

Kristen meanwhile attended a garden meeting. The gardening group had hired a guy from CSU to speak about Colorado garden issues. She enjoyed it, and learned a few things.