Work and Snowboarding, House Hunting

I randomly heard Bonnie Raitt singing "Angel From Montgomery" in the grocery store the other night.  That brought back some memories.


Two weekends ago, Kristen and I managed to make it down to the National Western Stock Show.  Bruce and Teri had 10 mules there, entered in a myriad of contests.  We watched them place 2nd in the Costume contest.

I went snowboarding the next day with five other guys.  The snow wasn't great, but we managed to find some good stuff.  The new helmet cam is working out great.  Here's a corny video I put together from that day.




Last week was pretty hectic at week.  We still have no shortage of work, and we're looking for bigger offices and more employees.  A few late nights here and there, but it's livable.  I managed to sneak away on Thursday for another day of snowboarding.  The snow was better, but it's still well below normal.

This Saturday was another day of snowboarding, this time at Copper Mountain.  The snow there was pretty poor, but we still enjoyed ourselves.

Kristen and I looked at a few houses on Sunday.  One was pretty beat up, was in a great location, but they were asking too much for it.  The other was pretty far up in the mountains, had bad access, but was pretty cool otherwise.  The search continues.  We did get pre-approved for a loan, so we can check that off the list.

We've been cleaning and packing up stuff around the condo.  The upstairs neighbors continue to have square dance parties from 2 am through 4 am, so that's a little extra motivation.  I'm almost done touching up all the cabinets, a few more nights of that and I'll be done.

This is going to be a short week, I leave on Thursday for a four day weekend at Steamboat.  They too desperately need snow, I'm hoping a big storm randomly swings in Wednesday night.

Not much to report...

It's been pretty slow around here for the last few weekends.  Two weekends ago we spent some time at Kristen's mom's place.  Joni cooked a huge amount of food.  I weighed myself before and after eating, I gained four pounds while I was there.  I was pretty full.

We also started reorganizing the condo, with the hopes of putting it on the market.  We have a lot of work to get through, so it'll be a slow process.  One of the bigger projects is to sand and re-stain all the window ledges.  A combination of cat scratches and water have forced that project to happen.

It's been warmer around here, not much snow in the mountains, so no snowboarding to report.  I did spend a bunch of time updating the tree house blog, so check that out if you haven't already.

This last weekend wasn't much more active.  More house work, a few trips to the Home Depot.  Kristen and I did end up at the new happening burger joint in town, Larkburger.  Good stuff.  Really good.  If the brother-in-law ever shows his face in these parts, we'll have to drop by.  I'd be curious about his professional burger opinion.

Pictures from the Christmas Trip

Here are some of the more memorable pictures from the Indiana trip.


Testing

Happy New Year!

Kristen and I celebrated a quiet new years by cooking a large meal, and laying pretty low. Kristen cooked up an amazing vegetarian feast using recipes out of her new cook books. We had potato enchiladas, a variation of Spanish rice using millet, and some very tasty spicy black beans. We actually managed to stay up past midnight for the first time in recent memory.

Earlier in the day I went snowboarding with Matt, Mike, Sharron. We met up with Mikael Anderson, a guy I went to high school with. Mikael and I had chatted a bit at the 20 year reunion, and realized we were both big snow-sport guys. It was a lot of fun telling Cody stories on the chair lift. He caught me off guard with a few memories that I'd completely forgotten about from way back when. Lot's of fun.



The snow was great, 11" of new powder. The new helmet cam worked out great, I have a lot of footage to sift through.

Christmas 2009

Kristen and I survived the trip to the farm.  We had a great time, and will be posting a lot of pictures here shortly.  In the meantime, here's a timelapse video of us opening presents on Christmas day.

Running out of time!

We really thought we were on top of things this year.  We were so wrong.  We plann on taking off tomorrow evening for Indiana, and the last week has been nothing but chaos trying to get everything together.  The house will be a disaster area, and we'll probably forget a few things, but that's the way it goes.

Last Friday I headed to Winter Park and Steamboat with a few friends for a long weekend.  I took along a new helmet cam, but only had limited luck with it.  It either would fog up, or I would have it pointing too far down.  I did get a few good still photos out of it, and a few not very interesting videos. 

The snow was pretty good for this early in the season, especially at Steamboat.  It was a whirlwind couple of days, and was over before we knew it.  Driving back was a huge adventure, Rabbit Ears Pass was barely passable, you could often only see ten feet in front of you.  It was somewhat frustrating seeing all the new snow showing up right as we were leaving.

Meanwhile, back in Boulder Kristen hosted the annual cookie making event.  Friday night Maddock came over for a sleep over, and Kristen and he made several batches of blank cookies.  The next morning a large gaggle of relatives showed up to help decorate them all.

Kristen's birthday was on Monday, and she at least pretended to like my gifts.  I did get a few wrong sizes, and the lamp I bought didn't function quite right, so it was a bit of a mixed bag.  She seemed to be happy to see the 12 volt electric blanket that is tree house ready.

On Thursday night we met up with Kristen's dad Bruce to do a quick gift exchange.  He'd heard all kinds of stories about my fancy Shindaiwa chainsaw, and gave Kristen the chainsaw he had when she was born.  She'd asked about it several times in recent years, and was almost moved to tears when she saw it.

Winter Weekend

Things have really cooled down here, we were below 10 degrees for most of last week.  It warmed up a bit toward the end of the week, but otherwise it's really starting to feel like winter.

Zack has gotten into the Christmas mood a bit.  He opened an early Christmas gift, and occasionally will wander the house in his reindeer outfit.  It usually doesn't last long, and he's becoming suspicious of us anytime we have it in our hands.

Friday night was a Christmas present wrapping bonanza, at least for me.  Kristen, Maddock and Allison headed down town to watch a Disney on Ice type of thing.  Maddock is young enough that he believes he's seeing the real Tow-mato, SpongeBob Squarepants, etc.  It sounds like he had a lot of fun.

We went up into the mountains on Saturday to celebrate Kristen's birthday a little early.  I'll be out of town next weekend, and we're heading to the farm the weekend after that, so that left this weekend. We both ended up feeling a little sick, we're suspicious we ate something questionable at some point this weekend.  We still had fun, and enjoyed the winter landscape.

I made the mistake of watching a good snowboard movie Sunday night, and with the snow falling, I can't wait to get up to the mountains and do some snowboarding.  The resorts haven't been getting much snow so far, hopefully the storm that's moving through the area next week will really dump.