Lots of Driving

I had a whirlwind tour of Wyoming and Montana this last weekend.  On Friday I headed to Cody, arriving around 11 pm.  Lena slept through my arrival, not a single bark emanated from the storied watch dog.

I visited w/ Ma & Pa for a few hours in the morning.  I did a little tech support, toured both shops, then jumped in the car to head to Red Lodge Montana.  I unfortunately picked a bad day to snowboard, all the locals were saying it was the worst day in recent memory.  The snow was poor, and the wind was really blowing.  I did manage to ride the lift up once with Dan White's daughter.  Dan White was my biology teacher in high school.

Due to the wind, I only lasted about 3 hours, then headed off to Billings for Joe Stringari's birthday party.  That was a lot of fun.  I got to hang out with Joe, Jack Ford, and Juli Hinze for most of the evening. I hadn't seen Jack for 15 years, and have only seen Joe and Juli a few times since college, mostly at high school reunions.  We really had a lot of fun, it could have been 1993 for all I knew.

The next morning I headed back to Colorado, stopping in Casper to visit with Brent and Trudy.  They were doing well, we had a good hour visit before I headed back to Boulder.

Kristen had stayed behind, planning the glorious gardens of the spring.  Many of the seeds she had ordered showed up in the mail, which only fed the fever.  I think we're going to be plenty busy come May.

She also visited with her father, and brother and sister in law.  The big news there is that Clay and Shana are expecting a baby.   Kristen also whipped up a loaf of applesauce bread, and a loaf of banana bread.

Unfortunately Kristen and I didn't take any pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination.

An on time posting

Here's a picture from our first big snow of the year a couple of weeks ago.  Zack really wanted to go outside, but quickly changed his mind once he was out there.

We had a good weekend.  The weather has warmed up into the 50s, quite a change from the colder temperatures of last week.  I headed up to Copper Mountain on Saturday with a few friends.  The snow wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. 

After a day of snowboarding, we headed to their jump training center to practice our mad-skills in their foam pits.  We quickly discovered we really weren't that good at jumping, much more practice would be necessary.

On Sunday Kristen headed out with a friend to the National Western Stock Show.  She spotted some chickens she liked the looks of.  Luckily she didn't bring any home.

I finally got a hair cut.  I went in on Friday and asked for a "Mullet", thinking it would be hilarious.  It was so atrocious that I had to hide it via a hat until Sunday.  Now I'm back to normal hair, and am looking forward to it for a good long while.

3 weeks gone

Three weeks have passed, and there's not a lot to report. I'm finally over the cold that Jacoby left as a last Christmas present. Kristen never really got it, it sounds like she's the only lucky one.

Shortly after the holidays it snowed like crazy in town. We missed a very white Christmas by a week or so. The weather has cooled considerably as well, we've had several nights with temperatures in the negatives.

Now that my cold has passed, there's a lot of snowboarding planned. I managed to make it up on Sunday and had a great day. This upcoming weekend will be more of the same.

Happy Holidays!

Everyone survived the visit.  Kristen and I are still getting the house back together, and finding all kinds of left-behind gifts.

Christmas is closer

The week ends are flying by.  Only one more before people start showing up!  This weekend was particularly crazy.

I took Friday off from work, and headed to the mountains with Morrissey and Weaver.  The mountains were supposed to really get a big hit on Friday and Saturday, so we were pretty excited.

We didn't get the kind of snow we were hoping for, but still managed to put in a good day.  It snowed on and off during the day.  Morrissey had decided to spend the night in Winter Park, Weaver and I unfortunately had to head back.  It ended up snowing 5 inches Friday night, far short of the 14 inches that had been originally forecast.  However, I'm sure Morrissey enjoyed the snow, and will tell us all about it come Monday.

When I returned home Friday evening, Kristen had picked up her 4 year old nephew Maddock for the evening.  We had fun jumping on the bean bag, and playing a little bit of Wii Sports.  He's a little too young to pick up a lot of the video game stuff, but seemed to enjoy things nonetheless.  He eventually demonstrated some of his ninja moves.

Saturday morning we headed out and got a Christmas tree.  We've never selected our own tree before, hopefully we chose wisely.  We got it set up, but still have a lot of ornaments and decorations to put on it.

A little later in the day we headed in to town to hit the skating rink.  Kristen quickly remembered how to skate, and dragged Maddock around for several laps.  He looked like he had spaghetti legs, they were flying every direction, all at once.  He picked things up pretty quickly, and was able to maneuver around the edge of the rink pretty well by the end of an hour.

We dropped Maddock off with his parents in the early afternoon.  Kristen and I then headed up to Nederland to celebrate her birthday a little early.  We stayed at our favorite hotel, and took in the sights and sounds of Nederland.  I fit right in with my wacky hair.

We drove around the mountains a bit on Sunday.  We ended up at Blackhawk for an hour or two.  Kristen tripled her money, I lost about $10.

We headed back to the house for a present wrapping marathon.  I also tried stringing some lights on the house, but am missing a few critical pieces.  Hopefully I'll get everything lit up in a day or two.

Two Weeks Ago

I'm falling behind.  Here's our best recollection of what we did two weekends ago.

Saturday morning I headed in to town to run the annual Colder Bolder 5k race.  The race has grown considerably since the last time I ran it (four years ago?).  I finished predictably in the middle of my age group, which is fine by me.  Morrissey was hoping to get a sub 20 minute time, but missed it by 20 seconds or so.  I was feeling good enough during the race to give the photographer the devil horn salute.

A little later in the day, Kristen and I headed into town and did a bit of Christmas shopping.  We are finding that we have a lot of little gifts for everybody, but still need to figure out what to get several people for "real" gifts.  The shops were a little crazy, but bearable.

On Sunday I headed up to Winter Park with a guy I've been trying to snowboard with for several years.  He broke his arm at the beginning of last season.  Luckily we didn't incur any additional injuries, and he seemed to be picking things up again pretty easily.  It was a short day, I was back home by the early afternoon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Whew!  What a whirlwind of activity.

 On Monday of last week, we released the next big version of our software at work.  Preparing for that, and dealing with the aftermath has kept the office pretty busy.  Luckily, with that out of the way, things should slow down a bit for the holidays.

I took Wednesday off, and headed up to Winter Park / Mary Jane for my first day of snowboarding of the season.  Even though Boulder has been fairly temperate, the mountains have been getting a lot of early season snow.  Things are much better than they were last year at this time.  It was a bit chilly up there, but the snow was unbelievable.  Morrissey and I got a very full day in, showing up right when the lifts opened, and riding them until it was getting dark.  I was sore for several days afterward.

Thursday of course was Thanksgiving.  Kristen had put together quite a feast.  We had 10 people show up, and things went very smoothly.  There was plenty of food, every one got along, and fun was had by all.  Things ramped down around six o'clock.

A few hours later Katie and Jordan showed up with Rocco and Olie in tow.  There were a few tense moments between Zack and Rocco, but for the most part things went well there.

Kristen and Katie took off early on Friday to hit some Black Friday deals.  Jordan and I took it a little easier, and managed to stay fairly stress free for most of the day.  Jordan and I did head out to Disco Friday night, in painfully embarrassing get-ups.  Disco was sort of a bust, but we managed to have fun regardless.

Saturday morning saw Katie and Jordan heading back to Grand Junction.  Kristen and I spent the rest of the weekend cleaning up the house and relaxing.  The cats were glad that things settled down again, and that something that resembled normal life had returned.