Random Musings.....

Now..... This is a large doggie. This large beast belongs to Natalie's sister Lindsey and her hubby Mike. His name is Ambro, and he is a freak of nature....at least I'm sure that's what sophie is thinking! He weighs about 15-20 times as much as Sophie, (the amount of slobber that comes out when he shakes his head prolly weighs more than Sophie) and he kept trying to molest her. She was having none of it! Don't need any St. Bernard/weiner puppies running around.... On this bottom picture, Sophie finally went to hide under the coffee table. As you can see, Ambro can't even get his fat head under the table. He prolly left a bit of slobber on the floor there though!!!!

This is a pic of my youngest sibling Michael. I was able to capture this foto at his Christmas tournament when we were home in December. He's a junior in high school and early in the season was seeing a lot of playing time on the varsity team. This is a huge deal in T-Town! Not sure what happened, but his playing time gradually waned for some reason or another. On friday night the team lost in the regional championship. It's always a sad moment to be on the losing team like that, but what a wonderful feeling to have the season over with!!! Basketball gets long, especially with 3 hour practices on saturdays and sundays! Congrats on a good season Michael! Good luck with club soccer and tennis now!

Below is a pic of the moon last night. It had a super bright star right next to it. It was really neat! I think someone told me it was a planet or something? Not for sure really, just know that I have never seen a star that bright so close to the moon before. On the cold clear nights out here, you can see so many stars! It's really cool!

For Valentines Day, I designed a hat for Natalie. She is wearing it in the last post about V-Day. The hat below is one that I designed for myself. Our secretary at school, her daughter, makes these hats. I came up with the color scheme, told her what I wanted, and Voila...... my hat! She has made quite a few of them, and said this was her favorite yet! I have good taste I guess. If you would like a particular hat made, just let Natalie or I know, and we can get it done for you and ship it to you. $25.00 for the hats. Not a bad deal. Especially when I need something to keep my BALD head warm!!!!

A Very Good Valentine

Nick's been planning Valentine's Day all week...but kept it all a surprise, so I had no idea what yesterday might bring. So, here's the scoop:

wake up and get served breakfast-on-the-couch (just like breakfast-in-bed except you get to sit on the couch and watch tv!) the plate colors nick selected...blue and green...and asks me if i notice anything, which of course, i don't...wedding colors! isn't that cute...served breakfast on valentine's day on plates that were wedding colors...who even thinks of stuff like that????

presents: gotta love valentine presents, right? nick had a beanie made for me. at school, the secretary's daughter takes orders and knits hats, so nick picked colors and all and she made me a beanie...very cute! i got nicky a 6-pack of microbrews and a book on all you could ever need to know about flyfishing in colorado.

after that, sit around a bit and then head up to boneyard to snowshoe. the weather was awesome when we left. wrigley went with us and we were all three having an awesome time. then the snow storm hit! so the last bit on the way back was a bit brutal - temperature dropped, wind picked up, snow was crazy and blowing horizontal. poor wrigley ran ahead and hid behind a shed since he couldn't get in the car until we got back...he was so cold!

got showered up and warmed up then drove up to vail for nick's interview. he met with the directors of kid's mountain bike camps in eagle and vail. seems like a good gig, so hopefully he'll get on there for the summer.

walked around lionshead village at vail, wasting time window shopping until our dinner reservations. dinner turns out to be at billy's island grill, which specializes in steak and seafood. it was a pretty awesome meal (which i finished off this morning for breakfast!) nick had halibut and i had ribeye. coming home was a little sketchy (if you ask me) because of heavy snow, but we made it :-)

a great day...thanks to nick for making it so awesome!

Nothin' in Particular...

So it's only been like a month and a half since I blogged. Why the absence??? Hmmm, no good reasons really, or at least none that I would accept from my students, so prolly no need to drone on about them...but I will. First, we went on our Christmas break trip...2 weeks gone. Then things were busy when we got back (again, no excuse really and not sure what I accomplished in my computer sabattical). After that, I dropped the laptop, resulting in my having to mail it to Denver Best Buy, who proceeded to mail it on to someone else to fix it, only to find out it was a piece of junk and we would need to get a new one. By the time we made it in to Denver, got things set up...well, that's pretty much taking us out to February 11 :-)


So, I've been working on this snowboarding thing. It's going ok...I'm not the best but for sure not the worst, so that's positive! I got to take a free lesson (cuz teachers are special like that) and that sure helped a lot. Alana and I have visited the mountain a few times together, with Nick and Torrey being much more adventurous than we are! This past weekend I worked on a few things on the mountain, before deciding heading to the bottom for a New Belgium Trippel sounded like a good idea!

Coming up this weekend...Valentine's Dance at School on Friday. Maybe I can find a cute guy teacher to dance with??? lol Nick tells me the plans for Valentine's Day are to relax "Natalie style" (whatever that means???) and spend some time with the dogs before we head up valley. Nick has an interview for a mountain bike summer camp position and then we're going to dinner (unknown site - surprise!!!) at a place that's probably more for the rich and famous...not Nick and Natalie :-)

For those who hadn't heard, our next trip home will be in August! And we should be moving within a month or so :-)

Love/Hate

The Good Ole' Bicycle Trainer......... Love It/Hate It.......

1. LOVE IT for doing very specific intervals based on power levels....HATE IT-riding inside

2. LOVE IT for being able to get a quick workout in short amount of time....HATE IT - still riding inside.....

3. LOVE IT for being able to burn many calories in short amount of time...HATE IT - still riding inside....

4. LOVE IT for getting some miles when there is ice on the road.....HATE IT - still not physically moving anywhere.....

5. LOVE IT for being able to get up and ride while it is still dark outside....HATE IT - still bored out of my gourd.....

6. LOVE IT for keeping my skills stronger than ever, when all the guys in Boulder that I will be racing are training outside..... HATE IT that I am not training outside.....

7. LOVE IT that I can ride for an hour, then go snowboarding all day.....HATE IT - still riding inside.....

8. LOVE IT that I can relate with other people that toil away on the trainer.....HATE IT - still not going anywhere....

9. LOVE IT for being time efficient.....HATE IT - for being time efficient

10. LOVE IT and HATE IT at the same time......EVERY time I get on......

Pack

Our school mascot is the wolf. The wolf runs in packs, although I don't think they range this far south in the Rockies. In honor of the wolf, we have pack meetings once a week to discuss content area... be it math or reading depending which pack you are in. We also have dens... which are our morning homeroom classes.

The pic above is not one of wolves, but one of coyotes which do range in our area and are fairly common. Coyotes also range in packs at times and much like wolves also howl at each other for communication.

Tonight we had an appreciation dinner sponsored by the PTO at 6:00. At Chatham the PTO consisted of many people, so we were in for a surprise tonight when we saw 4 PTO members who were at the meeting. It didn't take away from the dinner though which was Texas Chili and Green Chili among other things. Smaller town smaller PTO though I reckon. Back to the coyotes....we walked out of school at about 7:30 to a cloudy night and a BRIGHT full moon. There were lots of howls coming from a pack on the Red Hill on the right side of the valley, which were being answered by howls from a pack on the left side of the valley. (It's only about 1 mile or so from one side of the valley to the other.) It was really eerie and very cool to walk out of school to coyote howls and a full moon complete with a cloudy sky and fresh snow and ice on the ground.

The House

The first day of digging on the lot.


Lot #10...

The foundation as you will be looking at the front of the house. You can see the mountains in the background. That is Red Hill. The part covered in plastic is the garage.

The foundation and the garage frame going up. You can see the crawl space that will be under the great room and the kitchen.






















This is how it looks now. The garage frame is done, and the foundation is done. They still need to pour the concrete for the drive, but will have that done soon. Just waiting for the boxes to come up over the pass so they can set them on the foundation. Once that is done, it will take about 3 more weeks to be ready for move in.

Can You?

We are going bowling tonight as a school social outing for the district. They plan little social outings like this all the time. It's kinda cool and a good way to meet new peoples. Natalie and I went bowling last weekend for the first time in about a year. I like bowling and spent many wednesday nights with 3 dollar games and 50 cent drafts in college "practicing" during intramural bowling. Not a professional by any means, but I enjoy it.

So last week, the first game I bowled a 120, and Natalie bowled a 96. I beat her by 24 pins. I then made her a bet. If I beat her by more than 24 pins in the next game I would get a back rub from her.... If I beat her by less than 24 pins she would get a back rub from me.... She said yes, feeling pretty confident from the game before, not knowing that I was about to go on a run for one of the best games of my life.... Here are what my frames looked like... Can you tell who won the bet???? Do you know the score?

x = strike

/ = spare

0-9

x, x, x, 9-0, 9-0, 6-2, x, x, x, x, x, x = ?????

snowboarding

Torrey and Alana, and Natalie and I up at Vail. Torrey and I ran phat groomers while the girls worked on their skills at the top of the gondola.

Natalie and Alana cheesin it up.... Check out the colors on the bottom of those boards! Can you tell they are excited to be on the mountain? This was at the Beav.

Natalie after finishing a difficult series of S-turns, taking a much needed break at Beaver Creek!! Looking good Nat! Outfit and board make you look like a PRO!!!

Natalie and Alana at the Beav on their way down off the mountain after their free lesson! Sure does beat having to ride down after a long day on the smooth runs at the top! I was able to ride down under the lift, take a detour through some trees, a quick run through the park and pick this spot under the lift for the sweet foto!!! and meet them at the bottom. Excellent day learning S-turns on fresh snow for the girls. It was awesome seeing them connecting series of turns all the way down the hill. **** Remember to look where you want to go girls.....look down at the snow and that's where you'll go....

Natalie's first day on the mountain this year. Does she look nervous???? Nah.. she's confident and ready to shred........ I by the way walked down this slope while carrying my board and helping Natalie bring back those memories of how to turn that she learned in Breck 3 years ago.... Takes some practice to feel comfortable on the board.