road trip

Here's the plans for anyone who doesn't have them yet:
Friday 12/19 (Nicky's birthday!) - leave the mountains
Saturday 12/20 - arrive in LaSalle-Peru
Thursday 12/25 - head to Ttown
Monday 12/29 - travel on to Springfield
Friday 1/2 - head for the mountains

Hope to see you all on our trip home!

Roads, Bike Trails, and Dog Trails

Some people build roads for us to drive our cars on..... Some people build bike trails for us to ride our 2 wheel pedal bikes on....... I build dog trails for the dogs to run on in the snow! So yah, it has been snowing here quite a bit. The past two days we have gotten about 24 inches, with another 36 inches supposed to fall before Thursday morning. What are the little weiners supposed to do when the snow is over their heads??? If they can't get around they refuse to go outside, but if they have a trail to run on then they are more than willing to go out and pee and poo and run and chase each other. So, I go out in the back yard and build a maze-like trail for them to chase each other on. The trail's walls are now about 2 feet high, and the trail itself is rather long. It's quite awesome watching them chase each other around the trail!!! First you put on some warm winter boots. Second, you go out with the dogs and just randomly walk around the yard breaking the trail. Third, the dogs follow along behind you and pack the trail down firm. You should take precaution not to let sections of the trail get too close to each other, or the dogs will cheat and jump the bank between the trails... Then whadya know.... Voila! you now have a first class doggie trail!



I was able to get up to Vail on Sunday. I was planning to go up by myself because Natalie had to work on Sunday. I gave Mark, the 7th grade science teacher from work, a call Saturday night and he said sure, he wanted to go along and he would drive. We talked about going to the Beav cause they have free parking, but decided to go for the best powder and the big mountain at Vail. Normally parking is $25.00, but since the garage was full, we were able to park for free on the frontage road. Bottom line on the snowboarding is the snow was Phenomenal! Among the best powder runs I have ever had!!! We hit the backbowls early and were able to get some good powder runs. But because of the cold..... single digits..... with negative windchills.... we decided to get among the trees on the front side of the mountain. Here we really found some good powder stashes to tear up. The cold eventually forced us off the mountain just a little early at about 2:30. Mark dropped me off at the BOOT where Natalie was working, and I had a Miller High Life and a Gypsum Grilled Cheese with Tomato Basil soup to dip it in. The beer could've been a bit better, but for 2 bucks what ya gonna do? An excellent end to an awesome day!

Gettin Cozy and Guacamole.....

One of the wonderful things from the times spent at home was the guacamole made by my sis and mother. So simple and yet so delish! An avocado and some guacamole mix. Yummy!!!
All 3 doggies decided they had to lay on me for a bit. This is what happens when you turn the space heaters off. Pretty cool though how well they all get along with each other.
Yah, you guessed it... I guess Sophie really does like me..... She didn't mind me laying my head on her while she was laying on the pillow on the couch.

SNOWBOARDING!!!!!!

Last weekend I got out on Saturday morning for a bit of snowboarding with Alana and Torrey. There were about 1500 people in line for the lift after I purchased my first ever SEASON PASS! WOW! I have a season pass, I always dreamed about that moment! Natalie will be getting hers this weekend on Saturday. She and Alana are taking a full day lesson that is provided for free by the school district. A $135.00 value!






I was sitting below this sign and Torrey came around and stopped right below me and sat down between my legs.... just almost popped down on my lap. Felt a little..... weird.... :) Alana just had to get a picture.

We took the ECO bus up to Vail from Eagle for 6 bucks round trip. Good deal since you dont have to deal with parking and all in Vail. The snow was phenomenal! Excellent powder. Man it felt good to be back on my board! It has been about two years since Natalie and I went to Breckenridge. I was worried about forgetting how to ride, but it all came back pretty naturally.

Right after I got off the first lift, I decided to take the bull by the horns and ride off a small ledge. There was a lot of powder on the landing and I didn't have the nose of the board up high enough, so I face planted. Here you can see the leftover snow sticking to my peach fuzz....




Beautiful picture of the snow in the trees and on the slope. 75" thus far on the mountain. 0" in Eagle around the house. They are only about 25 miles apart......















Below is a picture of Alan practicing her smile. My good deed for the day was teaching her to take off her board and sit on it to use it as a sled on the flat catwalk areas. Sweet board Alana!

Fighting ILLINI

The fighting Illini had a great game tonight against Clemson as part of the ACC - BIG TEN Challenge. As I type this there are still about 7 minutes left, and IL has a 2 pt lead. Hope they get the win, it would be a huge one! Anyway, I rode my bike on the trainer tonight for about 1 and a half hours, which is a long time for me on the trainer, while watching this game. I was going to go sockless, as BlackBerry taught me to do, but instead decided that it may be good luck if I wore my Illinois Cycling socks from my sis Anne Marie who attends the U of I.


On another note, I think this is the weekend that we get to begin snowboarding! Hopefully Natalie gets to go with me one day, right now she is working on Saturday and Sunday. I know she would like to get out and practice the S turns she has been doing in her mind for the past 2 years! We got 30+ inches of snow over the weekend in both Beaver Creek and Vail with another 6-8 inches supposed to fall this week.

The last two weeks...give or take

Here's the deal...the computer broke and blogging is difficult -actually impossible - without a computer. We do still have the work laptops, but neither of us really has the complete hang of Macs yet and we can't upload pictures on the Mac, which takes a lot of the fun out of the blogging experience. So, anyway, we have had a broken computer which should be returned to us shortly. And then there will be some awesome pictures to send out on the blog :-)

A drama:
A few weeks ago we had the oil changed on the car. One week after that, we were driving in to Denver to get Anne Marie and Cathy and suddenly, going up Vail Pass, the car was lurching and going about 30 mph. So we (mostly just me) were freaking out because I am not a big fan of semis riding right up onto our bumper, especially when the only thought going through my mind is how easily they could push us over the side of the mountain! The car reacted much the same way getting up to Eisenhower Tunnel. I only cried once :-) Nick managed to get the car down to the flat-lands, where it performed perfectly, of course. We considered getting a rental car but were hopeful the car issue was just a fluke. Unfortunately, the car freaked out going up the foothills as we were coming back home, so we had to drive back across Denver to the airport (for the 2nd time that day) and get a beauty of a rental. The car did get fixed by some super-nice mechanics in Golden at Planet Honda and we now have new front brakes, a flushed transmission and clean fuel injectors.

2 visits:
Nick's sister was in Denver for an interview with FOCUS, a missionary group she is looking at being a part of after graduation. We spent the day with her on Sunday after her work was done. So we got to hang out with her, eat at Woody's (fire-grilled pizza!) and just spend time catching up. We picked up Nick's mom, Cathy, when we had Anne Marie with us, then left Anne Marie in Denver to catch her flight home, and brought Cathy back up to Eagle.
Cathy came to stay with us for 5 days. She found something to do most days on her own since we were in work, but I think she was really able to explore the area. She did lots of hiking and walking and even spent a day working in Nick's classroom with him. Nick took a day off and went hiking in Minturn with her; they started in Minturn but made it to the back bowls of Vail. It was a lot of fun to share all of the things we like about the Eagle area with her!

Thanksgiving:
We had a great day spending time here at home with some of our new friends. It all started waking up to a slight dusting of snow, which we hoped would stick around but was gone by 12. Church was nice, but we didn't know we were supposed to have taken our bread and beverage for lunch to have our meal blessed by Father Bob. One little boy brought his Capri Sun up to the altar as his drink for Thanksgiving meal! It was cute :-) We had all of the traditional fixings, plus the Macy's parade and lots of football. Tiffany and Niles brought some awesome stuffing and sweet potatoes. I hear the apple pie was also superb! Deb & Kent brought little weenies for appetizers. Poor Kent had to make these silly appetizers to make Nick happy; what they didn't know is I had already made some too! Jeff and his lovely girlfriend Jess (who was visiting Eagle from California) brought rolls and jalapeno artichoke dip with some awesome bread garlic crackers. They also did all the dishes and I will be eternally grateful to them for this! We talked lots, played Scattergories and just had a great time.

Now what???
Well, now that Thanksgiving is over, I can put up Christmas decorations. I'll get started on that today. I'm sure Nick is very excited to carry up all those heavy boxes for me! We will be getting a real tree, so I'll also go down today and get our tag for the tree. Only $10 to the forest ranger for our tree permit, which will allow us to go out in the forest and cut down a tree to haul back. Torrey and Alana will be going on that trip with us, so we'll wait to get the tree til next weekend when they are home.

Also, today is our deadline for ordering the new house. Nick's going to call on it later to make sure everything is a go. The interest rates dropped earlier this week and we signed on to a great rate. So, after today, much more house information to come!

And.........pictures to come once the other computer is fixed :-)

A Special Visit

Yay...we had a visitor! The much-anticipated visit from my sister finally happened. Lindsey flew out on Saturday via Peoria-Denver-Eagle flights. She wasn't a big fan of the puddle jumper she rode from Denver to Eagle, but she made it right on time. We spent Saturday showing her our school, the new house and just basically around all of Eagle and Gypsum. Saturday night we had a few friends (Torrey and Alana from Cali, Torrey teaches with Nick & I and Alana teaches 2nd grade right down the road from the middle school - I think Nick has mentioned them in previous blogs) over for hamburgers (Lindsey insisted upon her cheeseburger!) and a hotly contested game of Phase Ten. Alana pulled it out somehow...no clue how really...and that was our night. CORRECTION: NICK WON PHASE TEN!!! my bad :-)

Sunday we went to church then ventured up to Vail pass for some snowshoeing. It was pretty awesome. Lindsey was very excited that she didn't have to be carried back to the car on a stretcher, so I think it was a pretty successful trip. There was snow (duh...snowshoes) up there but not too much snow just yet. Pretty much the perfect amount for our hike.Monday I took the day off. Lindsey and I had planned to do a hike (Hanging Lake) but the weather was less than pleasant, so we just drove down to Glenwood to look at the pretty views of the canyon. We were lucky enough to see big horn sheep and some mule deer while out on our drive. After we drove the canyon, we decided to go up to Sylvan Lake and catch some more views. For those of you who don't know, I'm a little (or a lot, depending on who you talk to) squirmish on nasty roads...especially those covered in snow and ice. So, Sylvan Lake took every ounce of bravery I had (and maybe some I didn't have??), but we survived. We (aka Lindsey, the one who wasn't driving) got some beautiful pictures of the snow on the lake. The roads up at Sylvan Lake are a red dirt, which turns to mush when it's wet. Which means we slid down the mud worse than when we were on snow or ice. That was a bit freaky, and I did actually stop the car at one point and say OK, I have to take a deep breathe before I can continue driving. Monday's drives were followed by an awesome dinner (with Nicholas, Torrey and Alana) at The Rittenhouse Restaurant in Gypsum. Their Monday night special? $5 burgers with waffle fries and $2 drinks...what could be better than that??

Lindsey was dropped off at the airport this morning (it's fun getting up at 4 am!) with a few hugs and some good wishes. Apparently, it will be a good while before she tries the Denver-Eagle flights again (mountains cause turbulance...what else can I say??), which is fine...we can always drive the 2+ hours over 2 passes to go pick her up :-)