An All-American Fourth of July

The Fourth of July weekend this year was busy and awesome for us. We took my parents to the airport on Sunday after enjoying some yummy pancakes at a new(ish) breakfast spot near us. After that, Travis and I hit the store to stock up on food for our camping trip and swung by home to grab clothes, camping gear, and the Wy-Man. Then we were off to Horsetooth Reservoir to meet up with our friends at a boat-in camping site. This was Wyatt's first time on a boat, and I think that if he could talk, he would say that he had a blast.

Wyatt enjoying the wind in his ears.

The view from our campsite. This harbor was kind of the "party harbor". During the day there were a lot of boats and music!

Wyatt with his new best friend, Shala.

Travis wakeboarding.

Wyatt did try to jump off the boat once. We had taken the boat out and anchored it so that we could float on some rafts in the lake. Wyatt did not like the fact that I was in the water and he was not, even though Travis and Shala were still on the boat. He decided to try to join me and was not expecting it to be deep, so he panicked. Luckily a lot of guys were right there with him and got him right back on the boat. Poor guy. The next morning it took some convincing to get him back out and swimming to fetch sticks, but he warmed up to it again and had a blast. We had such a great time camping with our friends (made some new ones, too)! Boat-in camping is the way to do it!!

We headed back to Denver on Monday afternoon, took a quick nap, and headed over to the Daggetts to help them pick some cherries, hang out, and eat some barbeque. I was also happy to have another chance to hang out with Kai (their new son) :-). There were so many cherries! I came home with three bags full - plenty to do some baking with.

Jamie's mom up on the ladder pickin' some cherries.

Jamie and Travis working hard.

As if camping, wakeboarding, picking cherries, and eating barbeque didn't make for an American enough way to spend Independence Day, we closed out the holiday by heading over to Golden to watch some fireworks. The show was amazing. Actually, we just sat really, really close to where the fireworks were set off. It actually hurt the eyes somewhat. What a fun day!

The 'Rents Come to Visit

We've been busy! Aside from our normal busy-as-usual stuff, my parents came to town for a convention recently. It was fantastic having them in town for the ten days they were here. Even though they were staying downtown at the convention hotel for most of that time, it made it feel more like home to know they were nearby. We got to join them for a lot of their conference events and meet some of their friends they've been talking about for so long.  Between the parties, the big dinner event, tours, and more parties, they thoroughly wore me out (in a good way)!

This past Thursday (a week ago), I picked my mom and all their luggage up from the Hyatt Regency and brought her with me to Golden for the day. We went to lunch with Dani at my personal favorite, D'Deli, before I took care of some stuff in the lab and my mom explored downtown Golden a bit. I decided to take drive her up to the top of Lookout Mountain and take in the fantastic views, but as soon as we got to the top it started POURING down rain! It was still worth the trip.

View of Clear Creek Canyon from Windy Saddle.

My mom checking out the water temp (snow melt = cold).

A VERY full Clear Creek with a nice view of the "M".

Travis was working swing shifts Wednesday through Saturday (2 pm - 10 pm) but got to switch with someone and take Thursday off to play golf and poker with my dad, and enjoy a grill night with my parents, Dani, and her boyfriend, Andy. It was great to have him join us! Friday night we wandered down to Parisi, a restaurant in a cute little area not too far from us. There was an art walk of sorts going on so we enjoyed that after dinner, and spent some time exploring the street car tracks a construction crew was excavating! The rest of our weekend together involved a trip to the Golden Farmers' Market, more grilling, a hike with some friends up to the top of South Table Mountain to enjoy fireworks across the city, and a great breakfast on Sunday. Quite a full trip! More to come on the rest of our 4th of July weekend...

Bolder Boulder 2011

After a fun Memorial Day doing the Bolder Boulder last year, Travis said that he wanted to sign up for that 10K again this year. This year our times from last year enabled us to be in a "qualified wave", which is a good thing when you're running with 56,000 other people. Last year I ran an extra 0.3 miles just from weaving around people all the time! Travis really enjoyed passing people the whole time last year, so we decided to split up. I started in our assigned wave and Travis started a ways back.

Travis and me before the start. It was kind of dreary and drizzly in the morning.

Travis and I both had a great time again and both earned PR's (personal records)! Unfortunately it wasn't bright and sunny until after we left Boulder, but we did go over to hang out with some friends later and enjoy some hot tub time (it was a little chilly and windy). It was a great Memorial Day! 

My super-fast friend Katy and I after the race. (iPhone photo - sorry!)

Montreal

I've been really lucky in my graduate career to be able to go to some really cool places for conferences. Last year, it was Switzerland. This year, I got the opportunity to attend one in Montreal. Travis wasn't able to join me this time, but Dani and I went up the weekend before and got a little bit of sightseeing in. It's a good thing we went early - the weather that weekend was gorgeous, and it turned rainy and cold the day the conference started. We were there for an entire week, but most of the pictures I have were from the two days prior to the conference. After that things got a little busy!

We went to this amazing market. We even got to sample this yummy cheese that had been grilled. The demo lady kept talking to us in million-mile-an-hour-very-quiet French. We just acted like we understood everything.

With our rented "Bixis" that we used to go over to the Parc Jean Drapeau on an island in the river. They were fun - heavy, but fun! I think I laughed most of the time we were riding them.

This sphere was built for the World's Fair in the 60's, I believe.

Picnic lunch picked up at the market. Why can't Americans figure out how to make good bread?

This was a Formula One race track that's open to the public for cycling and running. On that day they were having a bike race for handicapped riders - pretty cool!

We found this artists' promenade near our conference hotel in Old Town. Here we're "making" our maple taffy. The lady poured maple syrup onto a bed of ice, we waited a bit for it to harden, and then rolled it onto wooden sticks. 

Sticky, but yummy!

Out for dinner with co-workers Nic and Sean. This restaurant was "bring your own wine". We liked that. After that we hit up this pub Dani and I had discovered - the Pub St. Elisabeth. I love cities where transportation is easy! We traveled by subway a lot.

Basilica Notre Dame. This church was two blocks from our second hotel. It was beautiful inside, but it struck me as odd that the stone walls inside were painted in vivid colors. You don't normally see that in the churches in Europe.

This was my first trip to Canada, and I know that Montreal is very different than non-Quebecois Canada, but I liked it. I got to use my French when I wanted to, and English when I needed. it. It felt strange when we first arrived, because it felt like Europe, but some things were definitely more American. It was a unique blend between the two. People went back and forth between French and English flawlessly. The food was a good blend of the cultures, too. I did try poutine (fries, gravy, and cheese curds). It was good but oh-so-unhealthy. 

The conference was good, too. I made some good contacts and did a decent job on my oral presentation. Those do get easier the more you do them! 

Such a cutie!

This weekend Travis and I had the pleasure of meeting our friends Jamie and Neely's new baby boy, Kai Daggett. He's about five weeks old and doing so well. The new parents also seem to be adapting really well.

(Photo courtesy of the Daggetts' blog)

We had a great time visiting with the Daggett clan (including Moki, of course) and catching up on everything. Can't wait to see the little guy grow and change!

Lone Star 70.3 "Race" Report

The day started out well, and I was so happy to have my family and friends there to support me (and attempt to calm me down before the race, just like old times for my dad).

Clearly I did not want to be eating that banana.

Me, my sister, and my eskimo mom.

Me and Dani.  

Had a fantastic swim - second in my age group!

Annnndddd.....done. A triathlon should not end with a trip to the hospital.

After a fantastic swim, fast transition, and a great start on the bike, I crashed at mile 24 and ended up with a big gash in my head and several rough scrapes and bruises. Since I needed stitches (and probably a CT scan), they advised me against finishing. There was no way - not worth it. I was pretty bummed after training so hard (and giving up my ski season, basically), but that's life. I will redeem myself!

Recent Adventures

Anndddd it's been awhile since I last posted on here! Sorry - life's been quite busy. This past weekend was actually my only weekend at home out of four. There's been a trip to Houston, Vegas, and an upcoming trip to Montreal to fill up the other weekends. While I'm really looking forward to going to Montreal (for a conference), I'm also really looking forward to coming back and settling back in to my normal routine. Traveling is exhausting!

Prior to all of this traveling, Travis and I went back to Houston for our niece's/goddaughter's baptism. We are truly honored to have been selected as godparents for Miss Abigail and will do our best to fulfill that role as well as we possibly can!

During the second week of April, Travis headed to Alabama to meet up with his Air Force buddy Mike for a week of golf and Masters spectating. Although he returned with no pictures, he assured me that he had a wonderful time. He especially enjoyed being at the finals of the Masters Tournament on Sunday. 

My Sunday of that week, however, was not so fantastic. I traveled down to Houston that weekend, along with my friend Dani, to compete in the Lone Star 70.3 (half-Ironman) race in Galveston. It did not end so well. In order to keep this novel-of-a-post from turning into an Encyclopedia, I will post that "race report" separately. I did get to end my weekend like this, though, which is fantastic therapy:

Abigail.

The next weekend, Travis and I headed to Vegas for a semi-combined bachelor and bachelorette party for our friends Zach and Victoria. I'd like to point out, though, that the guys stayed at a suite with a wrap-around balcony in the Cosmopolitan, while the girls stayed at the Flamingo. Yes, we were slumming it comparatively. It was a fantastic weekend and we loved catching up with all of our friends. I'll spare you from some of the other pictures...

Yay, Mr. Stand-On-One-Legs!

For Easter, Travis and I headed up to Dani's mom's house in Loveland after church. We dyed eggs, had an egg hunt (who says you have to grow up?), went on a hike (in the snow), and had a nice dinner. We were happy to have some "family" to celebrate with.

That's finally it - I'll try to keep it shorter next time and post as things happen, rather than two months later. 

In the spirit of heading off to Montreal, a bientot!

A little trip to Steamboat Springs

A couple of weekends ago, Travis and I decided we should head out of town and go ski for a couple of days up in Steamboat Springs. Our season passes have 6 days at Steamboat, so we figured we should use a couple of them! We arrived on Saturday after fighting the I-70 ski traffic and were able to check in to the condo we rented, eat lunch, and get in a few hours on the slopes. It was beautiful.

 The views from the ski lift. Steamboat had some different scenery because of its lower elevation relative to other ski resorts. This just means lots of Aspen trees rather than pine.

On Saturday night we broke out our new pasta machine (thanks Mom and Dad!) and made some pasta with ragout following the recipes we learned in Italy. We also found The Godfather on TV and had it playing in the background. Italian food + The Godfather = one of Travis's ideas of heaven. The food was amazing!

Showing off our lift riding while taking a self portrait skills.

Sunday we skied all day and ended the day with a little apres-ski beer at the bottom of the mountain. One of my favorite parts of being able to stay the weekend in a ski area is that you get to enjoy that apres-ski time! Later that night, after dinner, we made the trek out to Strawberry Park, which is this amazing collection of natural hot springs pools. It's situated right next to the (Yampa, I believe) River so the hot springs water can mix in with the river water. They have pools of varying levels of heat, depending on how much of the nearby river water they allow to flow into the different sections. I went during the summer after the triathlon, but it's a much different experience during the winter. For one, with the snow everywhere, you could see a lot easier, which also means less naked people (thank goodness). Second, the pools that felt the best during the summer are completely different than the best ones during the winter. I suppose this is due to the river being colder. The large one that we hung out in for awhile this summer was just about completely frozen over!

On the way home on Monday, we came to a stop on the highway we were on. At first we weren't quite sure what was going on since this road's in the middle of farm country, but then we saw this:

It was a cattle drive! Crazy, huh? There were lots of cattle, a few cowboys on horses, and even a couple of blue heelers to keep the cattle in check. I don't think I've ever been that close to that many cows. At one point they had the car completely surrounded. That was a pretty cool way to break up the drive and end a great weekend!

Cross-Country Skiing!

This weekend I went with my friend Dani on a cross-country ski trip with her mom and several of her mom's friends. We stayed at Snow Mountain Ranch, which is a YMCA alpine ski area a little north of Winter Park. It was incredible. We had gorgeous weather and relatively warm temperatures. For some reason, when you're up in the mountains skiing (either downhill or cross-country), if it gets up to 30F and the sun is out, it feels extremely warm. Saturday was like that. It was probably somewhere in the mid- to upper 30's and I didn't even wear a coat. Just a down vest. Even on Sunday when we went I think it was in the 20's but I was totally fine with one long-sleeved shirt and the shell to my ski jacket. Anyway, it was gorgeously perfect Colorado weather. All I could think about was how lucky I am to be able to do things like this.

Cross-country skiing certainly is a good workout, especially on the hills we were on. Downhill is scarier on those skis than on alpine skis because the boot isn't rigid, the edges aren't great, and they're skinny. I figured it out, but only after falling four times in the first twenty minutes! In the cabin we all switched off making meals and had some great food to go along with great company. An overall wonderful weekend!

I will always be fascinated by the snow...

We got a big blast of snow here yesterday and last night. I don't think I'll ever get used to how pretty it looks (with the exception of the roads) right after a big snow. I thought I would share some pictures!