Graduation

I apologize for the delay in my posts. Our camera was in my purse that was stolen out of my car a month or so ago and we have yet to replace it. I'm relying on other people's pictures! My sister Lauren is a much better photographer than I am, anyway.

A few weeks ago Travis and I went back home to attend the graduations of both of my sisters. Lauren graduated from Sam Houston State University with a Master of Science in Forensics Science, and Sarah graduated from Texas A&M with both her B.S. in Accounting and her Master of Science in Management Information Systems (I could be wrong on that). We had a great time visiting back home and hanging out with family. After graduation on Saturday we made a mandatory visit to the Dixie Chicken, of course!

The graduation ceremony for my Master's degree was on the same day as Lauren's graduation. Needless to say, I did not attend. If it would have been my last graduation ceremony, I think I would have attended. Since I did not get a choice in purchasing the cap and gown or not, we decided pictures were necessary :). And yes, my dad is a goof.

Good news!!

I'm clear to finally announce that Travis and I will have our first niece or nephew come December!! My sister Lauren and her husband Jim are expecting their first child. We're all pretty excited about it. Here's a link to her blog where the first ultrasound has just been posted: www.jimandlauren.net.

Sipping and Painting!

Oh, man, do I have some catching up to do! I'm terribly sorry - the time got away from me during that headache of a thesis-writing process. I meant to post these pictures a long time ago from a "Sipping and Painting" class Travis and I did with our friends Dani and Jerad a while back. We saw coupons for this company come up on Groupon (if you do not know about Groupon, you need to: www.groupon.com) so we decided to do it. It was a $40 class that we paid $20 for. They provide the canvas, paint, wine, and instruction, and you end up with a cool painting to take home with you. It was a blast! Such a fun way to spend the evening. We chose to do the class entitled, "Poppies". Here is what we ended up with. Can you guess which one of us painted each of these?



Got your guess? Here we are holding each of our paintings:



Surprised? It was so much fun :). Here are some more pics from the night:

In case you were wondering...

Aside from going out for a couple of amazing meals during Denver Restaurant Week and running, swimming, and biking, this has been my life lately:



Writing my Master's Thesis. Super fun and interesting, I know. For some reason I decided it was a good idea to set my defense date for April 1. That means I need to get this thesis to my committee around March 18 or so. It's getting there. Just plugging along.

Travis is finally finished with the inspection at work - yay! That means I get to see him more and (especially important right now) he gets to help around the house more. Good timing, except he's ready to celebrate and I'm, well, not quite there yet.

Ski Trip 2010

This past weekend was the Second Annual Richards and Friends Ski Trip! The first one was held at Breckenridge, but this year's was at Winter Park since that's where we have ski passes to this year :). Travis organized the whole thing; renting out a nice big house, getting people in and out of town, and food plans. We had 17 people staying at the house near Winter Park (it was at capacity!). Several of our friends from the Denver area joined us, including Jamie & Neely, Dani & Jerad, Berkeley & Jay, and Dave & Joan. The out-of-towners who made it were Chad, Aaron, Brad, Zack & Victoria, and Lindsey & Clint. It was SO much fun to get to hang out with everyone AND be able to ski the fresh snow without worrying about traffic. After a couple of dry months, we finally got some snow up there!

Dani helped me ski through some trees with lots of powder in them. I did well at first, but then I lost momentum. That was the end. Every time I got myself standing on my skis on top of the snow, I would fall into the powder again. At one point I even left my ski pole about 10 feet out of reach and had to work my way back up to it. It was exhausting! Great workout, though.

Here's me after I managed to get out of the trees:



and a view of where I had come from:



It was fun! Dani was very, very patient. The ski trip was a great success this year. We'll continue to organize it - even when we migrate back to Texas!

Superbowl Sunday

Sorry to post this out of order, but since I forgot to take pictures at our party yesterday, my friend Dani graciously offered to "draw me a representative picture" of the party. I just got it in my inbox, so here it is.



It really is very representative of last night's event. We had a few of our regulars over, including Dani & Jerad, Berkeley & Jay, Neely & Jamie, and our friend Grant from school. Of course there was way too much food (this normally happens at our get-togethers with this group) and way too much beer, but hey, too much is better than not enough! I was glad that our guests brought plenty of beer to share because I was a clutz earlier in the day and all the beer I had just bought spilled out of the car onto the concrete when I opened it up. Needless to say not much of that survived :(.

Travis was indeed cheering for both teams. He would say, "Alright whatcha gonna do on this move", to the defense and then make "ooo that's not good" comments to the offense when the defense did indeed tackle them. It was funny to observe. Very different from the normal frustrated comments made by Travis while watching say, an Aggies game. It was odd to see him calm during a football game. He actually remained seated most of the time!

Overall I guess I'm glad New Orleans won even though I was cheering for the Colts (big fan of Peyton Manning). I don't hate either of those teams, so it was kind of a win-win! Hope you all had great Superbowl Sundays, too!

So it IS still winter!!

Old Man Winter made his return to Denver yesterday morning after about a month long vacation. It was so weird that we got so much snow in October and November and then nothing for the whole month of January. It's been so mild (typical highs in the forties, lows in the upper twenties) and dry. I guess I got spoiled. My run yesterday morning was foiled due to snow and put off until today when the snow was supposed to stop. Of course, the snow hasn't stopped, and the roads are a mess, so I get to do a two hour run on a treadmill this afternoon. Woohoo. Here's a pic taken outside my office building in Golden.