Mother Nature

Mother Nature has confused everything and everyone.

Today I wore short sleeves to church.  Albeit, I was a bit chilly but not entirely cold.

I've seen a lot of birds, particularly robins, for this time of year.

Some of the trees are starting to bud.

This week, the highs are in the 60s.  Next week, the 40s.

No wonder we're all confused!

I can't believe it

I've been on Pinterest since I think August.  In the beginning I was totally obsessed with it.  I spent way too many hours during the week looking at random things and building up my inspiration boards.  Lately though, it's gotten a little boring.  That's probably because I don't have anything in particular I'm searching for.  The awesomeness of it has faded.  Don't get me wrong though, it has definitely provided some great recipes, cool cleaning solutions and a few DIY projects I'd like to try.  But lately, it's just kinda boring.

Also, the Facebook thing is about to get really annoying.  I just read yesterday on yahoo.com that Facebook is going to force us all to merge to the new "Timeline" feature.  Ugh.  Those people that have already switched to it, I don't even like going to their pages and looking at them. It's too disorganized, disjunct, complicated, too much going on in one page.  I honestly hardly even update my own page with statuses.  I mainly just read other peoples' updates and just get a quick update about what's going on with my peeps.  With this new Timeline thing though....ugh....I'm tempting to just forget about facebook altogether.  It's too much change for me. 

I just can't believe that that these two social networks awesome sites that used to occupy my time too much are slowly ....not.

Hey...but it's a good thing!

I Caved

I wasn't interested. 

I really didn't care.

I had no desire at all.

But, Stephen kept asking me.

He said it would make him happy.

He said I would probably like it.

So I caved.

I'm now watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix.

It's actually kind of riveting.

Better than I expected and not anything like "Stargate Atlantis" which is just plain weird and terrible.

The show is actually funny and interesting to watch!

So, now I'm interested.

And I like it.

Very Interesting

JCP rocks the boat.

Interesting article about the changes coming to JcPenney on Feb. 1.  I know a little bit about stocks and I'd just like to note than when this news was released, JCP stock dropped a lot.  And I would like to predict that it will drop significantly when these massive changes are put into effect.

We shall see.

A Tangled Mess

Stephen bought himself a Power Conditioner for our electronics. You plug all your stuff into it and then plug the conditioner into the wall.  Basically, it regulates the voltage for everything so if we ever had a power surge or something and the voltage is too high it will safely protect everything at a lower voltage or shut everything off completly. It's very high techie stuff. 

Anyway, this prompted the reorganization of all our wires, cables and stuff on our entertainment center and in the three boxes full of wires that I found around our house.

In the process, this is what our living room looked like.

 Now, it's all put back together nicely and all the extra slack in the wire is neatly twisty-tied instead of a tangled mess.

This also prompted me to detangle and twisty-tie all the other wires in our house.

I don't even know what most of these are for.  Like why do we have 5 useless surge protecters, or 3 apple headphones that lost their grip (I threw those away), two mini mouses, 8 different USB cords, and countless other things.

Oh well....at lease it's all organized in one big box now!

Crested Butte Vacation Day 5, 6 and 7

Monday morning we woke up to 3 new inches of snow with a forecast of snow ALL DAY LONG!
By the time we made it on the slopes there must have been at least 6 or 8 inches already and we learned very quickly that powder is hard to ski in!!! Even though they had groomed the trails the night before it really didn't matter today!

Tips for Skiing in Powder:

- Lean back and keep tips up

- Go fast on flat parts so you don't have to pole as much

- Ski on tracks already made so it's easier for you

- Be prepared to fall

 Mom and I went down Panion's Run as our first blue in the powder! It was tough; we screamed and laughed the whole way down and then she fell and put up a big cloud of powder and I couldn't even see her! Then I fell! Stephen took the run next to us and he could hear us screaming through the trees!

Before lunch, Stephen, Mom and I decided we wanted to ski Paradise Bowl in the snow and powder. It was quite the challenge even getting there! We took the Bushwacker run and it has a big downhill and then uphill right after it so even in normal conditions you HAVE to go straight down just to make it up the hill. Well in LOTS of powder you can't do that. So we took it slow and at the very end we all went straight down in hopes we could make it at least partially up the hill. Well....we all bit the dust!! Out of the seven people that went down the hill the same time we did, four of us fell.

We finally made it to Paradise and it was VERY windy and REALLY snowy! We had to keep stopping because 1) the wind was slowing us down and 2) it was whiteout conditions and we couldn't see anyone in front of us! So after that adventrue we decided we stick to the greens and easy blues the rest of the day!

This is not the Paradise Bowl, but you get the idea of the whiteout conditions.

The men were much more adventurous in the afternoon and challenaged International and Paradise again. I''m pretty sure they all fell as well and Dad even got checked out by the Ski Patrol. Don't worry, he's fine, just really sore in the neck.

And look at that! Just in time, the bulldozer came and cleared our driveway as we pulled in.

 After skiing and poleing in the powder and snow I think we all went to bed at 8:30 that night!

The next day, was our last day of skiing and it was near perfect conditions with a total of 15" of new snow! Everything had been groomed so it was Colorado's Best Corduroy! It would have been even better had they received just an inch of powder on top of it. Anyway, the high was like 13 and it was a bit windy so this day we all doubled up on the hand and foot warmers and braved the mountain!

Unfortunetly, 3 lifts were closed because there wasn't enough business to keep them open. Ergh. Eric and Stephen skiied the blacks again and the girls just kept skiing their favorite slopes over and over! Stephen and I cut the day short by about 30 minutes and did a bit of shopping and had some hot cocoa.

We were literally the 5th car in the parking lot!

Back at the house it was time for some hottubbing, packing up, leftovers, mario kart racing and cards!

Wednesday, we all left the house by 7, had breakfast at the Village Inn at 10, I slept the whole day in the car, we had dinner at Cracker Barrel and were in bed at our house by 12:30am!

My favorite row of trees.

Crested Butte Mountain

We don't know when we'll all be back to the ski resort as a big family and it may not happen again for years. Perhaps the next vacation will be on the beach!

Crested Butte Vacation Day 3 and 4

Saturday was our first full day of skiing!  Brian was back and forth deciding if he wanted to ski or snowboard and at the last minute he decided he wanted to try snowboarding.  We all got bundled up and headed to the lifts around 9 and Brian hung out until his all day snowboard lesson started at 10.

As with every year, I started out on the green slopes to get reacclimated to the mountain and skiing in general.  After a couple of runs, I was off to the blues.

Here is a picture that really shows the lack of snow and just how much man made snow was made.  It was so weird to see this!  But surprisingly, the snow conditions were really good!  Mad props to the snow making crew for making great snow conditions!

We came off the slopes at four and went straight for the hot tub when we got back to the house!

Most evenings were spent playing, Mario Kart, card games and trying to stay awake until atleast 9:30pm!

 

On Sunday, we went to church in town and then made it to slopes by around 10:15am.  Today, Brian was able to tag along with us skiiers, or I guess you could say we tagged along with him.  Either way, we were all interested to see how he was doing with this snowboard skills.

And hey, props to him for trying something different!  He looked pretty good out there and even did some easy blue runs with us.  At the end of the day though, he said he was pretty sore all over.

Forcast for Monday....SNOW

Crested Butte Vacation Day 1 and 2

This year we were once again blessed to be able to go on our family vacation to ski in Crested Butte, CO. We left early Thursday morning (Jan 12th) for the 8 hour drive to somewhere south of Pueblo, CO, to stay the night at a friend of my parents.  They built a beautiful house up in the mountains to retire in.  Must be nice, although I don't think I could handle being so secluded day in and day out.

Our first, and thankfully only hiccup, of the trip came when we tried to get up this small hill en route to their house.  Our car was so loaded down in the back that it couldn't quite make it on the icy path.  We tried three times and finally just had to call Paul to come and get us.  After we unloaded our car a bit, we were able to make it up with flying colors!

That evening we had beef stroganoff with real heavy cream for dinner.  It was pretty good, but I prefer it made with sour cream. 


The next morning we loaded up and headed back out on the road.  By 10am we had made it to Canon City and stopped in to by some wine at the Holy Cross Abbey.  We bought the Syrah and the Reisling.   By 12:30 we had met up with Eric and his entourage at the Gunnison airport to pick up Brian. We all said our quick hellos then had lunch in downtown.  Afterwards we made the 30 minute trek to Mount Crested Butte and our house for the next 4 days.

On our way in, we got our first real look at just how little snow Crested Butte has received so far.  It was really weird.  Lots and lots of brown grass.  And when you looked at the mountain it was especially wierd.  Grass, then snow where the run is, then grass again, and then snow where another run is!  I though to myself that skiing on that was going to be interesting.

So, after we unloaded the car, we loaded back up and headed to the ski resort to rent our ski boots and skis.

 A closer look at the mountain and the snow and it didn't look too bad....Tomorrow is the first day of skiing!!!

We have Curtains!!!

We made an impulse buy but a great buy the other weekend.  We went to Lowe's to get a light bulb for our living room.   That is all we needed, but as with most trips to Lowe's, Stephen suggested we just walk around a bit and see if there was anything else we 'might' need. 

So we walked through the dishwashers and ovens dreaming of the possibilites of upgrading in the future.

Then we walked through the garden area to see what cool stuff we could possibly need.

We looked at getting some more spray paint, but can you believe Lowes' didn't have any flat white spray paint! 

We looked at the shelving units and organization stuff for closets and kitchens and decided we definitely wanted to upgrade our pull out drawers to better quality metal ones. 

Then we finally made our way to the front of the store by way of the clock and curtain aisle.  We almost bought a huge decorative clock to put on our big wall into our kitchen, but it was scratched and we were not going to pay $50 for a scratched clock.

We then browsed the curtains and I said "oh this one is really pretty" and Stephen said " hey, yeah, that would look great in our office" and  I was like "oh my gosh, you're so right!"  So we bought them.

It has made a huge difference in the overall look of the office and the room looks so much more "complete" now.  I can't believe we've gone almost 3.5 years with no curtains in our whole house except for the living room.  Now, I'm totally inspired to find curtains for every room!

Christmas two-zero-one-one

Okay. I know. It's nearly three weeks past Christmas.  Too bad.  I'm still going to post about it.  I just had to add pictures to it and I couldn't do that until I had a new camera!

We had a really good Christmas this year! We made WAY too many sugar cookies and ate WAY too many of them!

We gave Janet "Just Dance" for the Wii and I wish we could have played it more while we were there!  We may just have to get it for ourselves now...

 Stephen and I received this name frame which I am super excited about.  I've wanted one of these for about 3 years!  Thanks to my parents for finding it at the State Fair....and get this, all the pictures were taken in Oklahoma!  That's even better!  It will hang above my fireplace just as soon as I get a nail in the brick.  Not an easy task.

Stephen's best gifts were probably the complete set of Calvin and Hobbes comics.  I can't even tell you how many birthdays and Christmases he's asked for this.  He also got an apple tv which he is stoked about, oh...and slippers! Brian got him this really cool wooden wall hanging with a picture of the OSU stadium at night and filled with orange...it's pretty rad.

I got a wireless mouse and keyboard from Stephen.  Our old mouse was really dirty and wouldn't scroll down anymore no matter how many times or how well we cleaned it.  I'm quite enjoying free range of scrolling right now. I also got really bright orange nail polish and really dark purple nail polish from Brian.

As for our combined gifts, we got a wood rack and a small leaf blower (which I was probably too excited about).

I also can't wait to try out making my own mozzarella cheese!