Parents Visit

It's been cloudy and cool aroud Colorado because of a couple of storm systems that swept through the eastern plains. Kate and I haven't been complaining though! These 70 degree days and 50 degree nights have been a real treat after the sweltering 100+ days we had a couple weeks back.

Side note - just got the results for my first exam for my Data Structures & Algorithms class that I took this morning. Aced it! W00t! :-)

Anyway, I mentioned that I would talk about my folks visiting last week. Well, they were passing through anyway following their nice three week vacation to the northeast (Vancouver, Seattle, etc). You can check out their website for more details and pictures. They decided to stop by and see us - and in graditude, I put them to work. ;-)

As posted in a previous blog entry, one of our stairs gave way, forcing us to shore it up with metal braces. Well, my folks offered to help us do some repair work - maybe even replace the whole thing. My Dad's quite the carpenter - I think he was even looking forward to such a project. When they arrived, though, we all agreed that the work involved would take more time than they had to spare. So instead, my Dad figured out a way to secure the steps for a little while.



Dad drove in four to six long screws at an angle into the bottom of each stair and into the wood of the frame. When he was done, I walked up and down each of the steps, trying to get them to move - they don't.



This should keep me and Kate safe and secure for some months. My parents and I talked about it and since they were planning on visiting for Thanksgiving anyway, they might turn that into a long week trip and re-do the stairwell at that time. My Dad described his idea for rebuilding the stairs and Kate and I amended it slightly to suit our preferences. So, now the plan is to hold tight and re-do the whole staircase on Novemeber.

While they were here, I talked my Dad into helping me replace the broken door on one of the kitchen cabinets.





I mean, you know, while he was here... ;-)

In the meantime, I took my parents to see some places around Fort Collins. The night they arrived, we (including Kate) went out to Johnny Carino's for dinner. Yum! I couldn't finish my Johnny's Combo so I was able to have leftover lasagna that weekend. :-)

The next day, we went to El Burrito for lunch, which was great because that's my hands-down favorite Mexican restaurant in Fort Collins.



I gave them a brief tour of CSU campus (through the Engineering Building, across the quad and into the Lory Student Center).






After that, we did a little shopping at Wal-Mart then had dinner at Hunan's, Kate and my favorite Chinese spot in Fort Collins. We even remembered to bring back some beef & broccoli for Kate (who had to work all day). Kate and I had enough leftovers to eat twice more over the weekend. :-)



Since they were so close to home after being away for so long, my folks decided they were antsy to get back to Colorado Springs and thus headed out the next morning. It was probably just as well, since Kate and I were working the entire weekend - we wouldn't have been able to see much of each other anyway.

BUT Kate and I decided to visit them in the Springs in a couple of weeks. It'll probably be a whirlwind visit, as usual, but it should still be cool. :-)

So that's all the news about my parents' visit! It sure was great having them here!



Thanks for reading! Have yourself a fabulous day!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to my Dad and all dads out there!



Here's a couple things I found online dedicated to Dads:

My Father

When I was:

Four years old: My daddy can do anything.
Five years old: My daddy knows a whole lot.
Six years old: My dad is smarter than your dad.
Eight years old: My dad doesn't know exactly everything.
Ten years old: In the olden days, when my dad grew up, things were sure different.
Twelve years old: Oh, well, naturally, Dad doesn't know anything about that. He is too old to remember his childhood.
Fourteen years old: Don't pay any attention to my dad. He is so old-fashioned.
Twenty-one years old: Him? My Lord, he's hopelessly out of date.
Twenty-five years old: Dad knows about it, but then he should, because he has been around so long.
Thirty years old: Maybe we should ask Dad what he thinks. After all, he's had a lot of experience.
Thirty-five years old: I'm not doing a single thing until I talk to Dad.
Forty years old: I wonder how Dad would have handled it. He was so wise.
Fifty years old: I'd give anything if Dad were here now so I could talk this over with him. Too bad I didn't appreciate how smart he was. I could have learned a lot from him.

Writer Unknown

And...

Dad's Favorite Sayings!


* Go ask your mother!
* Just wait until I get you home!
* I love you, son!
* I love you, princess!
* When I was your age....
* My father used to tell me...
* I used to walk to school in the snow!
* Be home early.
* That's not a tear, I have something in my eye.


My folks visited Fort Collins this last week so I was able to give my Dad his Father's Day gifts in person.

He first got a snazzy new tie:



Then a jumbo-sized new coffee mug:



What?

It's traditional. :-)

I'll have to post details about my parents' visit another time. I guess I'm not paid to update my blog. ;-)

Thanks for reading! Hope you and yours have a great Father's Day!

Kate's Green Thumb

Well, as evidenced by the fact that I'm posting, I survived my evening walk yesterday. :-) Even after sundown (9pm) it's still plenty warm outside. Not as bad as during the day, mind you, but still warm enough. I'm already looking forward to the autumn months. ;-)

Check this out! Kate is trying her hand at container gardening in our back porch area and she's starting to see results. She was so very excited last night when she went out to water the pots and found little sprouts and buds starting to form. To celebrate the beginnings of her success (and probably jinx her completely), here's some pictures...

First, the sprouts of either carrot or spinach plants:



Next, the first little green tomato...



And lastly, Chiral in a wierd position...



(Okay, so technically, Chiral is a part of gardening, but she looked funny enough to share with everyone!) ;-)

That's all for now. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you're having a great day!

Looks Like It's June

Summer is here in force. It's been getting steadily hotter each day in the last couple weeks. The nights haven't been too bad - drops down to almost fifty or so sometimes. And we've had a bit of cloud cover now and again to help things out.

Did I mention that I hate the heat? :-) I'm just gritting my teeth and getting ready to endure the next couple months.

Cute happy thing from yesterday. About five in the morning between Saturday and Sunday, Kate and I were awakened by a cat yowling outside. At first, we thought maybe one of our girls got out, since the yowl sounded awfully similar to Chiral's. But, no, both our felines were accounted for. We tried to ignore it, but I got twitchy, worried that there might be an injured critter outside. So I went out to check. I find a lovely cream/orange cat nearby crying her little heart out. She was very friendly and came up to me after only a moment's hesitation. She had a collar with tags (her name was "Eyla" or similar) so I knew she belonged to someone. I debated with myself as whether to leave her outside or bring her in and finally decided to bring her in. We kept her locked up in the downstairs bathroom until the morning when I tried calling the number on her tag. The guy on the other line said they didn't own a cat. Well, darn. Kate and I toyed briefly with the idea of adopting her ourselves but knew we couldn't manage another cat right now (with vet bills and so forth). So we decided that we'd take her to the Humane Society after church. When we got back from church though, I heard our neighbor outside calling the cat's name. Eagerly, I ran outside and asked if she was looking for a pretty cream/orange cat. They were and sure enough, the furball belonged to her! Yay! Kate and I felt glad that we didn't need to take the poor thing to the shelter. In fact, our neighbor was so grateful that she left us a thank-you-card on our front doorstep. How nice!

This reminded me that I promised Bill and Tammy (who run the Homeowner's Association for my area) that I'd organize a neighborhood barbeque and pot-luck to help get to know some of our neighbors. Some of these people I've lived next to for years but don't even know their names. My mother organizes these sorts of gatherings for the neighborhood where she and my Dad live so why can't I do the same? The HOA even offered to help with the cash needed for BBQ meat and such, which is totally cool. I'll probably need to get going on that here in the next couple of weeks.

I think I'll leave off there. There's some more stuff I could write about, but work is over and it's time to walk home. That's right. In an effort to both save on gas and get more exercise, I'm trying taking the bus to work in the morning and walking home at night. It's about two and a half to three miles distance but Kate's done it many times before so I figure I can too. In fact, Kate plans on meeting me halfway - that way she gets a nice walk in the bargain as well!

I've never been the most physical type so wish me luck. ;-)

Thanks for reading. Hope you're having a great day.

Memorial Day Recap

Kate and I had a very enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. My sister and her family came up from Colorado Springs to visit us for a couple nights. Here's how the weekend played out:

Friday - Heath, Dianna, and Julie made it up by just before 7pm, having braved the terrors of Friday rush hour traffic in Denver. It was probably just as well since neither Kate nor myself got off work until 6pm. Julie was a bundle of energy after being cooped up in a vehicle for so long so we let her buzz about the house (which terrified Rune to no end - the poor cat barely emerged from under the bed all weekend). None of us were interested in cooking so we ordered take-out from Johnny Carino's and I popped over to pick up the grub. We let Julie stay up a little bit but eventually put her to bed. Then the grown-ups stayed up a little bit later to play Such 'n' Such, a new game that Kate's sister Emily gave us for Christmas.

Saturday - Kate unfortunately had to work most of the day, but one of her kind-hearted co-workers offered to come in and work Kate's afternoon so that Kate could get home early. How nice! In the meantime, the rest of us stopped in at the Hickory House for a quick breakfast before visiting the Discovery Science Center. Kate used to volunteer at this place but I'd never visited the Center, even after living nearby for six years! It wasn't very busy so there was plenty of room for Julie to run around and play with everything. She seemed to particularly like the sand pendulum, the echo headphones, and the shadow room. But she played with everything at least once. Afterwards, we came back home and tried to put Julie down for a nap - but she wasn't having any of it. She kept calling down, wondering if Aunt Kate was home yet. :-) Well, while Dianna, Heath, and I were deep in a stirring game of Upwords, Aunt Kate returned home. We took a quick walk down to Edora Park to let Julie play around a bit. Heath and I watched over the little one while Kate and Dianna lounged in the shade. We didn't stay too long since Julie is a bit sensitive to sunshine. Then while Julie was getting cleaned up, Kate and I prepared a dinner of mostaccioli. We let Julie play a little bit before sending her off to bed early (she zonked out pretty quick!) and the grown-ups again played games 'til all hours in the morning. I think we played some Such 'n' Such again and a little Quiddler. We also broke away briefly to pick up some dessert at the local Coldstone Creamery.

Click here for pictures of Julie's visit to the Discovery Science Center.

Click here for pictures of Julie's visit to Edora Park.

Sunday - Kate and I went to the early Mass at SEAS while Dianna and Heath took a rare moment to sleep in. When we got home, Kate and I made some quick egg sandwiches for breakfast and then we all headed out The Farm at Lee Martinez Park. Admission to this place has been free for a long time, but after June 1st, they had to start charging visitors - so we snuck in at the last possible free moment. :-) Julie seemed to have a lot of fun running about and looking at all the animals. But what she talked about the most was her pony ride! It was a little scary for her at first, but she seems to remember it as being fun so all is well! :-) After the Farm, we decided to take a walk around Old Town Fort Collins to look for some lunch. We stopped in at Children's Mercantile and Julie picked up some new shoes, casting away her old Sesame Street footwear without a second thought, and a set of blocks. I talked everyone into stopping at Hu Hot, a Mongolian grill style spot, for lunch. Boy, I love that place! Highly recommended! After lunch, we made a quick stop at Ace Hardware to look for some household items then it was back home. Somewhere in the day, we worked in a game of Boggle and Wise and Otherwise, but I'm not sure when. Dianna, Heath, and Julie left for home somewhere between five and six. Kate and I spent the rest of the evening vegging out in front of the TV, watching Star Trek: Enterprise on DVD.

Click here for pictures of Julie's visit to The Farm and Old Town (plus some pictures of her helping Aunt Kate bake bread).

Monday - Kate and I slept in a bit (yay!). When we got up, I couldn't get myself motivated to do all that much - a real bout of lazy-day syndrome. Kate prepped the turkey and we got to try out our new roaster oven. She also put together a bit batch of homemade stuffing (I'll have to post the recipe sometime) and made some of her cranberry relish. Around dinnertime, Bill and Tammy came over, bringing some steamed broccoli and homemade cheesecake. Ron also stopped in, bringing curried peas. We all just sort of hung out and gabbed through the evening, which was very nice.

Then the next day, it was back to the grindstone. :-)

All in all, not a bad way to spend my three-day weekend.

Thanks for reading. Hope your having a great day!