Whirlwind Holidays

Whew! Is it 2012 already?!

December has flown by thanks to a madcap roller coaster of holidays. First off, our little girl Tessa turned 2 years old on December 14th...all with rather minimal fanfare. Since she probably wouldn't register the significance of the date, Kate and I decided to keep things low-key. We got her a present (and got a couple more from aunts in the mail) but didn't do anything more than that. She seemed okay with it.

We tried to get baking and Christmas cards out before the holidays but that just didn't happen. Somehow the month just got away from us. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

We ended up heading down to Colorado Springs to spend Christmas weekend with my family. My mother brought the whole lot us into her restaurant - Thai Eats - for a smorgasbord of both Thai and all-American cuisine.
It was also a joint birthday party of Tessa and her cousin Everest (whose birthday is Dec 31st). Tessa of course loved the cookie-http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcake she got from Grandma and even managed to blow out her own two candles!
The birthday kids opened a couple of presents and generally played around the whole night. The grown-ups ate too much. :-)

Christmas Day was more laid-back than I was expecting. Kate and I went to morning services at St Gabriel's then came back to my folks' home to chill for part of the day before jumping into prep for Christmas dinner. Kate did the ham and rolls while I did potatoes and gravy. Mom tackled green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and stuffing. Dianna and her family joined us later in the afternoon, with Dianna bringing over some dessert.

After dinner, we let the kids open up presents. It was kind of different being the grown-up parent watching the kids lay into their Christmas presents. I think it was the first Christmas where I felt like my parents must have felt when Dianna and I were younger. Sure, we had our own gifts but it was much more fun to just lean back and watch the children go at it. I think I took another step toward real adult parenthood!

Incidentally, Tessa really, really enjoyed tearing open Christmas wrapping! Big surprise there, huh?
The day after Christmas, Kate and I headed up to Denver, where we met up with Kate's siblings - Emily, Glynnis, Aileen, and Dan - at Emily and Jason's place. We enjoyed a second round of Christmas dinner and once more stuffed ourselves silly.

That evening, we traded presents around...and Tessa once again did her duty in distributing gifts to appropriate folks.And she once again had fun ripping open her own presents.


I should note that Tessa did pretty well for herself - between belated birthday presents and Christmas. In fact, we had to leave some gifts behind both in Colorado Springs and in Denver because there simply wasn't enough space in the car for all her new toys!
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I started back at work the next day while Kate and Tessa bounced between home and Denver, hanging out with Tessa's aunts and uncles. Kate's sibling came up on Wednesday to help us get started on our repainting projechttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift for the first floor of our house. That's right - the infamous purple wall is going, going gone!http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

To thank them for their hard work, Kate and I took Dan and the sisters to Beaujo's Pizza for dinner.

The next day after I got off work, I joined the family back in Denver for dinner at Larkburger and then our first ever visit to the Denver Zoo's Zoo Lights. The Zoo Lights were amazing! The creativity and artistry was great and even Tessa was noticing the various glowing, glittering animal shapes all around us. There were even a few animals out seeing visitors, including the mountain goats, giraffes, and Tessa's favorite: the Tropical Discovery house. I highly recommend Zoo Lights to anyone in the Denver area around the holidays.
Kate spent a little time on Friday with her siblings, seeing Dan and Aileen off before picking me up from work in Longmont. Friday night was kind of a gasp-for-breath sort of night where we did some clean-up and a little prep for New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve was spent over at my friends Bill and Tammy's house, as if often our tradition. It was a modest turn-out, around seven or eight of us not counting two kiddos. Bill made a turkey stew and Kate and I brought plenty of fruits and veggies. We played a few games...and nursed an exhausted Tessa all the way to midnight. We didn't stick around much longer than the changing of the year, hastening home to put our little girl and ourselves to bed.

Fortunately I had the next two days off from work...which was great because not only did we need a recovery from the whirlwind, but all three of us had developed a bit of sinus, sore throat, and coughing problem. We spent the first day of the year either sleeping or just plodding along. The second day was a little more productive but we were still recovering. By this post, I'm feeling quite a bit better, though Kate is still coughing and Tessa is still a bit stuffed up. Hopefully we'll be recovering soon enough.

So...wow! What a lot of holiday crammed into a couple of weeks, especially there at the end. Don't get me wrong - we had a great time...but now we need the proverbial vacation from our vacation! :-)


Happy Holidays! Welcome to 2012! With any luck, we won't all be so busy that we miss this year too!

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day!

Baby Number Two

Much to my horror, I realized that I haven't bothered to post an announcement that Kate and I are expecting a second child! I did throw a post and some ultrasound pictures up on Facebook, which means that anyone who follows this blog (both of you) probably already knows this bit of news. But just for completeness sake I'm going to post a quick note here as well!

Yes, our family is going to be expanding by one very soon. Kate is due in late February. We're going to wait until the baby arrives to find out its gender and we (finally) have some names picked out. The boy names were the hardest for some reason. Fair warning, we're keeping our name ideas to ourselves as well.

Here's an ultrasound picture of our soon-to-arrive bundle of joy, taken in early October:



We're both very excited by this new member of the family. Tessa is aware that there is a baby in Mommy's belly, but that's about it so far. She's been practicing swaddling and rocking a baby by using her dolls, but she still tends to carry her dolls by the hair or shake a doll out of its swaddling...so I'm thinking she won't be helping with little sibling real soon. :-) She does plant kisses and hugs on Mommy's belly, all intended for the baby.

Kate is far enough along that we can all feel the baby move pretty easily. The other night Kate was a little worried because she couldn't remember feeling the baby move most of the day. On a lark (since I was playing music for Tessa already), I turned on some rock music (it might have been Queen) on my iPod and placed it against Kate's belly. Almost immediately, baby started dancing around! :-D

Kate had the same nausea and lack of appetite during the first trimester that she did with Tessa. By a couple weeks into the second, though, she was largely over it. She still isn't always real motivated to eat things, especially (paradoxically enough) when she's really hungry. But as long as she nibbles here and there, she's been able to stay interested in eating most things.

(She did go through about a two week period between first and second trimesters where all she wanted was pizza. This is not as much fun as one would think.) ;-)

Anyway, as I said, we're really looking forward to expanding our family. Tessa is a joy to have -- at least 90% of the time. Kate is a wonderful mother. And I find that being a father feels both natural and amazing at the same time.

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

Family Outing

Well, this three-day weekend is off to a good start.

Kate and I decided that we would take this Friday as a family day and decided that we'd head down to Denver to do...something. It was a toss-up between the Denver Zoo and the Children's Museum. We decided that this would be a seriously low-key outing, with no timetables or need to be somewhere at a particular point. We would just head south and see what happened.

We didn't even bother to truly decide where we were going until we hit the north edge of Denver. At that point I decided that I wanted to take Tessa back to the Zoo. We have a membership with the Zoo so it wouldn't cost us anything to get in. Since we'd been to the Zoo a few times this year, we wouldn't feel like we HAD to see everything and read everything and so on within the time of our visit. We would just pop around and see what we really like to see and call it done.

So if you've never visited a zoo when the weather is cool and cloudy, this is me advising you to give it a try sometime soon. The cooler weather meant that many more of the animals were out and active. (As opposed to the summer time when it often too hot for most critters.) We made a beeline through the Great Cats as saw the likes of servals, a leopard having a meaty bone for lunch (Tessa: "Big cat eat rock"), a several tigers. We took Tessa through the Tropical Discovery building - one of her favorites - where she was fascinated by fish, turtles, frogs, and komodo dragons (which she can now say). She was frightened by an iguana, and I watched another lizard fall out of its tree then lunge at the glass to try and get me.

We took a look at some of the arctic/sea creatures, and it was the first time I'd ever seen the arctic foxes up and moving. The sea lions were also active and we watched them from the underwater viewing area, though they made Tessa a little nervous. We popped over to see the wolves and watched a single white wolf pace the length of its habitat. We then doubled back because Tessa wanted to see bears. We paused at the giraffes and the lions...and the male lion started roaring, and Tessa decided she was done here.

We took lunch at the Samburu Grille, with Kate having a grilled cheese sandwich, Tessa having a pizza slice, and me having a chicken quesadilla and nachos. We then cruised through the elephants, a few hoofed animals, the monkeys and finally the bears. Oh, we'd also seen the mongoose pack and a pair of enormous African (Asian?) porcupines. And by this point it was getting on to 3pm and we were about done with the Zoo.

My other reason for picking the Zoo was that I was hoping we could duck over to the Museum for part of the afternoon as well. We waffled a little bit about paying full price admission for only two hours of time, but then we just went ahead and did it. I really wanted to take Tessa through the Museum because she's getting to an age to actually notice and be interested in certain exhibits.

We visited the Discovery Center first, where Tessa got to play with magnets, blocks, puzzles, a see-through piano, an air tunnel with mesh scarves, giant foam blocks, a dinosaur pit, and several types of tambourines. I have to admit that some of my favorite moments of parenthood involve just watching my daughter discover, explore, and play. There is really nothing quite like it.

When the Discovery Center closed, we took Tessa through the Wildlife dioramas, which she found more engaging than we initially thought she would. Lastly we took a quick run through the Space Center and let Tessa try out a few things. I personally found the infrared camera to be the coolest thing - it showed that Tessa is one hot-blooded little girl, as opposed to her somewhat refrigerated mother. :-)

We left as the Museum closed and headed off to our planned dinner at Sweet Tomatoes in Westminster. If you get a chance to try this place, it's just fantastic. It's a major league salad bar with a wide soup bar, plus some pasta, bread, baked potato, and dessert options. Very cool. Tessa gobbled down peas, beans, noodles, mac-and-cheese, cheese foccachia, green peppers, grapes, and raisins. I personally managed to have two salads and minimal pasta - for a change.

After dinner we headed back north to Fort Collins, where we put effort into keeping Tessa awake on the drive. We succeeded and Tessa was a relative snap to put to bed. The kid was actually really, really good all day. She had only one semi-meltdown and it was obvious that it was only because she was so tired at that point in the day. We were able to calm her down in just a couple minutes.

We also did the whole day without a stroller. Tessa either walked on her own or was carried by me or Kate. Less to lug around and maneuver, making us more flexible in what we did.

So I'm chalking this up to a really great day. We get so few chances to go out and do something non-stressful as a family. It was wonderful to give ourselves this opportunity.

Naturally, tomorrow we're going to try to get a few things done around the house, including grocery shopping and a Goodwill run. Plus some reorganization if we get the chance. If we can get our meager to-do list done tomorrow, it might mean another day of rest come Sunday...which would be seven flavors of awesome.

As always, thanks very much for reading...and I hope you and yours are having a great day!

Halloween Weekend

Technically, this wasn't Tessa's FIRST Halloween. However, this was the first Halloween in which we actually did something with her. We weren't originally going to, figuring that she was too young to really know what's going on, but then her godparents bought her this awesome ladybug costume...and we just HAD to go out and show off our cute kid!



The condo division that we live in doesn't have much by the way of young kids in it. (College kids, sure, but no young-un's.) So we were pretty sure that taking her around the neighborhood wouldn't really be worth the effort. Instead, Kate tracked down details for the annual Treatsylvania celebration that takes place at The Farm in Lee Martinez Park. We'd heard about Treatsylvania many times before but, of course, never went there ourselves since we didn't have a kid.

Well, let me tell you...this Treatsylvania event is awesome! You enter the Park in groups and follow a trail lined with decorated "Doors" representing the commercial sponsors of the event:







The kids knock on the Doors and volunteers open up and offer up treats.





Mostly the treats were small bits of candy, but many vendors also dropped in coupons, pencils, and other little tidbits.

Tessa was hesitant at first, but she likes to knock on doors...so she would dash up, rap on the door, and run away back to Kate! But when she started to realize that no one scary was coming out...and that the people would put treats in her (provided) bag...she started to get into it. By the end of the line, she would knock once then try to open the door herself to get inside!! :-D

Altogether, it was a very well-organized and comfortable event. We're definitely visiting again next year!

This took place on Sunday. On Halloween Monday, Kate took Tessa to the Tiny Tot Halloween sponsored by the Downtown Business Association of Old Town Fort Collins. I'd heard about the event in the newspaper and suggested that Kate might try it out while I was stuck at work.

Basically, all the businesses in Old Town (and according to Kate, they do mean ALL of them) have treats for costumed little ones who come in for a visit. Costumed employees are eager and welcoming to all young candy-seekers and their parents.

Apparently the event was PACKED! Kate took some pictures to show how amazingly crowded it was:





...so this is obviously another popular event. Kate says that despite the crowds, it was still well-organized and Tessa had a lot of fun running around getting more loot for her (again, provided) bag.

Both events are obviously very commercial and geared toward advertising a variety of local and regional merchants...but that's okay! Both are still a lot of fun for the kids and a safe way to spend Halloween.

That night, after I got home from work, Kate and I bundled Tessa back into her costume and popped down to visit Tessa godparents - Debbie and Rick - to show off the outfit they had bought for her. While we meant to just do a quick stop, we ended up camping out with Debbie on their front porch and helping hand out candy. Deb insisted on taking me and Tessa around the cul-de-sac to meet her neighbors so she could show off her adorable god-daughter...so Tessa got in a half dozen "real" treat-or-treating stops that night! She also enjoyed helping hand out candy.

Crowning moment was when a gaggle (probably eight or nine) of teenage girls swarmed up the walk for their treats and spotted Tessa the Ladybug. They literally ALL broke into a loud and simultaneous "AWWWWW!" :-)

The drawback of the night is that Kate and I decided to let Tessa have a few pieces of her loot, including a couple Kit-Kat, Smarties, Three Musketeers, and chocolate-covered raisins. I know this will come as a shock, but she's now hooked on sweets. ;-)

But it was a seriously good weekend.

Anyway, thanks for reading...and I hope you're having a great day!

Busy Relaxing Weekend

I hate to tell my gaming buddies this, but not playing on the weekends is really helping me get stuff done around the house as well as spend quality time with my wife and kid.

Another pleasantly productive weekend. Saturday was pretty low-key where Kate, Tessa, and I spent the morning just hanging around the house. Kate got some cleaning down while Tessa and I played World of Warcraft. (Tessa is very concerned that my Tauren Warrior doesn't have any shoes, but she also thinks my Blood Elf Mage has big ears and jumps well.) While Tessa napped in the afternoon, Kate and I prepped a few meals for our friends Bill and Tammy, who recently welcomed a daughter into their family. We remembered when Kate's Dad visited with us and cooked three or four meals for us after we got home with Tessa...and it was a blessing not to have to do any cooking or cleaning. We tried for the same, sending a lasagna, a chicken tetrazini, a chicken and black bean casserole, and a dozen or so homemade dinner rolls to the new parents. Kate also put together a apple-cranberry crisp as a dessert for dinner at the Keyes' home.

Dinner was a "mole" chili that our friend Ron put together. Let me tell you, if you ever have the opportunity to have my amigo Ron cook a soup or stew for you, take the chance! It was a great chili, and everyone seemed to enjoy Kate's dessert as well. We gave the sizable leftovers (Kate made a double batch) over to Bill and Tammy in case their sweet tooth needs tending to.

Here's some pictures of their baby girl, named Felicia Irene Keyes:





Great hair, huh? :-)

That evening, I got to feel like a real father because Tessa wanted me to read her bedtime stories while Kate hopped into the shower. When Tessa started to whimper that she didn't want me to leave her, I pulled her into my lap and held her close, rocking and bouncing her gently. She nuzzled on in and within ten or so minutes, she had dozed off. That's right - my daughter fell asleep in my arms. I may have fallen in love with her all over again; I'm not sure. :-)

After Tessa was down, Kate and I played a couple rounds of our new expansion of the Dominion game. I have to say - this is a fun game. Many thanks to our friend Dave and Gina for introducing it to us!

Sunday morning was a lazy affair. Kate's lingering cough had kept her up part of the night so she wasn't in a hurry to get up. Fortunately, we had a couple of church services to choose from so we stayed in bed an hour or two longer. Tessa started to have a fit, but again Daddy was able to hold her close and calm her down. Yay me!

We went to church then ran some errands around town real quick. Then we brought Tessa home and with some effort put her down for a nap. While she was resting, Kate and I continued our weekly project - namely, picking a section of the house and totally weeding/organizing it. We've been working on our office/guest room and I've been mercilessly throwing tons of stuff out in an effort to trim down our stock of stuff and furniture. And I have to say, it's felt really, really good to do so. It continues to amaze me how much stuff I keep around that I really don't need or even want. And it's also amazing how GOOD I feel once I've gotten rid of it.

So Kate and I plowed through the office again, this time with the goal of consolidating our books and other materials from four bookshelves down to the three. We were more than successful, and we now have a large bookshelf ready to be hauled away for Arc or Goodwill. We're hoping to do the same with our computer desk next since it's really more desk than we need...but that'll be another weekend.

I also did a little weeding of my t-shirts and the books we keep in the hallway and bedroom. More decluttering progress!

By the end of it, neither Kate nor I felt like cooking the dinner we had planned. So instead, I fished out some money from my cash jar (my "allowance" - made up of the dollars we save by my taking the bus to and from Longmont instead of driving) and made a quick hop over to King Soopers to buy a discounted large pizza and some broccoli-cheese soup for our dinner. Boy, after a productive afternoon and evening, some high-fat, greasy chow sure tasted great! ;-) I also grabbed a cheesecake slice for dessert but it was getting late and I have work in the morning. So we're saving the dessert for tomorrow.

All in all, I gotta say that I'm enjoying these weekends. The work around the house not only feels good to get done, but it's also good time that I spend with my wife and Tessa. Kate truly appreciates the time together as well as the completed chores so it's a win in both our eyes.

Here's hoping we can keep up the pace. :-)

As always, thanks a lot for reading and I hope you're having a really great day.

Sick Week

And the week had started out so well too.

Last weekend was Kate and my sixth anniversary -- that's right, six years of Kate putting up with her slipshod of a husband. :-) We had decided that we would have a relaxing weekend. Kate had to work on Saturday so Tessa and I had a Daddy-Daughter Day in which we got quite a bit of house-cleaning done plus some grocery shopping. All that in time to prep chicken enchiladas for dinner and walk through the neighborhood to meet Kate on her walk back from the Main Library.

Sunday (our actual anniversary date) was just as good. Tessa went down for her nap without much trouble and Kate and I played some Lego Harry Potter on the Wii for a couple hours. Then when Tessa woke up, we took a family outing to Edora Park and showed Tessa how to kick a ball and toss a frisbee. Naturally she needs some practice, but she's very enthusiastic. Then Tessa's babysitter for the night, Emily (one of the girls who work with Kate at the Council Tree Library), took our kid for the night while Kate and I got gussied up and went to dinner at the Melting Pot, a fancy fondue place we've been wanting to try. Dinner was exceptional and our server Ian was fantastic. We're definitely going to find some excuse to frequent the Melting Pot again.

So naturally...with that kind of weekend, we were raring to start the week off. So guess what happens? If you said, "Both you and Kate caught a cold," you'd be right. :-(

It hit Kate pretty hard on Monday and tagged me hardest that evening. I still plowed through work Monday and Tuesday (primarily because I had desk time) but I was so congested and exhausted that I just couldn't focus on getting any real work done. I finally called out on Wednesday and took a serious rest day with Kate. Bless her, Tessa was pretty well-behaved and we both got good rest.

Now it's the end of Thursday and we're both on the mend - mostly just that annoying cough that seems to mark the end of a stuffed and congested head. While I'm glad to be recovering, I can't help but look back at the week and grumble about the wasted time. I'm already a trifle behind in my projects at work and the load isn't looking to lighten any time soon.

So far Tessa hasn't shown any sign of catching our bug. (Knock on wood!) She had her first cold some months back and the poor thing was miserable. She obviously felt awful but couldn't understand why. She didn't understand that if she'd rest and have some food and liquids, she'd start to feel better. Nope, all she knew was that she hurt and Mommy and Daddy weren't doing anything about it.

Not that her parents are much better when they're sick. We're a pretty whiny pair when under the weather.

Oh, well, here's hoping that we're both fully recovered by this weekend and maybe we can hit the ground running for next week!

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you're having a great day.

Happy Anniversary to my Folks

Wishing my parents all the best on their anniversary!

They deserve the best!




Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad!

Busy as a Bee

As expected, another month or two has passed since my last blog update. I appropriately hang my head in shame.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic at work. A week from last Sunday I almost didn't make it down to a planned trip to the Denver Museum because I had to stop in to the library to help diagnose a network problem. The city IT team had recently switched the all departments over to a new Internet service provider, which ended up playing havoc with any communications from the outside world to us. I ended up spending most of the afternoon at work (with Kate, Tessa, and my buddy Bill just milling about waiting for me) before the City IT guy I was working with said he was giving up for the day. Fortunately, we were able to blaze down the interstate and rendezvous with the rest of the gang at the Museum in time to catch the last showing of the Pirates exhibit (which was stellar cool!) as well as make it to Cinzetti's for a much needed dinner.

I'm still dealing with some of the communication fallout from the ISP switchover. For example, remote access to our subscribed databases don't seem to be working. Also a program used by our interlibrary loan staff is having trouble. I have theories on what's going wrong but I lack the skills or security access to make the changes. It results in a bit of sit around and wait for help on my part.

I did have a few successes. I was able to diagnose a network drop issue that was keeping one of our self-check machines down. A call to a specific network specialist later and it was up and running. I also installed a new color printer for use in the public computer labs. This wasn't as tricky as I was expecting it to be...once the city IT gents installed a couple of new network drops in my computer lab. Now all library patrons can print in color, which has already proven to be very, very popular. This did involve some rearranging of the lab, moving two printers, shifting the position of the copier, and installing a second self-service reservation station.

To top it all off, the library is in a hiring frenzy. I was recently on the interview team for a new cataloging technician that will also work under me in the computer lab a few hours a week. I did some training with the intern working the Childrens & Teen department, who was interested in helping us out in the computer lab. I'm also hiring a new hourly lab monitor position to replace one of my gals whose second job just bumped her up to full-time. Thankfully, she's been good enough to stick around for nights and weekends until I get this new person hired on. I currently have somewhere around ninety applications to filter through over the weekend. All this also means I'm having to revamp the lab rotation schedule to accommodate new availabilities.

I've also been getting pressure to update my section of the library web page, namely the computer lab section. It sounds like I may get tapped to help with the Circulation side as well. And the head of Adult Services/Reference wants my expertise in redesigning our Library 24/7 page. Didn't anyone tell these folks that it's my sister who's the web design expert? :-)

Tack this on to the usual PC maintenance and minor disasters that crop up every other day as well as juggling my scheduled time in the computer lab...and you have before you a severely run ragged library tech.

Still, I can't complain too much. I like being kept busy. I like being challenged. I like that my co-workers consider me an local expert and trust my judgment and ability. I like how I always have something new to work on or try out. It really is a pretty good job that I have.

But that doesn't mean I'm not looking for a nice vacation. :-)

Kate's Haircut

Kate decided that it was high time she chopped her hair short again. She often does this every few years just to clean it up a bit. It also gives her a chance to donate her excess follicles to Locks of Love. So for your viewing pleasure, here are the before and after pictures...

BEFORE:





And AFTER:





Kate wasn't sure how much she actually got lopped off, but since Locks of Love requires a minimum of 10 inches, it's probably quite a bit. The Great Clips that Kate visited even did the haircut for free since the hair was being donated. Pretty cool.

I think it's a cute haircut myself, though I admit to loving my wife regardless of her style. I do think that with this haircut that Kate looks a lot more like her mother and her sister Aileen. The resemblance isn't as noticeable when she wear her hair long. Funny which features tend to draw the eye, isn't it?

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

Bad Habits: 1; New Years Resolutions: 0

One of my resolutions for 2011 was to be better about posting on this blog. Not that I have a massive following or anything, but I just feel guilty if I leave for long periods of time (like I have). And naturally, since I'm inherently lazy and forgetful, I've still managed to neglect this blog. I'm still pretty up on my Twitter feeds (as you can see from up above), but most folks that would be remotely interested in the vaguest sense in what's going on in my life aren't on Twitter.

I think one of the problems is that I still have it in my head that I need to post long stretches of prose and/or pictures in my blog....y'know, make it worth the reader's time to visit. That's probably ridiculous - I've seen plenty of popular blogs that don't contain novellas or photo albums with each post. I obviously need to get used to the idea of toning myself down.

Secondly, I admit that I find Twitter and Facebook easier for my quick, day-to-day updates and announcements, especially the latter. A lot of my friends and family are connected to me on Facebook so a quick update or upload of pictures/videos there catches almost everyone I need.

Lastly, I am really busy these days. Between work at the Longmont Library, the long commute (via car or public bus), and a occasionally demanding one-year old at home, I don't get a lot of time to devote to my online affectations. I suppose it's probably good that I don't consider blogging more important than work and family, but it does cut into the time.

Anyway, I guess that's my weedy first post for the 2011 year. Let's see what I can do to keep up on the regular updates here. No promises on fine bits of prose or award-winning photographer at each post. Maybe I'll just stick to a comment or three about what's going on in my life at the time.

At least for those times when I can't sum up my existence in 140 characters. :-)

As always, thanks for reading. Hope you're having a great day.

Longmont Lights

Last Friday, Kate and I volunteered to man a fire pit at Longmont Lights - an annual celebration of the holidays hosted by the city of Longmont and the various businesses downtown. I originally offered up my help because it looked good to be helping out in the workplace...but it actually turned out to be quite a bit of fun! :-)

I took the bus down to Longmont and worked a 3/4 day. Kate and Tessa drove down and met me at the library. After doing the usual rounds so my co-workers could appreciate the adorableness that is my daughter, we walked around downtown Longmont for a bit, stopping at Abbondanza Pizzeria for dinner. This was awesome because not only was the food (meat calzone and bbq sub sandwich with some garlic bread) but the place also has board games at each table for visitors! Kate and I played an incomplete game of Stratego over dinner. (Naturally, Kate was winning.)



We dashed through a light drizzle to make a quick stop at Butcher Frank's for a roasting chicken then made a circuit around Roosevelt Park to see the sights before our shift started. The ice rink was in operation for visitors and there was a cool 'candyville' themed collection of Christmas lights. We watched the ice sculptor work his canvas with a chainsaw for a little while. We stopped by one of the other fire pits and joined some of my co-workers in a round of Jingle Bells. Then it was off to our station.




The work mostly involved keeping the fire going with wood, handing out flyers with events, and answering directional questions. There was a free hot cocoa station right next to the fire pit that we (of course) took advantage of. Everyone was in a really good mood and enjoying themselves.




Tessa had dozed off after dinner and stayed napping in her stroller for a good half hour or so into our shift. When she woke up, she watched the surroundings for a short while before deciding that it was all too much and started to cry. Willis - one of my co-workers at another fire pit - ducked over to help cover our area while Kate took Tessa to the Memorial Building for a diaper change and a snack. They also visited with the reindeer in front of the building, which apparently made Tessa much happier.



The weather wasn't too bad all in all. It was rather pleasant early on, though the wind picked up a bit as the evening got later. Still, we were bundled up and by the fire so we did pretty well.

The crowning event of the evening were the pair of skydivers that made a nighttime drop at 8pm. The drop was in some doubt due to the rising wind, but apparently it eased enough for the skydivers to chance it. We watched the plane take several passes overhead, then the skydivers set off a streams of sparklers from their boots to mark where they were above us. They swooped and glided in...at one point looking like they were going to clip the flagpole nearby...but sailed in for two perfect landings in the center of the park. Fabulous! I wish I'd thought to have my camera out!

The festivities were pretty much done at that point. We doused the fire pit and gathered up the supplies to take back to the Senior Center. My buddy Ron had met us at the park and we headed out to his new apartment in Longmont for some hot chocolate and chatting.

We ended up getting home kind of late but we did have a good time. I think I'll see about getting involved again next year!

Here are some parting pictures of the Longmont Lights event in Roosevelt Park:








Thanks for reading! I hope you're having a happy Holiday season!

A Short Tessa Anecdote

Kate and I had left Tessa with a babysitter (actually our library friend Audrey) a week back. Audrey told us that she had started to wonder where Jasper was since that cat rarely misses a chance to make his presence known every few minutes or so. She was wondering this aloud, asking Tessa, "I wonder where Jasper is."

Tessa apparently crawled over to the coat closet door in the foyer and pointed at it, saying "Caa! Caa!"

Audrey opened up the closet door and sure enough there was Jasper! Our little girl is learning how to communicate!

By the way, wasn't it October just a couple days ago? :-/

Thanks for reading. I'll try to have more interesting stuff to post next time. Hope you're having a great day!

Road Trip Summary

Well now, that was rude of me. Not a peep for months on this blog. Who knows how many viewers I've lost at this point? There's been plenty of blog-worthy events in the past few months but I just hadn't gotten around to talking about them. Anyone want to take any bets as to whether or not I manage to change my ways? :-)

Kate and I just got back from a road trip through Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. Ostensibly, we were traveling to eastern Iowa for a wedding reception for one of Kate's college friends. But since we had many friends and family along the route, we decided to see how many would be interested and available to see us. Much to our surprise, a lot of them were!

Usually, I'd post a number of pictures with this post, but since we took over 500 of them, I decided just to suggest that readers pop over to our Shutterfly page where I'm uploading all the pictures from the trip. Fair warning - the pictures are being loaded pretty raw, without editing or review. I'll eventually clean up the album, but for a short while at least, the pictures may be a little off.

On to the summary then!

Day One: We had a little trouble getting ourselves out on time on the day we left. Since we weren't trying to catch a flight or train, we fell into our own pace and ended up leaving close to three hours later than we intended. We traveled down CO-14 until it joined up with I-76 around Sterling, which then connected with I-80 in Nebraska. We then just shot straight down I-80 (with a couple stops for gas or stretch breaks) until we reached Council Bluffs. Terry and Karl - friends of Kate's family - had opened their home to us for the night, even though between our late start and our forgetting about the time change, we arrived close to 10:30pm local time. Terry and Karl were still very welcoming, having saved some roast beef and sweet potatoes for us to have as dinner. Tessa had great fun exploring the house and finding breakable decorations.

Day Two: Terry made us some breakfast and we sat around chatting for most of the morning since we didn't get a chance to do so the previous night. In the late morning, we headed back into Omaha, which was just across the Missouri River. We paid a visit to the Henry Doorly Zoo, which both of us recall fondly from our childhoods. Even though we only spent a couple of hours there, it was still amazing, especially the Aquarium, Desert Dome, and Kingdoms of the Night. After the zoo, we made haste down I-80 in Des Moines and arced south to Norwalk. We met up with my uncle Dean and my aunt Rachel, who were letting us crash at their place for the night. In addition, my aunt Karen had organized a grand dinner gathering with all my relatives that still lived in the area. The gathering included: Dean and Rachel, Karen and my uncle Pat, my aunt Donna, my uncle Stan, my grandfather, my cousin Kristi with her husband Nick and their three kids, my cousin Kari with her husband Mike and their daughter Hailey, my cousin Sean, my cousin Dan (though he was mostly downstairs minding the dog), and my cousin Tanya. I hadn't seen my aunts Karen and Rachel since my wedding, and I hadn't seen the rest of the family in almost ten years. It was great seeing everyone, catching up, meeting spouses and kids, and so on. It was like I'd never been gone so long! Tessa had fun playing with my cousins' kids too! After everyone left, Kate and I stayed up a little longer to chat with Dean and Rachel.

Day Three: After some breakfast with Rachel, we headed out to the little town of Milo to visit my grandfather and see the old farmhouse. On the way, we stopped off at Indianola to pay our respects at my grandmother's resting place. That was a little emotional for me but I'm glad I stopped by. In Milo, we hung out with my grandfather for a little while. (I helped him copy some pictures of my cousin Erika's wedding onto his computer.) Then it was off on IA-92 to Muscatine, with a stopover in Oskaloosa for lunch. We checked in at the Strawberry Farm Bed and Breakfast, which was so casual and homey that it was very much like visiting someone's house and staying the night. After settling in, we popped over to the Moose Lodge for the wedding reception of Kate's college friend Ann. We managed to catch her early before she got swamped with other guests and festivities. We stayed around for dinner, cake cutting, dances and speeches before returning to Strawberry Farm to crash for the night.

Day Four: We spent a casual morning enjoying breakfast with Karl and Linda (the owners) then made a point of visiting the Mississippi River for a little bit. Tessa was not all that impressed. :-) Then it was skipping up to I-380 and US-63 to Rochester. There we met with Kate's college friends Dave and Gina (and their two boys Zach and Sam), who were giving us a room for the night. We had dinner, got introduced to a cool new game called Dominion (which Kate and I might have to buy for ourselves), and played some Lego Star Wars. Tessa had fun playing with the boys (and didn't want to go to bed) while we enjoyed chatting with Gina and Dave.

Day Five: We woke up early the next morning to walk over to the Holy Spirit Catholic Church that was less than a block away from Dave and Gina's house. When we got back, we hung out and chatted a while longer before cruising down US-14 to St. Peter. This was the home of Gustavus Adolphus College, Kate's alma mater. We rendezvoused with two more of Kate's friends Jill and Jen on campus and took a walk around to see what things had changed since their time there. Jill had to bail shortly before that but Jen joined us for dinner at Whiskey River. Kate's friend Dana met us there as well and we all gabbed well into the night. (Tessa dozed off early on to our surprise!) Then Jen headed back to the Twin Cities while Dana guided us down to Windom to stay the night at her place. We watched the Viking-Packers game and talked a while before retiring for the night.

Day Six: The next morning Dana made us omelets for breakfast and we departed around mid morning to start the trek back to Colorado. We took MN-60 down through Sioux City then bounced to US-75 and US-30 until we stopped in Grand Island, which I had determined would be a good midpoint stopover. We actually made most of the trip with minimal breaks, though we did stop in Columbus for lunch at Quizno's. (This represented our lone deviation from stopping at a Hy-Vee grocery store for meal breaks, as we did in Oskaloosa and Waterloo, though we did end up stopping at Hy-Vee for dinner in Grand Island.) We checked in at a local Days Inn and pretty much spent the night vegging out. Tessa was a little temperamental that evening but not too bad.

Day Seven: After partaking in the continental breakfast (which included biscuits and gravy and do-it-yourself waffles), we hopped back onto I-80 and blazed across Nebraska toward home. We had to fight strong winds the whole way, which made the trip sporting and gas-consuming. I decided to cut straight down I-80 into Wyoming (we made a stop in Pine Bluffs just inside the Wyoming-Nebraska border) and hooked up with I-25 around Cheyenne. We skipped lunch in preference of getting home and made it back to Fort Collins by late afternoon. We even had enough to time get unpacked, do a bunch of laundry, make a spaghetti dinner, and relax a bit before going to bed.

The trip was a great deal of fun and while it seemed rapid-fire at times (we wished we had more time to hang out with folks), it was still very relaxing. All the friends and family we met up with were so welcoming and gracious and it was fantastic to see all of them. We hope to make this a more regular vacation option, instead of waiting 5-10 years before another visit.

In the meantime, there's always Facebook. ;-)

Tessa did remarkably well on the trip. Most of the time, when the car was moving, she was dozing or quietly watching out the back window. The couple of times that she became particularly upset, Kate was able to placate her with Cheerios and peaches. And despite her stranger shyness, she still seemed to do well with all the strangers she met on the trip. What a good girl!

So that's the quick and dirty summary of our road trip through the Midwest. Like I said, it was a ton of fun and we hope to have the chance to do it again sometime.

As always, thanks very much for reading and I hope you're having a great day.

New Addition - Jasper the Cat

While our dear friend Chiral will always be missed and never be replaced, Kate and I decided that it was time we brought a new feline companion into the house. We knew that odds were against us being as lucky as we were with Chiral, but we hoped that we could find a moderately sociable and playful kitten to join the family.




We visited the Larimer County Humane Society on July 11th after church. Our intention was just to have a look at a few cats and see if any of them caught our eyes. But this skinny little gray stick wowed us with his affection and playfulness. We decided to take him home then and there.




(Incidentally, we did look at a couple other kittens. One was an adorable male named Kenny who was friendly enough but very skittish, especially with Tessa. He would have been great for a single person or an older couple without kids, I think. The third was a cute female named Banshee, which I thought was a great name. She was very affectionate but also a little more nervous than we wanted with Tessa. Too bad - I loved her coloration.)

This gray kitten with an overabundance of scrawn was extremely playful when we were in the visiting room. He purred easily when petted or picked up. But best of all, when Tessa gave out one of her cries (I think she was frustrated that I was holding her and not letting her run around), this kitten came running over to greet her, rubbing up against her! He was not the least bit intimidated by the 7-month old and we knew we had a winner.



The Humane Society had dubbed the kitten Baby Gray...but that wasn't going to fly with us. We knocked around names like Tempest and Pewter...but we finally settled on Jasper - after the gemstone.

At this posting, Jasper has been with us for a little over two weeks and he seems to be adapting very well. He comes across as attention starved, always looking for a pet or a snuggle. He loves to play, especially chasing toys, though he is a bit clumsy as yet. He even knows how to fetch (!) and will retrieve thrown toys for us to throw again.

Jasper has quite a range of volume in his meows. Most of the time, all he does is open his mouth to make a mew noise that's barely audible. Other times, especially when he's hungry or trapped in the closet, he'll make an impressive yowl that can probably be heard by the neighbors!

He doesn't seem to know any fear either. He's not scared of the vacuum cleaner nor about the prospect of going outside. He especially not afraid of Tessa. This unfortunately means that he finds himself grabbed by the ears, tails and paws and dragged by the kid. But is he clever enough to get out of her way? No! He just keeps wandering back over to her, plopping down in front of her, and getting grabbed again.






Jasper has the usual bad habits that we're trying to cure him of, namely chewing on things he shouldn't (like electrical cords) and climbing onto the tables and counters. Fortunately, he doesn't like getting sprayed with water so it should only be a matter of time before he realizes what he's allowed and not allowed to do.



Rune is adjusting slowly. She obviously was not happy with the new addition when he arrived, but after a couple weeks, she starting to tolerate him. Jasper tries to play with her by pouncing, but that only results in an angry growl and hiss from Rune. Jasper does seem smart enough to know that maybe he'd better leave the older (and grouchier) cat alone. But still, whereas in the first few days, Rune didn't want to be in the same room as Jasper, nowadays she'll even nap or eat her meals with him nearby.

So we think Jasper's going to work out with us. He's a lot of fun and very affectionate. He's already managed to win the hearts of anyone who's visited with us.




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

Oh, and Jasper hopes so too!