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!

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!

Holiday Summary

Wow - those two weeks of holidays really take it out of you, huh? It seemed to take the rest of this last week for me to feel like I was back into the "normal" routine of things. :-)

Christmas was a lot of fun. My family was able to make it up on Christmas Eve as planned and stayed through Friday morning. Here's a quick picture-based summary...

Here are those promised shots of the Christmas tree. First, the pre-decorations...



Then the cats sniffing around curiously...



Then the finished product!




The meal that Kate and I made for my family on Christmas Eve...we were going to take them out to eat, but every place was closed early. Fair enough, says I!



On Christmas Day, we got to work opening presents! I think Julie and Everest had the most fun of all! :-)






Emily and Jason were able to make it up for dinner - which Julie was a very good helper in the kitchen with her Aunt Kate.



The whole crew!



After playing my new game called Last Word, we called it a night, with Emily and Jason heading back down to Denver, while Heath and Dianna stayed up a little with us to chat and play my other new game SceneIt - Movie Edition. (Thanks, Emily!)

The next morning Kate made breakfast for everyone - blueberry pancakes in fact - and my family returned home to Colorado Springs shortly afterward. I also had to head out to work for the afternoon and we all sort of collapsed in our respective heaps come the evening.

On Saturday, Kate and I took a trip down to Longmont to visit the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center - and so I can show her around my workplace at the Longmont Library. We finished with dinner at the Olive Garden.

On Sunday, after a lazy afternoon, we joined some friends at the Stonehouse Grille for a bout of Geeks Who Drink trivia. To my surprise, my old chum Matt and his wife had stopped back in Fort Collins for a visit. Bill, Tammy, Ron, and Arne were also all there and we had ourselves a darn good time.



In fact, the team consisting of me, Kate, Ron, and Arne came in second place for the night. We called ourselves "Distracted by Shiny." :-)

For New Year's Eve, Kate and I joined Bill and Tammy at their place (joined by Ron and another friend Ben) to ring in the new year. For a chunk of the night, the boys went upstairs to play some Nintendo Wii while the girls played an entire game of Seasons.

(We probably should have quit playing Wii earlier than we did - but some of us got addicted really fast!) ;-)

Whew! So that's the rapid fire recap of how our 2008 holiday season went. We had a good couple of weeks and we hope that everyone reading this had the same. The holidays can be draining at times but they never fail to be a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who shared in the season with us!

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

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve - and yet another holiday seems to have rushed upon me and Kate. Thanksgiving was like that. We thought about it, registered that we needed to prep for it ... then boom! Time to start cooking! :-)

Christmas hasn't been quite so bad but a few things that we intended to have done before this week didn't get done. We've been doing a little scrambling in the last few days to get ourselves ready but we've also made a concious effort not to allow ourselves to be stressed out about things we can't finish.

After all, it's Christmas, right? This isn't a time for worries and frets - this is a time for joy and celebration! It's a time of happiness and renewed hope! Whether or not you're the spiritual type - regardless of what Christmas means to you - no one can deny that this is the time of year when hearts soften and minds open. People always seem kinder and more generous around this time - even between the hustle and the bustle of last-minute shopping. It's a wonderful reminder of how good we can all be - we just need to remember throughout the year how we feel during these few days.

But enough with my sentimentality. :-)

A bit of bummer news: Due to some severe snowfall in the northwest and a lack of de-icer for the airport, most of the flights out of Seattle got canceled, including the one that was to bring Kate's siblings (Aileen, Glynnis, and Dan) down to Colorado. Kate and I are both sad that they won't be able to join us for the holiday and we both hope that they have a wonderful Christmas at home regardless.

We're still expecting my side of the family. My parents and my sister's family will be coming up tonight (Christmas Eve) and will stay through Friday. Also, Emily and Jason will be coming up on Christmas afternoon to join us for a big holiday dinner. As I write this, Kate is probably zipping around the house, getting things cleaned up and prepared. I also have a handful of things to do before my family arrives (like actually wrapping their presents!) but I've also promised to help Kate finish with the cleaning.

We were originally planning on taking my family out to dinner at Hu Hot tonight, but it turns out that they won't be open late enough for us tonight. So instead, we're going to make up a big pot of mostaciolli and bread - a nice easy meal at home. Should be good. :-)

I guess that's it for now. I wanted to post some pictures of me and Kate decorating our Christmas tree, but I haven't had a chance to download the pix from my camera yet. Maybe I'll put 'em up later.

As always, thanks for reading and, of course, have a wonderful Christmas!