It's Going to be COLD!

I just thought I would share with you our forecast for the next two days... I think we will be celebrating the New Year from home under a big pile of blankets with the -7 degree forecast coming our way! Hope everyone has a safe New Year's Eve! And we will post a Christmas update soon, I am just sure of it!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!!! We hope you all have a great day with family and friends! And we hope that you have been good all year long and Santa brings you everything you asked for instead of coal! Here are a few more pictures from Mikey's Christmas party and our Christmas tree!

Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

Christmastime! It's here! And it finally snowed all day yesterday! In the spirit of things, here is our Christmas Tree!!

Back to that snow, most of the city didn't see very much snow the other day, they got some fog and a few snow showers here and there. At our house, it snowed the whole day!!! (Seriously, there was a "snow line" about 1/2 mile down the road from the house!) We only got about an inch or two, but it was enough to make the trees look awesome the next day.

Unfortunately it was also enough snow to make our road very treacherous. We live on top of a small hill, with a turn at the bottom, and there were very few folks able to pass the road safely. We saw three separate accidents, one of which was a 2 car accident that needed a tow truck, and one where a mini-van did a full 180 and ran into a neighbor's rock garden! Everyone was o.k., except for the need for a few alignment checks.

Fortunately, a few hours of sunshine took care of the road problem, but it also cleaned the trees of snow. Christmas is now only hours away (o.k. a day and a few hours, but I'm excited!).

Peanut Butter

We have turned into hippies! Ok, not really, but we have started to become fans of making our own peanut butter! We got the idea a few weeks ago and thought it sounded easy enough to try! So we bought some raw Spanish peanuts and got to roasting! After we roasted the peanuts we threw them in the food processor. After about ten minutes in the food processor we had a very creamy peanut butter. I decided I wanted to try to add some flavor to some of it, so I added some cinnamon, sugar and vanilla to the peanut butter, and it was delicious!

While we were looking for the peanuts at Whole Foods we found a machine they have that grounds up the peanuts for you on the spot. We thought we would give the homemade way a try, but I think we will probably just get some from the user friendly machine in the store. I am not sure if we will ever go through the whole processing of making peanut butter again, but I am definitely sold on fresh peanut butter!

Sky Sox Fun!

Julie really likes her new camera, so we don't use the old one often, so when we got our Christmas pictures off of it the other day, we found a gem, pictures of us at Sky Sox stadium watching the World Series! If you don't know, the Sky Sox are the local AAA baseball team in Colorado Springs (Minor League affiliate of the Colorado Rockies!), and Julie and I have been going to games for ages. Julie is on the Fun Committee at her work, which means that she organizes fun events for the company to do. One of these fun events was a game at the Sky Sox, which had about 150 people attend. The Sky Sox wanted to say thanks to all of the people that organized group events, so Julie got invited to watch Game 3 of the World Series at the stadium, and enjoy a lovely dinner with them.

They served us a very nice buffet of food, including half-size hot dogs, chicken wings, cheese and crackers and other stuff that I can't remember right now! The neat thing is that we got to eat dinner in the clubhouse, walk around the field (the whole thing!) and walk through all of the suites, basically a self guided tour of the stadium, with food and drink!!

After eating, I went to take a few imaginary swings at the plate. Home Run!!!!

























We even got to violate posted rules by eating in the clubhouse!!



















We even shared an elevator ride with Sox the Fox, the best mascot in the whole world! We had a really good time!



Alright, I think that we are caught up on our blog posts now, expect more as the holidays progress!

Christmas Time

A few weekends ago, Julie really wanted to decorate gingerbread houses for Christmas!! So she whipped up a batch of fine gingerbread, cut out some templates she made herself, and baked away. Jim, Amanda, Reagan and Breckin came over one night, and we all had a house, and some gingerbread men to decorate. Well, the Steelers were playing that night, so my house didn't get quite as decorated as the rest of them!

We sat around the table and decorated our houses, Breckin decided that he wanted in on the action, so I let him have my seat. The Steelers were winning at the time, so that was nice.

















This was the best picture we got of all of the houses, you can see Julie's main house in the middle, the shed just in front and my house behind it. Julie did a good job. As for my house, well, the Steelers won at least. It was a fun evening, and we even got to eat some Jimmy John's sandwiches. Christmas time got started off on a sweet note! (Get it? Sweet note...gingerbread houses...sweet...get it?)

















The next weekend we went to my Mom's house to catch up on pictures and family time. We showed them pictures from Thanksgiving in Texas (especially Bodacious BBQ!) and they cooked us chicken fajitas. I think we got the good end of that deal.

David had a spiced wine, which is apparently a Hamburg (Germany) tradition! He heated up, and it was amazing. I highly recommend it if you run across it. Julie and I wanted to get a picture in our race shirts in front of their Christmas Tree, so here it is.
























I wanted to save the big news for the end! The morning before we went to my Mom's house, we ran Colorado College's Stocking Shuffle 5k race in downtown Colorado Springs. The start of the race was about 9 miles (or so) away from our house, so I had the great idea of running there before the race, then running the race, and getting into the car as quickly as I could! The temperature was about 30, so it wasn't cold, but certainly wasn't warm either. Well, I had this great idea because Julie and I have signed up for races in May. Julie signed up for the 1/2 Marathon and I put in for the full marathon. The race is in Fort Collins in May, and fortunately the first half of the race is downhill! Wish us luck!!

We'll have more Christmas related excitement to come. Hope you enjoy the new blog location!

Merry Christmas!!!

The Typically Terrific Traditional Thanksgiving Tyler Turkey Trot

Well seeing how Mikey covered all the food from Thanksgiving and gave me a title for this blog post I feel like I need to write about the Tyler Turkey Trot, and the other things we got to do while in Tyler!

We got nine people to run on Thanksgiving morning!  Reagan and Katie did the kid runs, and Jim, Amanda, Mikey, Uncle Mike, Aunt Carol, Claire and I all did the 5K.  Jim beat everyone in the family with a time of about 20 minutes!  It was pretty humid out, and even though it rained just a little bit before the race, it was hot out.  I think everyone is really glad that we all got out there and went running!  Here is the whole gang after the run.



And Mikey wanted to add a picture that his watch made of the race.



While in Tyler we also got to have the great grand kids get together and play at Grandma Reed's house.   So we let them have the rakes and make piles of leaves to jump in!  The pictures are of Seth, Clark, Breckin and Reagan.





Then the last story we had was when we went to visit the Swift's on Lake Palestine outside of Tyler and Amanda caught her first FISH!!!  Steve ran to the fridge to get the good Stinkbait out when he heard he had a challenge of getting Amanda to catch her first fish.  And man was it stinky, but she caught that fish in no time!





Here is Reagan after she petted the fish!

All in all, we had a great time in Texas, and really enjoyed seeing all the family!  We ate great turkey dinners with our families and look forward to our next visit with them all!  Hopefully it will be sooner than next Thanksgiving.  We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with your family too!

The Terrific Tyler Thanksgiving, Part 1 Food!

This year we got to go to Texas to see all of the family for Thanksgiving!  It was a great time and we were really happy that we were able to make it down for the festivities this year!  We decided to leave Friday afternoon after work and stay at the La Quinta hotel in Dumas, Texas Friday night, it was a great decision, it broke up the drive nicely and as a great bonus, we even ate Texas shaped waffles for breakfast!

 

In the morning we had to scrape ice off of the windshield, but despite the chilly start, we continued our drive to Tyler without any problems.  On the way there we picked up our traditional Whataburger's (not water-burger) in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Once in Tyler we spent as much time as we could with both sides of Julie's parents families.  Her Aunt Carol took us with her to go pick up the traditional Greenberg Turkey.  Did you ask what a Greenberg Turkey is?  Well ponder no more, let me tell you!  Julie says "It is a delicious smoked turkey that is injected with more delicious peppery seasoning!  Oprah thinks it is one of her favorite things, and she should!"  You can order yourself one at  http://www.gobblegobble.com/  I heard tale that Jim is going to try and order one for Christmas, oh boy!  Anyhow, we went and stood in a very short line and picked up the turkey!  Aunt Carol said that there is typically quite a spectacle at the Greenberg factory when picking up the Thanksgiving turkey, which normally includes a guy giving out hot dogs, a blood donation place (which gives you a free turkey after donating blood!!!) and most importantly, a man with a rather large gun inside to protect the money.  Unfortunately there was only a Tyler policeman there, and no other festivities.  Maybe next year...  However the news crew was there, so there is a chance that I made it onto the late night Tyler newscast.

 

 

 

Staying with the theme of traditions (mostly food related, as all good traditions are) we ate what is billed as the best BBQ in Tyler, Bodacious BBQ, for lunch after church with Julie's mom's family and not to be outdone, we then had it for dinner a few nights later Julie's dad's side of the family!  Talk about awesome!

 

 

Oh, did I mention that they had jeans for curtains?  They did.  It is East Texas after all...

Last but not least, we also took part in the great tradition of eating Mrs. Rodriguez's tamales with Aunt Donna and Uncle Gary.  For those unfamiliar, this is the story that I have heard (details may be fuzzy!), Uncle Gary was a mailman and he had a route called Little Mexico, which is where we think he met Mrs. Rodriguez.  He has been buying tamales from her for years upon years and every time we go to Tyler we gather the family to have a big tamale dinner!   It was delicious!  This year all of the Colorado family ordered some tamales in addition to Uncle Gary's normal order, we sure did put Mrs. Rodrigues to work when Gary ordered 18 dozen tamales!

While that would normally cover the food part of Thanksgiving in most of the country, we didn't even mention the desserts yet, which is arguably the best part!  I should have made Julie take a picture of every single one there was!  In short, the line up included: Chocolate cake, caramel brownies, chocolate chip brownies, German chocolate cake, coconut cake, two chocolate pecan pies, two normal pecan pies, two pumpkin pies, Mississippi mud (if you were quick), 82 flavors of ice cream, chocolate chips cookies and a lemon cake!  I think I got them all! *phew*

I think my portion of this blog is done, and I am now hungry!  Wonder if there is any pie leftover...  Julie will post shortly about the rest of the activities in Tyler!

Fall is gone…

We have snow on the ground, and it has been there all day long!  It melted in the driveway and the roads, but it is still on the grass and the mountains!  We just got back from Texas this weekend, and were kindly reminded that we haven't written any blogs for awhile, so here is the first one!  Not much had really been going on in our lives, but we do have a few pictures we can share.

First we learned this year that we needed to buy a leaf blower, so when we noticed the leaves were starting to fall we promptly went out and bought one!  It was so much nicer to use instead of raking all the leaves!  It also has a vacuum and mulches the leaves into a bag, talk about handy!



Then the next excitement we had was carving some pumpkins for Halloween.  Did I mention that there wasn't much going on around here?  We both carved a pumpkin...  here are few pictures.  Our next blog should be about Thanksgiving and hopefully something more exciting than pumpkins and leaf blowers!!!

It’s starting to feel like fall

So we are making chili for dinner!!  And probably because it's October!  It seems like we have been keeping with the September always busy theme, but hopefully today is close to end of nonstop things being planned!  So far, I have signed up to play on a volleyball team for 8 weeks with a friend from work, we ran the Pumpkin Run at the Venetucci Pumpkin Farm, went to an Air Force Football game with Dad and Jim and the kids, and then this morning we ran the Fans on the Field 10K in Denver.

So, for my volleyball, I am going to be playing one game a week for eight weeks.  They have a co-ed team of four and we signed up for the B league, we'll see how it goes, but hopefully it should be fun!  I signed up with two friends from work and then the volleyball place gave us the name of another guy who wanted to play too.  We have practiced twice so far, and our first game is the 13th!!  Should be awesome!!!

Then for the Pumpkin Run, I ran the 5K and Mikey ran the 10K.  The race went all around the Venetucci Farm and we got to run by Wilbur the hugest pig we have ever seen (it was about 1000 pounds!!!).  It was a pretty fun run, and this was the second year we decided to run it.  One extra reason we ran it, was because it completed my Grand Prix races that I did all summer.  It was a series of five races, and hopefully there will be a cool prize for completing the whole thing, the award ceremony is in December (we think) so we'll find out then!  Mikey also ran a PR (personal record) for the 10k, he ran it in 52:54!  Good job honey!!!

Yesterday we went to the Air Force Football game vs. CSU.  My work was sponsoring a tailgate and we had group rate tickets, so we got the whole gang together and headed to the game!  We met up at the tailgate for some hamburgers and hot dogs and then headed to the game.  CSU is not very good this year, so 3 plays into the game Air Force was up 7-0, and it got out of hand after that.  We left the game in the 3rd quarter when it was 49-20 (or so) then met up with some of Mikey's work friends for lunch!  Quite a cool day if you ask me.

Some quick pictures of the game, first Jim with the kids.



Then Mikey and Bill too...



Today is the final day that we have something planned until Thanksgiving, and it is the Fans on the Field race in Denver.  The race started outside Mile High (the Broncos' stadium) stadium, then we ran over to Coors Field (where the Rockies play) we ran through the Pepsi Center (Avalanche and Nuggets) and then back to Mile High to run on the field and have a BBQ.  The weather was pretty cool, and it even started to sprinkle a bit when we finished, so we didn't linger too long.



Julie and the Rockies mascot, Dinger!



Julie and I in the Pepsi Center



Julie checking out Mile High.



Mikey in Mile High too!



The finish, good job honey pie!



Don't trample us!!!  Oh no!!!



It was another great weekend, and we are looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend coming up!

The Last September Story

So this is the last update about September, and its a fun one, for us at least!  On the 27th Julie and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary, and we decided to go to Crested Butte to enjoy the fall foliage.  We have spent a lot of time in Vail and Breckenridge since we got married, and neither of us had been to Crested Butte before, and that is as good as an excuse as we need, and we were off to Crested Butte!

We drove up on Saturday afternoon, and despite the objections of Julies GPS unit, we took Cottonwood Pass out of Buena Vista to get there.  This route took us past Taylor Park Reservoir and down the Taylor river which was amazingly beautiful with the leaves changing colors.  We drove through the canyon in the afternoon, and the sun shone through the leaves making them seem to glow yellow and red.

We stayed for two nights in Crested Butte, and while we were there we walked around the town twice which meant that we saw just about everything there, and I took the opportunity to use my new GPS watch and went for a long run (about 9 miles) up to a lake.  The run was lovely, and Julie used the time to hike up the same trail to take some rather lovely pictures of the trees and leaves and such.

This first picture is of Green Lake, which was the turn around point of my run, and really was very green.  I had some pretty good views at this point, I was at about 11,000 feet!  Oh, and it was kind of chilly too!



Julie took this picture of the trail while I was running up.



We decided that we liked the drive so much, that we drove home the same way, going back over Cottonwood Pass.  The weather was a bit chillier the second time over, so we had our jackets on.  Fall is definitely here!  On the way home, we stopped to take a lot of pictures, and delay out return home!  First we stopped at the reservoir and enjoyed the views there.







Then we stopped at the top of the pass for pictures:



Finally had lunch in Buena Vista and made our way back home!  We had a great time out of town and are very excited about the adventures we have planned for our third year of marriage.  No kids, hopefully a trip to Europe, backpacking in the Colorado Summer, and who knows how many other exciting things!