Friday night Jake helped Lanette move and I was able to get my list accomplished. We slept in Saturday morning and then left for Kansas. It was a great day for traveling..and also great knowing we'd be coming home to a clean house : ) The simple joys of life. Slate is always psycho before and after being in the car, but when he's inside, he does really well. I can't quite remember what he is looking at here, but I think it was a trailer full of pigs that we smelled when we were stopped for a jake break.
It was great getting to be home. It's a lot easier and doesn't take as long to catch up with mom and dad when my sisters aren't around. It was the first time we had been home since Chel got married and moved to Oregon. Not as strange as I thought it was going to be. We usually spend a lot of time around the dinner table, and this time was no different. Sunday evening we spent some time with Dr. Shrock. Jake took over his home brew and then Dr. Shrock started pulling out bottle after bottle of new types of beer. Apparently since the oil boom, the local liquor store has brought in a lot more variety than the ole coors and pabst.. : ) It became a beer sampling evening!
Snow was put back in the forecast for Denver so we had to change quite a few plans and head back Monday morning. That was disappointing. Jake ended up spending Christmas morning plowing snow. Afterwards we tried out our cross-country ski's in the park next to Mike & Deb's/Dan & Tess' house and then spent the rest of the evening with family and Joe & Lorraine. We tried a new taffy pulling recipe that didn't turn out terrible, but still isn't quite what my Gma Mildred's was. She is losing her memory and no one thought of having her write the recipe down sooner. So we have been experimenting with lots of different recipe's. Wednesday Jake and I went cross-country skiing by the Henderson Mine on the Butler Gulch trail. Not a good choice of trail for beginning of the season...LOTS of uphill! I was beat and ended up complaining enough to make Jake let us turn around ; )
It was a beautiful day though and we really enjoyed the peace and stillness on the trail. The downhill was a little nerve racking at first, but after a couple wipe outs we got the hang of it. On our way down we noticed blood droplets in the snow. After a while we realized it was from Slate. Not sure what he did but he had quite the cut on his back leg. We got to play doctor when we arrived home. Jake also suggested we go to Les Miserable last night. I was excited because I love the musical but afterwards he admitted he didn't realize it was all singing or he wouldn't have suggested! I had wondered...as he intensely dislikes musicals...but wasn't going to shoot it down. It has been a wonderful few days off! Today I am back to work and then Mark will come over this evening. We got him a dog movie called Marley and me so we plan to have popcorn and set up the projector for him to watch it...which he is VERY excited about : )
Nothing like a quiet Friday afternoon before the busyness of travel and holidays. I'm getting ready to leave work and my notepad of evening activities is filled: clean, wrap, clean, pack, clean, maybe some spanish homework... Thankfully...nothing life or death or that will cause trauma if not completed.
Jake and I are headed home aka Hazelton, KS, until after Christmas tomorrow morning. We were hoping to have a new car as a Christmas present to ourselves, but it looks like that will be pushed back until the good Lord finds the right one for us. It's teaching us patience. I think more for him than me, I have driven my little sunfire long enough that a new car doesn't really seem all that important...or real.
We are in the process of remodeling the guest bathroom and it's coming along nicely. I'm super excited to have a bathtub again. Winter is just NOT the same without it. My mom had way to much of an influence on me growing up.
See pics here
Getting back in to journaling has been a challenge since I have been married. Bedtime now revolves around two peoples schedules and I don't spend as many hours in the evening snuggled against the headboard with tea and my journal. Although, part of that could be that our upstairs is in the 50's compared to my old bedroom being in the low 70's. I have missed it and randomly decided that maybe I could devote some time to my blog again to get back in to the swing of it. I'm around a computer a lot more than my nightstand and journal. So here's to a new era of journaling and hoping that writer's block does not stump my recounting of life.
