Day of Listening

So my fellow NPR junkies may remeber that at Thanksgiving there was a big push for the National Day of Listening. Well, since we celebrated Thanksgiving a couple weeks early, I didn't get to participate even though I was inspired to do so. So now that I am visiting in Atlanta for Christmas I am going to interview my Dad tomorrow (God and Dad willing, of course!).
I've been thinking about questions (suggestions welcome) and logistics.
I don't have tape recorder, but my camera has a video camera option (evidenced in previous posts) so I am just going to use that and I think the video will be a bonus. I hope to learn some new things about my Dad and record favorite stories too. Will possibly post the recordings here afterwards, but will definitely look forward to sharing them with my sister and her kids.
Anyway, I am really excited about this idea and want to encourage other people to do this too! I only wish I had more videos/recordings of my mom. The few we have are such a treasure now...
Hope everyone had a merry Christmas and that you all enjoy the new year!!!!

Josh's Visit

Northwestern tribal art

Josh flew out from Atlanta to hang out for the week so we've been doing lots of fun things in the FoCo area...

First we picked up Josh at the airport in the middle of a blizzard- made it home after ~3 hours of driving 30mph on the interstate.
Temps were low the next couple days so we decided to stay indoors and checked out the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Then we took the tour of the New Belgium Brewery, home of Fat Tire and many other wonderful beers and performed some quality control testing.
That was followed by a short walk to the Odell Brewery and sampled the wares there....
Beware the Buffalo Bourbon Stout- aged in used bourbon barrels and more like taking a shot than drinking a beer!

Today we headed up to Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park and went snowshoeing to Mills Lake. Beautiful, but cold! Wanted to have a bite to eat once we reached the lake, but piercing winds triggered the onset of frostbite, so we snarfed the food down and then thankfully got moving again. In just the hour and a half it took to get there the water in my backpack was already half ice.

Quote

I love quotes!!!! Here's a beautiful one I just came across reading a review for a book called Bowerman and the Men of Oregon.

For there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced, whatever the force, a last inviolable stronghold that can never be taken, whatever the attack; your vote can be taken, your name, your innards, even your life, but that last stronghold can only be surrendered.

Thanksgiving

Hi everybody! So its painfully apparent that even with internet access (thanks to our neighbors router!) and free time, I still am lame about posting to my blog.... so a few weeks late here are some photos from our Thanksgiving!
First we celebrated an early Thanksgiving in Kansas with Aunt Daisy and Uncle George which Dad and Julie and her whole family made it out to (pictures from that may make a later appearance pending Christmas). Then on Wednesday before the big day Craig and I rented a yurt for two nights in Colorado's State Forest State Park. It was amazing! On our drive in we saw 3 moose in a wet meadow surrounded by snow and we got to see flocks of snow geese migrating south, calling to each other as they went.
But best of all was the yurt itself! To reach it you park at a trailhead and hike about a mile in - we hiked in our Thanksgiving dinner- green chile elk stew with hominy and cornbread (thanks to Darrell's recipe!). The yurt has a woodburning stove for warmth (we took turns getting up at night to stoke the fire- it was cold!) in addition to a propane 2-burner campstove. We hiked and explored, drank hot chocolate, tracked coyotes, rabbits, mice, elk, deer and moose through the snow, and tried to teach ourselves to cross-country ski... we had the trails completely to ourselves til our cross-country ski back out to the car Friday afternoon... All in all I couldn't imagine a nicer way to spend a holiday, unless it was with all our friends and family there too!

Oh, be sure to check out the video at the end of the post for a tour of the interior of the yurt (and me looking like a person who hasn't bathed in a couple days!). You can check out some pictures from Craig's blog too.