Will's Birthday

Well, he made it to a quarter century......just barely. Will had to work today but he came home on time and had a lovely dinner prepared for him. Chicken fried rice and egg rolls. Not the traditional birthday meal but a great one nonetheless.



Allison made a cookie cake for Will instead of a real cake...



And will blew out his one candle...



And Will got some great gifts too...





And anoter day goes by.

Adventures in Cooking...

So for Christmas dinner we tried to cook a turkey (my first attempt ever!), stuffing, rolls, butter beans, and a fudge pecan pie.
Let's see...we ate our Christmas dinner at 10pm!
Has anyone ever heard of that Kenny Chesney song (mom I'm sure you've heard this) where he talks about getting married and having burnt suppers for the whole first year, and eating them so his wife doesn't cry? Kind of applies here...haha...thankfully we didn't burn the turkey though!
Will made me prepare the turkey, which just involved rinsing it off and emptying the juice from the "cavity"...he thought it was hilarious to take my picture. I have never cooked a turkey before and was rather grossed out, so I wore gloves, and seriously considered becoming a vegeterian!



The turkey was only supposed to cook for 2 hours and 15 minutes, so we were hoping to eat around 7:30 or 8pm. Well...apparently at a higher altitude things take a lot longer to cook, and it took our turkey 4 hours to reach the temperature needed to eat. Oh it was a stressful last 2 hours cooking, and the house got kind of smokey!
But the turkey was finally ready to eat, our stuffing was cold and had to be reheated, as did the butter beans.
But we finally got it all to the table, and it tasted alright. The turkey was a bit dry, but the gravy helped that. The stuffing, beans, and rolls were good.
And our pie turned out great, but I was too full to eat any, but Will enjoyed it.
Here is our little Christmas table with our advent wreath. (I'm still learning how to make one of those)



Thankfully our Christmas Eve dinner of ham, baked apples, and 7 layer salad turned out a little better. Sorry we don't have any pictures from that. But we had a nice dinner that night, opened a few presents, and went to church at 11pm for communion and singing Christmas carols, which was really nice!

Today is Will's birthday! The big 25!! And I'm cooking dinner again tonight (he's chosen something easier) so we'll have more pictures of dinner and presents tonight.



Hope everyone is having a nice, relaxing after-Christmas day! By the way...it's 11:30am here and it's only 18 degrees!! :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Merry Christmas everyone! We woke up this morning bright and early to a tree full of presents and about 5 inches of snow in the ground outside. WE HAD A WHITE CHRISTMAS!! It was really pretty to look at this morning. We both got a lot of really great gifts.

Will got a filing cabinet...



He also got some clothes...sweaters, socks, pants...



Al got a wonderful photo album filled with pictures of Gracie! And a dog sticker to go on her car...



Al got her favorite Christmas movie and a suduko book



This was how our den looked after this morning...



After a wonderful breakfast and a morning full of presents, we headed off to Eldora Ski Resort, which is about 25 miles from Boulder. We had signed up for a private skiing lesson there at noon but had to be there around 11. So we got our gear together and prepared to get to it.

The lesson went great. We didnt go down anything more difficult than a 'green slope' but we really enjoyed it. And to prove that we did indeed go skiing, for all the skeptics out there, we took some pictures...

This is at the top of the slope we skied down



Can you tell which one of us this is?







We had a great time skiing, preparing for our next big adventure next weekend. The drive back to Boulder was really pretty. The road on either side was just covered with snow.



This is actually a lake on the side of the road covered in ice and snow











When we got home we decided to measure how much snow we had gotten in our yard. The ruler said about 7 inches.



Now on to fixing Christmas dinner...
We had a really great Christmas and we hope everyone else did too. Happy Holidays and everyone please have a Happy New Year!

Trip to Golden, CO

This weekend, we made an attempt to go down to Golden, CO where the Coors Brewing Co. has a facility. We got there too late for the tours because of the really weird road conditions. We took some pics...











And this was a really cool picture of the mountain outside Golden, CO.

For our loyal readers..........

So we haven't been updating our blog in awhile because my mom and my sister, Robin, were out here visting for a few days! It was great to have them out here to visit, but we were sad it was so short.
Thankfully it didn't snow while they were out here, but it did get pretty cold at night. We had a good time, even though Will and I both had to work some of the days they were here.
One night we went to Denver to look at the Botanic Gardens all decorated for Christmas.



We got 3-D glasses to look at all the lights, and depending on which ones you had you could see snowmen or snowflakes with all the lights!









There were lots of interesting statues throughout the gardens. Robin & Will thought it would be appropriate to kiss one!



The photographer finally posed for one picture with me...



The next day mom, Robin, and I drove up to Estes Park, which is a small town about 40miles north of Boulder. We tried to go to the national park, but it was closed for the season so we got a little tour of the town.



You can kind of see the cute little town across the lake!



Lots of beautiful landscape...



And of course Rob and I had to figure out where a famous house in Boulder was. And in true stalker form we had to take a picture of it.
The Ramsey's house...



That's basically what we've been doing the past week! The weather out here has been pretty nice, kind of warm. My car said the temperature was around low 50s today! So exciting! But of course tomorrow and Saturday they're calling for more snow. We'll be sure to take lots of pictures, and Will and I are all stocked up on food and movies! For this weekend we're debating on whether or not to go skiing at the local mountain or maybe take a tour of the Coor's brewery! Either way we'll be sure to take lots of pictures and give very detailed descriptions for those who check our blog daily...Willis...
We're so excited about Christmas, and miss everyone back home!!!

Xmas Tree

So we have had our tree decorated for a while now but we just havent gotten pictures of it. ENJOY!!









And Allison made a snow angel in the front yard.....



And then she fell over...and ate the snow.

The culprit.....

Here he is.....



.....the infamous dog who got our tree....the little jerk.

So we had some snow, probably around 6 inches over the weekend. Its been several years since we have had to actually shovel snow but we made up for lost time.





People still walk and jog despite the snow and ice - which by the way is absolutly nuts. No one in their right mind should be doing that, yet these people do it anyway. Not us though. We stayed inside most of the weekend.

The sun popped out today but dont let it fool you like it did us. The sun may make it seem like its warmer than it was, but oh no. It was still about 16 degrees for the majority of today. Ironically enough, its warmer tonight than it was during the day today, tipping the thermometer at 28 degrees now.



Good news - its gonna snow again Tuesday!