Rocky Mountain High

We got home from Colorado this past Monday and I've been catching up at work since then, so this will be a quick post.

Colorado was lovely and HOT! We spent a few days in Durango, where we got to see Bob & Kelly's new condo. I really like the condo -- it's spacious and full of light. We also went to the Bar D Chuckwagon one evening, where we enjoyed a meat-n-potato dinner and some fabulous cowboy music entertainment. For dinner, I stuck to the beige foods (potato, biscuit, applesauce) and stayed away from the red stuff (beef and beans) and it all worked out just fine. I loved the music and was really impressed with the Bar D Wranglers. They had a great combination of musical talent and cheesy humor, and listening to Cy Scarborough's rendition of "Rindercella" (who "slopped her dripper") was a treat.

On Thursday morning, Chris and I took the historic train from Durango to Silverton aboard the Durango & Silverton Narrowgauge Railroad. The train is pulled by a steam locomotive and travels through some incredible scenery. It also spews a lot of soot, so by the time we made it to Silverton (3.5 hours later) we were quite dirty.

Kelly picked us up in Silverton and we hit the road to Beaver Creek. We stopped in Montrose to visit with Brett and Victoria for a couple hours, which was really nice. Victoria fed me a Peruvian jam that I really like, but I can't remember what it's called now.

After Montrose, we met up with Bob and headed to Carbondale for a tasty dinner at Six89 Restaurant. Then we were on our last leg of the drive and we made it into Beaver Creek around 11 PM. That was a long day, but it was an enjoyable one!

Patrick, David and Jenny arrived on Friday, Brendan and Meghan showed up on Saturday morning, and Kimberly made it on Saturday night. Everyone enjoyed relaxing and spending time together. The girls had a pedicure day while the boys played golf, a group went horseback riding, and some of us played frisbee golf on the mountain. It was a very nice weekend, full of family, food and sunshine.

Chris and I drove to Denver on Sunday night in time to catch a very early morning flight back home to Seattle. Once in Seattle, we retrieved Cowboy from Ben & Carrie's (where he'd been playing with Baxter all week) and settled back into our regular routine.

Now we're back to work, Cowboy, and waiting for summer to begin in earnest. We enjoyed our trip back to Colorado and are looking forward to the rest of the summer (especially the Lyle Lovett concert at Chateau Ste. Michelle on July 14)!

I haven't gone through my pictures from Colorado yet, but I'll post some soon!

"Dude, I kissed my neighbor..."

That's how it all started. They met as neighbors, after they'd purchased adjacent townhouses. One thing led to another, which eventually led to Julie texting the above message to one of her good friends and ultimately led to the wedding we attended yesterday.

We headed over to the peninsula for Nick and Julie's wedding at the Kiana Lodge in Poulsbo. We missed the ferry to Bainbridge Island (in our defense, we were there and in line to board...we realized something was wrong when we saw the ferry pulling away and we were still in line), so we ended up driving all the way around. The ferry ride is 35 minutes, the drive is 2 hours. Needless to say, we weren't exactly punctual.

You can see from the pictures that we did make it in time for the ceremony...but not in time to get a seat. We didn't want to make a spectacle of ourselves by walking across the lawn to try to find a seat, so we spent the ceremony peering through the bushes. Nonetheless, it was a lovely ceremony, Nick was very handsome, and Julie looked beautiful.

We enjoyed the rest of the evening meeting new people and catching up with old friends. It turns out Chris and Nick have a lot of mutual friends from the "old" days of Anderson Consulting, so it was a lot of fun to reconnect.

We didn't know anyone at our dinner table, but Nick promised us it would be a fun one. By the time the toasts came around, we were, in fact, the loudest and rowdiest table there. To top it off, Scott and Renee showed us pictures of their daughters and Chris was thrilled to see that he has a chance against my Asian genes. Renee is half Korean, Scott is Caucasian, and both of their daughters have blonde hair and blue eyes. They are gorgeous girls, and it made Chris' day.

After eating some cake (amazing dark chocolate mousse with cream cheese frosting) and dancing to some tunes, it was time for us to head back to the ferry. We actually caught it this time and were happy with the much shorter commute.

Now Chris is planted in front of the TV watching the US Open and rooting for Tiger. Tomorrow we'll be off to Colorado for one last trip to Durango before Chris' parents move out of the house, followed by a few days in Beaver Creek to celebrate David's 30th birthday with the whole family.

Link: View Nick & Julie wedding pictures

Pictures: Hiii-Ya!

Last weekend I went to LA to watch Trish test for her black belt in Tae Kwon Do (TKD). It was an amazing experience.

Although my 6 AM flight was canceled (it's cruel to cancel a flight that required a 4 AM wake-up time) and I didn't make it to Burbank until almost noon, Felix was nice enough to pick me up and we made it to the studio in time to see the entire program.

Trish did great weapons and forms routines and then came the biggie: the Wall of Black. Actually, I'm not sure if that's what it was really called, but that's what it looked like to me. As her final test to earn her black belt, she had to fight every single black belt in her school. She waited on the mat while they lined up -- all 16 of them. She sparred them one at a time, one after another, no breaks in between. She started with the newest black belts and worked her way up to the most advanced -- 3rd and 4th degree black belts. By then, she'd been sparring for over 3o minutes and could barely move, but she didn't break and made it through all of them! It was almost difficult to watch at times, but we were all so proud of her for surviving it -- a true test of mental and physical fortitude.

On top of it all, she only had enough time to strip off her sparring pads before she was called back up to break her boards! She broke one with her arm and then took a flying leap over a mat to kick another one mid-air. Then, as a crowd-pleaser, she did the flying kick leap AGAIN -- this time jumping over her nephews Nicholas and Zachary! It was truly an incredible show.

After Trisha earned her black belt, we all headed to the clubhouse at her residential community to enjoy tons of delicious food prepared by her family and drinks served by a very conscientious bevy of 9-year olds. We ate until we couldn't move anymore, watched videos of the day's events, and then finally called it a day. A group of us moved over to Trish's house and stayed up for another few hours playing the Wii, but I can't vouch for much of what happened at that point because I fell asleep on the couch. Trisha did too, but she did just spend the afternoon fighting off 16 black belts so she had good reason.

We spent a lazy Sunday playing more Wii, eating left-overs, and falling asleep on the couch again before I headed back to the airport for my flight home. It was a quick trip, but I'm so glad that I was able to go! I've posted a few pictures on Flickr -- as always, click to view them!

Link: View TKD pictures

The future's so bright...

...we gotta wear shades.

Boy, we look like a bunch of real winners, huh? Must be a slow news week here in Seattle.

• The picture of Chris was taken last week as he was on his way to Vegas for a mustache-themed bachelor party (there are more mustache pictures in the "Miscellaneous May" photo set). Thank goodness that facial growth was gone when he returned. The shades and orange trucker's hat, however, remain.
  
• The picture of me is from our honeymoon -- I was sporting the latest Croatian moped fashion. You can't get much cooler than that.
  
• The picture of cone-free Cowboy shows off his new Doggles, which we use to protect his eyes when he is hanging his head out of the car window. He gets a lot of double-takes from passersby, but now he can happily let his jowls flap in the wind without worrying about damaging his newly-repaired eye.

This weekend I'm off to LA to watch Trish kick some tush as she earns her black belt and receives her state championship titles (first in her bracket in both forms and weapons, second in sparring). Hopefully she'll get a few more trophies that are taller than she is. Go Trish!

Pictures: Miscellaneous May

Here's the last set of pictures for today -- a collection of miscellaneous photos from May. It includes the following:

• Eric & Jen's new Berner puppy, Bodhi
• A couple random shots from dinner, hiking and the NW Folklife Festival
• An example of fine Seattle parking
• Chris like you've never seen him before (and will probably hope never to see him again)

Link: View miscellaneous May pictures

Pictures: Conehead Cowboy

As I mentioned before, Cowboy has been wearing a cone for the past two weeks. He had to get surgery on his eye to fix his entropion -- an inward rolling of his eyelid. His lower lashes were rubbing against his eye and causing ulcers to form, so the doctor performed a little nip and tuck to roll his eyelids back out. Since he was already getting plastic surgery, I asked if they could also give him some botox injections to fill in the wrinkles on his forehead and maybe do a little "neck tuck" to get rid of those rolls of skin, but they didn't go along with my plan. Ah well. I guess an eye lift is better than nothing.

So life with the cone has been entertaining. I already described Cowboy's little couch-howling (is this the dog version of Tom Cruise's couch-jumping?) and his cone-mutilation episodes. He also managed to crack his cone in half when he tried to play "touchdown" (a game where he runs between our legs) with me and ran his cone smack into my shin at top speed. He scoops up dirt and grass when he tries to sniff, and routinely walks into trees which inevitably startles him.

We thought the cone would be off last Thursday, but when they took the stitches out, one of them split open. So the doctor left one stitch in and said we could take it out ourselves in 48 hours and start to wean him off the cone. We have to watch him carefully to make sure he doesn't scratch his eye, but it doesn't seem to itch him so we don't think it will be a problem.

In the meantime, Cowboy looks like a junkyard dog. In addition to the black eye with stitches, he's got the dirtiest, trashiest looking cone around -- bent out of shape and criss-crossed with duct tape to mend all of the cracks. That's our boy!

Link: View conehead pictures

Pictures: Maifest in Leavenworth

We headed over the pass to find sunnier skies and German food at the Maifest in Leavenworth. We stayed the weekend and enjoyed a Volksmarch through the hills, singing and dancing performances, a lot of German food, and a nice game of putt-putt golf. I like to brag that I shot a 73 at golf. Granted, it was a par-56 course, but no one really needs to know that. And yes, Chris shot under par. Hmph.

Link: View Leavenworth pictures

Pictures: Blue Ribbon Cooking School

Chris and I took a cooking class at the Blue Ribbon Cooking School as part of a Point B event. We had a lot of fun learning to make a really fancy menu that I can't remember for the life of me. It had a salad, some kind of meat, risotto, green beans, and a really rich chocolate dessert -- all with much fancier names. I took several pictures as we were preparing the feast, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the final product. Whoops.

Link: View cooking class pictures

Pictures: Baxter's Birthday

On May 6, Baxter invited all of his buddies over to celebrate his 2nd birthday. Ben had the BBQ going and Carrie kept everyone (including the pups) well-stocked with tasty food and drinks. This year Cowboy wasn't the only big dog around, so he ran and played himself to exhaustion. It was a great day for the pups and their people!

Link: View Baxter's birthday party pictures

Pictures: Mexico Cruise

At the end of April, Trish and I went on a weekend cruise to Ensenada with her brother Felix, John, and about 30 other people to celebrate her friend Greg's birthday. I did the same cruise with Sita almost 10 years ago, and I have to say, it is more fun when you go with a huge crowd of people you know.

When Sita and I did it, we did it on Carnival (which tends to be a younger party crowd). So even 10 years ago, we felt like the old ladies on the ship because it was full of high school and college kids on spring break. A couple years ago Trish and I took a 10-day cruise to Panama with her family on Princess cruise lines and that was the opposite experience. It was super luxurious, and we were the youngest people on board by about three decades. That was a fantastic trip and we went with a large group of people we knew, which made it even more fun.

This time, we took Royal Caribbean. It was a step up from Carnival, but definitely not the luxury of Princess. The crowd seemed to be closer to our age this time, but it didn't really matter because we had our own crowd with us. We set sail from LA on Friday, docked for a day in Ensenada on Saturday, sailed all day Sunday (we must have just been doing circles since LA is only a few hours away), and returned to LA on Monday. It was a great little mini-vacation!

I've posted the pictures on Flickr. Click the link below (or click on the title of this post) to see the set. It's much easier if you view the pictures as a set rather than going directly to my Flickr account and looking at the main page (which shows my most recent pictures). The main page doesn't post them in the correct order, so it can be confusing.

Link: View Mexico cruise pictures