LONG TIME COMING

Sorry everyone for not posting in such a long time. So much has happened in our last update. I started working at JP Morgan Chase since the end of February for one, which means I now don't have unlimited time to update you on our lives here in Denver. We had a long winter, and lots of good skiing and now it is beautiful and hot (mid 90s) nearly every day of the year. Many visitors have come (thank you Ryan, Cathy, Moon, Turi and my parents for some wonderful weekends and great meals). So much has happened we figured it would be easiest to just start new. This past weekend Drew and I boarded a plane to Santa Barbara. I am not sure why there is a direct flight from Denver to Santa Barbara but there is and it was very empty. The stewardess was nice enough to move us (as well as our friend Cody who is from Denver and happened to be on our same flight) to first class. We had several reasons to go to California, one being our friend Dayna and Sean's wedding and another being my sister and Turi's birthday. The wedding we went to was incredible, Dayna ans Sean could not have planned a better day. After a night of good food, drinks and dancing I ran to pick our car up in the morning (literally) as Drew packed the bags for Turi and I so we could drive down to Huntington Beach for a BBQ at my parent's house for my sister's 32nd birthday. Turi was unable to drive so I took the reigns and two hours later we made it to my parents. The birthday bbq was great and it was so fun to get to see all of the nieces and nephews, which I had not seen since my last visit to California for Christmas. After hanging out there for several hours we headed to Turi's for the second bbq of the night and I got to see a few of my friends, although for short period of time. My how things have changed with everyone! Some were pregnant, some already had kids, others just bought their first homes....whether we like it or not we are all growing up. The night ended with a trip to Malarky's, our old local bar in Newport. It was a Sunday night so it was just a few people and the bartender's. The place brings back old memories since we lived next door to the bar for over a year and its nice to see that some places dont change. It was great seeing everyone I was able to see. I wish there was more time so that i could see everyone, however, there is never enough time when we fly in for extended weekends. Photos from this weekend have not yet been uploaded (but will) so in the meantime I leave you with photos of the last few months (Wedding in Kansas, Wedding in Colorado Springs, Driving home from Vegas where we want for Emily's birthday, Sugarland Concert and Carrie Underwood Concert:

Moon and Lehlers Visit 2009/2010

Right after we returned back to Colorado from our holiday adventure in California we were given the pleasure of being followed half way across the country by our good friends Nicole Moon and Laura "Paint" Ehlers. Moon was doing her second consecutive New Years in Colorado whereas Laura was on an extended layover on her way back to Pharmacy School in Ohio. Needless to say much fun was had, almost too much fun. The week started by picking up the ladies at the airport who had entirely TOO MUCH luggage. After squeezing in our car and maneuvering the luggage our car looked like a clown car at a circus. The ladies arrived late and seeing as it was one of the busiest travel days of the year it took forever to get their luggage. The first night we just relaxed since we didnt get home from the airport until nearly midnight. Day two however the ladies and I ( no Drew since he had to work) headed out to Breckenridge to go skiing. Now I have been skiing on a few other mountains in my life but no resort was as big as this one. After the two hour drive with traffic and an accident in a plastic cereal bag and finding parking for an hour we finally made it up. The first ride was rough as Laura was on a snowboard and we had to traverse flat ground (she hadnt snowboarded in a few years). Here is a photo below of myself and Moon completely covered. We couldnt get laura in a photo with us because once we started moving we didnt want to stop her.



After a few runs we decided to make the trip back to Denver. It just started to get much too cold even though we were layered up pretty well. After we met back up with Drew we all cooked dinner (by all I mean I did) and met up with Emily and Jim and headed out to The Gin Mill Followed by the Giggling Grizzly. This photo was taken at the Grizzly:



Shortly after this photo our nights concluded at various times. Just as my last New Years Eve in Colorado. This one turned out to be great as well. No plans except to go over to Emilys and the night didnt disappoint. I think things are always better when you just see where the night takes you. Emily was a great host and set up some snacks and plenty of beer and vodka. We celebrated new years at Scruffy Murphys (a local irish pub) at least for those of us that made it in before midnight. The rest of the group celebrated in the streets (emily, Jim, Moon, Laura) so we have to thank the Denver Police for not being too strict.



Drew with the ladies. I must have been taking this photo.

So after new years, our friend Laura (go buckeyes) needed to watch the Rose Bowl to support her Ohio State Buckeyes. In denver, each bar represents a college so we looked up the local Buckeyes bar and headed to Crocs.... O-H- O-I, spelled wrong on purpose, at least this time . The bar was packed and I was tired so returned home but that didnt stop the youngin's from staying out all night. Lauras buckeyes were victorious and here is a celebratory photo:



The girls, and boy, came back to the house after and the ladies kept changing to find the appropriate attire to go out in and apparently kept running into our washing machine and i thought they were going to break it. Ladies, next time dont pack so much. Anyways after a tame saturday we headed to brunch at our favorite place the Coral Room and were lucky enough to catch the last broncos game of the year. Now the broncos needed to win and have either the Jets or Ravens lose in order to make the playoffs. Both the Ravens and Jets, however, did not lose and were playoff bound but that didnt stop our Broncos from an embarassing defeat at the hands of the Chiefs. Nice showing team. It was nice to go to a game though, and now we have been to all of the major sporting events in Colorado, which i havent even done in california. The ladies eventually packed up to leave and as much as i love them i was ready for my life to go back to normal. Sorry ladies, i do miss you though. Until next time (which i am sure will be sooner than i expect).

Jesus is the Reason for the Season

We were fortunate enough to leave the Colorado Snow (got out just in time) and head to California for Christmas. Sadly, we were on two different flights as my Dad's co-worker Denny gave me his expiring Southwest Voucher to use for free and Drew flew on an inferior airline through LA. It was so great to be home and spend time with family and friends that I don't get to see as often. As usual my family did the the Holiday Celebration on Xmas Eve, but unlike other years, the wine drinking was pretty minimal and the festivities ended early because everyone had to put their children to bed. Here are some pictures of the most important people of the trip (the nieces and nephews)



Rowen in his cute geriatric attire.



Liliana taking a stroll with her Great Grandma



Grandma and Grandpa (mom and dad) with three of the four kids...shockingly Hudson is missing (from left to right Cannon, Dad, Giana, Mom, Rowen)



Hudson carrying presents too big for him...note to self, buy him a candle next year since that was his favorite gift.



Mine and Drew's pile of gifts (thank you everyone for still considering us kids)

We were also lucky enough to have a few game nights with our friends and drink some wine though now living in Colorado we realize there just isn't ever enough time to do everything. I also want to thank my mom and dad for our new winter wardrobe and thank the rest of our friends and family for an amazing trip. We cant wait until our next trip back to California, and your next trips out to the lovely state of Colorado. Miss and love you all.

PS - one thing to note, Drew and I were able to play tennis while we were in California and it was such a nice change from playing in the cold and high altitude. We couldn't believe how much better we were at sea level. We couldn't hit balls out if we tried and never got tired. Its amazing the difference that altitude will do. I swear you would have thought you were watching a professional tennis match. Our matches aren't nearly that good here.

Lastly, from now on remember to only fly southwest since they were kind enough to change my flight that connected through vegas to the direct flight at no charge and also give me a credit of $2.50 (not sure why i got the credit seeing as a used a free voucher for the flight but i am not going to question anything).....best customer service of any airline.

Christmas time is Cookie time

So I must say that we have been lagging but I'm going to go ahead and blame Aaron for that....why not right? It's been about a month so I figure I could do a little updating on what we have been up to during the Holiday season. As we all know, you can't really have a Christmas without slopping down 5000 calories of sugar cookies and frosting, so naturally we invited some friends over to enjoy this time of obesity. Emily, Jim, and Cody came over to join us for what could be considered a cookie decorating party?? Let's start off by saying that baking isn't any of our strong suits but luckily for us, Philsbury has a pre-made cookie dough that tastes not much better than trash. It didn't bother us though due to the massive amounts of frosting that is obviously good for you. Oh yeah, we didn't have a rolling pin or flour so we sprayed cooking oil on the counter and used a wine bottle. I guess you have to do with what you have right. This was okay until we realized that the already unhealthy cookies probably doubled in grease/butter due to our lack of flour. But it's XMAS time and no one can be worried about that. My first batch was so thin they broke apart and tasted like pretzels. Emily's next batch was the opposite and the cookies grew over the sides of the pan I think. I would have to give the best cookie making to Jim who made a candy cane that was about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. Here's a photo of our "rolling pin."



We also tried to see who could pile up the most frosting and not sure who won but of course Emily had to eat it. Here's the play by play of that situation:



And here are just a couple more photos from this night...

Its Beginning to look a lot like XMAS

The holidays changed quickly here in Denver from Thanksgiving to Christmas and the city and our house are going through some Xmas decoration makeovers. It finally began to snow here as well so hopefully the mountains will be a little bit better than last week. It was a whopping three degrees for Drew on his drive home from Boulder and he almost got the day called off for a snow day but settled on going in just before lunch time. Here are some photos of the Christmas spirit going on here in Denver.


Our Jewish Christmas tree



Larimer Square drive-by(it's like this year round)



Union Station



16th street although it does look much better in person



And the Denver Court House, that plays xmas music during the day!

1st Post

Well here goes nothing, the first post of the blog. We figure this is a good way to keep everyone up to date on the adventures here. We hope you enjoy and also we hope everyone in CA comes out and visits so we can put your picture on the blog! Today we just got back from the first day out on the slopes. We took off around 7:45 and picked up Aunt Kim for the day. It's about an hour and 15 minutes up to Arapahoe Basin, which is 1 of the 5 mountains that our season pass works for. We arrived around 9 and began piling on all of the layers. Aaron couldn't believe how easy his new boots were to put on and then I decided to let him know that he was wearing mine. Kim struggled a little so I ended up putting hers on for her. We snapped into our skis and we were on top of the 2nd lift by 9:30. It was sunny and a pretty decent temperature and all of our new items (skis, boots, poles, pants, jacket, etc) seemed to be working out just fine. There wasn't too much snow and part of the slopes were pretty icy. Halfway down the first run we could already feel the quads burning. Kim ate it twice and Aaron blamed me for his lone fall because he thought I was going to run into him which is very likely to be honest! We stayed till about 1:30 and then headed back for Denver! Let's see what tonight brings!

Here are a couple of pictures from today.


Aunt Kimmy, ATG, and I on the way up!


Where's Waldo...or Drew!


ATG, after his first fall of the season!