We headed back up to the mountains this past weekend, with our friends Tracey and Jeff. We had an incredible weekend with snow falling nearly the entire time we were there. We spent the whole day Saturday on the slopes of Vail. After closing we drove back to our hotel in Silverthorne, which would be convenient for the next day’s adventures at Keystone. Our camera batteries were dead the first day, but Kim took some photos on the second.

Two weeks ago I added a couple of clownfish to my saltwater tank. Well I have good news, they are both still alive and both doing really well. These guys are pigs and eat most of the food before anything else can get to it. They are very active and swim all over the tank. They like playing tag, or establishing dominance, depending on what way you look at it. I think this is all a part of growing up, and I’m still hoping that I’ll end up with a mating pair when it’s all said and done. I finally took the camera out and spent a few minutes taking some pictures. They really seemed to like posing for me, so I’ll be sure to take more as they grow older.

We had more visitors out this past weekend. This time it was three of Kim’s brothers: Jason, Chris, and Chip. After hanging around Denver on Friday night, we headed toward Keystone early on Saturday morning. Since Keystone is the only resort in Colorado (that I know of) that has night skiing, this was perfect for them. We were able to stay as late as we wanted, especially since we were staying right across the street from the resort. We found time to hit up the terrain park, take a snowcat ride out to fresh powder, and even conquer the very same trail that injured my ankle around a year ago.

After a great day at Keystone Saturday, we decided to mix it up and head to Breckenridge for Sunday. Since we were staying so close, we were able to be one of the first out on the slopes. So we immediately headed for my favorite area at Breck, Peak 7. The entire peak is mostly blue, and full of natural rolling terrain. The options are endless in this area, so we stayed here for the better part of day. As it normally does, Peak 7 got more and more crowded as the day went on, so eventually we made our way over to the terrain park once again. And once we beat ourselves up pretty good, we did a few more runs and then headed back for Denver.

It was a great weekend trip, and Kim took lots of pictures and videos. If the videos are slow here on my site, I’ve also uploaded them to YouTube. Enjoy!

As I mentioned at the end of last week, my friends Ken and Jon were in town visiting through yesterday. After hitting up all of the Denver area sights for a few days, we headed up into the mountains for some skiing and snowboarding. As luck would have it, friends of ours were staying in a huge cabin north of Winter Park and invited all of us to stay with them. So we headed up Thursday night so we could get some sleep and get up early to spend a long day at Winter Park. About halfway into our drive, the snow started falling and it never really seemed to stop.

The never ending snow left some great conditions for my first ever visit to Winter Park. And since it was Friday, the crowds were not bad at all. We hit the mountain with some of our friends from the cabin, along with Kim and I on snowboards and Ken and Jon on skis. We spent the majority of our time on the Mary Jane side of things, especially in Parsenn Bowl which was by far my favorite part. These runs started above the tree line and were very windy, but once we got down just a bit and into the trees, the powder was super thick and the terrain wasn’t too steep. It was “epic” as many would say.

After staying in the cabin again on Friday night, we woke up early on Saturday to head to Vail for another day on the slopes. Despite Vail being on our season passes, we had only been one time before. If it were a little closer to Denver we would probably be there all the time. Anyway, after experiencing Parsenn Bowl the previous day we wanted to finally get out to the legendary back bowls of Vail. The lines were much longer than before, but we finally made it out to Blue Sky Basin. I must say that this area really is amazing! Incredibly long runs full of trees, deep powder, and more fun than imaginable.

I apologize for the delay, but I’ve been busy entertaining a couple of friends from high school who are visiting through this coming Sunday. We’ve been eating good so far, including dinner last night at CityGrille and lunch today from Breckenridge Brewery. It was the first time for all of us at CityGrille. I chose it after my friend Ken had his heart stuck on a buffalo burger, which I’m told was very good. Everyone else was also satisfied with their order, so I’ll add this to my list of great places in Denver. Breckenridge Brewery has always been on my list, and was delicious as usual. Ken and Jon should be finishing up their tour of Coors Field shortly, so I better wrap up some work and get back downtown. I’m off the rest of the week and should be busy, so I’ll write more next week.

Our first trip to Steamboat was a huge success! I’m convinced that it never stops snowing there, although we did see some blue skies as we drove away yesterday morning. Not that constant snow is necessarily a bad thing at all. According to the snow reports, they had 10+ inches of snow over the two days we were out on the slopes. That’s in addition to the over 250 inches they’ve already had this season. Needless to say, the conditions were great!

We stayed in the Scandinavian Lodge, which was nicely furnished and really close to the slopes. It is sometimes advertised as ski-out, but that’s only true if you count the narrow trail from the parking lot that weaves between other condos and lots of trees, not to mention the street that you must cross. However, one of the lifts is less than 200 yards away and an easy walk to/from the condo.

With my ankle feeling better with each passing day, and the awesome conditions, I finally felt comfortable doing a few jumps here and there. Here’s a quick video that Kim captured of my adventures. As you can tell, she was a little surprised by how close I got to her.

Kim also took some pictures from our trip, which can be viewed here.

I just got back from taking a lunch trip downtown to watch the National Western Stock Show Parade. I’m assuming that the series of events are similar to the American Royal in Kansas City, which I’ve experienced different parts of in the past. However, I have never seen a parade quite like this. It actually starts with a big group of cowboys driving somewhere between fifty and one hundred (by my estimation) longhorn cattle down 17th Street. Then they have a band or two, lots of horses, and some other standard parade fare. It isn’t very long, but was worth it alone to see the cattle up-close.

One of the cooler gifts we received for Christmas is a big world map from Kim’s parents that we can stick pins in to mark our travels. Last night we went through each state in the US and marked one of the best cities that we had been to in each. I think we are only missing like three states between the two of us, so this took up nearly all of the included red pins. We marked a couple spots in Mexico and Kim’s travels to Belize and Guatemala, but after that we were completely out. I’m searching now for more matching pins. The green pins in the map designate future dream travels, most of which are on the other side of the world, but you can see one in this photo.

After taking the picture of our map, I started uploading it to my computer and found a couple of other random shots from the last few weeks. The first is this shot of a snow drift on top of our shed. We got a big snow storm in Denver right after Christmas, and this cool little ski jump was part of that. Some of that snow from the storm is still on the ground today, although a few more days above freezing could take care of it.

And this little guy should look familiar to many of you. We were headed out the door on New Years Eve to grab some food and noticed that Amstel had created a bunch of confetti for us to take with us. He loves chewing on phone books and often has one in his cage, but this time he really shredded the paper. Somehow he must have known what day it was. He is a pretty smart little guy, sometimes. Let us not forget when he ate our linoleum kitchen floor…

After a heck of a delay in Indianapolis, we finally made it back to Denver very late on Christmas night (actually early morning on the 26th). Apparently Denver had the highest amount of snow on Christmas day in over 100 years, officially 7.8 inches although I think we had more than that at our house. And after shoveling it all for hours yesterday, the snow is falling again today and should continue into the late hours tonight. We could get anywhere from another 4 to 8 inches. This could quickly become similar to the snow situation we experienced when we first moved here last January. This time I will be sure to stay on top of the shoveling though.

As I work through the pictures I took during our trip to Cincinnati, here is one that my mom took for your viewing pleasure…

Update: our pictures are now available.

My apologies for the late update. I have a good excuse though, I’ve already sorted through all of the pictures from out trip and posted those online.

Now for a recap of the events. We flew into Cancun on Thursday morning. After avoiding the masses of people who wanted to “help” us, we eventually found the ticket booth for ADO, which provides $8 bus trips to Playa del Carmen. Once we finally made it to the resort we met up with everyone else and soon after went out for dinner and then for a stroll along Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue). We ended up in a bar to celebrate Doni’s 40th birthday.

The rest of the weekend, we didn’t leave the resort all that much. Our days consisted of laying on the beach, soaking up the sun, and occasionally some beach activities. I wanted to see some Mayan ruins while we were there, and fortunately they offered a bike tour to some, so we took this trip on one of the days. Another one of our afternoons was spent playing a bocce ball tournament and then with a little boogie boarding.

The trip definitely flew by and before we knew it, we were on a ferry to Cozumel for our flight back to Denver. When we left Mexico it was in the mid 80s and when we landed in Denver it was 14 complete with snow and ice. Talk about a dramatic change. For more details on the trip check out Phil’s site and his recap.