New haircut. Eh?

Christmas

Can you believe this is the first gingerbread house I've ever made!
32 and playing with my food.
Obviously not a good architect as my roof is already caving in.

Our 2007 Christmas eve opening stockings from Grandma D.
And our first year with a fake tree. Next year, I promise Nathan.

Christmas gift from dad I wished I'd had the night before at the relatives house where the common conversation with us was, "so when are you two going to start popping out kids?" Shirt says, "If I wanted to hear the pitter patter of little feet I'd put shoes on my cat."
LOVE IT DAD!

Christmas photo that didn't go out with our xmas cards.
Oh well. Too much to do with the new house. Next year.

Curry caught red-handed seeking out the cat nip I thought I had cleverly hidden.
GOTCHA!

Snakes & the grass

So 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to tackle the yards and mow my first lawn. After enquiring at work as to who owned what kind of mower I decided on an old 1950's type manual push mower for "the fun of it". It was fun for the first half hour but then I kept hitting holes which made mowing very difficult. When I got tired, Nathan took over. It took us all weekend to mow both front and back lawns.

Soon after mowing the lawn, Mr. Milo brought us a snake to play with. After batting it around it was thrown over the fence into our neighbor's yard. hee hee.

This weekend, we BBQd at Marcie's and oohed and aahed over her gas mower. Thankfully she let us borrow it and both lawns were mowed in 2 hours. After Nathan gave me a crash course in mowing (perimeter first then fill it in in straight lines) I had a lot of fun. But when he kept coming out to survey my work and give more pointers, I told him he could probably do a better job than just pointing out everything I was doing wrong. So he earned mowing the front lawn :)

Leah got out front and surveyed Nathan's handy work.

While I was in the kitchen getting some water, I noticed Milo was being a little too attentive to me and there was a small hose sticking out from under the dishwasher. "I know that wasn't there yesterday when I washed the kitchen floor," I thought. And upon closer inspection, what do you know, it was ANOTHER snake Milo had caught! Nathan was called in to drag it out from under the dishwasher and it put up quite a fight while I yelled from around the corner to just "YANK IT OUT NOW!!!" It was thrown out over the neighbor's fence and we'll hope Milo stops catching the little buggers.

Brad visiting Loveland

Brad, Nathan and I went out to test the ice on Lake Loveland. Don't worry, there were lots of people out there and we found a fresh ice fishing hole and stuck our arms down to see how thick the ice was...16 inches Brad says. We also got to watch search and rescue practice in their gumby suits rescuing each other from the water.

My new favorite leather chair and me.
The dining room. I did NOT make the walls here red. If we stay, they WILL change :)
Milo and Leah in their favorite room on their favorite table in the sun. Look how big Milo is getting!
And the kitchen wall. The other side is boring counter, sink and stove/fridge. This was more interesting for a photo.

New digs

Our new place in Loveland. I'm only including pics of rooms that are unpacked, for the most part. It's a long process :(



And snow on the ground STILL. Front yard and back yard.

Tracy's Gift

Tracy got to open one gift on Christmas Eve from Nathan. Nine strand liquid silver necklace with a snowflake. Tracy likee a lot. Nathan did good. Mom you'll have to come visit to borrow it :)

Matt, Karen, and Doug during the gift mahem. I think Doug's expression says it all :)

After everyone left we spent sometime with Gma, Kitty, Al, and Joey. Joey got all the attention while Kitty and Al took a breather to sit down and just talk. Tracy showed Joey the mistletoe.

Tracy, Joey, and Nate on the phone with mom.

And Joey and Kitty snookered from the festivities. Time to go home.

Grandma Hindman and Nate.

















Faith trying on a hat she got for Xmas.

















Most of the kids eating. You can see Stephanie and Marcia in the background making sure everyone eats their vegetables.









Doug cutting the ham with Dougie, Brad, Matt and Alicia in background.









The kids watching a flick in the basement.

Christmas 2006 in Littleton, CO

This is one of Stephanie and Kelly's kids. I forget her name.






Al had feeding time with baby Joey.

Faith and Steven (who we thought was Dougie when we first walked in). Nope, Dougie is way bigger and has a way deeper voice.










Super Nathan wowing the crowds with his moves.






And Doug and Karen who drove from AZ for Xmas and to see Matt graduate from Police Academy.

Snake Bruise

Duncan found this snake out in our front yard. He batted it around and chewed on it but that's about it. Nathan relocated it a few doors down. The next day Duncan was in the yard with it again. I was in the shower and Nathan decided to bring it in the house and show it to me. Hell yeah he got yelled at and the snake went back outside.

Nathan's ice hockey team is playing in the finals. They won all but one game this season. And they haven't lost a game yet in the finals. If their streak continues, they'll have 2 more games. So what is this photo? During practice on Saturday a teammate took a slapshot to the goal but hit Nathan on the back of the leg. Right in back of the knee, the only place he doesn't have padding. So we've been watching it change colors every day. It wasn't so bad on Saturday, but now, Tuesday it's getting some good color :)

Hot Day in Colorado

You know it's hot when even Duncan can't handle the heat!

We've hit 102 the past 2 days we've been back in Colorado. Yes it's a dry heat but dang it's hot!

Manhattan Day 5.5

On the way back from Coney Island we stopped in Brooklyn to meet up with one of Nathan's friends from Texas. We did some siteseeing in her neighborhood then headed uptown to get in line for tickets to the Colbert Report. After 3 hours, we were told we wouldn't get in. We had to try. Walking back into town we turned a corner to find a strange sight, a russian woman walking her turtle. Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

But to top that, later that night in Times Square, if you've heard of the naked singing cowboy.....we ran into the naked singing cowgirl. Sorry, I did not whip out the camera to encourage her performing but we stopped and watched for a few seconds. Then it was a late dinner and back to the hotel.

Nothing memorable happened on Friday except that we packed and headed to La Guardia via taxi. Kamikaze taxi but we can say we've survived a New York taxi!

Manhattan Day 5

Since we saw all we needed to see in the city (we don't want to do everything in one trip- there has to be a reason for a return trip, right?), we decided to take the subway out to Coney Island. We had recently seen the hot dog eating championships at Coney Island on ESPN2 the week before and it looked like a must-do, so we did.

But WAIT! What is this? Nathan on his phone on the train talking to a customer on the way to Coney Island??? No way!

We had lunch at Nathan's hot dog stand where the hot dog eating championships take place. We both admitted, the hot dogs were probably the best we've ever tasted. Don't know why.

A huge sign counts down the time to the next hot dog eating contest. There's also a list of the winners. The past few years an asian guy has won eating 53 3/4 dogs with buns and beating his last record. Gross huh?

We walked down the boardwalk and put our toes in the Atlantic Ocean. The beach is pretty darn gross. Girls in cute little bikinis laying among cigarette butts, broken glass and who knows what else. Pretty sad beach but apparently New Yorkers love it.

And we couldn't leave without me taking a few swings at the batting cages.