Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas from Butler, PA!

Justin and I had a pretty painless trip back to Pennsylvania this week and have been enjoying the winter weather, family and food. Here's few highlights of our trip thus far.

Sleigh ride

Late Sunday afternoon Justin and I participated in a historic Carson City Christmas sleigh-ride party. It was so much fun!

Everyone shows up at the first location where a spread of appetizers are laid out along with all sorts of beverages. Then the dual-horse-drawn carriage takes you to the next house for the salad course, then to the main course and finally to dessert. We even sang Christmas carols during the sleigh rides!

AGU conference in the city

Justin and I got to travel together last week to the annual AGU (American Geophysical Union) conference held in downtown San Francisco, CA. From what I hear, it's the largest gathering of scientists in one place, at one time, in the world. Somewhere around 12,000-15,000 scientists.

Crazy.

We both presented posters of our individual work in the crazy mob of posters you see in the pictures below. Although there were crowds of scientists we had a large showing of UNR hydro (past and present) students, faculty, and USGS people there to hang out with. It was fun to be in the city, eating the great food, walking the city streets and staying in the fancy hotel that was so nicely decorated for Christmas (Sharon, you'd have loved it!)

Boarding season begins!

We took advantage of all the snow we've gotten lately and spent our first day on the slopes of Heavenly. We loaded Libby full! 4 adults, 2 snowboards, 2 sets of skis/poles and all our boots and gear.


I was totally worried I had forgotten everything I ever learned and spend the day taking digger after digger, but I pleasantly surprised myself. I did quite well. It helped that the conditions (although blowing snow) were excellent--not too hard-packed with a few inches of fluffy stuff on top to make carving fun (and not scary).

Sarah posing on the top of Stagecoach run.

Second wave

Friday night started the second wave of our big winter storm. It started freezing rain and then Saturday turned over to huge fluffy snow flakes. Pretty sweet!

I'm trying to get into that warm, fuzzy, contagious Christmas feeling. Even thought we're going to be out of town for the next 2.5 weeks, I decided I couldn't stand not decorating the house. We don't have that much stuff, but enough to make it Christmasy.

I was playing around with my camera setting last night. These are just a few shots of my decorations I liked.

Everett's shower

Friend's of ours, Kelly and Ashley, are expecting little Everett on Valentine's Day 2010.

Sarah and I threw Ashley a shower last weekend that was a lot of fun. We had dinner and only played one game, for Kelly's sake. Everyone in attendance wrote down a favorite childhood memory and Kelly & Ashley had to figure out who it belonged to. It was a lot of fun!

The Mom and Dad-to-be.

And yes, that is Justin on the floor under the chair. lol.

Snow day...

...yes it is a snow day, but Justin and I are still heading to work, although all schools are closed. This is what we woke up to this morning and it's still coming down!

Rob--Here's a picture of Justin's car for you!

USGS holiday party 2009

My Christmas party was a lot of fun this year. Better venue this year-small italian resturant.

I also won the 2 lies and a truth game. Wine and chocolate for me!

2 lies. 1 truth.

My office Christmas party is tomorrow night (semi-formal attire, woohoo) and we are playing a game called "2 lies. 1 truth." Each co-worker has to submit 2 lies and 1 truth about themselves and the rest of us have to figure out which one is true.

Here's what I submitted. Can you figure out which one is true?

I got my eyebrow pierced for the second time while in Australia

I won first place in my hometown's Junior Miss competition

I was dropped on my head while crowd surfing at a local concert

Family Time

Special thanks to Aunt Linda, who's blog I swiped these Thanksgiving pictures from!

Aunt Linda and Pappa Jack above

Amy and Ally below.

So good to see them all!

Justin and I played 18 holes of frisbee golf with Brandon and Jayden the day after Thanksgiving. Thank God for a little exercise to wear off some of that fabulous turkey!

Then we had a family dinner with NanEvelyn, Trevor, Natalie and Kelcie

And Willy says "buh-bye" till after Christmas...

Thanksgiving 2009

We are in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving this year.

It was a beautiful drive down with a little more traffic than usual, but I can't complain since it was supposed to be the busiest travel day of the year! Willy seemed to enjoy it!

Willy will be staying with Grandma and Grandpa for the month of December. Justin and I have a week long conference to attend in San Francisco and then a week in PA for Christmas. Willy doesn't seem to do so great without people around these days, so Ron and Sharon graciously agreed to Willy-sit for us. Thank you!!!!

Thanksgiving day was full of friends and family. We went to Aunt Linda and Uncle Alan's house for our first meal. It was great to see everyone and Pappa Jack too. I didn't take any pictures, but hopefully Aunt Linda or Jenny will post some.

Next was dinner at home with Brandon, Jayden, Hailey and friend of the family, Marie. Wonderful time...but after my second dinner, my belly was ridiculously full!
And finally it was on to cousin Sulaya's house. We had lots of fun hanging out with NanEvelyn and all the friends and family. A great Thanksgiving!

Love, prayers and turkey to all my family back home and across the country!!

"Fetch the car" trip. Day 3 & 4.

Finally finishing up posting on this trip.

I forgot to mention we went down to the locks on Day 2 and saw the salmon ladder exhibit.

The morning of day 3 we left Seattle and headed south to Portland. We spent the afternoon walking around downtown Portland browsing several huge bookstores, record shops and visiting the Willamette River. I luckily had enough hotel reward points to get a room right downtown.



Day 4 we departed Portland and made our way down to Trail, OR to visit Justin's grandfather, Pappa Toby. Because we came in from the north it certainly seemed like he lives way out in the boonies, but in reality he's not that far from Medford.

We spent the afternoon and evening visiting with Pappa Toby and his wife Twila, who live with Twila's daughter Melinda, her husband Bud. They have a really nice home set back near the forest. Pappa Toby showed us his scrapbook and told us all kinds of stories. It was a really nice day. Now I know where Justin gets his thick curly hair from too!

"Fetch the car trip". Day 2.

While in Seattle we stayed with friends of Justin's family Christy Cameron. Her brother, Kelly (Justin's best man) was also in town so we got to hang out with both of them. Christy has a sweet little apartment in a trendy part of town with little shops, restaurants and bars all around.

We also met her most interesting cat--Boomba. There is seriously the brain of a cynical old man in his furry head.

Christy is a graphic designer for corporate Starbucks, which is located in Seattle. We went to visit her at work and got a tour of the building and some of the creative things they do.

I learned why Starbucks has the mermaid as their logo. She is actually a siren, just like the ones from mythology that sang and lured the sailor to their death. I guess it's because coffee is rather addicting, so it's symbolic. Crazy, eh?

The pic of Christy and I was in corporate Starbucks with one of their displays of coffee beans and the burlap coffee bags on the wall.

We had dinner at a sweet mexican restaurant and visited the biggest vinyl record store I've ever seen.

And finally we had dessert at his coffee shop/cupcake bakery. Holy cow they were good. And they had a cupcake late happy hour--buy 3 cupcakes, get 3 free. Oh boy!

Check out all the sprinkles!!!

"Fetch the car" trip. Day 1.

We made it safely back from our "fetch the car trip". Although the sole purpose of the trip was to pick up the car we bought in Seattle, we packed a TON of other fun in there too. I'll try to summarize.

Wednesday we flew to Seattle and picked up the car. 2003 Volkswagen Jetta, TDI (turbo diesel injection). Spiffy little ride that will be mostly Justin's commuter car to Reno as he starts his new job this week!

That afternoon we drove into downtown Seattle and walked around the markets and did a bunch of awesome people-watching...one of our favorite pass times.

We ordered a local cheese plate from a popular brewery/restaurant as an early evening appetizer and this is what we got. Count them. Five pieces of cheese. Five. For $10.



For dinner we went over to my cousins Manon and Ian's house. They have a beautiful home and it was just awesome to see them and baby Will. We had a blast catching up on what we've all been doing, had a fabulous dinner and got to play with Will. Thanks, Manon and Ian!!

Roadtrip

Greetings from Seattle, WA! Justin and I left for a total last minute roadtrip on Wednesday. More details and pictures to come. Right now we're jumping in the car and heading for Portland...

LEAVES

Oh the leaves. The leaves. All the stinking leaves.

We tried a new way of disposing of our leaves this year....racking piles of leaves onto a tarp and then stomping as many as possible into the back of Justin's truck--and then going to the dump. Defiantly saved time not bagging all those leaves. Besides--I don't like the idea of 40 bags of organic matter stuffed inside plastic bags sitting in our landfills.

Justin made make-shift sideboards for his truck to increase our leaf capacity. The pic on the right is looking into the back of the truck through the back window from inside. hehehe