Willy

This is a post dedicated to Justin's (and my) lovable, loyal, hyper, happy, furry 4-legged friend, Willy. The past week has been hard for us because Willy was tragically hit on the road and killed. It was a traumatic evening as we laid Willy to rest up in Ash Canyon (western foothills of Carson City) close to where we always went mountain biking, and therefore one of Willy's most favorite stomping grounds. He has a fabulous view of Carson City and I'm pretty certain, our house.

I've never really had a pet before, and I married into being one of Willy's parents--so this was a new experience for me. Willy was 6 years old when Justin got him and he lived to be 13.5 (94.5 in dog years). He was really a member of our family and will be missed very dearly. Willy was most in his element while hiking and mountain biking--they will never be quite the same again. This slide show is meant to recount some of the fun times we've had with Willy.

Goddaughter

Isn't my Goddaughter just the cutest you've ever seen?

Green Christmas

Rewind to Christmas.

We celebrated Christmas with the Green's a few days after Christmas when all the "out-of-towners" could get together. We ate several times, had a white-elephant gift exchange, watched the Steelers game, went for a walk, played poker, watched a movie, and just enjoyed ourselves.





Here's the whole Green gang, minus just a few.

Hard at work

Self portrait.

Just me at work last week.

In the western foothills of Eagle Valley (Carson City) hiking around in the mud.

Break on through to the "upper" side

Last weekend Justin and I drove up to Heavenly for a couple snowboard runs. It was completely cloudy in Carson City and I mean socked in! The whole regional area was under an "inversion layer". Basically a very stable atmosphere with cold air down below and warm air above. No gradient for mixing...

Robot party

Our friend's Jen & Ramon's son turned 1 on Saturday and we celebrated robot style! Notice Ramon has a Casio keyboard inside his robot costume...

...and there are many other instruments at Jen & Ramon's that Justin loves to play!

Chicken pot pie

I made my first ever chicken pot pie.

I was pleased with it and Justin liked it too!

Winter Wonderland...sort of

It has become rather routine that the 1st week of the month I spend some time in Dixie Valley. I've started to dislike Dixie Valley over this last year, but it was hard not to admit Dixie was looking her best this week.

There was a consistent 6-8 inches of snow over the whole valley and almost every surface had another layer of what the locals call "pogonip". Wikipedia explains it as: "It occurs very rarely during cold winter spells, usually in deep mountain valleys. Pogonip only forms under the right conditions, the humidity has to be near 100% as the air temperature drops to well below 0 °C (32 °F), allowing ice crystals to form in the air. The ice crystals will then settle onto surfaces."

Please disregard the large amount of birdy poo on the solar panel....using a wet cloth to scrub it off would have only resulted in a somewhat diluted and smeared frozen poo slushy.

The pogonip attached itself to all our sensors and debilitated them. Lovely to look at, sucky for data collection.

My attempt at being a good photographer...

Grandma, John & Me?

Recently my Mom shipped me a box full of all the piano books, sheet music and other random things that I had left inside my piano bench when Rob came to pick up my piano. I sorted through all of it and kept all my favorite sheet music and Christmas books. One thing I found did not seem to fit with the piano genre.

I'm not sure if I made this work of art sometime during my bad handwriting childhood or if my cousin John Tack did...but I enjoyed it all the same! I love the 7 pieces of scotch tape!

Old Friend

One of my very best friends from high school was Mandee. Yes, 2 e's Mandee. All her siblings have names with 2 e's....isn't that cool? Anyway, it's always hard to stay in contact with friends when you are so far away and I can only say I've done well with about 2 high school friends and one college friend.

Mandee and her husband, Denny, recently moved back to Butler while we were home Justin and I went to visit. They have a beautiful home and a baby girl on the way!

Check out the baby shower invitation. Can you tell Mandee is a graphic designer???