Black Friday

This year I took the day after Thanksgiving off, and we went down to Crown Center to watch Santa Claus come to town in his "sleigh".  We've been down here with the kids to see him every year, but we hadn't watch him arrive since Noah was two.  

We killed a little time before he arrived, then stood outside with the rest of the crowd waiting for him to arrive.  We were well positioned - right in front of where his carriage would stop.  Finally he came, and it was cute to see Noah nervously waving his hand at him.  We followed him in, then as everyone else went to stand in line to have pictures taken, we walked over to Union Station instead.  There will be plenty of time to go during the week for our annual pictures with Santa, when the lines are shorter and the kids can play longer at Crayola Land.

At Union Station, we let the boys have a train ride that turned out to be pretty lame for $5 each - three turns on a circle track at a speed that Elliot could have crawled a couple years ago.  But they enjoyed it, and afterwards we went to Science City for a while.  After a busy, fun-filled morning, we had lunch at Harvey's in Union Station.  A little more upscale than Fritz's, where your meal is delivered by a train, but not nearly as crazy either. 

Noah was fascinated by the Lego Nutcracker.

Counting down the minutes 'til Christmas.

Looking for Santa Claus

Cute family.  I don't think we have a single picture of all of them staring at the camera at once.

Watching Santa arrive.

The big guy driving could give Santa a run for his money. 

The perfect spot to watch Santa disembark.

It's the real Santa!

I don't think he was as interested in the trains running around this gingerbread village, as he was in the candy on display.

Taking the skywalk to Union Station.

View of downtown KC from the skywalk.

Union Station

They were actually more excited about this train ride than the picture indicates, but it seemed pretty lame to me.

Playing music at Science City

Playing with the water table.  This thing fascinates them. 

Elliot got wet even though we kept pulling up his sleeves

Thanksgiving 2011

It was not our year to host Thanksgiving, which suited me fine with all we had going on this year.  Instead, we went to Mandy's aunt and uncle's house.  The day turned out to be a perfect day, weather-wise, and we got to enjoy a lot of outdoor time with the boys. I took advantage of the weather too, and even rode my motorcycle to dinner.  

Noah and Elliot love running around their big back yard, playing around the trees and creek and just being boys.  They cleaned up all the hedge apples lying on the ground by throwing them in the creek.  Any excuse to throw something in and watch it splash - the bigger, the better.  It was certainly a better endeavor than throwing decorative rocks onto the net that covered their fish pond/waterfall, which I found Elliot doing when I first walked outside.  I fished them all off the net with the pool strainer, and pointed him towards the creek.  I find myself using "Because you just can't" as an answer more often, as Elliot is asking me, "Why can't I?" more often. 

This year the roles were reversed as Noah ate a good, balanced meal, and Elliot ate virtually nothing but the pumpkin cookies he discovered on the counter.  As always, there was food aplenty, and lots of desserts.  All that was missing this year was a screening of "Christmas Vacation."

Playing in Snow

The day after hiking Mt. Sniktau, we hiked Mt. Royal (in Frisco).  Instead of the clear, blue day we had the day before, it was snowing in the mountains.  The trail was steep and icy in places, and even though it was cold and snowing, we were sweating from the effort.  I somehow managed to lose my camera the day before, so I only snapped a few cellphone pictures of the rest of the trip.

After about 4 hours of that, we had lunch at a great authentic Mexican restaurant in Frisco and headed back to the hotel for a little nap.  We spent the afternoon in Breckenridge wandering around, trying to decide what to do the next day.

We wanted to go snowshoeing, but we'd been getting mixed signals on whether there was enough snow in places to make it worthwhile.  We could have used them at the top of the trail at Mt. Royal, but they weren't needed at the bottom.  We decided to rent them anyway, and the next morning we agreed on hiking Argentine Pass, which starts high and ends at 13,205'.   To get to the trailhead requires traveling about 4 miles on a 4WD road.  It was covered in snow, but there were tracks of vehicles that had gone before us, so we decided to follow.  About halfway there, the snow started getting deeper, and the tracks disappeared.  We continued on, but a few hundred yards later we were stopped in deep snow trying to crest a hill.

It was a narrow road, with no way to turn around, so I backed the Suburban down the hill.  I promptly got stuck, nearly going over the edge into Peru Creek, which ran right beside the trail.  After we dug ourselves out of that mess and got back on the trail, I continued backing down, trying to stay in the tracks we had created coming up.  Instead, I got sucked into a small ditch on the other side of the trail, which abutted a rocky hillside.  It took us quite a bit longer to dig out of that one, and cost us the driver's side mirror in the process.  A few yards beyond that, we found a turnaround spot, and just parked there.

We were now about an hour past our scheduled start time, and still two miles from the trailhead.  With a flight out at 4:00, we were on a very specific timeline.  We donned the snowshoes and started moving.  Instead of doing Argentine Pass, we decided to explore the area around the Pennsylvania Mine, an old ore mine developed around 1879.  There were no other tracks besides ours, so we had to break our own trail in the snow.  The areas of deep drifts were hard work going uphill, and even downhill, but we eventually made it to the mine and back.

We got back to Frisco, packed up, washed the Suburban to make sure we hadn't scratched up the side, and headed to the airport.  A few hours later, I sat in my bed reading lots of bedtime stories to the boys, who were both very happy to see me.  It was a great feeling to see a huge grin on Noah's face as I surprised him coming up the stairs, and Elliot told me he wanted to give me "the biggest hug ever."  It was a fun weekend, but I was also happy to be back with Mandy and the boys.  Mandy, as always, was a trooper - taking care of the boys by herself for four long days.

Top of Mt. Royal

Sunday morning outside our hotel

Oops.  Digging out with a snowshoe.

Heading uphill in deep snow.

Pennsylvania Mine.  This building still has an ore-crushing machine on the top floor.  It looks pretty dangerous at this point.

 

What's for dinner?

I was walking back from dinner in Breckenridge, along the main street, and this big guy was standing at the doorway to the left of this picture, like he'd just let himself out.  He proceeded to walk right towards me, backing me up a few feet, before he stopped and stared at me, as if he were daring me to stop him.  I didn't.  I may have even done the palms-out, universal, "Hey, I don't want no trouble" sign.  He then walked back to the garbage can and had a little look.  

Judging from the size, this guy hasn't missed many meals.

Getting out of the office

In the midst of a busy few weeks, I had a business trip to Denver scheduled.  It was on a Thursday, so I decided to extend it and take the weekend off to play in the mountains.   Thursday was a typical travel day.  Early flight, but waking up much earlier because of a fear of oversleeping.  Long day of travel, meetings, typical heavy dinner with all the meeting participants, and off to bed in a different time zone.  

Another colleague stayed over as well, and we decided to try some hiking or snowshoeing while we were out here.   I'd been looking forward to the weekend, but a lingering cold and sinus issue left me feeling pretty drained, and unsure of my ability to do anything.  We had initially decided on Rocky Mountain National Park, but 85-100 mph winds had been wreaking havoc all week, and the snow wasn't yet plentiful enough for any meaningful snowshoeing.  

Instead, we decided on Mt. Sniktau, a 13,234-foot mountain off Loveland Pass that provides spectacular views of both sides of the continental divide mountain ranges.  The first, and last time I'd been here was with Mandy a few years ago.  At that time, closer to summer, it was still cold and snowy up high, but I remember it being a great acclimation hike with a lot of visual reward for the effort.   

We exited off I-70, headed up Hwy 6, picking up some skiers along the way, and made our way to the start at 10,990 feet.  As expected, it is colder, snowier and windier in the late fall months than it is in summer.  When we started out, the wind was pretty mild, but it picked up about 20 minutes after we started.  It was a tailwind, of sorts, and didn't hinder us going up.  Once on top of the main ridge, however, we were getting gusts that kept us off balance.   About an hour and forty-five minutes after we started, we stood on top.  

I made two hugely stupid mistakes on top.  I was shifting some gear around, and briefly stuck my sunglasses in my pocket without securing them.  A wind gust made me stumble, and my sunglasses went skittering across the snow, and down a steep drop.  I briefly debated going after them, but the steepness of the slope made me reconsider.  No sunglasses, lots of wind, sun and snow can mean snow blindness, or at least painful retinas if you're not careful.  A few minutes later, I took off my over-mittens, and right as I did, a gust ripped one out of my hands.  I ran after it and made a final full-body leap to grab it, but it blew away, and down the mountain, over a 700-foot steep slope.  This was a little more serious given the wind-chill, but I still had insulated gloves on, so I stuck my left hand in my pocket on the way down to keep it warm.

It was a very windy second half, but we made it down in good time.  Afterwards we ate at the Dillon Dam Brewery, and unable to muster any more energy for awhile, we booked a room at a nearby hotel.  

Later that evening, we headed to Breckenridge for dinner.  We'll try something different tomorrow, and hopefully we'll have continued good sunny weather. 

Torrey's Peak in the distance

Windswept ridge

Great views from the top

The blowing snow at times created brief whiteouts.

Men in the kitchen

Mandy was off getting a haircut, Noah was with a friend and it was just Elliot and me in the house.  I've been doing some experimenting with various recipes lately, so I decided to give another one a try.  I enjoy cooking, but I don't get the chance to do it often.  I figured Mandy would be home soon and she could give it a try.

With my little helper, we made Eggplant Tricolor - roasted eggplant with a topping of cherry tomatoes, capers and yellow bell pepper that had marinated in red wine vinegar and olive oil.  Topped with buffalo mozzarella crumbles.   I thought it tasted pretty good, but I didn't get any other takers.

Elliot was excited about it right up until the time I asked him if he wanted to try it.  "Nooooo, I don't like that."  He wanted Cheez-its instead.  He did tell me I was his favorite daddy, though, so I didn't go away empty.  I asked Noah, who had come home right before we finished, but his friend came over and they made their own creations - crackers with American cheese and peanut butter.  They both declined, saying they didn't like eggplant, because it tasted like eggs.  Mandy never got a chance to try it, as her appointment went waaay long, and we ended up taking cousin Charlie out for pizza later.  

We all had fun with our recipes though, and had some good male bonding in the kitchen.

It's pretty, at least. 

My little helper. He kept wanting to flip something with that spatula.

Peanut butter and cheese crackers...

After awhile, it was like an arms race to see who could make the biggest cracker sandwich.

I need to relax more, I guess.

Noah is certainly no Rembrandt yet, but he does have an eye for detail.  This was a picture he drew of me, Mom and Elliot.  

Mandy asked him, "What are those lines?"  Noah said, "Those are the lines on daddy's forehead."

We've been busy

We've had a lot of fun over the past month or so that hasn't made it to the blog because we've been so busy. So we're playing a little catch-up here, and posting some of our fun in random bits.

There isn't much award-winning prose contained in these posts, but the main purpose of this blog is to document the fun and important moments in our kids lives for them to see someday.

Dunn's Cider Mill

Dunn's Cider Mill is a unique little place just south of Kansas City that produces fresh apple cider and cider donuts.  This is the real thing - fresh apple cider is defined as the fresh, untreated liquid expressed from apples.  Anything else is considered apple juice.

Sucking down the cider

Sucking down the cider donuts.  Made fresh right before your eyes.

Elliot and Grandma Anita watching the donut-making machine with fascination.

Looking at the scarecrows.

Afterwards, we went to the park in downtown Belton to play for awhile