Weekend Re-org

This past weekend we tackled an issue we've been facing for quite some time. Especially since said issue finally became unbearable after bring home all of Marielle's Christmas loot. The problem is that her room, with a queen-size bed in it for guests, just isn't big enough to serve as a good playroom. The solution . . . get rid of the bed and no more guests. Just kidding :)

In a slightly less drastic move, we opted to move the guest bed into the room that we have been calling our office. We finally came to the realization that Viv doesn't use the office for work, I don't bring work home, and I will never really be able to turn it into the man cave of my dreams. As a result, it is now the office/guest room. Moving the bed set off a chain reaction of events that included taking our bedroom set and moving it to the office to go with the guest bed and starting to rearrange our room, which we've been thinking of doing for months. As you can see from the photo, we didn't get too far in our room because it got late. Viv didn't even want to wait for me to put sheets on our temporary mattress setup.

Once we secure us a new bedroom set and finish things up, we'll try to get some more photos posted. Marielle's room is awesome without the bed in it. She's got a nice open center area and room for a table and chairs as well. The office isn't too bad either with both a desk and bed in it.

P.S. Just for grins, here are some photos of Blizzard 2.0 which was not near as bad in the Denver area is Blizzard 1.0 was.

Sophie's New Toy

Sophie got a new playmate for Christmas. You may recognize this individual from the PetsMart commercial. If not, follow this link to the commercial. We thought this wiener dog was the coolest, and we went ahead and got them as gifts for some of Sophie's doggie friends.

(Christmas) 2

I implemented my first HTML tag today. You'll find it in the title of this post (see superscripted text). Without it, the title just wouldn't be the same.

Now that I've finished showering praise upon myself for my rudimentary HTML skills, Merry Christmas everyone. We hope that this holiday season has found you all well, and we wish you all a great New Year as well.

As the title implies, we have kept busy today by celebrating not one but two Christmas "Mornings." It has been a lot of fun. We mentioned in a recent post that we love having so much of our families close at hand, and it's nice that, on relatively short order, we can see all of them. Furthermore, I've found that Christmas Morning typically ends with that bit of sadness that it's all over for another year - the decorations, the music, the gifts, and the friends and family. By the end of the morning it feels like it's all gone by so quickly. Getting to do it all over again later in the afternoon, for that second time, is definitely fun. This year, we woke up to Christmas Morning with Viv's side of our family, and we later ended the day with another Christmas "morning" with my side of our family.

This was Marielle's second Christmas, and it has been a riot! The concept of gifts has certainly not escaped her, but Viv and I are glad we can celebrate with all of our friends and family to ensure that she learns that this is one of the most important parts of the holiday season. For days she has been saying, "presents?" and "open it?" This morning she even woke up fairly grumpy but cheered right up when she heard that the gifts would finally be opened. As excited as she got over all of her new things, I thought the best part of it all was watching her spend time with all of her aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends.

The Blizzard (or as Marc Would Say "Blizzity Blau")

So my day started off by having 5:30 a.m. witness interviews. The employees I was interviewing worked the night shift so I had to interview them at either that time or 12:30 a.m. I choose 5:30. Anyway, when I left the house it wasn’t snowing, so I put on my suit and my strappy shoes. When I left the interviews at 7:00 a.m. several inches of snow had already accumulated on the ground. The drive to the office though wasn’t all that bad. When I got to work everyone was talking about the weather. I should say when everyone else got to work, since no one else was there at 7:15 a.m.
It just kept snowing and snowing and snowing. I could tell from my window that it was getting bad, but I had something due so I just kept working.

At about 1:30, after everyone had already left because of the snow I finally decided that I was just going to have to turn in my brief later. After all, the agency that I had to file with had already decided to close until Friday. Thankfully, on my way out I saw a friend of mine who noticed my non-blizzard friendly strappy shoes. She said she had an extra pair of boots that I could borrow if I wanted. “Yes please.” When I got to my car I was sooooo grateful for my friend’s boots because I had to kick snow from behind the back of my car so that I could back out.


When I got into my car I knew that I would have a long drive ahead of me. I thought it would probably take at least a couple of hours to get home. Ok, so my dream of a couple of hours was quickly dashed when I spent two hours traveling one mile. Every few feet
another car was stuck in the snow. The worst was the on ramp to the highway. The on ramp had a decent hill and several trucks/cars had gotten stuck on it. Once a car/truck would get unstuck, another one would get stuck.

Marc says this blog is running long, so I’ll cut this story short. Basically, I was on the road for five hours. The whole time was spent swerving around stuck cars and going between 0 and 5 miles an hour. There was even a couple of buses that had turned completely sideways. BTW the only reason I got home in five hours versus seven or eight is because I got off the highway by following a group of cars driving down a ditch and up onto a road beside the highway. I did make it home safely, which I was thankful for. I was so glad to see Marielle and Marc's face. I did feel bad for our nanny who, along with her son Ethan, had to spend the night at our house. By the time we had gotten home it was too late and too treacherous for them to try and make the trip home to Denver. We made it a slumber party though. Lots of cookies and milk! Anyway, I’ll stop now and leave room for Marc. ; )


All I really have to add is that each time I talked to Viv on the phone while we made our separate ways home was, "this car (the Forester) is so Bad @$$." I was glad that her car was treating her well on the treacherous roads. For the most part, my drive was uneventful but loooonggg. Near the end of my drive I chose a few roads less traveled in an effort to side step the traffic. It worked, but I found myself in a few hairy situations. My Legacy's all-wheel-drivedness did well also although I did find myself stuck in our alley, 20 feet from our garage. That sucked. Thirty minutes later, with no help from neighbors, I was in the garage.

Aunts and Uncles

One of our favorite things about Colorado is the fact that so much of our family lives here. From Fort Collins to Colorado Springs we've got relatives holding things down all along the Front Range. Between the locals and frequently-visiting out-of-towners, we love that Marielle is growing up getting to know so much of her extended family. Here are some pics of her having fun with Aunts Jenn and Sarah, and Uncles Ryan and Josh.


We are also excited that my Grandfather and his wife have just recently moved out to Colorado. Marielle is his first great granddaughter, and she is always excited to see him. She has taken to calling him Opi. I guess that if Opa is Grandpa, Opi must be Great Grandpa.

Hopefully, this is Cooler than it Sounds

OK, I'm not thrilled with the idea of making our blog a forum for poking fun at people, but this deserved mentioning. Think of it as more of a warning to us newer parents to really think through the situations we plan to put our children in. A contest for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese sounds harmless enough, right? Wrong.


Somehow, when Thomas gets older, I don't think he will be thrilled that in 2006 he was "One of the Cheesiest Kids in America."

"Cherry Creek Breakfast"

Last weekend we went to breakfast in Cherry Creek. We had a really hard time keeping the kiddos from playing with their food.


Note the boy in the red shirt who falls off the waffle.

Thanksgiving in the Springs

It seems like November was a light blogging month for all. Lisa and PC did OK, The Clintons have caught up here in the beginning of December, and the Pierz Family blogged about no less than two Thansgivings. I think it's time for us to follow suit.

First of all, we had a great Thanksgiving. We headed down to Viv's Mom and Al's house. Believe it or not, this was the first Thanksgiving that I didn't spend with my side of the Family. It was a little weird not being at my parent's house, but, as always, I had a great time with Viv's side of our family. They always take good care of us. The whole day was filled with cooking, and it all built to quite the feast. All of the ladies in the house contributed to the cooking while us guys ran support. I made a run to the grocery store and Al and the kids helped look after Marielle. Al also took care of mixing up one of my favorite things Viv's Mom makes which is a sherbet punch. Vivian debuted three new recipes that were a total hit. One was a stuffing with apples, another was a potato au gratin, and lastly a pumpkin pie.

After dinner, we dusted off the family's Super Nintendo for a bit of old school, 16-bit entertainment. We all sat down and played a little Tetris Attacks, and yes, I do mean all of us. Everyone loves this game and it is truly addicting. Vivian is the reigning champ and is virtually unbeaten. You play three-match sets, and I, for one can win a single match but have never beaten her best of three to take the set. I have been trying for seven years. Anyway, it was a lot of fun to have everyone pile into the game room to play.

The whole weekend was great.