Aspen Weekend

Marc, Marielle, I, Colette, Geoff,
and Alex all headed up to Aspen this past weekend. Once a year I get to use either the Aspen or Steamboat Springs condo that my firm owns. This year I chose Aspen and I got a slot in November. Since we have little kiddos it didn’t matter to me that it wasn’t quite ski season, although they did open up the slopes last weekend since they had enough snow. We headed up on Friday night and drove through the mountains in the dark. It was actually a really nice car ride. Marielle slept most of the way up there and the rest of the time we listened to “her” music. I am sure that all of you reading this are glad you didn’t have to endure several hours of Marc and I’s singing. Marielle seems to dig it, but what does she know. I think Aspen is such a pretty town, especially at night. They have all the white Christmas lights up and it looks just like an ideal mountain town should look, quaint and elegant. Anyway, we went almost straight to bed since we got up there pretty late.

On Saturday we ate a cute little café and then headed to the Maroon Bells for a photo shoot. There was a decent amount of snow and we didn’t make it that far in, but it was fun to be in that close to the mountains and get to take some pictures with the kids. We spent the rest of the day walking around the town and looking in the ridiculously expensive shops. Marc bought a coffee and milk for Marielle and paid $11.00. I definitely don’t think we could afford to live in Aspen. On Saturday night we ate at a Chinese place and played Scrabble. Colette beat all of us three times in a row. Guess I had better become a better speller.

On Sunday, we ate breakfast in Glenwood Springs. We intended on eating at a place in Aspen, but it was closed (the restaurant, not the town). We thought if we just drove towards Glenwood, where we planned on going to the hot springs, we would find a place. Well there was NO and I mean NO real breakfast places in between Aspen and Glenwood. Even in Glenwood we had trouble finding places that were open. We drove around in circles until we found a breakfast place. We almost went to Village Inn, which I detest, but at that point I would have eaten anything. Anyway, luckily we found a place and it was great. They had the best cinnamon rolls. Marielle ate like half of mine.
We did eventually make it to the natural hot spring pools in Glenwood after breakfast and it was lots of fun. Marielle LOVED it. I mean LOVED it.
Most of the time she just wanted to sit playing on the steps with her toys. She doesn’t really like going where she can’t touch the bottom of the pool. She stood on the steps, bounced on the steps, and sat on the steps.
Alex, however, liked swimming about with Geoff. He too played on the stairs, but was a little more adventurous about where he would go. When we left the pool Marielle had a break down. She just kept screaming WaWa! WaWa! Moma WaWa! Please! WaWa! WaWa! Anyway, you get the idea. Marc couldn’t even get her dressed in the locker room because that was too close to the pool. So he took our little naked tyke out to the car to get her dressed. After Glenwood we all headed back home. It was a fun trip and it was nice to get away from the city and go into the Mountains. I look forward to next year!

P.S. All the group pictures and most of the pictures of the adults were taken by Geoff and Colette so you'll have to look to them for those. : )

Contraband Photos

That's what Leah's calling these pictures. We went out to dinner at the Dragon Restaurant which is a Hanks' Family favorite. We then went to a new place that Emo had heard about called Pinkberry. It's kind of like a TCBY but all modern and chic. Apparently this restaurant concept is sooooo hot that we weren't allowed to take photos inside. I guess they thought we might sell them to a competitor. Apparently, they didn't realize that the majority of the photo was Anjali and me.

I've had a lot of fun getting to catch up with the all of our family out here in California. They've made me feel right at home.

P.S. Anjali wasn't as angry with me as she looks. Once she got settled, she fell right back asleep.

I Love the LA Freeways!

Despite LA being known for having horrendous traffic, I love to drive here. I think that the highway system across the metro area is quite impressive. Even when I do hit traffic, it at least moves. Also, my 45-minutes-to-anywhere theory still remains intact. I love how everything criss-crosses everything else to create this web of alternate routes to anywhere you want to go. Viv's family out here has never given me the same directions twice for getting someplace, and I think that's the norm. Anyone out here has an arsenal of routes for getting anywhere and choosing a route for any one location is dependent on: 1) traffic at that point in time, 2) Time of day, and 3) a gut feeling that cannot be taught to visitors. You may ask, "aren't 1 and 2 the same or at least related?" No. There is traffic associated with rush hour, but traffic can occur at anytime. Getting hooked up with these alternate routes has been invaluable. It's allowed me to get places quickly and learn my way around the city.

Also, everyone refers to the different highways as the "blank." One of my staple routes on this trip has been: the 210 west to the 134 west to the 101. Often, the directions, such as east or west in my previous example, are often not necessary. Instead, your directions will couple a highway with a city. For example, the route above could also be said as: take the 210 towards Pasadena to the 134 towards Burbank to the 101 towards the San Fernando Valley. How come I-25 is not the 25, or how come we don't take the 36 to Boulder? I find it fascinating and right now I'm probably putting you all into a coma.

Oh, I have also only seen one cop out on a freeway. I've seen lots on the surface streets, but almost none on the freeways. There is also a lack of signs clarifying the speed limit. This combinations allows the masses to cruise around at incredible speeds virtually unchecked. I think looking the other way on the speeding is essential to traffic moving at all in this city. It is a thing of Beauty.

Californiaaaaa, Californiaaa

Just imagine the music from Fox's The OC playing in the background as you read the title above. I know, I'm a horrible singer. For those of you who didn't know, I am out in Los Angeles this week for training. Viv has been minding the house and kids on her own, and from all reports she's holding it down just like I knew she would.

My class has been going well. It is all about process improvement, and I'm glad to say that I think I'll be able to apply a lot of it to my team's work flow when I get back.

Although my trip is work related, it couldn't have been timed better. It has allowed me to claim the honor of being the first Colorado family member to meet the newest addition to Vivian's cousin's family. On Sunday, I got to see little Anjali. She slept for most of my visit (and boy does she sleep hard), but I did manage to introduce myself when she briefly woke up to stretch and yawn. She's got the darkest hair, but her eyes seem like they could stay on the lighter side, although not as light as Lacy's. Watching Lacy dote on Anjali was a lot of fun. After hugging the teddy bear we got for Anjali, Lacy took it right over to her crib and sat it down by her. On numerous occasions, she snuck in little kisses for her sister while she napped.

Since being here, I have also gotten a chance to see Viv's Aunt, Uncle, and their respective families. In my first two nights here, I had accumulated in excess of 220 miles on my rental car! Not that I'm complaining. They have made me feel right at home with a delicious homemade Korean feast last night for dinner and a Jamba Juice that Emo still owed me. Oh, and Leah and Cliff fed me as well. Leah, I think the dessert was a success.

The Children's Museum

This last weekend we went to the Children's Museum with Colette, Geoff and Alex. The kids thought it was awesome! Marielle was a huge fan of the play kitchen. Marc and I couldn't get her out of there. I am a particular fan of the apron : )









Both the kids liked the pretend grocery store. It was cute to see them push their little carts around. Marielle shopped like there was no tomorrow. She acted liked she really had to stock up because there weren't any groceries at home.









Marielle also enjoyed the painting. She got a little bit on her shirt, but we are hoping it will wash out. If not, it will just be her artist shirt and she can wear it when she paints.









The kids favorite by far, however, was the lockers. The lockers were in the play gym area and Marielle and Alex thought it was the greatest thing since Velcro. To play with the lockers you have to abide by the following protocols: 1) go into locker; 2) try and shut yourself into locker; 3) laugh; 4) get out of locker; 5) try and walk through locker with door on both sides; 6) laugh; 7) get out of locker; 8) try and shut your friend in a locker coming perilously close to getting their fingers jammed; and 9) laugh.

Quick Post #2

In addition to grocery shopping, we have been doing mad amounts of laundry. Marielle and I were folding some laundry last night when something in one of the yet-to-be-folded piles caught her attention. She ran over to the pile of clothes, pointed, and said, "me bug." She repeated it a few times, so I went to see what she was looking at. Buried there in the pile was her ladybug Halloween costume from last year. Although the sentence leaves something to be desired from a grammatical standpoint, I am amazed at how our little ones are starting to grasp sentence structure on some level and pronoun usage. For example, when I say, "You did it Marielle." She responds by saying, "I did it." It's awesome.

Anyway, she spent most of the evening in her ladybug costume.

Quick Post #1

So I will keep these short and to the point. Viv wants to blog about our past weekend and these posts have nothing to do with the weekend. Check them out and stay tuned for Viv's post-weekend post. This one's really for Lisa and PC.

The other day we decided to thin out our kitchen cabinets after returning from grocery shopping. In the process, I came across a box of Taco Rice. For those of you who do not know, Taco Rice is huge in Okinawa, and yes, this is the box of Taco Rice sent to us from Okinawa some months ago by Lisa and PC. At first glance, this doesn't seem like a big deal. Especially since most boxed rice-type meals have a respectable shelf life. Shortly after receiving this stuff from Lisa and PC, however, we got a frantic email from them stating that there was actually meat in this box! Despite the manufacturer's guarantee that said meat was OK to sit, unrefrigerated, on a shelf, they begged us to throw it away. We are finally heeding their warning.

Multimedia message

I am sending this from my cell. Now I can potentially blog about things as they happen. Although it took me 5 minutes to send this with only my thumbs.

More Halloween Hulabaloo

Every Halloween, my brother, Ryan, comes up with the best costumes. He definitely gets this from my parents who always outdid themselves on our costumes growing up. By the way, Jossie, his girlfriend, is no slouch either when it comes to Halloween. This year the two of them went as Mario and Princess Peach from the Super Mario Brothers games. As an added twist, they made little go karts to hang over their shoulders a la Mario Kart.

If anyone has no idea what I’m talking about, I am sad that you have missed out on the Super Mario Brother video game franchise and video gaming in general.

Anyway, either Princess Peach had already crossed the finish line or she spun out on a banana peel because she didn’t make the photo.

Boo at the Zoo and Halloween Too

We decided to really amp things up for Halloween this year. Last year, we skipped going out to trick or treat with Marielle. It was a bit cold last year and we didn't think that Marielle would know what was going on. This year, in addition to keeping our Boo at the Zoo and Bump & Grind (see the Pierz Family Blog) tradition alive, we took Marielle out for a round of candy-tax collection in my parents' neighborhood. All together the Halloween weekend has been a lot of fun. Boo at the Zoo was a lot of fun this weekend. It was definitely an improvement over last year even though the parking situation still sucked. It was better because Marielle and Alex really knew what was going on this year, and it was much warmer. They had a blast watching the animals. The elephants and bears were big hits. Marielle calls them "el-fants" and "bearies." In addition to checking out the animals, Marielle and Alex spent the day finding new places for sitting next to each other.


For Halloween proper, we headed up to my parents' neighborhood. Where our neighborhood is all but devoid of trick-or-treaters, my parents' neighborhood teems with them. Marielle really liked walking to the front doors of homes with all the other kids that were out. she'd stand there in her mouse costume with the ninja turtles, princesses, vampires, and soldiers and wait her turn for getting candy. Omi walked the block with us so that she could show off her grand daughter while Opa (in Where's Waldo garb) stayed back to hand out candy. By the end of the night, Marielle was definitely getting the hang of things. She yelled for one household to hurry up when they didn't answer the door right away and in another instance she tried to take candy from a bowl on her own. A little bit of trick to go with the treats I guess. She had a lot of fun.

Sock Puppets and Jack-o-Lanterns

This post has been waiting in the wings all week. This past weekend Geoff, Colette, and Alex came over to go pumpkin hunting with us - at least that was the plan. Our first snows of the season kind of "rained" on our parade. Rather than trudge through the muddy fields of the pumpkin patch, we decided to trudge through the aisles of Albertson's for our pumpkins. Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. Since we new that hunting pumpkins at Albertson's wouldn't be nearly as time consuming as picking them out of a field, we thought we'd need some other activities to fill our afternoon.

We opted to make sock puppets with the kids. Over the last few weeks, Marielle has been obsessed with putting her socks on her hands. It's pretty funny. First she'll pull the socks off of her feet. Then, she tries her hardest to pull them onto her hands. She manages to get her fingers into the sock on her first hand, but she usually needs help from there. I thought that if she really wants to put the socks on her hands, they should at least be entertaining. Making sock puppets sounds easy, but believe me when I say there are a few things to keep in mind. Like the fact that sock puppets need lips but not mouths. Or the fact that poorly-drawn noses will look like mouths which we just learned are unnecessary. After a little trial and error, we all managed to crank out 5 or 6 pretty cool sock puppets. Geoff cranked out a decent ant-eater puppet, and I had a pretty scary looking puppet with fangs (it seemed appropriate given the upcoming holiday).

Later we got to work on decorating our pumpkins. I say decorating because we didn't carve pumpkins. In previous year we have, but it just seemed a bit too messy to tackle with the kiddos. Instead, we found these nifty little kits containing Mr. Potato Head parts to attach to the pumpkins. Marielle and Alex were able to help connect all the parts to their pumpkins. And they seemed pretty excited about their finished creations.

Altogether, we had a lot of fun. Watching Marielle and Alex playing is always fun. We always end up breaking out our cameras to capture something funny that they are doing. We always joke about how they play together. This is mainly due to the fact that they spend the majority of their time merely playing next to each other. It's typically near the end of their get togethers where they start interacting and playing with each other. On this particular day they hit their stride by casing each other back and forth from our kitchen through to the living room. Each time they got to the back of the kitchen, they would take turns pounding on our trash can. Then, they'd chase each other back into the living room where the'd pound on the coffee table.

First Snow and Gearing Up for Halloween

This past week brought us our first snow of the season! I love the snow. Any afternoon news cast that predicts snow later that night will have me constantly checking the windows for approaching clouds. I get sooo excited for the clouds to roll in and love the sounds of the snow tinking off the windows in our bedroom. I always get bummed that the snow may have moved out by morning. This week, this was not the case. The snow came in early while I was still at work, so I constantly found myself looking out of the window at work. It snowed through the night and didn't lift until late the next morning. Later in the week we got our second helping.

As we all know, Halloween is fast approaching and Marielle is getting anxious to give her mouse costume another try this year. Last year, for her first Halloween, my Mom made her the cutest mouse costume. Sadly, the fabric store didn't have patterns small enough for our little one, and my Mom had a hard time scaling it down. It was awesome, yet a little big. This year, we think we are in business. We will save the mouse pictures for the 31st, but to get you in the spirit, here's our little devil.

Sick and Running out of Kleenex

We have all been sick. Marielle is sick, I am sick, and Vivian is just getting over being sick. The only one of us that didn't get sick was Sophie. By the way, why is that? How come our dogs don't catch our colds? This dog has spent the whole week eating bits of food that Marielle had dropped, licking her runny nose, and chewing up the occasional kleenex that we forget to snatch up. You would think she would have some sort of mutant mega cold from all three of us.

Anyway, us being sick is not the excuse for us blogging, but rather the subject of this blog (until I shoot off onto another tangent . . . wait for it). We think Marielle caught her cold last weekend at a gymnastics class we checked out. Although we haven't let this fact reflect negatively on the experience. She had an awesome time checking out the class, and it's definitely something we want to explore with her further. She enjoyed learned somersaults and climbing across the mats and blocks. The gym also had a large inflated mat the her and the other children could jump and tumble on. When they finished with that portion of the session, the kids sat with glee as the mat was deflated out from under them. The high point of the class was Marielle learning to hang from a bar for the first time. Teaching her the concept was quite amusing. The first four or five times we brought her hands up to the bar, she would only pretend to really grab it. This became apparent each time we'd go to let go of her, and her hands would just slide off the bar. After a few more tries, I tried wrapping her hands around the bar and holding them there. When Viv started to let go, Marielle instantly realized what she needed to do. She was totally amazed with herself! There she was hanging by her hands on her own. The look on her face as it was scrunched between her two arms stretched above her head was hilarious. Just a complete look of awe and accomplishment.

Later that day, we went on to music class. The class came with a CD for home that we use to learn the songs (we are all required to sing along in class). Marielle loves the class. She spends half the class participating by singing and dancing along, and the rest of the class is spent wandering and exploring the classroom. At home, she can't get enough of the CD. I ripped it to our Media PC, and she has started to realize that this CD, and her other favorites have been saved to the Media PC as well. She has taken to standing in the living room, pointng at the TV, and saying, "Music? Music?"

Later last weekend, on Sunday, the runny nose started. We then proceeded to Geoff, Colette, and Alex's new house for playtime at the park and dinner. We warned them, but being the great frineds that they are, they did not turn us away. Although turning us away would have been OK. Afterall, we did this to a coworker of Viv's once.

So far, we have managed to pass the bug on to Colette, Alex, and my Mom. Our new nanny and her son seemed to have made it through last week unscathed. This week is looking better.

Dad's Weekend '06

Well, Geoff beat me to it. Check out the Pierz Blog for the first of our two posts about the 2nd Annual Dad's Weekend. Last year we inaugurated our Dad's Weekend tradition with a trip to Vedauwoo, WY. Vedauwoo is this great little nature area full of great rock formations and lots of aspen trees. The aspen trees are kind of key to the Dad's Weekend concept. Basically, the idea is to schedule it in the fall and camp someplace where the aspen leaves are turning. It gives us a chance to hang out, try some new beers, and grab some great fall photos. This year we camped back in the Poudre Valley, northwest of Fort Collins. As Geoff mentioned in his post, we were a little apprehensive about the weather, but everything turned out great. I think I will defer to Geoff's post in most respects and will just leave you all with a few more photos to round out the ones Geoff put up. He briefly mentioned the wood chopping that we spent part of Saturday doing, and I've got the photos to show why it took part of the day. By the way, Frank, we probably owe you a new hatchet.

A Day With Marielle

Marielle is a pretty busy girl. She has a full day filled with activities. Sometimes she goes for walks. She is a really strong girl too. She is so strong she almost pulled daddy over. She loves her daddy.








She even makes time in her busy day to cuddle with him.










She also makes time for baths. Every princess needs her spa time.


Then at the end of a busy day she gets a little beauty sleep. Oh the hard life she leads.

Marielle's First Haircut

When I heard that Alex got his first haircut it motivated me to actually go and get Marielle's haircut. She has sort of been sporting a mullet lately. I didn't want to cut it, because I know its not very long and I didn't want her to look like a boy. At the same time it was so uneven I knew it was time. Well turns out Marc and I took Marielle to the same haircut company that Geoff and Colette took Alex to. Anyway, Marielle did pretty well. She got to watch Dora the Explorer aka Dori. Dori and my keys kept Marielle pretty occupied. She didn't have to deal with the razor like poor little Alex did. Marc and I were pretty happy about the haircut. The lady made Marielle's hair even and got rid of the mullet. Hopefully now it will grow nice and long so I can put it in pigtails.

O - R - E - O

Like so many of our posts, we've been meaning to mention this for a few days now. As you can see from the Photo, Marielle has dunked her first Oreo! It was hilarious. I just can't get over how quick our little ones absorb new concepts. Marielle stood in front of me and watched me dunk one or two cookies before she realized she wanted one. After handing her the cookie, she came around the corner of the table, climbed into my lap, and carefully dipped it in the glass.

She's been discovering all sorts of things like this lately and doing them for herself. When she goes up to Oma's house and plays with her Little Tikes kitchen, she puts all of the dishes in the sink and moves them around like she's rinsing them. She gets pretty upset that the water doesn't actually flow. She also sets the dishes out on her play table and sets a place for Oma. I think I'm seeing the beginnings of a first tea party.