Thankful Thursday

So, it's been a couple weeks since my last post. Since then, here's a list of things I'm thankful for:

1. Date night. Nathan and I went to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science a couple weeks ago to see a presentation on elephants and hear our friend, George, speak. (He's an elephant expert with Save the Elephants, works here at CSU when he's not in Kenya working with elephants, and does boot camp with me.) It was terrific!

And before the presentation, we treated ourselves to dinner at Annette (at the Stanley Marketplace about 10-15 minutes from the museum). Um, wow. It was delicious...

2. Asher snowboarding. A couple days later, Asher joined a UNC outdoor pursuits group to go snowboarding again at Snowy Range in Wyoming. For only having been snowboarding twice before, he's doing pretty well...

(Yes, he did more than one of those black diamond runs.) Glad that he had the opportunity to get away and relax a bit, as he'd been a bit stressed at the beginning of the term with starting his student teaching journey. (He seems to be settling in now. He's at a middle school for the first half of this semester and will be at an elementary school for the second half.)

3. Noah and his car are fine. Asher got back to UNC from snowboarding during the Broncos game that weekend so I asked Noah to go pick him up. (I'd dropped Asher off early that morning so he wouldn't have to park on campus.) Unfortunately, Noah got rear-ended on his way to pick up Asher. Fortunately, he was at a complete stop, as were the two cars behind him. The fourth car, though, wasn't paying attention and rammed the line...crashing into the car ahead of her and then pushing that car into the next car and that car into Noah. Noah is totally fine and his car has almost no damage. The other three vehicles all had to be towed. Oy.

In any case, Noah had to wait for the police report and all, so we had to then send Micah to pick up Asher, which worked out fine and without incident. Whew. 

4. Catching up. I won't share all the stories but let's just say that chatting with my sisters and my mom last week was entertaining and has me thankful for my life, lol. Thankful, too, to have caught up with them. :) 

5. Contacts. So, last week I developed an interior sty on my left eyelid. Annoying but not too bad. But, it's my eye, so I went to see my awesomely thorough neighbor/optometrist on Friday. He ruled out all the worse things it could have been (whew) and told me what to do...which mostly involved continuing with hot compresses and switching to wearing my glasses. (I also got a prescription but opted not to take it for other reasons.) All good. Except my glasses are almost 8 years old and *not quite* my current prescription. They're fine for when I take out my contacts at night but not so great for wearing all day. Bleh.

I'm happy to report, though, that I'm back to wearing contacts as of today and am thrilled at this. I'll also be ordering new glasses soon. ;)

6. Reorganized master bathroom cupboards. Last week I got it in my head that I should reorganize the cupboards in the master bathroom... 

It got a bit out of hand but is happily tidied now. Yay! I bought and assembled some sliding drawer things for both sides and am grateful to have purged and sorted and reorganized.

7. Standing desk. Before I started on the bathroom, I got Nathan to work on reorganizing his office area (which was a much bigger task that we neglected to take any photos of). We got a shelving unit from IKEA to hold the many piles in a more organized fashion and it's looking much better now. In the process, we've freed up this very sturdy standing desk that was given to Asher a few years ago. We don't need it any longer so if you're local let me know if you'd like it!!

(Sorry I didn't dust the top before taking the pictures.) The top is 24”x72” and the top surface is 37.5” from the ground. It has holes on the desk surface for cords, a sliding shallow drawer and a pivoting keyboard tray underneath. It’s pretty sturdy and on casters. Free!

8. Climbing. I don't know that I mentioned it, but I sprained my wrist toward the beginning of December so have been babying it since then. I've been wearing a brace and modifying things as needed for boot camp but haven't been able to climb in a couple months. Today, though, I went to Ascent and climbed! It'll take some patience to not overdo things and work my way back up, but it felt great to get back to it. Yay!

Okay, that's my list for today. January's been full of getting things done and starting to plan for the year. Here's hoping your year is off to a productive start as well!

Throwback Thursday

Hi there! Happy 2026 to you all! Throwing back, today, to last month. ;) Yeah...just catching up. Here are five photos...

1. On Christmas day, we had a lovely charcuterie spread for lunch...

Pretty proud of ourselves for putting that together and remembering we had that platter, lol.

2. Also on Christmas day, we tried out this new game I got Noah...

It's Monopoly Scrabble, lol. Noah's always after me to play Monopoly and it's one of the games I've said a flat out "no" to for years. I like Scrabble, though. So. Compromise. :) 

3. The squirrels have been busy here...

...and Micah's taken more of an interest...such that his photo roll is largely full of squirrel pictures, lol. 

4. Speaking of which, Micah painted us acrylic paintings for Christmas. Here are some of them (this photo is missing the Mt Fuji scene he painted for Noah but includes a couple of works he did for friends (the top two))...

Yes, Micah has (very) recently taken up painting. Pretty good for first attempts, right?! He's having fun with it and continues to paint even more.

5. And our New Year's Eve celebration was pretty full...we had more charcuterie, tried Soju (a traditional Korean alcohol), and had an all day game tournament before toasting the new year with some prosecco.

Our game tournament was fun? long? entertaining? Yup, all of those things. We decided ahead of time that there would be five points awarded to the winner each time, and the loser got to pick the next game. As you can see, Asher came out victorious and I was pretty darn happy with third. :) (Boys didn't think that wake up time should count. Nathan and I started with that to try to give ourselves some help but in the end the results stay the same even if you take away the wake up time, lol.)

And that wraps up our end of December. :)

Twenty Nine Years

Happy anniversary to us! We're celebrating New Year's Eve with our boys today rather than our anniversary (which is what we usually do). We feel like our big trip to Slovenia and Croatia in September was a pretty good celebration already this year, so this anniversary is a quiet one. :)

Given that, I'll just share some of my favorite photos of us from this past year... 

Yup, good memories and grand adventures! Love this man and looking forward to what's still to come!

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas yesterday and were able to celebrate with family and friends! We had a lovely, lowkey day here together. I'll share a bit about that later but right now I just wanted to pop in and share our holiday card & letter...

And here's the letter we included:

A group hug to you all! As we look forward toward 2026, let’s review what 2025 was about for us…

Noah’s year has been one of travel. In January, he and some friends got a great deal on flights so went to Japan for a bit over a week and had a wonderful time. At the start of June, he left his job (assistant manager at a local bank) and departed on an adventure. He flew back to Japan and spent the summer traveling around the country–living out of a rental car for a month on Hokkaido island, summiting Mt Fuji, meeting fellow travelers while staying in hostels, and seeing sites around Tokyo, Sendai, and Osaka. At the end of August, he relocated to South Korea where he met many interesting people and started applying for jobs here in the US. He celebrated turning 25 with a sunrise hike just outside of Seoul. In mid-November, he flew to China to see the Great Wall, Forbidden City and Summer Palace before returning to the states on November 18th. He spent a couple weeks recovering from his travels (he picked up his first cold of 2025 as he was leaving China) and is now continuing his job search.

Asher’s 2025 was about finishing most of his teaching degree. Earlier this month, he finished his class work and presented at the annual state SHAPE conference on health and physical education. Now he just has student teaching during the spring semester before graduating in May of 2026. For physical education, since it’s a K-12 degree/license, he’ll student-teach first at a middle school and then at an elementary school. (And he’ll actually be able to do that here in Fort Collins rather than in Greeley (where UNC is) so will live at home rather than in the dorms.) During the year, he also went snowboarding for the first time in March with a UNC outdoors group, passed his Praxis (teaching license) exams in March and July, and went skydiving with Micah and friends at the end of May. He’ll be applying for teaching positions in the spring and hopes to work with middle schoolers.

Micah started the year with a full sleeve tattoo representing a “symbolic protest against the valuation of everything in concrete terms.” He then graduated in May with his BA in Philosophy. He finished out his lease in Boulder then moved home at the end of July, about the same time he turned 20. Since then, he’s been here and job hunting…while also still enjoying time with friends, climbing and continuing going to a number of concerts. He’s recently gotten certified as a bartender and is now looking for a job doing that as he continues to look for a job utilizing his philosophy degree more. (Yes, apparently you can work as a bartender before age 21 here in Colorado so long as there is a bartender who’s 21 or over working at the same time.)

As for Nathan and me, we’ve also had some travel…a trip to Vegas with all three boys in February to see BattleBots and a Cirque du Soleil show, a few different couples weekends around Colorado, two different company retreats (in California and Arizona) for Nathan, a roadtrip with Asher & Micah to Washington for my family reunion in July (saw my mom, all four siblings and 13 of our nieces & nephews and also stopped at Nathan’s parents’ place in Montana on our way home), and a two week trip in September to Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Bosnia & Montenegro to celebrate both of us turning 50 this year. (Our birthday trip was fabulous!! You can see pictures on my blog.)

We’ve also tackled plenty of adulting–maintaining three older cars, leasing a new electric vehicle, painting Micah’s bedroom, replacing our dishes, and navigating the insurance headaches that come with Micah’s arthritis medications and switching insurance at the start of October. Nathan continues to work (from home) at August Health and took up paragliding this summer. In conjunction with that, he started working out more regularly…but had a bit of a setback with a major sprained ankle at the family reunion. Still, he was able to complete his first solo paraglide in August, and the two of us did tandem paraglide flights while in Slovenia. I’ve continued with boot camp, indoor rock climbing and volunteering, and started baking sourdough weekly. 

And that, my friends, was our fairly full 2025. We have a good life and try not to take it for granted. Wishing you all merry adventures in 2026!

Steamboat Springs

So, rather than going to Montana this year to celebrate Christmas, we met up with Nathan's parents in Steamboat Springs last week (got there Saturday, 12/13). Between John & Nancy and us, we gifted boys a couple days of skiing/snowboarding. (We're not very good Coloradoans--we've never taken the boys skiing/snowboarding. ;p)

The weather didn't really cooperate with a big snowy ski vacation (I heard somewhere that the entire state is at less than 60% of our snowpack for the year and it remains unseasonably warm...it was 73 degrees here yesterday!), but it was enough snow for beginners. (Noah actually went snowboarding on his own a couple times last year with friends and Asher went once with a school group.) Noah opted to try skiing this time while the other two went with snowboards. On Sunday, we took advantage of the free day on the community hill before tackling the main mountain on Monday. We had beautiful weather both days.

Overall, it seems to have been a success...there were no injuries! :) By Monday afternoon, Noah and Micah had made definite progress and were more comfortable on the starter runs before calling it a day. Asher went to the very top and made his way back down before they started closing runs and he had to come back.

Beyond the snow days, we all enjoyed a couple dinners out, played lots of games in our rental, did a little shopping and made use of the game room in the clubhouse...

...and I remembered to get a group photo...

(We also had a small hiccup, having forgotten Micah's meds at home. Given the soreness from snowboarding and being in the cold already, we were concerned about that and the lack of meds causing a flare up. Typically, when Micah has flare ups, it takes some extra meds and time to get things back to normal. So, Nathan decided to drive the 3.5 hours back home to get them on Monday. (John joined him for the drive.) I also had him grab some leftover extra meds (steroids) to bring back to Steamboat...which turned out to be good, as Micah (who generally avoids any extra meds whenever possible) opted to take them for a couple days. By the end of the week, without having missed his normal med dosage and having added the extra meds, Micah was feeling back to normal. Whew.)

On Thursday morning, Asher, Nathan and I headed back home (we all had other things scheduled for the next day). Noah and Micah stayed, along with John & Nancy, until Saturday morning.

So it was a lovely early Christmas...yay! As a bonus, since I tried to get everything ready before Steamboat, this week has been pretty quiet and restful as we finish any prep for our own low-key Christmas later this week. Happy.