Oops. Catching up.

Apparently I went missing here for a bit. Sorry about that...just busy living life and all. ;) So...here's a quick recap of what's been going on here for the last month or so...

1. Getting together with friends. I've had fun getting together with different friends at different occasions...lunches, shopping, watching football, etc. It's been awesome...love hanging with friends!

2. Noah came home. We picked Noah up at the airport on November 18. He came home from China sick, though (we think probably a sinus infection?), which was uncharacteristic for him. (Noah's very rarely sick and when he is it almost never last longer than 48 hours.) Given that, we didn't hear much about his travels for awhile, as the rest of us distanced ourselves from him and tried to stay healthy, lol. So, for the first couple weeks after he was home, he spent a lot of time sleeping and recovering.

3. Thanksgiving. With Noah sick and Asher still having classes Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, we had a very quiet holiday. Noah came home craving Mexican food after living in Japan, Korea and China for 6 months, so we ordered a taco bar set up from a local place that we love. We enjoyed the food and leftovers, the ease of our Thanksgiving meal, and supporting local. I didn't take any photos.

4. Group photos. But. I rallied everyone the next day to go take some group photos for our holiday cards. We walked to our nearby Power Trail and the new overpass installed there recently and took some photos...

Micah and Asher, of course, climbed things along the way. And we got a decent photo to use for our cards (not pictured here). 

5. Holiday decorations. We also got a start on our holiday decorations that weekend (and the next). Nathan and Asher got the outside lights up. (Micah initially volunteered but decided being up on the ladder was not for him, lol.)

We stuck with our tree of lights on our climbing wall this year to hang our ornaments. (We'd actually just left the tree up all year (without the ornaments) but they'd stopped working recently so I'd purchased replacement lights to string. Nathan, not looking forward to taking the old lights down and putting the new ones up, was motivated to get out some tools and soldering stuff and actually figured out how to fix the old lights...hooray!)

And for our stockings this year, we went in order of our Spotify year end "Wrapped" listening ages...mostly because it made Micah a little crazy, lol. Noah, Nathan and Asher all had ages in their 20s...Micah was 64 and mine was 69. 

6. Nathan's work offsite event. The week after Thanksgiving, Nathan flew to Arizona for another work offsite event. The entire company works remotely so gets together in person a couple times a year at different places. This time was on a sort of elevated dude ranch. Activities available included horseback riding, archery, hiking and the like. 

This year's gift exchange was all about mugs. (Last year they did a more typical white elephant exchange.) Each person drew another person and got a mug specifically for him/her. Nathan ended up with a fun mug showcasing squirrels and aviation. :)

7. Working through year end tasks. I've also been working through a lot of year end tasks...making and wrapping and shipping gifts, addressing and mailing cards, making a budget for 2026, reevaluating monthly subscriptions, updating paperwork, planning 2026 travel, etc. Nothing super exciting but rewarding to have done.

8. Noah update. Noah, as I mentioned, was sick for a good bit upon coming home. He got healthy in time for his annual eye appointment...where he talked with the optometrist about LASIK and now has a consultation scheduled. He had a bit of a relapse and got sick again for a few days but seems healthy finally now. Recently he finished going through and editing/culling his thousands of photos from his travels, too. 

9. Asher update. Asher finished the fall semester presenting at a conference down in Denver then tackling finals. On the 11th, Noah, Micah and I helped move Asher out of his dorm and bring everything home. He'll be doing his student teaching at our local school district so will live here in the spring. On the way home from Greeley we stopped for Asher to complete a trade he'd set up online. He traded his electric unicycle for an upgraded OneWheel and has been enjoying that. (He's been riding his OneWheel to and from classes and was happy to upgrade to a OneWheel with more range and power.) Since then, Asher's also been working on finishing up the miscellaneous paperwork needed to set up his student teaching position and will start when the school district starts after break. 

10. Micah update. Micah took a bartending class earlier this month and got certified to be a bartender. In Colorado, it's fine to be a bartender ages 18-20 so long as there's someone working at the same time who's 21 (or older). He's really enjoyed the learning and is hoping to find a job doing that in the new year.  

Okay. That's most of what's been going on here over the past month. I'll be back soon with one more post before Christmas...

Four on Friday

Just trying to stay on top of things...

1. Battle for the Fort. Last weekend, Micah and I thoroughly enjoyed being spectators at our local climbing gym's Battle for the Fort. It's a big competition. There are two parts...a Citizens Comp (open to anyone) and an Open competition (the "main event"). Micah and I went to watch the Open qualification round on Friday night...where competitive athletes attempted to climb nine problems in as few attempts as possible. The top six men and top six women then got to compete in the Open finals the next night. 

On Saturday, we went to watch some of the Citizens Comp, where 50 problems had been set in varying degrees of difficulty. (Since then, we've been back to Ascent to attempt some of them on our own, as all 50 were reset after the competition for everyone to try.) 

Later Saturday night, we went back for the Open Finals. It was insane! We hadn't anticipated how packed it was going to be but managed to park in a nearby neighborhood and maneuver ourselves to a decent spot to watch. It was literally standing room only (or sitting shoulder to shoulder) and wild and loud. 

This was us when we arrived Saturday night. After this, it got more full, we made our way closer to the center, the lights were dimmed and the place went crazy. The athletes were so very impressive! Oh, and Colin Duffy (who represented the US in both the Tokyo and Paris Olympics) won. Wow. Colin is actually local. Back when Micah was competing on Team Ascent, he went to competitions where Colin was also competing, so we've seen him climb for years. He also attends CU Boulder. 

Anyhow, yeah, crazy impressive and fun...and some awesome time with my kid.

2. Northern lights. On Tuesday, I happened to go for a walk after dinner. A neighbor stopped me on the sidewalk to make sure I noticed the northern lights and point out that they were more impressive when you took a photo with your phone. I could see the faint color with just the naked eye but the photos on my phone were pretty dang cool...

Seriously. Those are just walking around my neighborhood with lights and everything. Unedited. Crazy.

3. Noah update. Noah is in China now. Yesterday he made it to The Great Wall...

Here are some random other shots he's shared lately...

I don't know the details on all the photos but know that the middle right photo was taken in Seoul on his birthday when he went to watch a movie in Japanese with Korean subtitles. The bottom left photo was of a Gangnam monument also in Seoul. The bottom middle photo was a giant library inside a mall in Korea. And the bottom right photo is his first ice cream cone in China...ube lemon (top) and sesame mochi (bottom). He claimed it was better than Italian gelato. :)

4. Thankful Thursday (belated). And, yesterday I meant to share a list of random things I'm thankful for this week. Here it is:

• our dryer...the heating element went out on ours over the weekend but Nathan had it working again by Monday night thanks to YouTube videos and overnight shipping. Very thankful for Nathan, instructional videos, overnight shipping and having a dryer in the first place! (Especially after our time in Europe and our experience with the lack of dryers there, I appreciate the convenience of dryers, lol.)
• my inversion table...awhile back, I got an inversion table and I continue to be thankful for it pretty much every week. I find that my back benefits from the stretch, particularly after climbing...particularly if I've done much dropping from high holds to the mats. (I try now to top out and come down the stairs or just down-climb rather than drop, but it happens.)
• my standing desk...last fall I switched over to a standing desk and I'm grateful. I feel better about my posture and my movement, and I'm appreciative that it forced me to clean and reorganize my office in the process. 
• our heated steering wheel...I recently used the heated steering wheel feature on our new EV for the first time. Well, that's just lovely. I distinctly remember thinking they should exist during our years of driving our older vehicles and am delighted to confirm that it's a great idea.

And that's my post for today. :)

Four on Friday

Catching up...

1. Fall leaves photo tradition. So, I try every year to take photos of/with boys featuring autumn's changing colors. When they were younger, this often meant pictures of them in leaf piles and throwing leaves at each other. These days, so long as I get a photo, I'm happy. :) Here are our pictures for this fall...

Nathan, Micah and I went up to Estes Park for a day last month and just wandered and ate and enjoyed the time together.

Asher took these for me at a park near campus.

And Noah had to wait a bit longer for the leaves to change color but got this shot recently in Korea during a hike.

2. Magnets. When we travel, we try to bring home a magnet to commemorate our experiences. I finally added our magnets from our birthday trip...

(For what it's worth, when this box is full, we're definitely going to look for shadow boxes that open from the front instead...that will be way easier for adding magnets, lol.)

3. Fall, generally. It's been a pretty gorgeous and long fall here. I very much appreciate it. :) I've been tackling a number of seasonal tasks and things to get ready for the end of the year. For instance, October saw some car maintenance, sprinkler blowouts, insurance updates (and more since Nathan's employer switched plans...ugh, lots of paperwork and legwork to get Micah's prescription moved and filled again), meeting with our financial planner to get ready for taxes, and shots for most of us (covid and flu shots, plus shingles and pneumonia for Nathan and I since we're now 50). Not the most exciting stuff but necessary and nice to have done.

And here's a photo I took during one of my walks with Deanna last month...so beautiful.

4. Halloween. Micah was the only one of us who dressed up for Halloween...but he had three different costumes, so maybe that covers more, lol. (The three costumes were for different days and different parties with friends down in Boulder...but he neglected to take a picture the first two days.) Below is the photo of his Braveheart costume...

He was aiming to be William Wallace, mostly because he wanted to use/wear his kilt. ;) (We found a bunch of random pieces from old Comic Con costumes to finish out his costume, including that wig, lol. He couldn't find blue face paint and was disappointed that more of his friends hadn't seen Braveheart so didn't know what he was going for.) 

While Micah was down in Boulder most of Halloween weekend, the rest of us watched our neighbor set up his inflatable forest and then handed out candy from beside our firepit set up in the driveway. We ended up buying the right amount of candy this year, which was nice...only had about 40 trick-or-treaters. 

And that's some of what's been going on around here...hope your November is off to a great start!

Twenty Five

Yesterday my Noah turned 25! Given that he's in Korea right now, and thanks to the time difference, we ended up not actually talking with him until it was Nov 3 for him but it still counts. ;) 

Here's a photo he took last week while at one of the national parks there...

On his actual birthday, he took a sunrise hike near his AirBNB...

...then spent some time at a mall and watched a movie (in Japanese with Korean subtitles, lol). 

He's got just over a week left in Korea--where he's been applying for jobs and doing a little sight-seeing--and then he'll head to China to see the Great Wall before returning home. 

This past year has been full for him...he traveled with friends to Japan in January and then lived in Japan from June to August, has been in Korea since August, and will be in China for a week-ish. He'll have been on his own for almost six months when we see him next (in person) and he's surely grown and learned much during that time. (We're looking forward to hearing all about it!)

Obviously, we didn't do anything on his actual birthday but will celebrate when he gets home. Happy birthday, Noah!

Birthday trip: Days 14 & 15

Days 14 & 15 were travel days. We checked out of our place in Dubrovnik and settled in for a long day of driving back to Zagreb and the airport. Along the way, we decided to detour a short way to stop at Zadar. 

This is the view from one of the rest areas we stopped at. It was vast and a cool surprise... 

We made it to Zadar after about 4 hours and parked and walked to the sea organ...an architectural sound art instrument that plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located under a set of large marble steps.

Visually, the sea organ just looked like big steps at the water's edge. I have videos capturing the sound, but don't know how to post them on my blog. (I think my old plan doesn't support that.)

We listened there for a bit then went in search of some quick lunch. Along the way, we saw these...

No idea what they were but they were cool looking. Guess we'll have to go back to explore further. :)

After our quick lunch, we got a last gelato...

...which was delicious. We also grabbed coffee and tea before getting back on the road. It was another three hours to Zagreb. We returned the rental car, having driven almost 1500 miles. We got through security and found some dinner before heading to our gate and had an uneventful flight from Zagreb to London.

We arrived in London, went through passport control and customs and then out to catch an Uber to the AirBNB we'd scheduled to get a good night's sleep during our long layover.

The next morning, we Uber'd back to the airport and made it through security again. We had a lovely brunch then stopped for sticky toffee pudding, per Micah's instruction...

And then we boarded our 9+ hour flight from London to Denver...

We tried to think of the flight as just an extra afternoon (given the time zone difference)...watched some movies, finished my book, did a better job of staying hydrated. We arrived safely and made it through passport control, baggage claim and customs in amazingly quick order...then found Micah waiting to drive us home. 

And that was our trip to celebrate turning 50 this year. :) It was wonderful.

I'll be back later with more wrap up and other things. Whew.