Ice Castle

So. On Thursday, we drove down to Dillon, CO (technically a little over 2 hours away, though traffic made it take longer) to see the Ice Castle there. It was pretty darn cool (and cold, lol). Here are some pictures (click on them to make them larger):

We booked tickets for the 4:30 entry, knowing that sunset was scheduled to be around 4:47 that day. Given that, we were able to get our bearings in the daylight but still enjoy the castle after dark. Some of us went down one of the little slides (and ended up with wet behinds, lol) and crawled through the tunnels. Some of the tunnels were more squeezy than others and I'm told that the ground you crawled on was quite icy and uncomfortable. Regardless, 4/7 of us tried at least one of them out. :)

(Top left is Asher crouching rather than crawling...below that is Nathan's dad belly crawling to get back out...below that is Nathan worming his way in.) 

Here's a panoramic shot I took inside while waiting for people in tunnels:

Next up are some "people pictures"...clockwise from top left: boys with grandparents waiting to enter, boys with me inside, Nathan trying to stay warm, Micah and Asher trying to stay warm, and me and Nathan in front of one of the awesome lit walls after dark.

The wall kept changing colors...which made it difficult to pick a favorite shot of the boys with their grandparents:

Beyond that, after dark, we discovered this larger, cooler slide. The lights changed patterns and colors, and we all managed to get through the line and down the slide...fun! (Oh, and this one had sled type things to go down the slide so your butt didn't get wet.)

And here are a few more photos of the amazingness of the structure...

So...a few notes, if you plan to go also...

• I'm told that they continue to "grow" the structure throughout the winter, so going later should result in a larger castle. As it was, we went during the first full week they were open, but that's the time slot that worked for us and we were plenty happy. 
• When they advise you to bundle up and dress for the weather, they mean it. Definitely layer up and wear boots, people. I'd say about half the people we saw were in full ski-like gear, most of the rest were, like us, bundled mostly appropriately, and then there were some who were clearly not dressed warm enough and probably cut their visits short because of it. 
• Like I mentioned, we planned our visit so we could see the castle both in daylight and after dark. It was great, and I highly recommend that. Look up the sunset time ahead of time and plan accordingly. If you can only go during one or the other, I'd go when it's dark.
• If you're going with a group, it would be helpful to have a plan for meeting up if you get separated (if that matters to you). If all of your sons and your husband are dressed almost entirely in black, it's not easy to find them in the crowd, lol. If I went again, I might put a running light band on each of them (those types you just wrap around your arm so you're visible to traffic). 
• If you have little ones, they recommend *not* bringing your stroller, and there's good reason for that. Bring a simple sled instead...works great.
• The concensus from my group was that warmer gloves would have been better. Given that they all did have decent snow gloves, maybe bring some hand warmers for pockets? (I, personally, was wearing fingerless gloves, knowing that I'd get cold but wanting full access to my camera/phone.)

I think that's it. Overall, we were inside the castle for a little over an hour and then followed some signs to hot drinks across the street and warmed up. We then bundled back to the car and drove 40ish minutes to Idaho Springs where we stopped for dinner before heading the rest of the way home. Yay!

Christmas

And now here are the pictures from Christmas...

I'll start by mentioning that on Christmas Eve we enjoyed watching "It's a Wonderful Life" for the very first time ever (for all of us). And then we went for our traditional drive to look at Christmas light displays (and found our favorite display that's set to music and so impressive). And then everyone opened one present (after they figured out the code...which this year was the Navajo code talkers code from WWII, since Asher's history research paper was about that and it was in my head, lol)...

When they were younger, I used to continue my mom's tradition of getting everyone pajamas for Christmas Eve. Then boys grew up some and decided pajamas weren't for them so I switched to just a new tee shirt for each boy. This year, though, I got them all matching pajama pants and made them wear them and let me take at least one picture the next morning. Ta da? (Yeah, they didn't have a matching pair that fit me, so I went with coordinating instead.)

Christmas morning brought gift opening (after we finally got everyone awake and downstairs...which is fairly typical for us, as we've never been a family of early risers, lol). My gift from the boys was this photo:

...with the Old Town Santa that they used to let me take them to for photos. :) Awww. I appreciate that they stood in quite the line and took the time to get this taken. (I, meanwhile, was home doing other things.)

And we got and exchanged a number of games...

(have played some of them already and others are sitting here waiting to be opened soon!)...

...and I still got everyone a tee shirt...

(They were making "intense eye contact" and being silly.)

Here are close ups of the shirts. Noah's makes me smile every time.

And then we did lunch and opened stocking stuffers and played games and did some cleaning and watched "Die Hard" (first time for the boys and first time in decades for Nathan and I) and cleaned some more...and then we went to bed...feeling incredibly blessed. 

Hope your Christmas was beautiful as well!!

(And Wednesday we picked up Nathan's parents in Denver and will now enjoy the week with them before life gets back to regularly scheduled things...may or may not get around to posting while they're here...)

Before Christmas...

Sorry. No excuse really. :) Here are some pictures from before Christmas that I've neglected to share...

Asher and Micah went ice skating again with the Karate West demo team...

It was a gorgeous day for it and they followed this with a taco and Christmas cookie party at one of the member's houses with some pool (billiards) play and plenty of laughter. Love this group of kids!

After Noah got home for the break, we finally put lights and ornaments on our tree...ta da!

After the state First Lego League tournament, the team met once more for recapping and celebrating. Our contribution was bringing a bag of ginormous marshmallows so the kids could try the "chubby bunny" contest thing. Micah managed, just barely, to get two in his mouth...

And, by the way, when decorating a Christmas tree with teenage boys, mine in particular, you end up with random "themed" branches...

That left photo is Asher's "efficiency" by hanging a number of his ornaments from each other rather than individually. Then, there were also instrument, Batman and Avenger themed areas. Boys. ;)

And one last picture...

These brown butter salted caramel mocha cookies are fabulous!! I've made them once before and now remember why we loved them so much. YUM! The day we made these, we *may* have baked 11 dozen cookies...and received our annual box of cookies from my brother (we *adore* this gift every year!)...and been gifted two or three things from neighbors and friends...and had a box arrive from my mom with even more sweets. Yeah. We were a bit overloaded, lol. Fortunately, we gave away most of the cookies to neighbors and friends...and the rest somehow disappeared in a matter of days, lol.

Okay. I think that brings us mostly to Christmas. :) 

FIRST LEGO League state tournament

Yesterday, Nathan took Micah down to Denver for the FIRST LEGO League state tournament. (Micah's team, if you recall, had earned their invitation to the tournament last month with a 1st in Robot Performance and a 3rd Overall Champion.)

This year's venue was at the CU Denver commuter campus and was, I'm told, lovely. The 73 teams set up...

...and then spent the day with judging sessions (for core values, robot design and project presentations), practice robot runs, and scored robot runs. Though the team didn't beat their high score in the robot run from qualifiers (nor did any other team), their robot performed well and earned them a fourth place finish in the robot performance. 

After the competition portion of things was over, there was a bit of waiting for judges to tally results and come to decisions. During part of that, Micah enjoyed some time with the coach's youngest...who simply adores Micah. :)

And then it was time for the awards ceremony...

(Here, by the way, is a break down of the many different awards that the tournament gives out.) 

The ceremony began with participation medals for everyone...

And then...

Drumroll...

Micah's team...DNA (Defending Noble Astronauts)...took FIRST in Research! I'm so very proud of them! After the many hours these kids put in learning about space radiation and interviewing experts (in person, via phone and via email) and finding a feasible solution to be presented and then honing that solution after judge input at qualifiers, this was incredibly well deserved.

And, on top of that, Micah's coach earned the Coach of the Year award! Yup, it was pretty cool (and, again, so well deserved!). Congratulations all around!! It was a long but rewarding day...

Whew. 

Catching up...

So. I know I haven't posted much lately. Sorry. Just doing our thing here...living a pretty darn blessed life. :) Let's do some catching up...

After getting his license at the start of November, Asher's taken over driving duties to and from karate and parkour. This is mostly all good, but I miss talking with the boys during the drive and visiting with people at both activities. Sigh. (Asher's also taken the MasterDrive winter driving camp, driven to movies and laser tag with friends, and run errands for me...hooray!)

We finally got a new thermostat installed. Back in June, ours broke. We managed to fix it just enough to get the AC working but not the whole house humidifier (which is kinda necessary here in dry Colorado during the winter). Last month, we finally got a new smart thermostat and had it installed so that now everything is working again. Yay!

In another piece of adulting, just before Thanksgiving we also had to replace our oven/stove. It was the last appliance in the house, I think, that hadn't been replaced, so sadly it was time. The new one we picked has a flat glass top (not induction, but so much easier to clean!) and a double oven, which came in very handy over Thanksgiving and, we're hoping, will be more energy efficient. Plus, fortunately, Black Friday appliance deals were taking place for the full month. (We also ended up getting some new pots because our old ones were from when we got married 22 years ago and had copper bottoms...and apparently the raw copper could transfer to the glass stove top. And we had to rearrange the kitchen a bit because the double oven means no more storage drawer under the oven. But. All good and so thankful that we're in a position where replacing things was just inconvenient and not worse.)

We had a lovely little Thanksgiving here with all the traditional foods. (Tremendously thankful for Whole Foods, lol.) Just us on Thursday, then with friends on Friday...and plenty of leftovers. Yay! (Noah was home for the week, as both CSU and CEC had the entire week off.)

Didn't do any specifically Black Friday shopping but did place a number of Amazon orders, lol. Yup, almost done with all our Christmas shopping...

It wasn't Christmas shopping and it wasn't "fun" but we also bought a new chest freezer for the garage. The city has a great freezer/refrigerator recycling and rebate program going on until the end of the month so we've got it scheduled for them to pick up our old garage freezer (that we've had since we lived in Oregon) and will replace it with the new, more energy efficient, chest freezer.

Last weekend, we got our Christmas tree from the same lot we've been going to for years. We took what have become our traditional photos there:

We then went home and hung outside Christmas lights also. We'll wait a couple weeks before putting out the inflatables to finish our outside decorations...and apparently we're going to wait also to hang ornaments on the tree (which is now happily set up in our front room) until Noah's home for break.  

Also last weekend, I enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea at the Boulder Teahouse with friends:

(The pictures don't really do justice to the yummy foods and tea.) I've known these two since our freshman year of college and am so glad we all ended up here in Colorado within an hour of each other. We don't manage to get together as often as we'd like, but I love when we do.

And now it's onward to finals. Asher's got his final papers in and his first final tomorrow with two more next Monday. He'll be on break starting Dec 11. Noah's plugging away at final projects this week and has final exams next week. He'll start his break Dec 13. Thankful that that all means we'll be off for winter break sooner than most of the kids in town.

Okay, that's pretty much it. Just checking things off the lists now and trying to get to the next things as we work our way through December. I'll try to check in more regularly. :)