Thankful Thursday

Last Thursday of the year...whoa. Hoping everyone had a beautiful holiday! Here's my list for today...

1. Bring your kid to boot camp day. Monday, Micah decided to join me for boot camp since he's on break and needs to move around and was curious. Two other families had the same idea and we ended up with eight of our kids joining us:

It was a little crazy with so many bodies but we had a great time, and we "regulars" took secret glee in the fact that, for the most part, we held up better than our kids, lol. Micah, though, would like the opportunity to prove himself and says he'll go with me again tomorrow. :) (He was having some arthritis flare ups on Monday in his knee and heels, so the jumping and squats weren't his friends. He's taking solace in the fact that his form was definitely better than others'.)

2. Holiday cards. Since I started taping holiday cards to my office door a few years ago, I've so loved receiving them and being able to enjoy them throughout the year. My door's a little bare this year so far, but those that are there are appreciated. :) 

3. Holiday parties. I went to a holiday party last Friday (with a friend) and another (with Nathan) on Monday. Generally, the introvert in me prefers to stay home, lol, but I had a really good time at both parties and felt good that we'd gone. So. Thankful for friends who invite us and are worth pushing myself out of my comfort zone for! ;) 

4. A lovely, low key Christmas. Given that our main Christmas gift this year was our trip to Belize, we didn't have too much hoopla on Christmas morning. In fact, thanks to the fact that our boys are all teenagers now (and have actually never been early birds on Christmas morning or otherwise, lol), we didn't even start opening gifts around the tree until 10am...just a few little things and gifts we'd received in the mail. Lovely and quiet. 

After that, we had brunch and watched a movie before deciding that Micah needed to move around more. (Being on break is hard on his arthritis due to the decreased activity level...need to keep him moving.) So, we dusted off the three bikes we have here and Nathan, Micah and I biked to a nearby park. Asher and Noah drove to meet us there and we played a bit on the playground and tossed an aerobie for a bit...

After that, we biked and drove home and warmed up with some more exercise. ;) Asher and Micah gifted Noah a fitness video game and we all took turns completing levels. It was actually quite fun and well done. That was followed by dinner and a board game before a little clean up and off to bed. A lovely day. :) 

I'm feeling a little bit bad that I didn't take any photos...it was fun seeing everyone else post nice family pictures yesterday...but we enjoyed it. Off now to finish up a few things and then we'll be doing some year-end cleaning before Nathan's parents join us for a bit next week. Happy remainder of 2019 to you all!

Thankful Thursday

Things I'm thankful for this week...

1. Jack Tamlin's tree lot. I don't know how many years we've been getting our Christmas tree at this same lot, but we're always happy with the selection and experience. We went and picked out our tree on Dec 7 and took our annual selfie while there. (I was a bit sad, though, that Noah was busy with final projects and such so couldn't go with us. I understand that this will become more of the norm, but I can still be a little sad.)

2. Boys out for break. Asher and Micah actually finished their semester back on Tuesday, December 10. They're both happily enjoying break and relieved with their straight As. Very proud of their hard work!! Noah has one more final tomorrow before he'll be out for break. I always appreciate the flexibility having boys on break brings. :)

3. Old Town. I'll admit to doing a decent bit of online shopping this holiday season. But. I also tried to shop local as much as I could and must say that I so enjoy Old Town Fort Collins. The experience of walking around and popping into some of my favorite shops and chatting with staff is just lovely. 

4. Siblings. Thankful, so very, for my siblings. In particular, I'm grateful for my brother and his family...who are able to help my mom with her recovery right now...and for my sister and her family in Prosser...who have taken in my 98 year old grandma during this. (Gram lives with my mom but can't stay on her own for safety reasons. So, while mom is at Joe's, Gram is at Bekah's.) (PS Mom had her post op appointment today and is doing fabulously!)

5. The ability to print postage at home. Seriously, why doesn't everyone just do this? I fully took advantage of printing off my own postage for my packages at home and then just had to drop them off at the post office. Sweet. 

Okay...back to catching up on holiday prep. For what it's worth, we don't yet have any decorations up. At all. It's weird. We have a naked Christmas tree in our front room...have mailed all our packages and cards and finished pretty much all our shopping...and are making our neighbor gifts later tonight. But. No decorations inside or out. When we got home from Belize, there was too much snow to put up outside decorations and we've been too busy on the weekends since then. Thankfully, boys are all old enough that this doesn't bother them at all and we'll just get to it when we get to it...and will likely have a much more minimalist Christmas this year. :) 

This past week...

...has been a little full. :) 

So, my last post was from Sunday, December 8. Since then, I've been to Washington state, gone to Micah's regional bouldering competition in Longmont, and gotten almost all of my Christmas cards and packages packed, addressed and mailed. I'm a little tired but mostly happy and ready to actually get into the holiday spirit.

I went to Washington last Tuesday to help out after my mom's knee replacement surgery. She's staying a few weeks with my baby brother and his family; he's a physical therapist. He was able to take the day off when she had the surgery and picked me up at the airport. We got back to the hospital in time to see her before she went in then spent the afternoon visiting and waiting until we were able to see her settled into her hospital room. (She doesn't do well with drugs and needed to stay the night for observation.) The surgery went well according to her doctor, and she was pretty good when we left for the night.

The next day, my sister, niece and nephew drove up from Prosser to go with me to pick mom up from the hospital. Once she was successfully discharged, we brought her back to Joe's house to get her settled in. We filled her prescriptions and let her get some rest and did some visiting before they had to head back to Prosser. When Joe got home, he checked mom's condition and started on some physical therapy exercises.

The next couple days, I helped keep her on track with doing the prescribed exercise and icing and medication routine. I was also able to visit with my awesome nieces and nephews. By the time I headed back to the airport (Friday night), my mom was moving around fairly well and on track for a great recovery. Here's my brother, mom, four of the five little ones, and me...

And here are my sweet nieces and nephews in order (the youngest is 4 months and the oldest is 5)...

I hadn't been able to meet the youngest before now, so that was a lovely little bonus to the trip. And look at how adorable they all are! 

Anyhow, I flew home Friday night...landed about 11:30pm and made it home an hour later...had to get a few things for the next day in order and finally got to bed about 1:30am. The next morning, Nathan, Micah and I left the house before 7am to head to Longmont for the Indoor Bouldering Regional Competition that Micah qualified himself for a few weeks ago. The climbers were in isolation to warm up for the first bit and then had assigned times to come out and go through the competition routes. There were six routes. Each climber rested for four minutes then had four minutes to climb as high on each route (specific point targets were labeled on each route) as he/she could. More attempts meant slightly lower scores...everything was totalled at the end. Here's Micah on one of the routes... 

He was feeling a bit under the weather and didn't do as well as he felt he could have but was overall happy with this first regionals experience. Plus, unlike at the local competition he went to to qualify for regionals, many of his teammates were also there. They had a blast cheering each other on and were easily the loudest team there...

These are the Team Ascent members in Micah's age group who went to regionals. (One was missing when this picture was taken.) Most of them stuck around for the next group who climbed after them...continuing to cheer on teammates. We stayed also since Nathan had volunteered to help judge during the next group. During that, I also managed to deliver a couple of holiday packages to friends and family in Longmont and watch some of the climbing...and then we finally made it home, where we grabbed Asher, picked up our holiday cards and a few gifts for boys' friends and then got dinner. 

So. That's mostly what happened last week. I'm catching up now and have gotten almost all gifts and cards in the mail. We might actually get around to putting up some decorations tonight... ;)

World Record!

Yesterday, Nathan and I joined 223 other couples here in Fort Collins to help set a new Guinness World Record! We headed up to our local Anheuser Busch Biergarten, waited through a lengthy check in process (we'd had to register ahead of time), and then stood outside in the cold for a good while. (Fortunately, we'd heeded the warnings to bundle up. Some of the others were in ridiculously inappropriate gear for the conditions, lol.) But. Finally, everything was ready and we did it! 

Officially, we joined 895 other couples across three Anheuser Busch venues (ours in Fort Collins along with those in St. Louis, MO and Merrimack, NH) for "most couples kissing under the mistletoe in multiple venues" by simultaneously kissing, under our individual sprigs of mistletoe, for five seconds. 

Michael Empric was the official Guinness World Record adjudicator sent to monitor our venue, and the previous record was 839 couples. Afterward, we all received commemorative beer glasses. Woohoo!

Belize, part 3 (Thankful Thursday)

Okay, doing a bit of a wrap up from our trip...and combining it with things I'm thankful for (in no particular order)... :) 

1. Travel blogs & books. Many thanks to Pinterest and all the various travel blogs I consulted when planning our vacation to Belize! Hooray for the ability to research ahead of time. :) I know planning and research isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it works for me and I appreciate it. In case anyone's interested, we bought this travel guide (though honestly used online information more). Also, I read this book. It's fiction but actually did a lovely job of providing some history and a feel for the country.

2. Travel towels & dry bags. I learned my lesson in Venice and knew that towels like the ones provided by our resort would take a good while to air dry in Belize's humidity. On the recommendation of one of the travel blogs I found, I purchased these travel towels, and they worked fabulously. They packed down small, were awesome absorbent and felt great. Because we weren't lying around on them in the sand or anything, we probably could have gone for an even smaller size, actually. We also took a couple of dry bags to keep everything in when we were out and about...worked great and didn't have to worry about things when we were at the beach or on the catamaran...or when we got caught in a downpour, lol. (We had this one that Asher took to Costa Rica and added this one not long ago. We find the 20L size works well for day packs.)

3. Sunscreen. I was a little worried about sunscreen. Everything I'd read said to bring it with you because it was hard to find and expensive in Belize. Given that we weren't checking bags, though, bringing enough sunscreen for all of us in containers smaller than 3.4 ounces was going to be tricky (especially since a portion of our allowed liquids was already taken up by contact solution for the five of us, which is also hard to find in other countries). Also, I wanted to use the "good" sunscreen...that is reef safe and better all around. This was even more difficult to find. In the end, I bought tins of this mineral sunscreen and was quite happy with it! It met all my requirements for being reef safe...because it's a tin and a solid, it didn't have to go in the liquids bag...and it surprisingly went a long ways. Honestly, we only ended up using a total of about one tin for all five of us (three days of using it). It wasn't the easiest sunscreen to apply, but after we got the hang of it (warm it up in your hands first), it was fine. And the boys appreciated that it didn't smell like typical sunscreen, lol. 

4. Pre-booked things. Similar to number one above, it was nice being able to have already booked things before we got to Belize. I booked our resort online and was then able to book our transfer flights and shuttle through them, as well as our golf cart. Technology is a beautiful thing, lol. (Incidentally, if we were to do it over, we'd have booked a four person golf cart instead of a six person golf cart. It would have been tight, but finding spots big enough to park the six person cart wasn't easy. In fact, we didn't see any other six person golf carts being used while we were there.) The other main thing we booked ahead of time was our Chill Cruise with Island Dream Tours. While our resort partnered with a different tour company and conveniently would have booked things for us (and we could have departed from the dock at our resort rather than going into town to a different dock), being able to look at tour companies online ahead of time allowed us to choose one that met our specific wants/needs. We were delighted with Island Dream Tours and would definitely tour with them again.

5. Shorter hair. I'm thankful that I had shorter hair for this trip. On our Europe vacation, the long hair almost always ended up being braided back or pulled up, as it was just too hot or too humid to do otherwise. I remembered that and was also more realistic this time...and didn't even bother to bring any hair styling tools or product, lol. Instead, I just brought clips to quickly twist my hair up and ponytail holders if I wanted to pull it back. Easy...and so much better for riding in golf carts and being in the water. :)  

6. Locals. So, one of the reasons we picked Belize was that the national language is English, lol. Communicating during this vacation was definitely easier than when we were in Europe. Beyond that, though, the locals were amazing. It could just be that we were in such a small area in the first place, but everyone was so kind and helpful...we loved talking with the artisans...and it warmed my heart when the boys ended up playing soccer with local boys.

7. Rum. Rum is one of my favorites. ;) It's no secret I prefer sweet drinks, so being in a country where most of the drinks were rum based was fabulous. Honestly, pretty much every drink I had was lovely...from the pina colada at Secret Beach to the rum punch at our pool swim up bar to the varied rum drinks on board the YOLO. Yay for rum! (Nathan had the local beer, Belikin, and said it was okay. He admits to being a bit spoiled by the crazy variety and quality of craft beers here in Fort Collins.)

8. Infrastructure. It would be difficult to go to Belize and not be thankful for the infrastructure we have here at home. We may complain about road construction here, but we must be glad that it can happen in the first place--that we have the machinery and the ability to get the machinery to where it needs to be and the funds to do so. Also, though we were pleasantly surprised by how well Belize handled the lack of safe drinking water, we're so grateful to live somewhere with fresh, clean water coming from the taps. (Our resort provided a large purified water dispenser which was refilled as needed and every place had bottled water for drinking. We didn't end up needing the water purifier we brought with us and are so thankful we didn't need any of the medications we brought just in case.)

9. Ability to travel light. Thankful, too, for the fact that our family has learned how to and values traveling light. :) As with our Europe trip, we each packed one carry on and one day pack. That was it. Our backpack carry ons work great (and were easier than trying to wheel a bag through sand).

10. Warm weather memories. As it was snowing again today, I'm thankful for warm weather memories. Knowing that I was warm just last week makes this week's temperatures more bearable. :) Micah and I were just discussing how a warm weather destination might be a lovely Thanksgiving tradition... ;)