Christmas Hut Trip - 2009

We left for a hut we have been to 3 times now... SANGREE M. FROELICHER HUT to celebrate Christmas with friends! We set out on Christmas morning and it was DARN COLD! The hike into the hut is only 3.5 miles and we had done it several times but with temps near and below zero it became a chore for at least one of us - Karyn. Sounds like Becky and I both showed up at the hut a little hypothermic. I also succeeded in getting a little 'frostnip' on 8 of my fingers and perhaps frostbite on two of those - time will tell. Frostnip is "the reversible freezing of superficial skin layers that is usually marked by numbness and whiteness of the skin". My fingertips were white, i.e. frozen, and I have numbness and swelling in those fingertips today - 4 days later - which can last up to a year.

Some parts of one finger are turning black (right around the nail) but I'm not going to worry about it because I already had a doctor's appointment scheduled for early next week - will be fun to explain to a doc I've never met before, huh.

Seemed like time to take a nap....


Xander (9 months old) got a ride up in the Chariot and still thought it was a good time for a nap.

We got settled in and the turkey got started! we had a phenomenol dinner of veggies, cranberry sauce, gravy, giblets, and TURKEY! Another Brinkelman wonder of hut tripping!


The next day we had a fantastic breakfast and headed out for some skiing - Jake took some great pics that I will post later!




Saturday night, after the sun had gone down, Russ came down with some sort of illness... not sure what still but he was immobile. Perhaps food poisoning? Or altitude sickness or both? We discussed our options - sled him out Sat night in the dark or head out first thing in the morning. Xander was dehydrated as he hadn't had any liquids (that had stayed down) in 2 days so we were already considering an early departure for him.... We set alarms for 6am and when we went downstairs to see how Russ was doing, he was sleeping soundly. David put breakfast burritos in the oven and sausage rolls and we all tried to sleep another hour. At 7 we started moving, cleaning, packing, etc. Fred, Karyn and Russ headed out first - about 30 minutes ahead of the rest of the group as we figured that although Russ was moving on his own power he wasn't going to move very quickly. We were back at the car about the time Tucker sailed to the bottom of the trail. Karyn brought the Jeep up to get Tucker and his stuff - and David and Becky showed so they got a ride too. We took them to the parking lot where Russ and Fred were patiently waiting. They left in an attempt to get Russ to lower elevation - and a flush toilet? Back to the trailhead to get the Lewis family. All 3 of them and their gear shoved into the Jeep and back to the parking lot - to a dead battery in their car. A quick jump start and Tucker and Karyn were off to Copper Mountain to ski the afternoon with Drew - a friend who now lives in California and we don't see nearly enough! What a great weekend!

Looking forward to next year's trip already!

Macaroni and Cheese!

I can't remember the year... I'm not sure I remember which trip...

But....

The Browns and the Allens were out camping by canoe...

This happened a lot when I was a kid. We took a few trips in Michigan, 1 trip on the sand, but the most memorable trip (overall) was Isle Royal.

The Allens had prepared one of my favorite dishes... Macaroni and Cheese. Not the real stuff... no real cheese. Just simply that Kraft style dehydrated goodness. But wait...

Ham? How did that get in there? I remember wondering why you would put Ham in Mac and Cheese?!!?!?!? I thought that Mac and Cheese was ruined!!!

Ahh these days I'm a bit older, I require a little protein in the meal. Karyn is downstairs mixing up a bit of Kraft style Mac and Cheese with a bit of habanero turkey sausage. That's what I'm talking about!!!

Oh, did I mention Karyn loves a little Mexican spice?

All dressed up with some place to go....

Handsome had no where to go but got dressed up anyway.....


Tonight was Karyn's company's holiday party!

We got all dressed up and had a blast! There was an American Idol star and some Dancing with the Stars - we don't know who they were since we don't watch those shows but the entertainment was fantastic!

Bye

I really loved having two fridges... Except for the part where you buy more condiments because you can't find them...

Well I filled the other two freezers, and it's time to go.



I posted it on Craigslist, within 30 minutes it was gone...

I hope you picked it up, it was a great fridge, but just make sure the front is higher than the back, or it leaks..


I love craigslist. :)

Hmmm

Jack and Sarah? What do you think of your dog?

Congrats on Graduation!!!!

What a weekend!

Well,

what what did we do this weekend??? We skied - surprised, I know! and then to a holiday cookie party hosted by our neighbor.... Hopefully Tucker will add to this posting but yesterday was Karyn's FOURTH day in resort on ALPINE skis in 10 years (and they belong to HER - bought them at the end of last season when she couldn't ski, after knee surgery #3)! She sure seemed to enjoy it though!

Hmmmmm.... telemarks will come out next weekend, right?!?!?!

Christmas Cards!

We finally got our act together on the Christmas cards... This is one of the traditions that came from the "Brown" side at our house...

But Karyn is a real trooper with it. She puts together the picture card, and prints all the envelopes... She's even caught with some help!

100th POST!

Woot! We MADE it! 100 posts.... some of you have been reading since the first one. Kinda scary but maybe we're a tiny bit interesting.

So.... what have we been up to? Well, walking to Thanksgiving dinner at the neighbor/friend's house Karyn did 'something' to her infamous knee....

*note the ice pack*

So, the next day we hiked in the snow 3000 vertical feet and 8 miles.... of course. The following Monday she was at the doctor... Thursday getting a MRI and today getting the results.

The pictures look a little more ragged but until the pain is chronic and/or preventing normal activity, nothing to concern ourselves with so we went ahead and skiied like crazy this past weekend. TWO days at Keystone. Never got above 10 on Sunday there and not above 10 degrees at the house in Denver today. Thank goodness the house remodel included a new high efficiency furnace for the upstairs!

So we are both upstairs taking care of a little bit of business. With 35 lbs of weight loss Karyn has realized that she has neither a formal dress (for holiday parties) nor a swim suit (for apres ski soaks) that fit! So Karyn shops online and Tucker is doing his duty of writing the Xmas letter - if you don't get it and want to, let us know!

We are also preparing for hosting Christmas Eve dinner while Christmas will be spent at a hut in the backcountry with our best friends. We do this every year although not every year we have stayed the night we have at least 'hiked' in and had dinner and then 'hiked' out in the starlight - incredible in the Colorado high country.



You might try posting a comment - I wonder who all reads this silly little blog of ours and what you want to hear about that you think you don't...? I don't know.

Stay tuned for your holiday letter as it will host the whole year's worth of stuff without having to read all of the blog posts!

luv ya all!

Hut Trip - Day THREE

Yup, I'm almost done with this hut trip adventure... the snowshoes got used yesterday (attached to the pack today and Friday) and I feel good about that.... but now we had to take the trip out - reverse the 3000 vertical foot, 8 mile hike in. We took a few shortcuts and ended up at the car in 3 hours! (as opposed to Tucker and Karyn's 7 hours into the hut)....

Thanksgiving Hut Trip - DAY 2

That's Vail in the background.... the view wasn't so bad from this Eiseman hut.

The next day we woke up late-ish, had breakfast and then started normal hut activities - talking about who is going to go where and do what outside and then the puzzle got out!
We finally got motivated, after lunch, to head out and explore... with 4 snowshoers and 2 skiers it was interesting to find enough snow for the skiers and keep everyone entertained....
Mike got to ski the trees!
David and Rachel just enjoyed the time together with friends and the beautiful scenery!

Thanksgiving Hut Trip - a new tradition? - DAY 1

In September one of the guys at my work suggested a Thanksgiving hut trip to Ben Eiseman Hut. We knew that early season conditions could be questionable but Tucker and I signed up with barely a pause. We got out of the house about 1 hour later than planned on Friday morning and arrived at the trailhead that same 1 hour later than planned - 9am instead of 8am. At Karyn's 'typical' 1 mile/hour rate of hiking into huts this 8 mile hike should take 8 hours... meaning that a 9am departure was really close to sundown and we didn't want to do that again...


we then got our first glimpse of the conditions....

But, the snow got deeper very quickly... of course, we had left our skis at the car and had snowshoes - not that they got put on for this trip into the hut....
We got to the hut at 4pm... a little too close to sundown for these Browns....
Our friends arrived later in two groups, one group at 6pm and one person at 7pm... the 7pm arrival, Mike was ready to celebrate this long, hard haul with..... champagne? I've NEVER seen that at a hut before!

Thanksgiving! & When was the last time you saw Tucker play with Tinkerbell....?

Tucker entertained while others socialized and/or cooked/nibbled... Jessie really seemed to appreciate it though!!


So, we were Thanksgiving 'orphans' this year with no invites to anyone's house for any festivities... but we had a hut trip to prepare for the next morning which was ok.

Laura and Shelley invited us over early in the week and we decided to hike on over (they live in our neighborhood) and partake in their (food) deliciousness! And, it WAS delicious!

From this weekend

p.s. that's Karyn in the blue jacket and red pants on the telemark skis!

Turkey time!

Sounds like we're hosting Christmas this year. We're going to fry a turkey. That's always a fun event, and I really like the outcome.

Everyone has heard the horror stories of burning the turkey when the oil is too hot, and heck burning down the house when the oil catches fire.

We're using the recommended peanut oil, flash point at 460 degrees or so. We'll try to keep the fryer at 350 for best results...

The Vanpool invited us to join them on Thanksgiving... I offered to fry the turkey for them too. Shelly really likes the idea of 1 hour or less cook time... As their party grew, we're going to fry 2 turkeys... This will be fun!

Here are a couple cool links:
Maybe we'll try some gumbo recipes...
http://www.gumbopages.com/food/poultry/fried-turk.html

This one has lots of nice warnings...
http://www.crawfishcoofcentralflainc.com/Fried-Turkey-Instructions.html

Weekend ski trip

Headed up Sunday again. We ran into a few friends.

I haven't played with the helmet cam footage yet, but I'll see if I can get something up in the next day or two.

The weather was nice, but the slopes were icy.

Brian came up to join us, somehow we never saw him. There must be enough of the mountain open to completely miss someone up there, and you know cell phones don't work at a-basin.

World Diabetes Day (or how the Browns spent the weekend?)

So, November 14th is World Diabetes Day - bet ya never knew that, huh?

The American Diabetes Association in Colorado hosted an Adult Type 1 and Family retreat weekend at Beaver Creek, CO. We had a researcher speak about the research he is doing with mice (using all the great donations to me, your RED RIDER?!?!?) and the progress he has made. It was absolutely amazing! I was on a panel of adult diabetics who spoke to the children

and then another panel that spoke to the parents. There was also a discussion between spouses of us diabetics and all that they deal with which sounded REALLY interesting but I was busy talking to the kids at that point. WOW - lots going on!

At dinner on Saturday night I spoke to the group about Team WILD. I didn't realize all the emotions that parents go through until our Team WILD dinner after the 1/2 Ironman when one of the parents said (through her tears of joy) 'When my toddler was diagnosed with diabetes I never could have imagined that this was EVEN POSSIBLE' I wanted these parents to know that 15 of us, with 300 - yes, THREE HUNDRED YEARS - of diabetes between us did just what so many people in our lives thought our disease would prevent.

I hope I inspired just a tiny bit of hope... I hope.

We also met up with our friends Emily and Dave and Tucker got to meet Carter!

It was wonderful to hang out with them in the hot tub and watch their little water baby splash and play! My hope is that he never has to deal with diabetes.... He (and every other non-diabetic) is why I am now involved with these groups that help to cure and improve the life of diabetics and their support network - cause this disease doesn't just affect us and that is what I walked away with this weekend.... until next weekend?

I've been working on some video

I finished up the MonoP video from last year. You'll have to wait for the DVD to come out. Its about 35 minutes.

But this one is from today.

I think it worked out

Some video, some taken by me 1 mile away on 20x zoom. The other... I think you can tell who.

Salad for breakfast, take 2!

Well, I got a few 'complaints' that salad for breakfast the first time was just "normal" breakfast thrown onto some lettuce.... so here's another stab at it! Enjoy!

----------------
Ingredients

* 1 small head iceberg lettuce, torn
* 1/2 bunch green leaf lettuce, torn
* 1 med. vidalia onion, sliced
* 1 small package dried cheese tortellini, cooked al dente
* 1/2 pound bacon, cut into half pieces and cooked
* 4 hardboiled eggs, cooked, cooled and sliced
* 1 large tomato, seeded and chopped coarse
* 1 cup toasted croutons (I make my own but bought will suffice)
* DRESSING:
* 1/2 cup plain yogurt
* 1/2 cup mayo
* 1/4 cup buttermilk
* 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
* 1 tsp. dill weed
* 1 tbs. white wine vinegar
* 1 tbs dried minced onion
* 2 cloves garlic, pressed
* YOU CAN ALSO add a small amount of sugar to this dressing if you like that taste. I prefer it without for this particular salad.


Directions

1. Mix dressing in small bowl, set aside
2. place torn lettuce mixture into bottom of large salad bowl.
3. Top with sliced onion.
4. Drizzle small amount of dressing onto lettuce and onions. About 1/3 of the dressing.
5. Layer tortellini onto lettuce and onions.
6. Layer chopped tomato.
7. Drizzle with about 1/3 more dressing.
8. Layer sliced boiled eggs and bacon and finish drizzling the dressing over all. Top with toasted croutons.
9. Let chill for about an hour then DIG IN!
------------

CHANGES I MADE:
fat free plain yogurt
fat free mayo
1/2 cup skim buttermilk
NO dried onion
No tomatoes, croutons, or tortolinni
Extra lean turkey bacon - 3 slices total
added 1/4 cup per serving of low fat mozarella cheese
Didn't CHILL for an hour - who can wait that long for BREAKFAST?!?!?!?!
Added the bonus english muffin (Thomas Better Start - 1 WW point)

WW points w/o muffin (made my way) = 4 points
WW point w/ muffin (made my way) = 5 points

Enjoy!
~karyn

To make Jamie proud - salad for breakfast!

So, my trainer, Jamie Atlas, has started making weekly 'challenges'. This week's challenge was to eat two 'new to me' vegetables OR have salad for breakfast. Well, I LOVE breakfast and I like salad... so.... here is the recipe!
------------------
Salad Lyonnaise

Yields: 2 servings (but this recipe can be easily doubled)
Time to make: ~30 minutes

What you need:

* 2 tbsp. olive oil
* ½ lb. potatoes, cubed
* ¼ lb. slab bacon, cubed — I really recommend you seek out the slab bacon for this recipe, as the chewy cubes of fat are part of what makes this salad unique.
* ½ tbsp. shallot or onion, minced
* 3 cups salad greens
* ¼ cup red wine vinegar
* 1 tsp. Dijon mustard
* Salt and pepper to taste
* 2 eggs, poached — click here to learn how to poach eggs

1. Divide the greens among 2 salad plates.
2. Heat the olive oil over medium.
3. Add the bacon and cook until the fat renders, 2 minutes or so.
4. Add the potatoes and onion.
5. Continue cooking until the potatoes are browned and the bacon is crisp, 10-15 minutes.
6. Mix the vinegar and mustard.
7. Add the vinegar mixture to the skillet and bring just a boil, stirring to mix with the bacon and potatoes.
8. Season to taste.
9. Pour the mixture over the greens.
10. Top each portion with a poached egg.
--------

MY CHANGES
I used no oil in mine, I substituted lean turkey bacon for 'real' bacon and ended up with a 5point Weight Watcher dish. I added a Thomas 'Better Start' 100 calorie english muffins with spray-on 'I can't believe it's not butter' for 1 additional point. I also fried the eggs rather than poaching. Prepare the eggs however you would like!

6 points - delicious! For those that don't follow weight watchers or have no idea what I'm talking about... This meal was approximately 300 calories. WAY more than I normally have for breakfast but worth it and very filling!

Thanks for driving me to salad for breakfast Jamie! I'll see you tomorrow morning to work off those 300 calories now!

~karyn

Still Snowing

Overnight adds to the total!

Blizzard twenty oh niner?

Yep, I wasn't brave enough to fight the traffic, stuck at home all day. Karyn went to work, but came home early.

Two lows have set up east of Denver. One feeds the other... Sound like the blizzard of 03? The difference being, the eastern Low is not over Texas this time... it's north, feeding us Nebraska moisture. It might pass tomorrow.

He got his ski back!

Closing day you saw this:


This year not opening day, but he got his ski back!

What good old times we had last year!

I suppose you have been waiting for this!!?!?!?!?!

OMG!!! Austin was SO much fun! What an incredible and amazing group of women! I have posted ALL of the (very un-edited) photos here..... PHOTOS.

There are only 104 photos.... but when you get done with that......

I had an infusion set fail... but one of my team mates came to the rescue with a set - but a PINK set!!!!!!

Then we matched..... yeah!

We rocked it!!! My team finished in 6:52! woot! My biking was not what I expected but it was my FIRST RACE EVER and it was an IRONMAN so I'm really okay with it. LOVED every minute. I cannot even express the joy on my face at the team dinner with friends and family as they told us how the team and what they have accomplished had affected them. wow!

We had a woman with two glucose meters fail before the race - everyone to the rescue!

I had my set fail - someone to the rescue!

someone forgot to put their CGMS (continuous glucose monitoring system) in their bike transition - someone to the rescue!

cap fell off my lancet device - someone to the rescue

I don't know how these girls have done shorter distances WITHOUT this team. There was something so AMAZING about EVERYONE knowing exactly what it feels like to have to stop hiking, biking, swimming, running because your blood sugar is too high/low/unpredictible or equipment failure, etc. For once - and Ramona said it, not me - DIABETES WAS EMPOWERING!!!! It was not making things impossible..... it was making them possible! Without this team (of diabetics) I would not have been participating in a HALF IRONMAN! Without this team of diabetics- a lot of us might not have made the race at all... but LOTS of extra supplies, GU and hands to help made all the difference in the world. We are AWESOME! Go Team WILD!!!


I'll live to race another day (but for today, the quads are very sore)!
~karyn - Team WILD 70.3 ATHLETE!