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!