12. February 2015 · Comments Off on Note to Self: Snowboarding is Not the Same as Skiing! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
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I was as unsteady as I look here. Despite numerous warnings, I got on a snowboard and guess what? It wasn’t that bad!

This past Saturday at Monarch Mountain, with our sponsor cadet’s persuasion, I got on a snowboard for the first time.

I’ve been skiing since about age 18, gaining most of my experience during the two winters Dave and I were stationed in Korea. In fact, many of the resorts where we skied between 1998-2000 will be venues for the 2018 Winter Olympics! After over a decade of hiatus from 2000 – 2012 while the kids were little (skiing just once in those 10 years), we are skiing routinely now and the whole family truly enjoys it. More »

19. March 2014 · Comments Off on Colorado Springs Sledding Fun · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
Despite the signs, everyone sleds! I'm sure it's the city just covering their butts.

Despite the signs, everyone sleds! I’m sure it’s the city just covering their butts. See that fence down there? OW!

I’m now officially catching up on some smaller posts I had planned to share…but then forgot.

Let’s start with some sledding the family did at the beginning of February. We went up the road to Cottonwood Creek Community Park, which has numerous gentle hills throughout.

We took our little sleds that we used at Estes Park back in November and enjoyed going up and down the hills. More »

07. December 2013 · Comments Off on Colorado Discoveries 21: Winter Hiking at Rocky Mountain National Park · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,
Jacob's smile in this picture make this slippery hike worth it!

Jacob’s smile in this picture make this slippery hike worth it!

On the second day of our trip to Estes Park, we took a hike around Bear Lake. We weren’t sure what we would encounter, since there was quite a bit of snow. It turned out the trail was very snowy, but was packed down enough that we could walk on it okay. We just had to be very very careful!

These signs all over the entrance were rather daunting....

These signs all over the entrance were rather daunting….

More »

We awoke to our first snow accumulation this past Friday!

We awoke to our first snow accumulation this past Friday!

We were excited to wake up to snow on the ground this past Friday! The kids had no school, so they had the chance to play outside for a while.

We had about 2 1/2″ total by about 9am, but it was all melted by lunchtime. From what I understand, this is typical in Colorado Springs.

The view from our back deck!

The view from our back deck!

I’m glad I got the boys new parkas and snow pants, but I guess they could use some boots soon. Where do I begin to get some?

*Wait a second, wasn’t that a major fast-food corporation jingle?

While I was in Nebraska, I did make some time to visit with my Pokeno girlfriends, have a nice dinner out with Shannon (who took me in at her house when the Offutt Inn was booked for the week), and enjoy a trip to Trader Joe’s!

Several neighborhood Moms in Bellevue get together for a breakfast pot luck once a month, and a dinner potluck and game of Pokeno also once a month (on another separate day).  The girls elected to move Pokeno night around a little so I could join them!  I shipped a box of Mardi Gras decorations to the ladies, and we had a blast dressing up and enjoying Cristi’s tater tot casserole.

We have pictures of the Pokeno ladies from every month!
Guess who???
Who else would appear for the world to see on the Internet in Mardi Gras deely-boppers?  If you look closely, you can see the blinky lights…

Shannon and I also had a chance to go out together for dinner. Shannon was my adventure-buddy when I was in Omaha…she braved the 3-hours-each-way drive to the Ashfall Fossil Beds last summer! We also checked out numerous out-of-the-ordinary restaurants together, and this time around we had a hankerin’ for Ethiopian food!

Shannon did the research.  She found two places, both in the downtown Omaha vicinity.  One was called “Ethiopian Restaurant” and the other called “Lalibela’s”.  We chose “Ethiopian Restaurant” because it was closer to the highway and the weather still wasn’t great.

The restaurant shares a business space with an Ethiopian grocery, and the grocery side was very full.  The store owner — a very pretty young lady, probably in her 30s — came out and told Shannon and me that she was out of food.  What?  On a Friday night at 6pm???  Don’t even go there with the irony of it.

We’re hoping it was from the weather…we got back in the truck and headed up the street to the 2nd choice (what are the chances of that???  TWO Ethiopian restaurants within about 5 minutes of each other!!!).

The restaurant was rather empty, just two other couples at tables, eating their respective dinners. We ended up talking to one of the other couples, asking about what they were eating and getting some tips of what’s good and what’s not. Shannon and I each chose one entree and we grazed freely on both of them. I ordered something with seasoned lamb, while Shannon chose a vegetarian combo. I wish we had ordered two of the veggie combos, I didn’t care for the meat too much, but the rainbow of lentils (on the left) was awesome!  Learning how to eat the food without utensils was also fun!

There’s a basket in front of Shannon filled with injera, a flatbread that you use as your plate and utensil.  Rip off a piece of injera and scoop away!

Finally, even though I was quite tired from my 4-days in a row of work (wow, what happened to me?), I took a trip out to the recently-opened Omaha Trader Joe’s and stocked up on the family favorites!

This will last us till my next trip to Omaha!  I hand-carried this home in a single TJ’s reusable shopping bag.  I got crap from Jacob for not picking up some Dorothy Lynch salad dressing…sorry!

Thanks to Shannon, Cristi and Laura for helping make my weekend back in Nebraska so great!

07. March 2011 · Comments Off on My New Commuter Life, Part II: Just Because I Now Live in Florida…. · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

….doesn’t mean I never have to see snow again, right?

Or drive in the snow again?

(As promised in my previous post, here’s the story of why I’ll never buy a Ford Mustang north of the Mason/Dixon line!)

On last weekend’s trip to Omaha, I was fortunate to travel in between major winter weather systems.  Temperatures were in the 50s on my first day there, quite nice!

We were forecasting 1-2″ of snow on Thursday, February 24th.  We told EVERYONE 1-2″, and not just us: the National Weather Service, the television stations, everyone!

What happened was pretty freakish, didn’t last that long, and happened right on top of the afternoon/evening commute home.  I only caught one iPhone screen capture of the event’s Doppler radar.  I wish I had taken more:

You know how folks talk about great things (or not-so-great things) that happen when “all the stars are aligned?”  Well, in this case, several things “aligned” in the atmosphere to make this nearly-horizontal dark green line form across central Nebraska.  I’m not going to get into the wintertime “convective symmetric instability” here.  That line is HEAVY SNOW, and it dumped about 5″ of snow in 3 hours in Bellevue and in areas just south of Offutt AFB.  And the line barely moved for those 3 hours.  It was NUTS!

And I got to drive home in it.  Whee!

I had reported for duty very early that morning, so I figured I’d be heading home around 1:00-1:30pm, but at the last minute I had a meeting that took me to about 3:00pm.  The movement of this line was very slow, and I was itching to leave for the day, so after a few minutes of monitoring a non-moving line, I bit the bullet and left.  If I had left when I thought I’d be leaving, I’d have made it back to where I was staying without incident.  Instead, I fishtailed and skidded all the way back, with heavy snow making things all the worse.

I ending up coming back into my old neighborhood right as my boys’ former elementary school was letting out.  The neighborhood is hilly, and there were cars slipping and sliding everywhere.  Since only 1-2″ of snow was originally forecast, the salt/silt trucks didn’t even come out to prepare the roads.  What a horrific mess!

I couldn’t get that #$%  Mustang up the last hill before getting to the house.  I tried several times, but it just wasn’t happening.  If there wasn’t so much after-school traffic, I might have had the room to roll backwards down the hill, and get enough speed to do it.  But I simply had to abandon the car about a block from where I was staying, and walk in the heavy snowfall, and on unshoveled sidewalks, to the house.  I had my full winter-weather gear, and nice warm boots, at least.  It wasn’t a long walk.  Uphill, of course.

About 1/2 hour later, my hostess loaded a few supplies into her Suburban and drove me back over to the car.  With less traffic, I was able to roll backwards back down the hill and tear with full power up the hill to the house.  And here it is right after I got it parked — POINTING DOWNHILL on the legal side of the street.

How incredibly frustrating — I’m not a bad winter-weather driver.  I could hold my own in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and South Korea.  Even our 2 1/2 years in Nebraska, we were fine even driving our Toyota Prius.  But with this Mustang, I was dealing with a very lightweight, rear-wheel drive vehicle.  Ugh!

The local National Weather Service office had put out this map of snowfall totals from that one event, note how there was 5+” of snow in a narrow ribbon across south-central eastern Nebraska, but NONE in northern Sarpy and Douglas Counties.  Downtown Omaha saw no snow, but 10 miles to the south was buried in 5-6″ of snow that fell in just 3-4 hours.

Image created by the National Weather Service office, Omaha/Valley, Nebraska

There were cold temperatures and snow showers for the next couple days of my stay in the Omaha area, and the snowy weather turned into a freezing rain risk that lasted right up until just a couple hours before my flight out on the 27th.  Since I was heading into work each day at about 4:45am, luckily I could slip and slide around without other cars in the way.  It was nerve-wracking, but I survived.

I’m so glad the next time I head to Nebraska will be well after the winter-weather is done.  I’ll only have to worry about tornadoes next time…

Next up, Part III: a happier post about my fun times on this trip: trying out Ethiopian food, enjoying Pokeno with the girls, and shopping at my favorite store, Trader Joe’s!

30. November 2008 · Comments Off on SNOW! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

We awakened this morning to about an inch of snow here. Yay! I leave tomorrow for Florida for my pre-deployment training and I was hoping to see some snow before I left. We had the boys bundled up and out the door around 8am.

That’s Jacob throwing snow at Howie on the left. Timmy in the center with the back of his hood covered in snow.

Howie probably had the most fun of all, he was running in circles and enjoying rolling around in the snow.

What’s super cool? This snow won’t melt by lunchtime, the way it usually does in Raleigh.

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