A chilly day at the Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO, November 2015. Jacob will probably be taller than Patricia by this time in 2016.

Greetings from the Vollmers in Colorado! This past year has flown by for us and I (Patricia) can't believe it's almost 2016! We now have a teenager in the house, and most of this year involved the chaos of two working parents and two very busy sons. The holidays kind of snuck up on us...

Again, we plan to minimize the printed paper in our Christmas cards, instead opting to share our news via electrons. While drafting this one, I had a fun time looking at the holiday newsletters over the past years: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Read on about our individual news below. After the individual news are some highlights about this past year's family travels to Utah, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, British Columbia, and Alaska.

Dave is now on his 3rd year of teaching at the USAF Academy, still mainly teaching the upper level dynamic meteorology classes, but also this semester having the chance to teach the introductory meteorology course, which is popular with cadets from all disciplines, especially those who want to become pilots. He continues to work with junior- and senior-cadets on individual research projects, and he was able to present his work at a conference in Boulder in June.

Dave not only is maintaining his N Scale Juniata Division portable model railroad and his G-Scale Denver Rio Grande backyard railroad, but earlier this year Dave embarked on a new layout: An N Scale Colorado Midland railroad. This one is smaller than his Juniata Division; he's repurposed the benchwork he had for a CSX layout he and Jacob had worked on a few years ago. Jacob wasn't spending much time with the railroad anymore, so he was okay sacrificing it. You can visit Dave's public Facebook page to see more about the layout's progress. As of now, the tracks are being finalized, and scenicking should start later this winter.

Dave's latest modeling railroading project: the Colorado Midland Railroad's Aspen Branch circa 1905.

Dave is still having fun as an Assistant Scoutmaster for Jacob's Boy Scout troop, and this past summer they did a camping trip near Leadville, Colorado, where they hiked one of Colorado's 50+ "Fourteeners" (or "14ers"): Quandary Peak. We're looking forward to Timmy crossing over this month into Boy Scouts and he can be more involved with both of their Scouting experiences.

Dave conquered another 14er the weekend of his 41st birthday, along with Jacob!

I spent most of the year employed, and I worked more in 2015 than I had since 2004! It was quite an adjustment for the family, but the kids have been great about it. Unfortunately, the sacrifice the kids had to make was baseball this past spring, but we think it might work out in 2016. Fingers crossed!

In the spring semester, I served as a temporary civilian instructor in the USAF Academy physics department, teaching physical meteorology and helping with the senior capstone course. Compared to the freshman calculus I was teaching the previous semester, I had to really up my game. I was having to learn Wallace & Hobbs and Rogers & Yau all over again, along with a new textbook by Grant Petty. I had a great time teaching junior and senior cadets, and learned so much about working as a government civilian.

I took the summer off to spend time with the kids and went right back into the classroom in August, returning to teaching freshman calculus. It's time consuming work, but so incredibly rewarding.

Patricia is still running, usually now with Jacob. But on Thanksgiving morning, it was a balmy 22F with freezing drizzle. Jacob stayed home while Patricia ran one of her fastest 5K races since moving to Colorado...in Yak Trax!

Dave and I had a chance to see the Denver Broncos last season (they beat the Buffalo Bills)...we did this just after the Christmas cards went out in 2014. I love this picture of us, so I figured I'd include it here.

Jacob is 13 years old and continues to excel in school. We are so proud of how self-motivated he is: we NEVER have to nag him to do his homework or practice his music. He didn't have a chance to play baseball last spring, and he now claims he doesn't really have time for it anymore. Hopefully he continues to get some exercise with the running he's been doing.

This past year Jacob kept himself busy with Boy Scouts, Science Olympiad (his team went to the state competition in Golden this past April), chess club, LEGO Robotics ("The teams are too big") and he started to play cello in his school orchestra. I love hearing him practice cello, and I love even more that I don't have to nag him to practice. His desire to get an "A" in the class drives it all on his own. Jacob still takes piano lessons, but we had told him that if he wanted to focus more on cello, we may have to discuss whether he has the time to do all of it.

Jacob also likes to join me for 5K races in the area...he's run 3 races with me so far this year, and this weekend (as of this writing) we are doing a holiday race together.

Nothing gives us more joy than seeing our sons enjoying music. Jacob plays cello at his school holiday concert, November 2015.

Jacob will have been my running partner for four 5K races this year...sort of. He usually takes off at the start, and consistently beats me, running these races between 29-30 minutes, while I'm between 30-32. I love that Jacob enjoys running as much as I do...

Timmy is a 5th grader and this year is part of an experimental gifted/talented classroom at his elementary school. We really enjoy that his teacher doesn't have to "teach to the test" and Timmy seems to be some pretty amazing things. He's also involved in the Rubik's Cube club, Boy Scouts, tech club, and likes to play football on the playground with his friends. He continues his piano lessons, although he's less likely to practice without a gentle reminder from Mom and Dad every once in a while.

Timmy rarely is seen now without a Rubik's Cube (or one of the related puzzle games) in his hands. He has gotten his time for solving one down below 1 minute, which is remarkable to me.

He also absolutely loves his video games, and we've been trying to dig into that fancy by exposing him to some programming skills. He's dabbled in the SCRATCH programming language some, but I wonder if he might be able to handle dabbling in Python...we'll see!

Timmy's 5th grade portrait. Our baby will be 11 years old in January. Where has the time gone?

Timmy with his school's team during a Rubik's Cube competition in April. His team took 4th place.

We hit our 1st anniversary of adopting Ranger in July. We learned over this year that Ranger is a very different dog than Howie was. Much of it is in a very positive way, such as with how well one can walk him, and how well he comes when called.

But we also learned that Ranger has some stress issues, which are typical of many border collies. We can't take him to dog parks or let him interact in any kind of large group dog setting. He simply becomes too stressed at the chaos and begins to get belligerent at the group. So Doggie Day Care programs are out, which is what we had relied on to keep him active while the whole family is out of the house on weekdays.

At the beginning of this year, we elected to try out a dog walker, one who was recommended by one of Patricia's co-workers. When the weather is good, Ranger gets a 20-30 minute walk and plenty of individual attention.

In his first year with us, Ranger also put on some weight. Too much weight, unfortunately...so this fall we had to start a diet for Ranger. But it turns out he LOVES certain fruits and vegetables, so we are able to now give him baby carrots as treats which is pretty cute.

Ranger on a winter walk at the Garden of the Gods, November 2015. He doesn't like the cold that much.

I haven't done as good a job as I wanted to logging our travels on my blog, so I'll give you some summaries here, and point to my blog for those trips with details. I will continue to play catch up on the blog during my holiday break at the end of this month.

I (Patricia) had never been to Utah. I had heard that Utah had the "greatest snow on earth", and with our season passes, we had pretty good discounts at Alta resort. So I arranged for the family to stay in a condo in Park City during part of our Spring Break in March. I figured we'd ski, ski, and ski some more.

It turned out that Colorado took all of Utah's snow during the 2014-2015 ski season. Park City Resort was in pretty bad shape late in the season, so our day there wasn't very good. We are grateful for our sons' awesome skiing skills, since sometimes the only way down would be a more-advanced trail...all the other trails were closed due to lack of snow. Timmy and I had fun on the Park City alpine coaster!

On our second day, we decided to check out something else in Utah...we took a drive north of Salt Lake City and visited the Golden Spike National Historic Site near Promontory. Because, well, you know...Dave and trains, right? The site is actually worth the visit! You have to travel about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, and it's in a very remote area, but the preservation and storytelling in the area has been well-kept. I was very surprised at how busy the site was...it's not that difficult to access from I-84. Read more about our visit at my blog.

For the final day of our trip, we decided to make the drive to the next canyon over from Park City and visit Alta Ski Area. It was remarkable how different the ski conditions were in Cottonwood Canyon compared to what we dealt with in Park City. The snow was wonderful and we had a great day skiing!

After Jacob's cut short week at Boy Scout camp (due to flooding), we flew to visit all the grandparents. This year we were able to spend one week in Pennsylvania visiting with Dave's side of the family, then another week with my side of the family in West Virginia. We had a great time and can't wait to return in June!

It's a tradition: When we visit Martinsburg, we visit JayDee's water park! This year the boys' cousins were able to join them!

For our 20th anniversary, we took a cruise to Alaska. We sailed in and out of Vancouver, British Columbia, which we decided was a location we could drive to...we now know that's a VERY long drive from Colorado. It was lovely on the way TO Vancouver, but when we had to do it in reverse (particularly the border crossing), things got old in a hurry. We know better now...

Alaska was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! We visited Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan. The boys were old enough to freely roam the ship and enjoy the "tween" club on board. Here are a couple photos, but you can see more at our Picasa album here and can read an essay I wrote about taking the boys on our 20th anniversary trip here.

The boys and me at the Chinatown gate in Vancouver. It was a Sunday evening, so things were very quiet, but we found a nice restaurant for late dim sum.

Timmy got a selfie stick for his birthday, so we brought it along. It came in handy quite a bit. This was a tough picture to take because the phone wanted to adjust the lighting to our faces, which would have washed out the gorgeous glacier behind us.