A Year of Change

It snowed a bit more and looks pretty outside but it is only 4:32 in the morning so kind of hard to see. I woke up and headed downstairs to get coffee only to step in a pile of dog shit from Mojo. Not the hard nice kind either, enough said. It was also on a few stairs giving us about 5 different places to clean up. Unbelievable.

Last night I found out one of my Partners, Josh, is sick with the flu. Knowing this and now with having the clean up and hopefully get carpet cleaners out here, I’m skipping Seattle. Plus I need to wait for the plow to get out of the driveway. I should be leaving in 30 minutes for the airport but will instead just fly to San Francisco tomorrow for my Wednesday morning meeting. Must be God’s way of telling me not to go, ha.

Yesterday afternoon we headed out to get our little tree. The snow was deep and we found a cute little Charlie Brown Scotch Pine that’s about the same height as Jagger. It’s small but really feels like Christmas. Lori and I were at Home Depot and thought about getting a fake one but she texted both boys and they were adamant about going and cutting one. This made us both happy as there is a Christmas Spirit after all! While trudging through waist deep snow Ty found a pan, a plate, a bucket and a half a bottle of Makers Mark Whisky buried in the snow. Not sure how he found it, maybe he stepped on something as it was buried deep. Must have been from someone who was camping or something.

Today is Dad’s birthday, Happy Birthday! Dad was born in 1928 so he would have been 91. He passed away on August 16th, 2010. We sure miss him and Mom of course too. Hopefully they’re having a fun day upstairs.

The dogs want food but they’re not getting it for another 30 minutes or so as after they eat I walk them and cannot walk them in the dark. It’s a big week at school as next week is Final’s Week. That’s it, have a great day and God Bless.

Ok, maybe not enough to put the title in Caps but it snowed. We probably have 3 or 4 inches of the light fluffy stuff. Skiing should be good today. We’re supposed to get more this afternoon and tonight and I have to leave for DIA at 5:30 am tomorrow morning so bring it on, ha.

I’ve learned that as my Mom always said, it is what it is. No point getting upset about it as if I miss my flight, I miss my flight. This wouldn’t be a good one to miss though so I’m hoping the roads are plowed in the morning. Lori and Jag are going down today for a photo shoot. They are leaving around 11 and should be back by 5 or 5:30.

Yesterday’s basketball game unfortunately wasn’t as good as the one the day before. Our team couldn’t get their shots to drop. It was just one of those days. Shots would swirl around the rim and roll out. The other team also had a few great 3 point shooters and our guys would continue to leave them open shots. After the first 5 minutes it was 15 to 6 and we just couldn’t crawl back. Good news is these games don’t count towards league standings and we play them again in January and can beat them if we play our game. Jag continued to play well and has the best basketball IQ on the floor. He’s like a coach on the floor and is actually a better coach than our coaches, ha. We’ll get them next year which is about 23 days away!

Jag’s best friend Lexi received an email and she was accepted to Middlebury in Vermont. Lori, Jag and I went to Matsu for sushi as Ty was at Bol which is our high end bowling ally with friends. We had an alert to shelter in place last night around 10 pm due to some police activity in Minturn. Turns out it was some domestic thing or something. The day before a U Haul from Las Vegas got into it in the Walgreens parking lot where a guy was killed. Apparently he wanted to die by suicide by cops or something. Shit happens everywhere.

Lori and I went down to the house and made a few changes. We were going to have our living room tv next to the fireplace but it just didn’t work so now it’ll have to go above the fireplace. If we can get the boys up we’re going to get our tree this morning, we’re running out of time. Have a great day, God Bless.

Last nights basketball game was great. Jag’s definitely the star of the team and yes we won. The Championship Game is at 3:30 today. Had we lost we would have been playing at 11 this morning. We have a pretty good starting five but our bench isn’t deep at all. A couple times during the game the coach took Jag out along with two other starters and we had no one in who could score. This will be an issue going forward as the boys have to have a break for a few minutes during the game. They just can’t run up and down the court without getting a few minutes rest here and there. The coach though needs to do a better job of managing the team and deciding who and when to give a guy a break. We’ll be playing Vail Christian today unless they were somehow upset last night in their game after we left. Not bad for a school that’s known Statewide as a premier ski racing school!

After the game we headed to TiAmo for Lori’s team dinner with everyone on her team and their spouses. It was a fun dinner but we were out until about 9 or so. This morning we’re headed to the gym and then going down to the house to check out a few things. Then we’re going to cut our Christmas tree before the game. Ty is meeting a bunch of friends at the mountain sometime this morning.

Now for the BIG news of the day, Happy Birthday Mojo! He’s 13 today, whoo hoo! He’s such a good dog and has been such a huge part of our lives and the kids growing up. He’s getting old as 13 is old for a big dog. He has sore back legs and hips but still manages to crawl up on the couch to sleep and walk up the mountain. CBD helps him a lot. If you think back to pets you’ve owned you can associate things that happened over the years just like you can with your kids. I still remember clearly driving Mojo home about 12 years and 10 months ago from Highlands Ranch where we picked him up.

So that’s it, time to get moving, we have a busy day and a busy week. Lot’s going on. Hope everyone is well, take care and God Bless.

School’s almost over for the year. Seems like we need more time. Also doesn’t really seem like the holiday season yet. Hopefully that’ll change and everyone will get in the spirit soon. The problem is we’re all so busy that no one has time to get into the spirit. When we were kids is seemed like it took forever for Christmas to get here. I remember those advent calendars that we’d watch daily as we counted down the days until Santa arrived. How things have changed.

Today I might have to run to Denver but am hoping to avoid it. Jag’s basketball game starts at 4:30 so I’ll pick Lori up around 3. Ty has lots of work to do as does Jag. It’s warm up here and a lot of the snow has melted. Ty wants to switch from basketball to the telemark team. We’ll see. Lori’s head still hurts, not sure how we’re going to fix it this time. More surgery is probably the answer. Time to get the boys moving as it’s a bit after 6:30. Have a great day and weekend, tomorrow is Mojo’s birthday! God Bless.

Christmas is 20 days away! Wow! That means somewhere between 110 and 125 days we should be moving, double wow! Time goes fast, hold on tight.

Today we have more of the same, work, school, dogs and more. It’s snowing lightly outside with big fluffy feather like flakes. Not much will stick as the ground is warm.

I had a good tasting yesterday here in town. I connected with 5 key guys or accounts that will do substantial business with me this season. I hung out from about 1 until a bit after 3 and then Lori and I went down to the house. The shower and bathroom are framed as are the new windows we wanted put in along with the front porch and more. It’s coming along fast now and Lori had to finalize all the plumbing fixtures yesterday. It’s all “dried in” meaning no weather gets in anywhere. The windows are covered in some sort of plastic.

Next week Lori and I are both traveling. After I get back from Seattle and San Francisco Lori goes to get Dixie in Sacramento. Then the fun starts. The boys will have Finals Week and then we have Jag’s 18th birthday, wow! Not sure what to get him.

We’re trying to declutter or downsize around here by slowly getting rid of stuff we don’t want or need. Last thing we want to do is haul a bunch of junk we don’t use down to the new house. It’s sort of a chance for a fresh start. In the next few weeks we should start hearing back from some colleges Jag applied to. As I said earlier, time goes fast. God Bless.

That’s my diet for the next 5 days, nothing but chicken, eggs and vegetables. Time to lean out before the stretch run between now and the end of the year. Robi put her tree up! Nice. It’s Mom’s old tree so that makes it special. We’ll go cut ours Saturday. Jag has a photo shoot Sunday, a basketball game Friday and I leave Monday for 56 hours. We have a ton of stuff going on. Jag had a scrimmage last night and was the high scorer. He has a nice soft touch around the basket and great court awareness. He didn’t play last year due to his hand surgery so we hadn’t seen him since he was a sophomore. The team needs to work on getting the ball to him as that’s the biggest challenge. He’ll have a good year the way he’s playing.

Lori is off today and I have a tasting from 1 to 3. I skipped Aspen yesterday as I had too much work to try to get done before I leave next week. Not much else going on to talk about, time to get Ty moving. Have a great day and God Bless.

Today I’m supposed to be in Aspen for a tasting but I think I’m going to have to skip it. I thought Vail was today and Aspen tomorrow but I had it backwards. I just have too much to do around here today to prepare for next week. Oh well, these tastings are mostly for show anyhow.

Jag has a scrimmage tonight at 5:30. Ty has a bunch of school work and I have a bunch of calls to do among other things. It’s already December 3rd which is hard to believe. It’ll be January 2020 before we know it. 20 years ago 2020 sounded like some futuristic World with flying cars and transporters. We’ve advanced in a lot of areas but not those two. Sadly many of the areas where we’ve developed are not good. More and more of our rights are being suppressed daily and it seems you can’t say or do anything these days without someone being offended. Anyone read George Orwell’s 1984? One can only imagine where we’ll be in 5, 10 or 20 years.

Time to get Ty up as he wants to go to school early. I hope you all are having a good month so far. I know Tommy has his tree up but what about the rest of you, Robi? We’ll go cut ours this weekend which reminds me, I need to go to the forest service today and buy my $10 permit. God Bless you all.

Pressure’s on. At work, school and for me to figure out how to fix Lori’s neck. Everyone is moving slow, or not moving at all if you’re a teenager. Hard to get back in the groove.

Yesterday we cleaned and cleaned until about 1:30. Around an hour later Zoe showed up and hung out with Ty until 6:30 when Jag and Ty took her home. Then they headed to Lexi’s house and Lori and I met them there for some chili. They’re super nice people and Lexi and Jag are best friends. We made it home around 10.

There’s so much each of us have going on this week it’d take too long to explain. Lori did get her reservations, three total trips in all, two go get Dixie and then get her back home. One roundtrip for Dixie. More on that in a week or so.

Time to go, have a great day. Here’s some fun pics. First one is my arm in Lori’s pants! Either her pants are really small or my arm is really big. Probably a little bit of both.

Next up is some bighorn sheep that hang out by the school licking some salt of the road.

God Bless.

Uh oh, it’s December 1st. We have 3 birthdays, 2 trips at least, about $1.7 Million dollars in sales to get in, 10 or so final exams, 3 basketball tournaments, a company dinner and the challenge of figuring out how to get Grandma Dixie out here and back over the holidays and probably the most difficult thing, finding her a place to stay. Oh well, you do what you have to do, right mom?

Today we need to clean up a bunch as Zoe is coming over to hang out with Ty. Tomorrow the boys start the grind. They have two weeks of school before finals week and that’s it. We have a basketball game Tuesday at Vail Christian and a tournament Friday and I think Saturday.

Yesterday Jag went to basketball practice and earlier in the day I went to the gym. I washed the car, not by choice, to get all the ice that was frozen by the tires out of the wheel wells. My knees almost froze off as I was in shorts on my way to the gym.

Harley has brought every toy she owns over to me to play this morning. She and Mojo woke me at 5 to go out and then I went back to bed until about 7:30. We’re swimming in dog toys as a company called Bark Box had been charging our AMEX and when we cancelled they sent Lori a few boxes of toys and stuff. It looks like a nursery in our front room.

It’s clear outside with bright blue skies and they say near zero but I’ve been out a few times in shorts and it doesn’t seem that bad. That’s it for now, time to get moving. I’d like to go to the gym but we have a lot of cleaning before Zoe comes over. Better get moving, go Bronco’s! Oh I almost forgot, Robi and Robert are going to the Cardinals game, have fun! God Bless.

Yesterday afternoon we headed to Silverthorne only to arrive in Frisco and find I-70 closed yet again. Seems some rock slide or something happened like another accident. We got off the highway, stopped at Whole Foods and then with a few thousand of our friends, took the dam road over to get to where we needed to go. Needless to say (why do people say that and then say it anyway) it took us an extra 45 minutes or so. First stop was Bed Bath and Beyond for new bedding and a small vacuum to replace the same one we returned to Costco last week that broke. Through coupons and the Black Friday sale we ended up getting the vacuum for $200 instead of $400 which was $79 cheaper than Costco! Next up was Petco for dog food. Then we were going to hit Zumiz but the snow was coming down hard. I was worried about the pass closing and decided that we’d better just head home. Luckily we left when we did as sure enough, they closed the pass soon after we made it over.

On the way to Frisco we stopped in to the doctor as Jag still wasn’t feeling better. After a strep test, we found out he has strep throat. We picked up some amoxicillin on the way home to hopefully make him better. Meanwhile Ty stayed at Sonny’s and we’ll get him this morning.

It’s windy up here but no new snow. Jag wants to go to Denver for basketball shoes but they say the wind will be blowing as high as 80 miles an hour. I think we’ll pass today.

Yesterday was Annette’s birthday. Lori had told me but I forgot to put it in the blog so Happy Birthday Annette! Hope you had a great day and now you can make it a birthday weekend. I’m guessing you’ll go see a movie or two.

It did snow and blow until around 7 or so. We also made our turkey which turned out pretty good. Mojo loves hanging out in the snow, the colder the better.

Lori’s headache is back, not sure how it went away two days ago but we’ll try to identify what she’s doing, or not doing, that triggers it. Someday, probably after another fusion, we’ll lick this thing. That’s it, tomorrow is December 1st! Happy Holidays and God Bless.