A Year of Change

Any way you look at it, the mountains win out over the city. They’re prettier, healthier, cleaner, less crowded and just overall better. Throw in this fantastic place and well, it’s pretty much like heaven.

We arrived in Aspen and were settled in by 2. Soon after the 2 girls and Aleks and Jure and I headed to town to drop off some wine and buy some groceries. An hour or so later with $500 worth of food in tow, we headed back to the Ranch. Meanwhile the boys were fishing, swimming, paddling around in the canoe and having a blast. The other two kids are more interested in living on their computers and video games than playing outside but that didn’t deter our kids. Sometimes it takes being around other kids to realize how great ours are!

Lots to do today starting with a visit to the St Regis for a meeting and then a lunch and then a dinner. It’ll be nonstop from now until Sunday, but that’s what we’re here for.

Time to run as I need to go buy shampoo somewhere as it’s sitting on our kitchen counter at home. God Bless.

This morning our convoy (OK, so it’s only 3 vehicles) will head out at 9am for Aspen. It should take us a bit over 3 hours to get there as I’ll go slower since I have people following me. We’re going to go over Independence Pass which is as close to heaven as you can get at about 12,500 feet in elevation. I’m sure we’ll stop and get some pictures.

Yesterday was a whirlwind. Finally at 9:30pm we had to stop even though we didn’t finish packing. Ty did take a suitcase upstairs and threw all his clothes in, unfolded and all. Of course Mom had to take it all out, fold it, and repack it.

Mojo woke me up around 5am but before that our alarm went off at 1 so Lori and I both were up calling ADT so the cops didn’t come. Then I woke up around 2:45 and finally rolled out of bed at 5:20 for good. I’m ok now but will surely be tired later.

Time to run as I need to go gas up Lori’s car. I’m going to have Josh, Aleks and his son Jure (pronounced Jur-ee) who are our long time friends and winemakers from Slovenia, drive her car so she doesn’t tense up her neck driving in the mountains for 3 plus hours. Peggy has arranged for us to use the 1934 Rolls Royce for the week which should be fun for our guests.

Here’s our Ranch house (the main house) for the next 5 days. There are also two cabins that sleep 2 and 4. Throw in a pond for swimming, fishing and a canoe and the kids will be in heaven. That’s it for today, time to run, hope you are all well and wish you were joining us! God Bless, (great place for a family reunion!)

Snowmass Valley Ranch Main House

Ok, in about 30 minutes the non stop action begins and it won’t end until next Sunday night!

By 7:30am this morning we all need to be in the car for a quick trip to Vail to Lori’s doctor for a 10am appointment. Then we need to leave the mountains by noon to be back in Denver in time for me to get to the airport by 2pm and for Lori to get to the office to call in payroll. After that we have lots of cleaning to do and other assorted errands such as getting more dog food and some banking.

Then tomorrow morning we’re off to Aspen until next Sunday. No time to rest, no matter how tired we are, which we obviously are as Mojo kept us up again and rousted me out of bed at 5:15. This morning I came down to a chewed up legal pad all over the floor.

We have to get the house cleaned up by dinner time as we can’t get out of town leaving it in the shape it’s in. After that we’ll attempt to pack, forgetting some things I’m sure. So, time to go, hope you all are well. I need to shower and then wake Lori and then 30  minutes later, the boys. Have a great day, God Bless.

Lori needs to be in early today and I have a ton of work and running around to do. I have so much, I don’t know where to start so I guess I’ll just tackle it as it comes. I need to do about 30 minutes worth of computer work before my conference call at 9am so that’s a good place to start.

We’re going to try to get all packed today too even though we don’t leave until Wednesday as we might need to go to Vail tomorrow. I think baseball practice will get rained out but if it doesn’t, we’ll probably skip it anyhow as we’ll be missing the games this week.

Time to run so I can figure out what all and where all I need to go today. I had it all figured out last night when I went to sleep but now of course, have forgot! Oh yea, Mojo has taken to sleeping next to our bed, which is fine, until the morning comes. That’s when he decides to start licking and nudging your hand or whatever he can reach and then he starts talking or barking at you. He’s like the new alarm clock we didn’t order!

Have a great day, God Bless.

Yesterday we managed to get to the storage unit with about 10 more plastic tubs full of clothes and other stuff. Lori then caulked and painted the window sills so they look good. At one point she came downstairs saying “we gotta move” as she noticed cracks in the sills by the windows. Not sure what’s going to happen but that’s still our plan and we’re another day closer to putting the house on the market. Our goal is by the end of the month, period!

Today we’re going to look at our neighbors, the Plotkins house. They had listed it and then pulled it as their broker in their words, an idiot. They are just about to list it again at a new lower price. It’s a cool house with a big lot with a tennis court. Not sure we’d use the tennis court much but it’s larger, about 3500 square feet, with a mother in law apartment.

We also need to try to get to church at 10am plus get ready for our trip Wednesday am. I made some perfect bbq ribs last night, maybe the best I’ve ever made, and I’ve cooked up some good ribs in my day. Also today we need to go through all our clothes and pack up all the winter stuff and separate what we no longer use. Our neighbor Roger who’s a minister has been getting bags and bags of stuff from us for his church. Somewhere there’s some disadvantaged people running around in Armani sports coats!

Guess I’ll go, hope all’s well. The boys found our missing phone last night so our home phones are up and running again. Take care and God Bless.

Yesterday after writing the blog I went downstairs to find water rushing in the window all over our new carpet and flooding the basement. I quickly slammed the window shut and ran outside in the rain. The window well had filled up with water as it was coming down a makeshift river on the side of the house. I grabbed a shovel and dug a ditch away from the house towards the neighbors and then began scooping water out of the window well. 30 minutes later I pretty much contained the problem but then had to deal with the wet carpet. Just another day.

Next up Lori and I worked on the upstairs guest room and ran some errands. Around 2pm the guys from the furnace company showed up as our air conditioner and fan to the furnace stopped working. 2 hours and $687 later we also had that fixed. So I got that going for me too!

Lori then went to get her nails done (girls like to do that, I don’t know why?) and I stayed with the boys. Today we have some shopping to do to get a few things for our trip but it’ll be short as I didn’t expect to pay almost $700 yesterday to get the furnace fixed. We did take a walk and Lori has a slight headache which she thinks came from that.

Time to get moving so have a good day. We might take the boys to a movie today, we’ll see.

God Bless

Well our oven is broke and I don’t mean out of cash. I’m not even sure if saying the “oven is broke” is proper grammar, probably not, just doesn’t sound right. (Lori’s still sleeping so I can’t ask her) Anyhow there goes another wad of cash. It’ll be a few weeks or more until we can afford to fix it.

The monsoon rains pretty much missed our neighborhood but other areas of the city are flooding big time. It’s supposed to wind down around noon they say. Not sure if we’ll have our baseball game tonight or not.

My people from our Company start arriving today with Jody and his family landing from Florida around noon. Each year at our Company meeting we have a tradition of going around the room after our big dinner, and we each toast a person within the Company who  has affected them or means a lot to them. Anyhow this year, Jody, who is our up and coming national chain rock star, chose me. We talk every day (as I’m his boss) but usually the employees pick another employee that’s one of their co-workers. He took me aside later and was all emotional and told me how much he learns from me daily, even though I might not know it, and how much I remind him of his dad, who passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. It was quite a compliment as he’s probably the most important guy we have outside of us three owners and he and I are close, kind of like family. He told me I’m the only one in the Company that he can talk to without a filter meaning he can say whatever he wants without having to hold anything back. I was surprised but happy to hear how much I’ve helped him grow plus glad to know he feels this way as we almost lost him to another company a year ago when Bob left. You see Bob, who left,  tried to steal him by offering him more money, but he told me he stayed because of me. Who knew? Anyhow his wife and 2 kids, ages 10 and 12, are here and going to Aspen with us and then here for another week as he needed to get out of his house for 3 weeks as they found mold. I’m sure our kids will have a good time as they’re all excited to have other kids to play with.

Lori’s head seems to be all better, so she says. We’ll knock on wood that it stays this way. I’m watching the news and there’s a lot of water out there. Parts of the city really got hammered.

I read a story yesterday about a family who had their kids taken away as they let their 11 year old play basketball in their own backyard for 90 minutes alone when they weren’t home. The neighbor called the cops and the parents were arrested, strip searched and both kids were taken away and put in foster care for 2 months until finally the 11 year old talked with the judge privately and he returned them to their parents. Now the parents have to go to parenting classes and the kids have to go to a certain type of state camp each day all summer long to be supposedly watched. This is just one more example of an overreaching meddling govt. We were shocked to read that this can happen today but really nothing much surprises us anymore. I could go on and on citing examples of unbelievable stories but I’ll let it go. It’s just so sad  what our society is becoming these days.

Guess I’ll stop and head to the gym. Hope everyone is well, take care and God Bless.

Looks like we have about 36 hours of bad weather coming our way. I guess it’s supposed to start around noon and then stay around until tomorrow night. Then a few days of on and off storms before the 90’s arrive around next Wednesday.

Lori’s plane was late so we made it home a bit after 8pm. Everyone was glad she was home. Today I have some more work to do to prepare for next week. I’m not sure what Lori’s doing, probably stopping some crisis at the office.

Guess I’ll go, hope all’s well, take care, God Bless

So far this summer, either I’ve been gone or Mom has been gone. We’re all glad she’s coming home tonight as it seems like she’s been gone a month! We didn’t get much cleaning done that you can see but I did make some progress on a bunch of little things like clothes on top of the dryer and some stuff in the basement or wine cellar.

I think today the rain comes back with it kicking up tomorrow. Next week though it’ll be in the 90’s which will be perfect weather for our mini trip to Aspen for work. Today we’re supposed to have baseball practice but it might get rained out as the storms are suppose to start around 2pm.

Time to run now so I can make it to the gym before I need to take Ty to track practice and then he has a haircut at 9:30. Hope all’s well, God Bless.

Yesterday it was a nice day but today it’ll be down right hot. They say 88 degrees meaning we’ll need to start up the air conditioner. Last night Jag and I headed to baseball while Ty went to Vinny’s earlier in the day to go swimming and then hang out at his house.

It was a good game with Jag going 2 for 3 with 2 doubles, 4 runs batted in and 4 strikeouts in 2 innings pitched. I think he gave up one run if any. We won 12 to 6 and will play the same team again this Friday. The other team was talking smack and at one point distracted Jagger when he was on the mound and the umpire called a balk which gives anyone on base a free base. Jag knew he shouldn’t have let them get to him and it was a good lesson as I doubt it’ll ever happen again. He came off the field and said he shouldn’t have listened to them razzing him. I reminded him to let his game do the talking no matter what anyone ever says to him. We also had a few bad calls against us or it would have been more lopsided. Oh well, a win is a win.

This morning I need to return a few things to a few stores and then pick up some wine at the warehouse. Aspen will be here before you know it. I arranged for a driver to drive Alberto and Kristin from Denver to Aspen next week after they land which will run $600!

Meanwhile Lori is still in California (which I’m sure you all know) and Kristin came up to be with her and Dixie too. It’ll be good to have Lori home. Life is funny in that when you’re gone, you’re gone. The point is no matter who passes, life goes on, it doesn’t stop or take a time out now, does it. So, once again, live your life, cherish each moment and as they say, don’t sweat the small stuff. Here’s a couple of comments,

1. Blondie says:

   June 8, 2015 at 3:54 am (Edit)

   Our thoughts and prayers to you all! We enjoyed knowing Don and had some nice visits with he and Dixie through the years❤️❤️❤️

   Reply
2. Eleanor tafoya says:

   June 8, 2015 at 11:40 pm (Edit)

   So sorry to hear about Don, he gave Dixie a good life. They had fun and traveled, sometimes life was meant to be for Don and Dixie in their later life. But what I have to say is that I will always have Bob in my heart always, but life does go on and over 60 years ago their was a handsome young man that loved me but instead I married Louie and broke his heart,well Gordon my new old bow is back in my life again he lost his wife of 55 years I get a phone call in March of this year from Gordon he must have found out about Bobs demise. We have been having a good time traveling. He’s taking good care of me he has been taking my mind off Bob. He is a very wealthy man trying to win me over ha ha, he is doing a good job of it, you ought to see gifts he has bought me. He is my age, a little fatter but he is still romantic. Bob told me when he was in last week of his life, he took my hand and said to me go and have a good life ,it tears me up every time I remember what he said,sometimes love comes around again for sometimes for the better. Love you all—

   Glad to hear you have a new friend in your life! Life’s too short as it is and we’re happy you have someone to share it with. Thanks for staying in touch!

   God Bless.