Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa

We had a great Thanksgiving Day. Marianne made a wonderful main dish called a Jalousie. It was a puff pastry filled with peppers, leeks, mushrooms, asparagus, garlic - yum! And as you can see it was also beautiful to look at. Earlier in the day we took Te Beagh for a walk, and mar new where there were still some apples on a tree near City Park. Te Beagh loves apples, so she had a Tday treat too! Then we came home and cooked a bit more, and did some planning with Quentin for how to arrange our family room. We will be getting a comfy sectional couch and then putting up the dart board and now there is also the slot machine there! so, it will be a great place to hang out for Christmas. We snuck in a game of You Don't Know Jack, and then got Grandma and Grandpa. We enjoyed our time with them and had dinner and then went over to the Mannings for dessert. Lots to be thankful for!

Is this normal?

Just a quick question - do you all sit on your kitchen countertops? In other words, is this normal?

Visit with Diane and Dick

Diane and Dick visited this past weekend and we had a great time together. On Friday afternoon we went to New Belgium brewery and took the tour. They have a whole new building for bottling now, and have more than doubled the speed at which they bottle. At the end of the tour they now have a circular slide that you can take to go down to the first floor - fun! Then that evening we went to see the play "Noises Off" by Open Stage at the mini-theater. It was really well done, very physical and slapstick, and a great set.

On Saturday, we drove up to Estes Park and drove through Rocky Mountain National Park and hiked around Sprague Lake. We saw bighorn sheep in the canyon on the way up, and some elk, including this one right off the side of the road, and then, the next day, Diane took the photo of the mule deer in our backyard. So, lots of good wildlife watching!

Sunday we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's place for a quick visit, and so Diane and Dick could see their home. Then we walked along the river in town, and at 4 p.m. went over to the Mannings, because Scott and Jen and Zoe were in town.

The last day of their visit, Monday, we drove to the new Centerra Mall in Loveland, by I-25, where Marianne had read about a new sculpture garden. It was really nice. It is called the Chapungu Gallery and Sculpture Park, and here is a bit of info about it:

"The 26-acre park includes 82 Zimbabwe Shona stone sculptures set in eight themed-sections, including family, the role of women, and nature and the environment. Each of the themes fit into the Shona way of life, park curator and Chapungu Gallery owner Roy Guthrie said of the exhibit, titled "Chapungu: Stories in Stone - An African Perspective of Family." The park is the first permanent exhibit of its kind in the United States."

We only saw part of it, because it was cold and windy, but we want to go back and see the rest. Here are a few pix from the visit.

Desk room project

Thought I'd post a few pix of the solatube and our new office space. The solatube works really well, and helps make the room not feel so dark and uninviting. Mom picked out great colors for our old file cabinets, and we got rid of a ton of stuff that had been cluttering this space. So, now it feels a lot nicer and looks much better too.