Beer, fishing and football

After the insanity that was Chicago, we thought the best way to get over alot of beer and booze was to go to a happy hour with our volleyball peeps!  Since we won the mid season tournament, we got a $200 gift card to a cool bar called Bull & Bush, an english style pub that makes its own beer(probably redundant in Denver to say that, but still...).  We had our PDD(pregnant designated driver) thanks to Naomi, but we really only wanted to go for a few beers.  Our friend Kristina showed up a bit late, and she wanted to catch up by doing tequila shots.  There went that plan.  Also our friend Garrett decided to end the night with Jaeger bombs.  Or was it that the Jaeger bombs ended our night...?  either way, Matt was cursing Garrett's name all day Saturday.  Still a good time with good friends.

Saturday Matt was a bit sluggish, but we did manage to go to Red Rocks for an hour hike.  Karla was impressed Matt could even get in the car.  The rest of the day was watching college football, and feeling bad for Iowa State as Baylor beat them pretty good(sorry Lowell!)

Sunday Matt & Clint got up early to go fishing in Deckers.  It was a chilly morning, and we only fished till noonish, but it was a good time.  We tried a new spot on Cheesman Canyon, which you had to hike to, but was a bit more secluded and we saw lots more fish.  Saw, not caught.  The trout of colorado still elude our keen trapping devices.  Next time its dynamite.  A house party at Naomi & Ryan's wrapped up our nice semi relaxing weekend.

Weekend in Chicago

On a bit of a whim, we decided to go to Chicago for the weekend to take advantage of Matt's bank holiday on Columbus Day.  The Bears were playing Thursday night football, so Karla flew in Wednesday night and went to the game sans Matt.  He was delighted that Karla was able to watch the Bears without him.  Matt flew in Thursday night and took Friday off.  Since Karla was working, Matt went on a tourists day.  A 4 mile run along the lakefront, lunch at costello's with Scott Kalmus, frozen custard at Scooters, and a walk through the Lincoln Park Zoo.  Karla was delighted that Matt played while she worked all day.

Friday night Matt, Kristin, Kristen and Karla went out for tapas, which was delicious.  Saturday we were able to get to the farmers market for Wisconsin cheese curds, a staple that Matt has been missing in his diet since moving.  We were able to see some old friends, and then it was off to Lockport to stay with Jeannie and Patrick and watch the Baylor game against K-State.  It was closer than usual, but the Bears pulled it out in the end.

That night our old soccer crew went out to eat and it was officially Bowtie Night!  The guys donned their bowties and looked dapper as always.  Hilarity ensued at the restaurant, and the night ended with the guys going to the casino in Joliet, and making a few dollars of dinner back.  Yay for Craps!

Sunday was pretty chill, the marathon was happening in Chicago, so we watched a bit of that.  Matt had dinner with his cousin Adam at Bad Apple in Lincoln Square, one of our all time favorites.  What was supposed to be a casual dinner turned into a night of bar hopping and karaoke with Adam, Matt and Raf.  Closing down a bar on a Sunday night is always fun!

A casual Monday with old friends and Karla's work friends and we hopped an afternoon flight back to Denver.  Quite the fun 4 day weekend!

Trip to Belize

Karla and I decided back in June to go on a beach vacation sometime in September.  It was between Costa Rica and Belize, and since it was going to be a short trip, and relaxation was the goal, Belize won out.  Ambergris Caye is an island that we had to take a puddle jumper to from Belize City, but we had heard good things about the place.  Karla found the hotel we stayed at on trip advsior, called X'tan Ha.  It was a great deal, and right on the beach.

We left early Saturday, and got to the town of San Pedro around 4pm, which was odd since Belize was on mountain time as well, although it is pretty much due south of alabama.  We stopped in town to get some provisions such as eggs, bread, peanut butter...and rum.

The next day we got up early, kayaked to Mexico Rocks, and snorkeled.  We saw mostly small colorful fish, stingrays, and a nurse shark.  The rest of the day was relaxing, but we did try paddle boarding, which Karla
did very well at.  We met some fun other couples as well, from mostly the states, but also one from Canada, although Gerad was from Ireland, and a Liverpool fan to boot, so I got along swimmingly with him.

On Monday we had a "chill day". Nothing huge planned. We slept in, read for a while, and then took some bikes for a 3 mile bike ride down the beach to visit some friends of my parents who have a house in Belize. After visiting for a few hours, we decided to head back to the resort before it got dark. The ride back was an adventure because it was raining, Karla's chain kept slipping off her bike (so we'd stop and put it back on every 10 minutes), and it was rush hour on the beach. Lots of workers on bikes heading home! We went with another couple to a neighboring resort, Portofino, for dinner. It was pretty snazzy as they send a boat to pick you up and bring you home. Of course, we had seafood and all agreed it was the best meal we'd had so far.

For our last full day in Belize, we decided to take a snorkeling tour. It was small tour - two couples from our resort, our driver Kevin, and our guide Mario. Our first stop was Hol Chan Marine reserve. We spent a good hour snorkeling seeing lots of fish, some beautiful reefs, a crab or two, and, my favorite part, some sea turtles!

Next on the tour was Shark/Ray alley. And it lived up to its name! As soon as Kevin attached the boat to the buoy, Mario threw out some food and up came the nurse sharks and a ton of fish. We all jumped in so we could get a close look at all of the animals (although I think Karla pushed me in before her to make sure it was safe). Once the animals ate all the food, then it was just us snorkeling around looking at them. Mario caught a shark and a sting ray for us to touch.

After we got enough of swimming with the sharks and rays, we headed to Coral Gardens. On the way, Mario had us stop at a few lobster traps he had set so we could bring lobster back with us and have lobster ceviche when we got back to the resort. When we got to Coral Gardens, we all jumped in and quickly determined that the current was too strong that day. We were snorkeling for about a minute and the current had already taken us 30 yards from the boat! So we all quickly swam back to the boat.

We were supposed to also go to Caye Caulker, which was about a 30 minute boat ride further from the resort, for relaxing and lunch, but it had been raining for a while so the 6 of us voted to head back to the resort. We stopped at a bar on the way back for a drink and lunch. Mario and Kevin also took us to Mexico Rocks to get more snorkeling in since we skipped Caye Caulker. After getting back to the resort, we all took 30 minutes to shower and warm up (it was a little chilly on the way back in the rain), and then went to the bar to eat our fresh lobster ceviche, which was amazing.

That night was just hanging out at the bar, having a dinner on-site, and drinking with everyone. We had bought a bottle of rum when we landed, so we had to make sure we drank most of it! We gave the rest (maybe 1/4 of the bottle) to the newlyweds staying next to us since they were there for another few days. Can't let rum go to waste!

Our trip home was pretty uneventful. Our flight from Belize City was delayed a bit, but luckily so was our flight from Miami to Denver. Overall, we had a great trip and would definitely go back to both Belize and to X'Tan Ha!

Football & Mt Evans

Football is here!  After watching Payton Manning throw his 7 touchdowns on Thursday, We thought it would be fun to watch the Iowa game at 10:30am on saturday and then the Baylor game at 1:30. Except we told Ryan we would climb Mt Evans with him.  So instead we got up early on Saturday and drove to Summit Lake on the Mt Evans Road to start to summit.

This was a fairly short hike, since Summit Lake is already around 12,800 feet.  We took the long way up and the short way down.  On our way up we could see Chicago Lakes, which we hiked to the summer before, and realized we weren't too far away from the summit last year.  We also saw a mountain goat and their kid, which couldn't have been more than a few months old.  Pretty cool.

We could also see Bierstadt and the sawtooth from the other side, which was a unique perspective.  It took us about 2.5 hours to hike to the summit.  It was probably the clearest we've seen at the top of a 14er.  We could see Grays/Torreys, Bierstad, and even Long's Peak off in the distance.  I'm sure we could also see Quandary, but couldn't quite pick it out.

The way down was much shorter.  We went straight down the side of the mountain, on rocks and scree most of the way.  It was about 40 minutes back to the car!

We did make it back for the Baylor game, another thumping of Buffalo.  Sic em!

Sunday we watched the first NFL Sunday, as the Bears and Packers were both televised here.  And most importantly, Matt's fantasy team beat Karla's...no big deal.  ;)

Labor day weekend

This last weekend Karla and I spent the 3 day weekend in the city.  I can't remember the last time that happened.

We had a few goals:  get Karla skis, and go on a nice local hike.  We Also were dog sitting Junior, so we had to take that into account.

SNIAGRAB(bargains spelled backwards) is Sports Authority's ski blitz sale every year.  Basically you get last years models at crazy prices.  We got in line at 6:30am on Saturday and with that we got each a $25 gift card.  Karla's boots, skis, poles & helmet were about $550 out the door, and we got a $125 gift card to use later(retail was probably around $1400).  Very much worth getting up early!

After that we made our way to LODOs to watch Baylor destroy Wofford, and enjoyed some Shiner.  Taking it easy saturday night, we decided to hike at White Ranch Open Space on Sunday.  Its in Golden, and we've never been there.  It was a nice 6 mile hike, which before moving to Colorado we wouldn't have thought 6 miles was a nice chill hike!

A grill out at some friends on Monday and that was pretty much thee weekend.  Very relaxing time.

Volleyball Tournament

This past weekend was pretty low key. We went to Marzyck's on Friday night for wine tasting and ended up with a wine tasting inspired dinner. Our dinner was wine (a bottle of one that we tasted), Serrano ham (which Matt was psyched about since we can rarely find it at a reasonable price), candied walnuts, apple slices, and 3 types of cheese. Yum!

Saturday was our year-end volleyball tournament. We were in a pool of 5 teams, with 2 teams making it out of pool play into the tournament. Unfortunately, we didn't make it out of pool play - we were 6-6 on the day. However, we had a blast playing and grilling out! It's always a sad day because that means no volleyball until spring. Boo.

After volleyball, we headed to a pool party Matt's co-worker was having at her house. Matt cooled himself by jumping in the pool while I re-fueled with the awesome food spread. :)

The rest of the weekend was pretty low key - watching some baseball, running errands, etc. I have my first book club meeting tonight. I've been missing book club since leaving Chicago so decided to form a club - hopefully everyone else is as excited as I am!

Weekend in Estes Park

Karla was a day late for this vacation. Her Uncle Dewey passed away the week before so she made a last minute trip to Iowa to say goodbye to a great man. He'll be missed and always loved.

This last weekend we were in Estes park with the Texas clan (Ken, Nancy, Jared, Jess, Avery & Caleb).  Ken & Nancy drove up Thursday with Caleb and the others flew in Friday.  We headed out friday, stopping at Beau Jo's pizza in Boulder, a favorite from Jared's childhood.

We all stayed at the YMCA of the Rockies, a place that Matt & Jess hadn't been to in probably 20+ years.  With the kids' feeding and nap schedule, we did things in 2-3 hour increments.  We were able to go fishing(not catching, just fishing), and we did take Avery on her first hike.  She loved her baby bjorn and could have stayed in there a long time.  We went up to Nymph lake, which is one of our favorites.  It was a quick hike but got Jess out and Avery was a happy baby.

The only real activity we did as a group at the camp was taking a mini archery lesson.  It took a few rounds for us to even hit the target, much less get a bullseye.  I think we only lost 2 arrows!  Matt did get a bullseye on the last round, and everyone definitely improved!  Relaxing in Moraine park and playing carbles and taking it easy was the goal of the weekend, so mission accomplished.

On Sunday before we had to head back to Denver we made sure to get ice cream.  With loads of food from the weekend and the worlds largest ice cream scoop, I don't think we ate again until Tuesday!