Blizzard?

"The National Weather Service is calling for a big blizzard today!" -- Groundhog Day

Given that news, the entire state of Colorado is in a panic. Schools are closed in preparation. I don't get it, personally, but hey - Jordan gets a snow day out of it.

I have decided to blog the day. I'll take a picture every 30-60 minutes and watch the blizzard roll in. We'll see if my lack of faith in the meteorologists is worthwhile or if I need to rethink my belief in news reporters.

So, to start us off, this is what we woke up to at 6:30am

Less than an inch on the grass & roofs and nothing but a bit of moisture on the roads

Fast forward to 8:30am when I decided to take another picture, this time from the office window

A little more snow on the grass, but the roads are still fine. You can see a couple of flakes in the shot, as it has begun snowing.

9:35am

More flakes in the air. Nothing on the road, and not much change to the grass. You can no longer see the road and houses in the distance, though.

10:50am

Bah. This isn't getting to be the big blizzard I was thinking of. Not that I want it or even expect it. The snow on the grass hasn't changed, the roads are still fine, and you can now see more of the road & houses in the distance.

11:45am

It's not any different on the ground, although there is a lot more snow in the air and the flakes are bigger. The wind has kicked up a bit, too. The road & houses in the distance have disappeared again.

12:15pm

Okay. So now it's starting to come down. The flakes are really big still. The snow is now beginning to stick to the roads.

12:30pm

More snow. Definitely sticking and not melting away. The flakes are smaller, but there are more of them in the air.

12:50pm

Wow. I'm impressed. I'd say there are now 2 inches of snow in the grass, heavy blowing snow, and near whiteout conditions. You can see the bare spot in the street where a neighbor drove up, parked for about 10 minutes while his wife ran inside for something, and then they drove off again. That's quite a bit of snow in 10 minutes!

1:00pm

I won't put another picture up yet, but the spot in the street where the car was sitting is now completely gone, as are the tire tracks. It's still coming down quick, seeing as it's only been another 10 minutes. Lots of horizontal snow in the air. But it seems like plenty is still falling from the clouds!

2:15pm

Well, it's slowed down a bit. I think the snow is blowing more than falling. Lots of horizontal white stuff. But visibility is better and some of the roads & driveways are melting a bit. I'm sure it'll be icy tonight! Lots of businesses are closing early, and Jeff is on his way home from work. If the snow keeps up, he'll probably be home tomorrow, too!

3:45pm

The snow has tapered off, but not quit. It's still coming down and blowing around. But the visibility is better, as you can see the road & houses in the distance. Jeff is still working on getting home. Traffic is completely backed up. He just turned off his side street and onto Arapahoe. It's 1.4 miles from his building to Arapahoe. Yargh.

5:00pm

Well, Jeff finally made it home. It is continuing to snow here, and it's getting deeper. While it doesn't appear that much has changed, the lack of getting better isn't a good thing.

6:15pm

So, aside from the picture looking like it was taken at noon rather than 6pm, nothing has changed. Our backyard has more snow, but the amount on the streets still seems about the same. News reports are now saying that the storm is finishing up sooner than anticipated. Yay.

7:15pm

Ahh, it's getting dark out! The snow hasn't changed much. People are now shoveling their driveways. They either think the storm is almost over, or they think we're going to get a ton more and want to make their next shoveling job easier. As it stands, I can't see us getting much more. The storm seems about spent and the blizzard watch is over for us. But, the snow is still coming down, although it's difficult to see. I guess I'll check again in an hour or so.

8:20pm

A look at our neighbor's house, since they have their porch light on making the snow is easy to see. The photo looks grainy, but it's all snow. The wind is still gusting quite a bit, the snow is nicely falling, and the temperature is 13 degrees but feels like -6. Fun. I sure hope that there's no school tomorrow and that Jeff works from home (although that means I don't get to do my woodworking project unless we move the car from the garage). 

Still 8:20pm

A look in the original direction. You can see the lights on in the houses in the distance, so obviously the snow isn't coming down too hard. I'd still hate to be out in it. I'm sure it's slick.

10:45pm

A shot of our old barbecue that we need to throw out. Quite a bit of snow for us this winter. Hopefully Colorado will not have as many fire danger days in early Spring now! The pictures had to be taken from inside the house, as the screen door is frozen shut... both Jeff and I pulled and pried to get the thing open and it just wouldn't. And I couldn't bring myself to go out the front door and traipse across all the snow just to get the picture I wanted. :)

10:45 again - last post for tonight

So, to end on the same scene as we started with, here's a shot of the backyard showing how much snow accumulated throughout the day. It's still snowing out there, and is supposed to continue through the night. School is canceled for tomorrow so Jordan gets to start his Spring Break a few days early.

I may take some more pictures tomorrow, if the snow continues to provide any interest for me. Since it was too cold for me to work in the garage this evening, I spent a lovely time playing WoW with Jeff. Who can complain about that? :)

Happy Birthday, Jordan!

Jordan was born on Wednesday, March 19, 1997 at 9:21pm following 18 hours of labor.

I'm missing pictures from when he turned 1, 10, and 11, but all the other years are here. In defense of the lack of 1998 pics, I can only say that we didn't have a camera and therefore only have a limited amount of pictures... somewhere. I may find them. Regarding the lack of 2007 & 2008 pictures, I really don't know why I can't find any. I'm not usually a photographer, but we should have some pictures roaming around somewhere. I may also encounter these in the coming days.

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1997
First Week - With Dad, shortly after coming home from the hospital

We didn't get much sleep during the night for the first month, so we took naps whenever we could.

With Mom, shortly after coming home from the hospital

We were both so unfamiliar with infants that it took a while to become comfortable with holding him

6 Months Old - Could there be a more comfortable sleeping position?

He loved his jumper and often slept in it like this.

6 Months Old

After the initial settling in, Jordan was a very content baby and didn't fuss much.

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1999
2 Years Old

This is one of the only times we've gotten professional pictures taken (aside from school photos). I just can't bring myself to spend the money on it.

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2000
3 Years Old

This lock box was his favorite thing for a few years. He played with it endlessly.

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2001
4 Years Old

No longer looking like a toddler - he's now in preschool.

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2002
5 Years Old

On the ferris wheel in Seattle, near the Space Needle.

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2003
6 Years Old

He enjoyed his rocket ship cake that I made for him, and was thrilled to find the candles shooting out of the bottom, as well as the large 6 candle near the top.

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2004
7 Years Old

This was taken at Disneyland. We were standing in the unmoving line for the Indiana Jones ride. His grandfather had just sprayed Jordan with water and he's obviously rather miffed.

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2005
8 Years Old

He loved sitting in Grandpa's car pretending to drive. Is this what will happen in only 4 years from now?!?

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2006
9 Years Old

He got a skateboard which, because he broke his arm a couple of months later and has never gotten over his fear of falling, is still mostly unused. I have given up trying to get him to be an outdoor kid.

He broke his right arm after falling off his bike - he severely snapped both his radius and ulna

Jordan was completely in shock on the long (30 minutes) drive to the hospital. I had to sit in the backseat with him and keep him awake. His arm was at such a horrific angle that it was all I could do to not throw up. We had to pass over several train tracks along the way and it was quite the inhuman torture for Jordan.

X-ray of the broken bones

I could barely bring myself to look at his poor arm and was totally pleased when the E.R. doctors covered it up. In a wonderful feat of modern medicine, we were asked by the doctors whether we wanted Jordan to remember the entire experience or if they should give him medicine that would make him forget. We chose the latter, not wanting to remember the event ourselves. Jordan now hates that we chose that option.

X-ray after his surgery to set his bones

Ahhh - much better! The doctor who performed the surgery did an excellent job! Oddly enough, Jordan has never seen these x-rays. Anytime we offer to show him, he just gets quiet and says no.

Finally home from the hospital. It took almost all summer for this to heal

Jordan spent the majority of the summer rather grumpy about his broken arm. We bought him a cast cover to put over his arm while swimming. He enjoyed that, but would holler when we had to suck the air out of it, since it got all tight on his arm.

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2009
Original cake image (from DROD, his favorite video game)

I found this picture for his cake, added the border, and had it put onto Jordan's cake.

How the cake actually turned out - not bad!

I was slightly bothered by the bubbles in the picture, but overall, it was great and Jordan didn't have any complaints.

Blowing out his candles. Whoops! Dad added some relighting candles!

I hate the relighting candles, but Jeff stuck two on the cake. Jordan was surprised when they relit, but he quickly got them to go out completely.

Age 12

Here's my baby. Only 4 more years until he can drive, and only 6 more until he goes to college. Wow!

Impromptu Road Trip

On Saturday Jeff and I fixed our broken gate hardware and installed a door closer on the door to our garage. The gate now stays closed without breaking wood off the fence and the garage door closes slowly and will no longer slam. Fantastic!

We were feeling somewhat antsy after this work and thought it could be fun to go pick up some dinner and eat it in the car somewhere with a nice view. After all, what's the fun of having a nice car if you don't spend much time in it?

So, after thinking for a while about it, we decided to just get in the car and drive in a direction until we felt like stopping. We felt that if we didn't want to drive all the way back home at that time, we would be happy to find a hotel for the night and return home in the morning.

So, we planned on heading north (Jordan wanted to go south, and I wanted to go east, but Jeff got us to agree that there are more stops if we headed north). I packed a small amount of things in case we stayed overnight somewhere (Jeff's contact supplies and our other bathroom needs in the kit we have on hand). I fed Luigi & the fish, and made sure Smoky had enough food and water. I then stuck a few drinks in the car, we grabbed our jackets, and were off!

Not thinking far enough ahead to grab our real camera, I found myself using my cell phone. Also, I failed to even consider taking pictures until the return trip (which proved better, since it was dark much of the "there" drive).

Here is an attempted shot of the

mountains - too far away for a decent picture

After traveling through Denver for an hour (we had to slog through the traffic surrounding two separate accidents - ugh), we were finally north of metro Denver and the roads started clearing out. It was amazing to see that metro Denver has grown north quite a bit since we lived up that way. I was unable to see any difference between Denver and Northglenn/Thornton, and there was only a slight bit of space between Northglenn/Thornton and Erie/Dacono/Frederick/Firestone (now just all mashed together into one city).

Here is another try at a

mountain shot - still too far away

Jordan, being an only child, has never had to deal with other kids on road trips. So, Jeff and I regaled him with various tales of road trip traditions. We talked about the slug bug game, how people have different fun things they do when they drive over railroad tracks, fun games to play with license plates & road signs to help pass the time. He sat in incredulous silence for a few minutes, then scoffed and said that we had weird childhoods, and then went back to his reading. Although we have a DVD player in the car (including headphones so only the movie viewers have to hear it), he refused to bring a movie and just chose two books. My kind of kid.

I will never get my mountain picture, apparently

We sailed past Fort Collins and Jordan began looking for the Colorado/Wyoming border. He's never been to Wyoming, so he was looking forward to adding it to his list of visited states.

A picture of the landscape to the east

By this time the sun had set and there was very little traffic on the road. Jordan kept attempting to read his book by using his cell phone light, but I put a stop to that. He has poor enough eyesight as it is without straining to read a book in a dark car!

I wonder if there are any owls along Owl Canyon

Road? I almost had us go check...

We hit the state border and he enjoyed reading the many billboards posted there. Most of his questions and comments revolved around the various radio & cell towers in the area, plus quite a few space-related questions had nothing to do with the journey.

The mountains still haven't gotten any closer

We found Cheyenne a few minutes later and pulled into a parking lot to decide what to eat for dinner. Jordan requested IHOP, so we found one and ate a very filling meal. We then declared that it was too late to comfortably drive home, so we found a nice hotel and got a room.

While trying to snap another mountain pic, I

indavertently got myself in the side mirror - silly (plus, the

mountains are proving to be permanently elusive today)

The hotel (Microtel - our first time in one) was fairly new (still had balloons, banners, etc.) and our room was very clean. The flat-screen TV was hung directly on the wall, which eliminated the need for the typical TV armoire that is found in most hotels. This made the room seem much larger. Jordan chose his bed and lay down to read. Jeff and I checked out the TV and found the quality very nice. We settled on an educational show from the History channel, about the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors to our planet. Jordan was unable to read very long, as the topic of the show drew him in like a black hole. He absolutely loved it. I have no idea what it was even called! We learned a lot, and he hasn't stopped talking about it.

Only 68 miles back to Denver

In the morning, we watched a couple of shows in bed (always fun to do in a hotel), then checked out. We had missed the continental breakfast (fine by me, but Jeff and Jordan seem to enjoy them) so we went looking for food. We decided we weren't hungry enough to eat at that time, so we just headed toward home with the intent of stopping for breakfast or lunch along the way. We made it to Loveland before our stomachs overpowered us and forced us to stop.

This is just a cool outcropping of rocks we found

along the road - it was maybe 500 feet long

Since we had arrived in Wyoming in the dark, on the return trip we had Jordan look out at the landscape and take in whatever Wyoming had to offer him. He was pleased to see the wind turbines spinning out at various wind farms. After we had been back in Colorado for about 15 minutes, he went back to his reading.

I don't know why I kept trying...

When we got to Loveland and stopped to eat, we agreed to try a new restaurant we had never been to: the Bent Fork. It was a new experience, and fairly expensive for lunch. With 2 sodas and a lemonade, a cheese plate appetizer, and 3 lunch meals, we paid $50 - ouch. But the food was good enough, the restaurant wasn't busy at all, and the atmosphere was nice. Since there is a movie theater near the restaurant, we drove by to see what movies are playing (we never know). It was strange to see that there were 8 PG, 3 PG-13, and 6 R movies. I've never seen so many PG movies in a theater in my life! Jordan showed no interest in any of them. Having received the movie information we desired, we continued on our journey home.

There was a giant buffalo statue on a hill - I'd like to

detour at some point and see what that's all about

We have rarely taken I-270 (I guess the road continues into other states, although the named 270 part itself is only in Colorado, making the Interstate label a bit erroneous). Our car's navigation system (Navi) told us that going that direction would be the fastest way to get home, so we ventured off our beaten I-25 path and onto 270. Heading through Commerce City is always interesting, and this is the first time Jordan's ever been interested in it. He loved every minute of the city. He enjoyed looking at various power plants, and even naming which source they came from (natural gas being the most common). He was intrigued by the Colorado UPS hub there and remarked on the number of UPS trucks parked in the lots. I've never taken that much interest in Commerce City, but he seemed to love it. Strange.

We also got to do the new(er) Parker/I-225 flyover loop and enjoyed that. We've done it going in other directions, but never from southbound I-225 to Parker. It was quite the adventure.

We arrived home about 10 minutes later and were able to walk through the garage door that has the newly-installed door closer on it. A thoroughly wonderful way to be welcomed home by one's house!

We got home just after noon, so Jordan still had plenty of time to do whatever he wanted before school on Monday, which is very important to him. He needs his alone time. :)

Overall, we had a spectacular spontaneous trip. Although we didn't go anywhere overly exciting, we were together, having a silly adventure that we'd never done before.

A side note regarding the pictures I took. All of these were taken in the car, going roughly 75mph. You can tell the motion in them, sorry. I'm not normally a mountain-viewer, and I have never understood why people love the mountains so much and strive to find lodging (house, apartment, hotel, camp site, etc) with a decent mountain view. But after seeing nothing but dry, grassy fields for an hour or so, finally catching a glimpse of the dark, snow-covered Rockies just made me need to take a picture. While none of the pictures are very good, at least I now have a better understanding into what people find so wonderful about the mountains. I didn't take any pictures of us, as I didn't want to distract Jeff too much while driving (it was really windy in Northern Colorado and Wyoming!) and Jordan was sitting directly behind me, so I couldn't get a good shot. But, with Jordan's birthday this week, I should get some more pictures of us celebrating his last year before his teens start. :)

Denver Museum of Nature and Science

This past weekend we went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I love going there, despite there being so many people. We should have gone on a weekday, though, when the museum has fewer visitors.

We saw the new "Nature Unleashed" exhibit. It was a very big exhibit that took us longer than we had anticipated to go through, and even at that, we didn't see the whole thing to our content. Despite the crowds, the exhibit was fantastic. They had all sorts of natural disasters. There were explanations on why they occur, as well as statements from people who have experienced the various disasters that Mother Nature throws at us. My favorite section was the volcanos, while Jordan surprised us by loving the earthquakes and hurricanes. I was sure he would be more into the tornados, but I guess he already knows all about them, so it wasn't as fascinating as earthquakes or hurricanes, of which he doesn't have such extensive knowledge. I'm not sure what Jeff liked the most, but he thoroughly enjoyed the entire thing.

We also went to the Space Odyssey exhibit, which was as busy and crowded as it typically is. We did get to witness a fun demonstration of liquid nitrogen being frozen. That was great.

We went to three Planetarium shows: Black Holes, Cosmic Journey, and Cosmic Collisions. They were fairly good, but the theater was freezing! We then went to the IMAX theater and watched Ring of Fire (all about volcanos, my favorite). That was a good movie, and the theater was much warmer than the Planetarium.

We ate lunch in the cafe there and it was fairly good and not too expensive. Can't complain about that.

As is typical in any exhibit at any location, all doors lead to the gift shop, and we just hurried through. We've found that most gift shops are just not interesting enough to warrant browsing. Jordan never wants any toys or keepsakes, and he's always eager to leave.

We went to Gunther Toody's on the way home, which was an interesting experience. I got the pot roast, but probably should have gotten a burger, for which the restaurant is more known for. My food was good enough, but I like the pot roast at Village Inn much better. Homemade is even better.

Overall, it was a fun day. It was good to get home and be away from people, though.

I'm Finally 30!

I turned 30 a little over a week ago. While Jeff believes that 30 is when the warranty runs out and 40 is when parts start falling off, I think 30 is a fantastic age and was more than ready to get here.

Jeff took the day off of work to be with me. So nice. Unfortunately, I had some emergency work that I had to do before I could play. Jeff was kind enough to help me and it made the work go by in just 2 hours.

Since the working thing took much of the morning and we had planned on an  early lunch anyway (to avoid the lunch rush), we just went to lunch 

after my work was done. Kokoro is my favorite restaurant and it was a great treat to be able to go there.

After lunch, Jeff and I returned home and he "gifted" me with a few hours of WoW play. We did well and even leveled our characters!

When Jordan was finished with his homework for the day, we got Little Caesar's and watched Lie  to Me. I love this show. After Jordan was done with dinner, he opted to leave us, as we intended to watch more episodes that we have saved. But before he left, I got to open my presents.

Jordan gave me a wonderful gift card for Amazon.com. I bought some great games with my  money, so I can still play games on Tuesdays when WoW is being updated. 

Aside from taking the day off to play, Jeff gave me another game to play, as well as some clothing I had asked for. He says he still owes me a carpet cleaning that I put on my wish list.

I was supposed to get some ice cream from Cold Stone for dessert, but didn't want to be too full after dinner, so I decided to put it off until the weekend. It was quite yummy, and since we went on a night when it was raining (in February?), there was no one else there. I love having stores to myself.

Jeff's parents came over a few days later and gave me some nice gifts as well. I got some more Red Vines (it didn't take me long to finish the Red Vines that Jordan gave me for Christmas), some neat gel pens, and a happily accepted gift card for Cold Stone. We used this when we finally got our treat over the weekend.

Our turtle, Luigi, gave me a great gift - his tank has been much easier to clean lately. Although last week he managed to snag a fish and didn't eat the whole thing. I had to clean that up and it wasn't pretty.

Our cat, Smoky, was kind enough to let me take her picture without doing some annoying thing like investigating the camera. I normally end up taking a picture of her side, or worse, nothing but the floor. She sat and looked at the camera for me this time.