Exploring Colorado

Ian and I are enjoying exploring places in Colorado.  This weekend we took a day trip to Colorado Springs.  We started with a picnic in Palmer Park which has a lot of great picnic areas and a great view of Colorado Springs.

We then visited the U.S. Olympic Training Center.  We watched many of the olympic teams in training.    There are only three olympic training centers in the USA and Colorado was picked for one of them because of the high altitude.  

This is a picture of Bob Beamon who still holds the record for long jump: jumping 29 feet 2 1/2 inches.    I am standing 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches down the hall.  

Lastly, we met up with my family and went to a piano performance of The Five Browns.  For those of you who don't know who they are, you can check out their website at http://www.the5browns.com/.  I am still thinking about how incredible their music was!    

Must listen to...

For any folk music lovers, I just found a new artist (she has actually been around for a while, but I just found her music)- Kate Rusby. You can listen to her version of "You Belong To Me" on this YouTube video.  The video isn't great, but the music is amazing!  An artist with real talent.

A Good Read

I finished the book "Stones into Schools" by Greg Mortenson this week and wanted to pass the title along.  It is a sequel of sorts to his famous first book, "Three Cups of Tea."  This book details his efforts to build schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  As a teacher and proponent of literacy, I agree with his philosophy that to really empower a people or a nation you must give them opportunities to learn and educate themselves.  This second book was also a really interesting view into the lives of the Afghan and Pakistan people (one that we don't hear about in the news).  Happy reading!  I am looking for another good book to read if anyone has ideas.

When the World Gives You Lemons...

This post was originally going to be about a wonderful weekend of skiing and relaxing in Park City, but instead turned into a post about the generosity of random people.

As soon as we arrived in Park City, we rented our skis and headed to our hotel to pick up our lift tickets (free skiing at Deer Valley; shoot us a note if you want to know how to score this deal) and change into our ski clothes. To our great dismay, we found that I had grabbed the wrong bag off of the plane and we were in possession of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant's suitcase. Instead of snowpants and gloves, we had shaving cream and the Southwest Flight Attendant Manual. When I called the flight attendant's cell phone, he was extremely forgiving, told me to enjoy my vacation, and mentioned that he wouldn't need his bag until the following day.

Trying to make the best of the situation, we decided to ski in what we were wearing. Both of us had only a pair of jeans, wool socks, a beannie, and a fleece (luckily Annie had a pair of glove liners as well). Before we hit the slopes, one of the hotel staff donated a pair of gloves to my cause and while on the mountain, a ramdom camera man gave me another fleece. Annie ended up with a neck gaiter and a pair of gloves to keep her warm. While we were far from the winning the best-dressed couple at Deer Valley and definitely had the best story for all of the Deer Valley staff, we were warm enough and enjoyed a great day of skiing.

This weekend a number of ski competitions were being held at Park City, including the Skier Cross World Championships. It was an incredible site seeing four skiers race down the course and battle for the glory of being crowned the champion.

After warming up in the hotel we had some friends and family join us for the next skiing event, the freestyle aerials competition. We saw a perfect score on a lay, triple full, full (translation: a full-laid out flip, a flip with three twists, and a flip with one twist) which turned out to be the winning jump. Nick and Jordan Olsen (cousins), Brent and Kristen Ludwig (Annie's sister and her husband), Alana, Eileen Heng (Alana's friend) and Heather Balli (a former roommate of Annie's) enjoyed dinner, the aerials competition and some hot chocolate with us.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend. Yes, we did receive our luggage (back in Denver) and yes, the flight attendant did receive his luggage (in Ontario). I have always been told by my mother that when the world gives you lemons, just make lemonade. Little did I know that it would be some random strangers that provided the much needed sugar to make this weekend as sweet as it was.