Awesome Christmas Card

Given that my nerdy colleagues and I all have professional tech-community blogs, in addition to our personal/family blogs, this Christmas card from http://store.wondermark.com/products/greeting-cards is really funny. I'm half-way tempted to get some, but unfortunately most of our family/friends wouldn't think it is nearly as funny as I do.

Snow Day!!

I had to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting today. I spent a good bit of Friday and Saturday collecting source material and outlining my talk. As I got into bed last night about midnight, Jane asked "do you have to teach Sunday School tomorrow?". I thought about it and realized that it was my week to teach, and since I had only really outlined bits of my talk, I was counting on a couple of hours this morning before church to get everything organized, so I had no time to prepare a lesson. I woke up about 4am, and noticed it had started snowing again, and by the time church started at 10:30am it showed no sign of stopping. I finished my talk notes about 9:45am, so I took a brief look at the lesson and got ready for church. When I arrived at church about 15 minutes early, ran through the choir number once with the choir, and then settled into my chair to hopefully get some inspiration for Sunday School. Just then one of the Bishopric members confided in me that the boilers were out in the church heating system, and the chapel which felt a little on the cool side, was by far the warmest room in the building. He went on to inform me that the Bishop was going to cancel the rest of the meetings once Sacrament Meeting was over. Yay! So I didn't have to give my poorly-prepared lesson after all. So we came home after Sacrament Meeting, had some more Thanksgiving left-overs, lit the fireplace, and will spend the rest of the day enjoying quality family time.

What a Great Thanksgiving Holiday!

With all the family that has moved to Colorado this year, Thanksgiving was a big event with the focus mostly on FOOD. There was lots of laying around and visiting, plus Grandma Jane took all of the Thornbrue kids to the rec center pool for about five hours, giving Allie and James time to go to the movies and do some relaxing. Thursday and Friday, Jarom and Randy put up Christmas lights, including cutting a juniper tree in the back yard and putting up a "Christmas" tree in the front (which the trash company will obligingly take after the holidays). Friday night, it started snowing and by 8pm it was really coming down. We ended up with four or five inches on the ground, creating lots of fun play opportunities Saturday morning in the back yard.

Bryson gets a ride on Daddy

A Thanksgiving necessity; the cauldron of mashed potatoes expertly prepared by Jarom

Deviled eggs by Molly was the center piece of pre-feast snacking, along with the warm spinach & artichoke dip made by Melissa.

Allie made some amazing apple pastries (that Jarom insisted looked like a sand worm to you "Dune" fans).

Jane hit a double home-run with the main event; apricot-stuffed roast pork and whipped yams.

Our first Christmas light feature was the crab apple tree by the garage. Flocking provided by Mother Nature Friday night

Jarom's juniper Christmas Tree also got a heavy helping of snow

Mini-video of the snow looking at our house

Video pan of our lighted trees and street

Lots of snow! We finished putting the lights up about 45 minutes before it started

Saturday morning snow play in the back yard; Tessa didn't like getting hit with a snowball in the face.

Marie lays down because its soft

The Thornbrues get a taste of Colorado winter (only four more months to go!)

Ben has his own snowball (and runny nose)

Grandma Jane, Marie and Tessa have a snowball fight

Action video of the Thornbrue Family snow fight

Grace didn't like to see Daddy and Mommy "fighting"

Allie lost this round

James wasn't unscathed either

Daytime view of the house

Too much food; we had to keep some in the "walk-in refridgerator" (garage)

Allie and James' van in the morning after the snow. James' comment "I don't think I have a scraper!"

Melissa We Miss You

We love having Jarom and Melissa living with us, and they really do help out an awful lot. But it's really apparent what a blessing they are, how much we've come to depend on Melissa since she's been gone visiting her family in Seattle this past week.

Hawaii Wrap-up

I'm sure most everyone that follows this blog is probably ready for a new topic, but since Allie and Staci in particular wanted to see the rest of Jane's (Mom's) outfits, plus the fact that I hadn't really shown any of the underwater camera pictures, I thought I'd wrap things up with a lot of random pictures that I particulary liked. BTW, its harder than you think to hold a camera on the bottom of a pool with one foot and click the shutter with the other.

This is a 5 minute video "tour" of the pool at the Grand Hyatt where we stayed. We had a lot of fun swimming here. If you are goofing off and relaxing, it takes about an hour to go from one end to the other.

Jane thought our Hawaiian lifeguard was pretty interesting.

These fish have teeth! One bit me while I was feeding them part of a dinner roll.

Hawaii Day Seven - Waimea Canyon

On our last day in Hawaii we started out with early morning stroll down the beach to see if there was a place to snorkle. Then we went swimming one more time in the resort's big pool. Then we sadly packed up our bags and checked out of our room. We loaded up the car and headed west to Waimea Canyon area, a ten-mile long canyon that is kind of like the Grand Canyon. From the top of the ridge you can look down in the Napali coastal mountains where Jurrasic Park and King Kong was filmed. There are many scenic lookout points on the road and we stoppped at every one and took pictures. After spending about three hours in the canyon, we drove down to the Waimea beach to an area called the salt ponds, and went snorkling. We found a protected little cove that wasn't too deep and spent a good hour face down looking a schools of angel fish and lots of other "tropical fish". After snorkling we ate a picnic lunch and headed towards the airport hoping to find another snorkling spot before the sun went down. Alas, it was not to be. We finally found a highly recommended spot that turned out to be a 1/2 mile from our hotel, but got there just as the sun was slipping over the horizon. We saw a huge green sea turtle on the beach, and Jane washed the salt out of her hair in the rinse-off shower at the beach. We then changed into our travel clothes in the bathrooms and headed for the airport. We got checked in, waited a bit to board and headed home. The plane left at 9:45pm, and we arrived in Los Angeles at 5am local time. Our connection left at 7am, and we arrived in Denver at 10am local time. By the time we got our bags and drove home it was noon. Jane took a nap and I started working on yard because I was going to be leaving on Monday for another trip and wanted to be prepared in case we got snow.

This was without a doubt the best vacation we've ever taken and I really was grateful that Jane could get some reward for all of her sacrifices and work to manage our house and family while I am gone so often travelling. It was so nice to spend quality time together, and we actually had to get to know each other a bit better because we haven't spent a lot of time together in the past couple of years. It was a real treat and we're already thinking about where we can go next!

The Napali Coast from the top of Waimea Canyon

Looking east

Funny sign at the beach where we snorkled

Looking at the protected cove where we snorkled

Jane overcame her fears to have a total blast. She says that looking at all of the life in the ocean helps her appreciate the Creation all that much more

Beautiful clear water

The giant sea turtle. I bet it weighed over 200 lbs

Sunset over Poipu Beach as we get ready to leave for the airport

Hawaii Day Five - Exploring the North Coast

On Thursday, November 6th we rented a car and started touring the island on our own. When we went to pick up our car at the airport they offered me a Suburban at first, but with gas prices so high I asked for something smaller and they gave us a Mustang convertible, which we were completely happy with. Our first destination was a town on the north coast called Princeville, where we had heard about some swimable (at low tide) tide pools called "The Queen's Bath". On the way there we stopped at several scenic lookouts. We didn't know exactly where they were, but we took a chance and by luck or whatever we drove right there. We parked high on a cliff and then had to climb down a muddy trail to the rocks. When we arrived we found that the tide was coming in and the pools were very dangerous so we took some pictures but didn't get too close for risk of being swept out to sea. After visiting the tide pools we continued driving north until the road ended at Ke'e park, which was closed due to heavy surf. The drive was very pretty and we stopped a lot. We had dinner at a local burger place, and got home just as it was getting dark.

Our fun convertable

The Queen's Bath area from the top of the cliff. You can see one of the pools at the bottom of the picture just to the right of the center and another just left of center.

This is a taro plantation where they grow the plant from which poi is made of. If you look carefully in the river you can see two kayaks

Admiring the view...

Some of the houses near the beach are built to survive hurricane tidal surges

Jane tries a coconut. The Hawaiian guy that sold it to us got them off of local trees and loads them in his pickup truck and sells them at a camping beach where we stopped to look at some neat caves

Machete expert opens the coconut

Brave Jane tries the coconut milk

This philodendron is the same kind of plant we've had in our homes, only the rainy climate helps it grow MUCH bigger. The cave we explored is right behind Jane in the photo.

Inside a tidal cave

We stopped to look at a waterfall and while I was getting the camera ready one of the local chickens was trying to figure out if Jane had something to eat in there. Jane is holding a newspaper ready to give battle

Here is the waterfall. If you look closely you can see that someone has a house just above it