Friday Stuff

I drive carpool to School in the Woods and back on Fridays. And on half of those Fridays, I stay the morning to volunteer with Library Time. AJ often asks his teacher if I can read for the storytime portion, and she usually lets me. Brings back all kinds of teaching memories. Just this morning AJ chose the mineral he wanted in his pine needle basket in our rock collection display. It's a piece of labradorite. Then that evening, four of us headed to Ivywild School (repurposed into shops, eateries, and a little theater) for what turned out to be a great improv night, The Chicago Bring Backs. On the way we ate at Colorado Mountain Brewery located in an old railroad roundhouse. Imagine my surprise!

Library time at School in the Woods.

Labradorite in AJ's handmade pine needle basket.

Colorado Mountain Brewery in a roundhouse.
See photo on the wall.
That's Lynn and Fina under the two lights.

Snow Day, Again

Snow Day, again. But we've got this down...

My new favorite tree to look at while shoveling snow.
It's a weeping spruce.

Not everyone can get to work or school. But everyone gets to Starbucks.

Some recent new toys got exercised.

A few rounds of Wingspan.

That's Fina on the bottom.

Matteo on xylophone and David on triangle.

Jonathan loves these magnetic blocks.

Some baby time.

Caught in the snow. Again.

Valentines Day and Presidents' Weekend

Lots of miscellaneous happenings over the weekend. Starting with Fina's premier appearance on the high school's Improv Team. They do "Cheap Date Night" once a month; it's hilarious. Some of us went swimming on Sunday in 48-degree weather. Some rock climbing today at a new facility in town, Gripstone.

Here's Lexi while dropping AJ at his carpool stop on Thursday.

Cheap Date Night. This was after the show during cleanup.

Going to the pool with snow on the ground.

AJ (closer) and Matteo at Gripstone.

Cripple Creek Ice Festival

Eight of us headed out for the Cripple Creek Ice Festival today. Temperatures were right around freezing, which I guess was just about ideal for a combination of people and ice. It was small, but fun, and we managed to score some festival foods, too, like corn dogs, kettle corn, and fudge (which we always get from Cripple Creek Candy). We saved lunch for Fiesta Mexicana in Woodland Park on the way home (the restaurants in Cripple Creek were small and impacted today). Fiesta Mexicana has a huge menu, all of which is good (at least all that we've managed to try so far). A few more photos are here.

Twins Birthday

It took all day to celebrate their birthday, from the traditional whatever-you-want-for-breakfast breakfast to dinner at Red Robin and Coldstone birthday cakes. Wow! We know how to party!

You may pick ONE gift to open this morning.

Thing One and Thing Two. Exactly.

At right, dinner with some of the Kreb friends at Red Robin.

Check, Please

The DCC Theatre's winter production of "Check, Please" closed last night. And that marks Fina's 40th production! This one was unique, though, in a very significant way - she was an understudy for the female lead. I've come to learn (thank you, Zach, for sharing some of your stories) that being an understudy is a very tough job, and quite thankless. In the big leagues, you mostly get to sit in the seats and take notes of all the blocking, characterizations, etc. and practically without rehearsal be ready to go on at a moment's notice. As a lead! I can't even imagine. So, Fina got a taste of it here. She did get some rehearsal time, and even a show (the Saturday matinee was for the understudies), so it wasn't quite as merciless as the big leagues, but she got a taste. By the way, it was a great show. Excellent script, very well performed.

Fina with her overstudy counterpart, Megan.

Worse than the "Bomb Cyclone"?

May be. It was a pretty heavy duty snow, almost 24 continuous hours, on top of 5-10 inches a few days ago. Certainly ended up being the hardest driveway shoveling job we've had to date. I picked up Matt at the airport last night in the middle of it all, and was very happy to follow a snow plow much of the way along highway 83. We figured there wouldn't be many Uber drivers willing to make that run. Two Snow Days this week and one Delayed Start. Yesterday's snow day managed to cancel one of the Check Please shows.