January Update

Good thing my New Year's resolution wasn't to update my blog regularly. Sorry it's been so long. I've been trying to keep up with Snapfish pictures at least, but I'm over a week behind on that too. If you had a chance to look at my Snapfish albums, you know that I've done some more skiing and I also tried out tubing. The tubing was okay, but the slope was too mellow for my liking. Not $20 worth in my opinion, but we still had fun.

Last week Hoku, Roxanne, and Roxanne's daughter Faye asked me to drive them around since we have the same days off and they don't like to drive in the snow covered roads. They're from Hawaii so they're not used to winter driving. We made good use of their rental during our three days off. First we drove around in search of wildlife and found a herd of elk then we drove about 1 hour east to the Silverthorne outlet stores. On Thursday we went west toward Glenwood Springs. We were hoping to see some big horn sheep and drove all around one of the places that they are most commonly found, but we only saw 1 dead one. It was hard for me to look while we were driving because the roads are narrow and windy. Maybe I'll see a live one before I leave.
Anyway, after we gave up on the sheep, we went to Hanging Lake which is just east of Glenwood Springs. Some of you might remember that I hiked the same trail in last summer when I was staying in Aspen. The ice and snow made it a little more difficult but it was fun to see how it looked in the winter. Here's a picture of each.

On Friday 1/18, Hoku, Roxanne, and Faye asked if I would drive them to Aspen. I was there for 2 months so I didn't feel the need to go back, but I decided to go anyway. We went up to the top in the gondola first then did some shopping. They also had some sort of gay pride thing going on. People were dressed in costumes and skied down the slope then were judged on there technique and outfits. It reminded me of Key West with snow.

After a weekend of fun, I had to go back to work. Nothing exciting to talk about there. Then Tuesday 1/22 and Wednesday 1/23 I went with LaDonna, Patty, Alice, and Rachelle to Breckenridge. We shopped the first day in Breckenridge and then went back to the outlets in Silverthorne for the second day. The others, except for LaDonna, hadn't been to the outlets before so they found a few good deals. We had a Toyota Prius for the five of us and every inch of that car was packed with stuff.

On Thursday, I planned to go skiing with Hoku and Luis but the skis I bought from the thrift shop weren't working. The bindings were set to close together and couldn't adjust far enough for my feet. Gary brought them to a repair shop but they wouldn't fix them because they said they were too old. Basically they just wanted you to buy new skis from them. So I spent the day grocery shopping, doing laundry, and finding a different pair of skis. All very exciting.

That brings us to today, Friday the 25th. I wanted to go skiing and everyone else was either working or sore from the day before so I ended up going alone. I took the bus to Beaver Creek because I had never been there before. I wanted to make sure I didn't hurt myself since I was alone so I stayed on the green slopes. It was fun but by the time the lifts closed at 3:30 pm my legs were sore. There was about 5 inches of fresh powder from the night before so it didn't take much to wear me out. I'll try to be better about updating but don't bother looking for at least 2 weeks. I swapped last Tuesday for this Wednesday so now I've got five fun filled days of work to look forward to. I know what you're all thinking...."I have to work five days every week." Well, I feel bad for you but my shift is 11 hours plus 30 minute commute on each end and that's if there are no delays. That leaves me with enough time to sleep and eat and not much else so by the time that 4th day comes I am ready for a weekend.

One last thing...I almost for got to tell you that the rumor is that we will be staying until the end of ski season. My ticket and deployment report were round trip and I was scheduled to go back to Minnesota on March 5th. We haven't received anything official with different dates yet but the Security Manager told us that we can expect to be here until April 9th. Look on the bright side. That leaves more time for you to come visit me. Why hasn't anybody said they want to come? I know most of you aren't big skiers, but neither am I and look at me. Or what about shopping? There's plenty of that. The least you could do is send me and email and let me know what I'm missing out on.

Love,
Tracie

(**I'll add pics from Breckenridge, Silverthorne, and Beaver Creek later.)