Capital Reef 3/26 - 3/27

Kathy and I had spring break last week, the beginning of the week was hanging around home with a little jaunt to Capital Reef National Park mid week for a couple of days. The weather was beautiful, but a bit chilly at night. The first day we got there it was low 70s, mid 60s the next day and upper 30s at night. We took the Vanagon down to keep it simple and enjoyed a very relaxing break. Enjoy the pictures!

Happy Spring adn Easter!!

Happy Easter all!!!!!

We have finally had a warm nice day on the weekend!! After my ride up emigration pass in the snow last week and the three stops I had to make on the way down, today was more welcome. Although the ride stared on the cooler side, it did warm up nicely. A good 4 hour ride through the mountains on a sunny day...Is there anything better? I guess so, but for today it was great.

Spring seems to have sprung here. All the flowers are starting to come up and soon will cover the yards. We went for a walk on Saturday morning to a neighborhood yardsale and saw a flock of robins. Had been seeing 1 or 2, but not a whole bunch. I even saw a honeybee in the flower today taking its picture. Karen had a ski morning at Alta, said it was amazingly beautiful up there today with the sun and snow, good temps..... yeah, yeah,yeah!

We are looking forward to the next month, with lots of family coming in over the month. Karen, though is unhappy as after her spring break this week she has "19 weeks" without a vacation! Don't you feel sorry for those teachers??

Well, I hope your easter flowers are coming in and the weather starts to shine in everyones homes.

RK

March (a little late!)

Finally, a new blog entry! It's been a VERY busy month. The pictures on this entry are from the staff retreat we did at work. Our entire staff went to a camp near Winter Park, CO, the 5th - 8th, for a planning retreat for next year. The National Conference for EL was in Denver so this allowed some of the staff to attend that while the rest stayed back and worked on school related issues. We put together proposals to present to our Board on topics that needed to be addressed, such as the school calendar, class size, the adventure program, etc. etc. Of course, we also had time to play. There were miles and miles of cross country ski trails there and many of us enjoyed the beautiful weather and snow and skied some every day. It was really nice, groomed trails in the mountains, and through the woods. Of course, we were at 9,000 feet so it was a little thin up there! Kathy and went for a run in the morning, that's when I really felt the thin air! All in all, I think it was a very productive week, and it was a lot of fun, too.

Since then, we had a dinner party for St. Patty's day. Well, actually, it wasn't FOR St. Patty's day, but we made it so. We have a group of friends that we do dinner with, rotating each month. It was our month and right before St. Patrick's so we decided to do an Irish theme. We cooked up traditional corned beef and potatoes, with carrots and onion, made potato leek soup with Irish soda bread, and had Irish bananas for dessert. Great time had by all! Last week was a very busy week with something going on every night, massage til 8:00 on Mon., work stuff til 9:30 on Tuesday, Book Club til late on Wed., Board Meeting til 9:00 on Thursday, out to dinner and collapse into bed on Friday. All that while getting some runs in for the half marathon in April! Whew! Now I have a week off for Spring Break, some relaxation and exercise, perfect weather and maybe a quickie road trip in the Vanagon down south for a night or two with Kathy. Nice.

Spring has sprung... but I'll let Rich do an Easter blog entry to highlight the beautiful spring weather we are having! Take care!

Ski variety and other stuff

Definately behind, as usual on the blogging. This post relates to last weekend, but hey, better late than never! Friday was a great night, a full moon ski with some friends from work. We went up Mill Creek Canyon at about 7:15 until about 9:15. The peace and solitude of night skiing was amazing and so relaxing, once you got the demons out of your head! :-) We didnt even need a headlamp (once we got our stuff on and got started) because the snow lit everything up well enough to see where you are going, this gave it such a surreal feeling that was really cool. Super fun! Saturday, was a training day for me, we are doing a 3 day bicycling tour with our 6th graders in May, so we teachers that are leading the group are getting trained as Lead Cycling Instructors through the SLC Bicycle Collective. This day was an 8 hour training that was not anything new for me, but was a nice way to spend the day talking about bikes and doing some riding, the temps were in the upper 40s with sunshine galore. Of course, Sunday was a ski day. This was Rich's last day of the season - the picture here is his "Do I really want to stop skiing" thoughtful pose. :-) He needs to dedicate his weekends now to training for Ironman. It was a crazy day up there - stormy and windy windy windy. You couldnt see 10 feet in front of you on some parts of the mountain, so we stayed pretty much off Collins Lift where we could get near the trees to find some contrast in the light. All in all, it was pretty fun - the crazy weather adds an element of challenge and fun that I kinda like. :-) You can check out the video of Rich skiing! This weekend, we are running and trying not to get blown to Oz, as it is exceptionally windy - a storm is blowing in. This will make it particulary difficult to ride a bike, which was on the agenda for the day as well, not sure if that will happen! These are the mountains out our window, they were just glowing this morning!

BTW - does anyone know how to block comment spam? Geez, cant get away from it anywhere! I cant find a way to delete them either. Ah well. Hope all is well with our friends and family.