Colorado Hiking: Kansas Style

In case you didn't know, school is hard. And time consuming. As you can see by my lack of posts over the last few weeks, I haven't had a lot of time to keep up with blogging. But my constant hard work on my class has payed off. I believe my teacher has used the words "wow," "excellent," and "outstanding" in feedback to my projects. So, that's cool.

Somehow, Matt and I have found some time to do fun things, too. Last weekend, we took a winter hike with my dad, because we live in Colorado and we can hike in January here. Colorado's awesome like that. But we couldn't head up to any of the trails in the mountains because there's lots of snow up there and we don't have snowshoes... yet. We will someday. For now, we stayed East and hiked "Kansas Style," meaning there were absolutely no mountains or inclines on the entire hike. But it was still cool.

We headed to Barr Lake and took the 9 mile trail that circles the entire lake. The first part of the hike was really pretty, with offshoots from the main road that took us through a few different areas.

Walking over the frozen lake.

Lots of geese.

Despite the beautiful temperature, there was still quite a bit of mud and ice on the road, making it a little difficult to find our footing.

Walking in the mud.

The frozen lake and trees created a pretty cool winter scene.

Half of the lake is a wildlife refuge for bald eagles that live on the lake. We managed to see a few from a couple of wildlife viewing areas.

Those very, very small dots on the ice are actually small eagles.

In the center of the picture, you can see two eagles perched on a branch.

Even though it was from a distance, it was pretty cool to see such beautiful creatures.

Once we had passed the main viewing areas, the trail got a little more boring.

Look, more animals! Cows!

While slipping and sliding on mud and ice, we kept on trudging. It felt like a lot more than 9 miles.

About half-way around. You can see the other side of the shore in the distance.

The terrain was certainly less pretty in the second half of the hike.

Ahh, nature.

Somehow, we made it around. I was pretty tired at the end, and my legs were sore from the constant effort to keep from falling in the mud. Luckily, no muddy face-plant for me!

At the end.

I think taking time to do things like this will be very important in keeping my sanity during this grad school program. We have a few more fun things coming up! But for now, homework awaits...

Skiing Again

New Year's Eve was pretty subdued for us this year. We had a nice dinner, a little wine, watched the Avs game, and went to bed right after midnight. I'd feel pretty lame, but we had a good reason to take it easy. To start 2010, we were up bright and early on New Year's Day to head up to Loveland for more skiing.

This ski trip was pretty uneventful. In fact, there's not much to report, except that I'm awesome!

Seriously, I was so good this time. Maybe not "awesome," but I was way better than I have been. The last few times I went down the run I didn't fall at all and I was even able to turn. I made sure to take my time, and not let anyone pressure me. I know I may not be learning as fast as some people would be, but I'm just glad I'm improving!

Other than that, it was just a fun, relaxing day. And a great start to the new year.

Loveland. Starting to get busy.

Me. Awesome.

Me again. Yay.

Matt went off on his own to do some fun and harder runs. This is on the top of the mountain.

Beautiful day. Lots of skiers.

Yay.

I have a feeling we're gonna be spending a lot of our winter weekends in the mountains from now on.

Exciting News and Christmas Fun!

With the craziness of the holidays, I've been slacking at keeping up with my blog. And if you think it's bad now, just wait. Pretty soon I'm not going to have much free time at all because...

...drum roll please...

I'm going back to school!

I'm about to start a program that will lead to a Master's degree in Special Education. I'm very excited, but it's going to be a lot of work. However, I will still attempt to continue updating you all on what's going on in our lives. We may just have fewer exciting things to report!

But anyway...

We hope you all had a fantastic holiday season. The last few weeks for us have been filled with family, food, and fun. While I'm glad things are getting back to normal, we certainly had a very nice holiday.

The last few days before Christmas were a blur of baking, crafting, and wrapping. I was a little behind on things this year, so the stress levels were up. I went a little crazy with the baked goodies, and I spent a lot time hand-making our Christmas cards. I've really gotten into the paper-crafting thing this year, and it was a lot of fun.

A few of my awesome cards.

I think I'll start making cards for next year now. I was a little rushed to get them finished and in the mail!

When Christmas Eve finally arrived, I was excited to just relax and have fun. My family has always gathered and opened presents on Christmas Eve, so we headed over to my folks' house to a fun chili and taco dinner.

The Krauses always end up gathered around the piano singing carols at Christmas.

After dinner, we settled down for the present craziness. This year we did something completely different with gifts. It was pretty confusing and would take way to long to explain fully, but basically, each person received only one gift from the whole family, and that gift was bigger than anything one would typically purchase for his- or herself. Because of this crazy new way of doing things, I got a Cricut!

If you don't know what a Cricut is, it's a fantastic machine that will make all of my paper-crafting so much easier and more fun. I'm sure you will see a lot of my new baby in the future. (You can't wait, can you?)

Presents went much more quickly this year, with only one gift for each person.

My mom had a little too much fun wrapping Matt's gift. He had to open three boxes before he found his new Xbox.

Then the kiddos got to get to their gifts.

Evie loved the new rocking horse my folks' got her.

And she wouldn't take off her cute sweater from me and Matt.

On Christmas Day, we headed back to my parents' house for a really nice dinner.

Yay Christmas!

My mom made a delicious meal (with a little help from me!).

Dinner.

Somehow, all the grown-ups ended up at the kids' table. Oh, well!

The rest of the afternoon was spent just relaxing with family.

Nieces in the awesome hats I got them!

Pretty Christmas baby. I don't think she cared much for the headband. But I guess I wouldn't either.

She loved the spiced whipped cream I made, though. And I did, too.

Bright and early the next morning, we got on the road to Kansas! Shortly later, we turned around and headed back home! Sadly the snow and cold closed I-70, and we were stuck in Denver. But you gotta love that Colorado sun, because by mid-afternoon, the roads had melted and were open again. The blowing snow messed with our visibility a little bit and there were still a few slick spots, but at least we got out to Hutchinson on Saturday. Much later than we'd planned, but we made it.

A little blowing snow. It wasn't too bad.

Tarr Christmas in Hutch was short and sweet. We visited with Matt's family, opened presents, ate yummy food, and headed out.

Chillin' (like a villain).

Dinner at Uncle Kenny and Aunt Brenda's beautiful, newly remodeled home.

The girls reading. I love reading.

So excited at what might be in her gift bag!

Our final stop on our Christmas adventure was my grandparents' house. I don't have any pictures because we spent most of the time just sitting and chatting, but it was a great visit. I talked crafts with my aunt and heard stories from my grandpa's childhood. It's always great to see them all, and I wish we could do it more often.

So, Christmas is over. It was a nice holiday, but I'm ready to move on to other things! Like lots of reading and essays and projects...