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A Return to Alaska for a Friend

In mid-December, after an email about one of our best friends, we returned to Anchorage. It was so beautiful up there with all the trees covered in frost and gorgeous bluebird skies.

Our friend Kevin had been skiing and experienced a seizure, luckily before he began the North Face run. As he was checked out at the hospital, they found a brain tumor. Surgery was quickly scheduled, and Ben and I made sure we would arrive before it to be with him, help out his parents, and have a little fun with him, as seen below.

The "head protection" we brought him was actually some packing material that we all had fun with while we still lived in Anchorage, we would pretend they were moon boots. And somehow they made it to Colorado with our stuff, so we brought it back for him to use post-surgery :)

Kevin and his support group (Ben, Lisa, Tisha, Amber and his parents) heading to the hospital, with the head protection too!

Alaska Trip continued

We were fortunate to be able to see Andy and Lisa and the twins for dinner real quick, along with Sam and Cindy. The girls were hilarious! They give fabulous "stink-eyes"!

Before we left to head back to Denver, we stopped one last time to see Kevin, he was up and ready to go, amazing recovery! We brought him the Costco-size bag of Swedish Fish (his favorite) to munch on. All in all, it was great to be there for him and help his family out.

This was about 10am in the morning, as we were in the airport heading to our gates.

And here's the gnarly scar Kevin had. We were kinda sad because we wanted to have him have a mohawk, and he even asked the doctors before the surgery if they would....guess he'll just have to work on one from here. :)

Unfortunately, the tumor ended up being malignant. But the doctors think they got most of the mass out. We have high hopes though because he's young, super healthy (a mountaineer), is willful and has so much love and support from his friends and family. So, for those of you who know him and for those of you who don't, if you could just put him in your thoughts we can all help to beat this thing!

Kevin - we love you and can't wait to hang out again! We're here for you always and forever. You're the best friend anyone could remotely even dream of having. And of course, keep singing:

In the light there's no darkness
So why not live the life we love
And love the life the life we live
Live the life we love

First runs of the season!

Last weekend we took a trip west to the awesome resort of awesomeness skiing - Vail! There isn't a lot of snow yet, but the day was beautiful and the company was great.

Brian, Lisa, Matt and Ben takin the first run up the lift

Almost a total bluebird day

Takin a self portrait as we're headed to the back bowls - were mostly closed though. John and Ben behind me, I was leaving them in the dust.....err snow. :)

Ben and Brian takin a breather.

Can't wait to go 100 times more and really make our Epic pass worth it!

Getting ready for Xmas with friends

With the help of Brian and Vanessa, we added some Christmas cheer to our house this weekend. Since we didn't have the huge Alaskan wilderness to chop our own tree down in, we went to a local Boulder tree farm and picked up a beautiful spruce.

Our first tree as husband and wife! :) We even found and hung up the ornament that Ben bought for our first Christmas together 5 years ago!

Vanessa helping add some cheer! You probably don't recognize her for 1.) she's turned around, and 2.) her hair is now short and brunette!!! She looks great and I hope to have a front picture of her soon!

Hung up our stockings near the tree, including the puppies below the TV! (yes, we do in fact own a TV, and for those of you wanting to call out Ben on his "Blow up your TV" comments, its only for movies :) )

After a long day, Brian, Ben and our friend passed out beside the decorated tree, dreaming of sugar plums and skiing the next day!

Granada

So after Sevilla we hopped on a train for Granada, we were hoping that it was going to be a smaller town type of place but we came to find out that it is quite huge. However, even as a large city it was really cool. It was organized into neighborhoods, each of which was a different culture. It was really amazing to experience them all.

This is a view of the hillside coming into Granda, we saw more olive and almond trees than we ever knew existed. Chances are if you are eating either of these things, it came from here.

The next shot is of Lisa enjoying the scenery on a train ride. I liked it cuz of the the old sepia feel.

When we arrived, we headed up to a viewpoint to check out the city layout. After negotiating the narrow unlabeled street system we made it to St. Nicolas plaza with a view of the Alhambra and the rest of the city. This is a shot of all the other people that were there doing the same thing. There were a ton of performers there too with music filling the air. It was great!

Granada Continued...

We made our way to the Alhambra to get tickets to check it out. Turns out that 8000 people go to see this thing every day. The tickets are for a specific 30' entry time and if you miss it you're out of luck. The place is well worth it though. Everything is decorated with water, in every way you can think of , because to the people who made it water was a very valuable commodity.

This is a cool shot I took of the first waterfall that we saw wehn climbing the giant hill up to the entrance.

This next shot is just a quick example of how narrow the streets were. Everybody who drove through here, and it was a lot of people, scrapped their rear view mirrors.

This is a shot showing the amazing rock work in all the streets and side walks of Granada. It is all made from different colored rocks. They must have spent centuries organizing and placing all these stones.

The Sierra Nevada Mountains loomed huge in the background of the city. We almost headed up there to go skiing but we couldnt find a snow pant rental place. It was cold in the city and we figured it would really be cold up there.

Granada Continued...

The Alhambra was truly amazing... the water was used in so many interesting ways and the topiary art was really cool too...

Here is Lisa discovering the inside of the palace. It was filled with secret rooms and passageways. Just imagine all that these walls have seen.....

The ceilings were once painted with vibrant colors that have all since worn away, but even without the color the amazing and intricate art of the surface itself was really something.

Even the most simple pillar holding up an awning was ornately sculpted into something to study for hours. There was so much to this place that it was like a city in and of itself.

Granada Continued...

The mountains really formed an amazing backdrop to the Alhambra.

This was a forum, that they used for meetings and speeches. It would sure be neat to have lived here back in the day!

This was a bathroom. Pretty extensive for a bathroom eh?

We really explored a ton of places in Granada, it was a cool city, but in the end we still prefer the country over the city. Seems like after a while you just need some open space and some quiet. We really enjoyed the food here, we found an amazing tapas bar that was really friendly and cool and we ate there a couple of times. It was really neat the way that when you ordered a beer you got an apetizer with it. If you wanted to you could just drink and eat all night!

A Stopover in the Mediterranean

Since we had no set schedule for our honeymoon, our great friend/old roommate in Alaska...Sergios, had mentioned many times that we should visit him in his home country in the Mediterranean - Cyprus. So, we took him up on it since we were relatively close :). We've had a crazy time with flights, a story we'll share later, but our last 2 days in Cyprus with Sergios have been AWESOME! Look for pictures soon, but for now we're arguing for the millionth time with Lufthansa Airlines - DONT EVER FLY WITH THEM!!!!

Sevilla

K, so my post about Sevilla is going to be short just like our visit there.... The train ride from Toledo was really cool, Lots of these trees! I think that they are olive trees....

The countryside is filled with them, everywhere. It is beautiful and gets even better the further south we go from Madrid, the rolling hills really add to the landscape.

The castles are getting cooler too! I think that we should have booked a few nights at this place. could have been really cool.

Instead we went to Sevilla, and let me say that it was a bad choice, should have just stayed in Toledo, the food sucked and the place was a crowded dump. Soul my toukas. Ok so we didn't really give it that good of a chance, but after our initial experience we just decided to move on. Maybe if we had tried harder we would have liked it more, but who has the time for that.

So we just sat and kissed, hiding ever so effectivly behind and orange? It was fun. The whole city did smell of oranges and that was cool. Off to Granada in the morning.

TOLEDO!!!

We left the craziness of Madrid for a much more relaxed and quaint Toledo, boy is this place breathtaking! The moon rose over the city as we went out on the town. The narrow city streets just ooze character, and each one whispers to you as you go by. It's impossible to walk down to many of them. We pretty much zigzaged our way throughout the entire town the first night. We stayed at a really great little hotel right inside the city walls, it was nice and quiet, except for the spanish lesson from the locals as they come home from the tapas bars at 7 in the morning laughing and carrying on. The major sights that we took in were the alcazar and the cathedral. Both spetaculo.

It was hard to find a bad place to take a picture here... tell me this isn't a postcard.

This is the giagantic alcazar that dominates the city. It was on the highest hill, but when you are walking the narrow streets you have no idea it even exists!

Here is the view from our hotel room... Toooooo coool.