Our Yearly Spring Break Hang!

Just about every year, we get together with Lisa's cousin Casey and his awesome wife Annie. This year, their 11 month old cutie pie daughter Avery came to Boulder to hang out a bit. As always it was a great time!

Cousin shot-o-tequila!!!

Avery likes books, I mean REALLY likes them, sometimes she eats them!

Shower time!

They had experience a major winter storm earlier this season in Portland, and they brought it here! We got about 19 inches in one day while they were here!Ben showed Avery a little drumming fun!
Thanks guys for coming! We had a blast with you as always!

Cousin's Hair Salon!

We went over to my cousin Tonya's house the other day and her girls wanted nothing else but to play with my hair! So I said it should be a full salon! We had a ton of fun!

Working on Abby's hair

Claudia working her wonders on mine

Abby finished mine up! Thanks girls!

An explosive thorn in our side

Mt. Redoubt, the volcano southwest of Anchorage is being a pain in the ass! Its been erupting several times over the last month or so, and yesterday the winds were just right to send ash over Anchorage. Check out our friends blogs (Andy's and Sam's) for photos of the falling ash and people and their masks.

Here is a time lapse video of the eruption!

Redoubt Eruption March 27 2009 from Bretwood Higman on Vimeo.

The reason why its such a pain to us down here in Colorado, is because the ashfall has closed the Anchorage Airport. Our friend Kevin in Anchorage is supposed to fly down here on Tuesday to come to Panama with us Thursday. So if everyone could cross their fingers, toes, eyes, whatever, that would help a ton!

We're alive!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, we've been pretty busy though! We both went on work trips last week - Lisa to Boise and Ben to Baltimore.....but not before Ben blew out his GOOD knee playing basketball! He thinks he tore his ACL and maybe MCL, just as he did to his other knee in college. :( Ugh.
On a happier note though, Lisa's cousins Casey and Annie and their baby girl Avery are coming to visit for a few days starting tomorrow! It'll be great to see them, and continue our almost yearly visit with each other in late March.
Stay tuned for updated pictures of the kitchen....its almost done!

Demo continues!

The demo of the downstairs bathroom continues! Last night Ben and I got everything out except the bathtub....even scraped off the 4 layers of linoleum on the floor. Now just need to probably break the tub to get it out....we think its cast iron so it'll be heavy. Its a good thing that we're doing this and getting everything out, Ben had an "asthma" attack will everything was blowing around....mold. We're getting rid of everything to make sure its not around anymore, even replacing some studs!

So here is a shot of the new project, the downstairs guest bathroom. It is going to have to come out all the way to the studs. This one shouldn't take as long though as we dont have to have anything custom made. Home depot here I come!

 

Kitchen floor done!

So the kitchen is almost finished, we got the heated flooring and the tile all finished up in there. It came out really great, we like it. Now we are just waiting on the rest of the cabinetry to be finished and we will be moving on to the next project. I didn't have anything to do yesterday so I figured I would get a jump on it. I ripped out everything in the downstairs bathroom to prepare for the remodel down there. Pictures of that soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hike up Bear Peak.

So we decided to go on a 9 mile hike up a mountain this past weekend. It was fun and although we stopped just 200 feet short of the top because there was too much snow on steep slopes to traverse without something other than tennis shoes, we had a great time. Here are some shots from the hike. Oh and you can see the peak that we climbed from the kitchen window in our house in Boulder. We love it here!

 

 

 

 

More visitors!

Our friends and European travel buddies, Jon and Charmian, came to visit us this weekend. It was so great to catch up since we'd seen them in November in Italy, and try to convince them to move back to Colorado. A great lunch and some climbing made a fantastic visit, thanks for coming guys!

My awesome sister!

My sister was listed as the "Top 20 Under 40" in Colorado Construction on the latest McGraw-Hill Construction site. I'm so proud of all her accomplishments, she's a pretty bad-ass chick and an amazing mom - if you don't know her :) Check out the article!
http://colorado.construction.com/features/archive/2009/0903_covere.asp

More Progress!

More progress on the kitchen! We finally got our new Silestone countertops in and they're great! We've painted the walls (LOVE the color!), we've put down some cementboard to put tile down, and deciding on tile for the floor. Its coming together!

Here's Lisa styling the latest flooring fashionwear for the spring :)

Laying thinset down for the cementboard

Our new Silestone countertops!

A glance into the kitchen

Our new awesome gas range with a downdraft so we didnt' have to put a hood over it.

Our pulls we're gonna have on the drawers and cabinets!

Kevin's birthday in Alaska Trip Photos

Finally got around to downloading all the pictures from our trip back up to Alaska for our friend Kevin's birthday. We had a blast together, tons of adventures including getting a puppy! It was great to hang with old friends again, play in our favorite spots, and eat our favorite Anchorage grub.

Kevin's AK Birthday Visit

Ice climbing in Ouray CO!

So this turned out to be an epic birthday celebration weekend.  We went to Ouray to hang with our good friends Brian, Vanessa, Seth and Fabrizio.  We packed in some ice climbing and some hockey at the local rink.  The ice climbing went off without a hitch, however I managed to trip Brian while playing hockey and send him into a flying dive elbow first into the ice.  We all laughed pretty hard but he came away with a jacked up elbow for his birthday.  All in all though we had a blast!

Here is an album with some of the ice climbing shots.  Ill post some hockey action later...stay tuned.

Ouray Ice Climbing

Visit with Michelle and Nolan

Before we left for Alaska, our friend (and Matchmaker) from Tucson (now she lives in NYC) came to Colorado to visit her family. We were lucky enough to snag her a few times to hang out and play with her adorable son Nolan! It was a short visit, but a great one - can't wait for the next one Miche!

Kitchen Remodel project update

So we are making progress on the Kitchen and it is all going to come together here really soon! Just today, the countertop people came by an measured for the one piece stone countertops, should be about a week or two for those... In the meantime we are installing the heated floors and painting everything. We have a temporary sink installation right now so that we can stop washing dishes in the bathroom. It's starting to look like a kitchen again, we are really starting to see what it is going to end up like. Pretty exciting!

I'll leave you with some shots that I took this morning while the electrician was finishing up.

Heading North

Ben and I are heading up to the Last Frontier again, to hang with our buddy Kevin for his birthday. We are super excited for a return to our last "home", hang out at our hold hangouts :), eat our favorite AK food and drink our favorite AK beers, see the beautiful Alaskan winter landscapes, and of course, spend time with friends. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that Mount Redoubt, an active volcano 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, doesn't blow her top off! Here is a recent picture....

Happy Weathermans Day!

Today, Thursday, February 5 is National Weatherman's Day, commemorating the birth of John Jeffries in 1744. Jeffries, one of America's first weather observers, began taking daily weather observations in Boston in 1774 and he took the first balloon observation in 1784. This is a day to recognize the men and women who collectively provide Americans with the best weather, water, and climate forecasts and warning services of any nation.

John Jeffries

Yay for Lisa! :) :) :)

Kitchen remodel continues

They took everything, INCLUDING the kitchen sink!!! :) Its been a little tough living without coutertops and a sink, but we're getting SO excited about the end!

Get ready to pee your pants!