No excuses

It's been a long time since the last update, and like the title suggests, I have no excuse for not updating.

Last time I wrote I was about to embark on a trip to Seattle. Well, I went and am back again. I had a great time. I learned a lot about the company I work for and I was reaffirmed in my decision to join such an awesome team. I even had the opportunity to meet Mr. Weidner, the president and founder of the company. He was extremely nice and caring; not what you would expect from a CEO. I spent my days in class and my evenings hanging out with another employee from the Canadian region of our company. We had a lot of fun and frequented the local breweries and brew houses in the evenings.

After I came home a lot of our corporate team followed me. We had our annual Weidner awards for the Colorado region and again I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Weidner and also the VP of Operations. It was a great recognition ceremony and I met a lot of other people in the region.

Ruth had been looking online for new jobs because she does not feel satisfied with her current job at La Petite Academy. She feels more like a babysitter and that she hasn't been able to use her degree. She interviewed and was offered a position as a teacher's assistant in the largest district in Colorado Springs. She accepted and she starts March 8th when we return from AL from my brother Sean's wedding. She will be working with special needs children in her new position.

The past weekend we took our first ski trip. We went to Monarch Mountain and spent the day Saturday skiing. We started by taking a lesson to learn the basics. Unfortunately, the rest of our class was in 6th grade and the instructor spent more time latching boots and helping put skis on than instructing. Nonetheless, after an hour we learned the basics and we were off. Ruth had been skiing once before in Indiana, but it was my first time. We each had a few embarrassing spills, but we eventually conquered the bunny hill and were on to bigger and faster slopes. Ruth picked up the S turns relatively quickly. I didn't do so well. I would go really fast, try to do an S, and roll. I picked it up eventually, but by that point my sunglasses has icicles and my cheeks were as rosy as St. Nick. After our hardships there's only one word to describe skiing for us, addictive. We have already looked into goggles, masks, and mittens (with slots for the hand-warmers for Ruth). Ruth's trying to book a ski trip with all the friends and family that are coming out to visit. She's looked into getting a season lift pass for next year. We aren't going to buy the skis and boots until a later date when we have a bit more cash and we know that this is a sport that we can frequent.

Other than that, we've found a church that we're really happy with and this coming Sunday we're going to see what we need to do to become parishioners. We've been going to the same one for a while now and we're really starting to bond with it. We've noticed that CO has a much higher rate of Hispanics than IN and it reflects in the church bulletin (which is half in Espanol).

We're really looking forward to our trip to AL. Sean is getting married on the beach at sunset. I have my suit and everything all fitted and pressed, waiting for the big day. We couldn't be happier for him and Eleana. Unfortunately, we procrastinated on getting the gift we wanted and someone else got it off their registry already.

After the wedding we have two friends from BSU coming to visit for their spring break. We're super excited. We're calling the week they'll be here March Madness. Ruth and I both have to work, but we'll still find plenty of opportunities to have fun that week.

Here are photo albums from our ski trip, Lorin's visit, and Seattle.