Non-traditional Thanksgiving

So at the last minute Lance and I ditched traditional Thanksgiving to go snowboarding. At first I was kind of sad (remember my earlier Thanksgiving post), but it turned out to be a really fun trip. I really miss snowboarding and it felt really good to get back on the mountain. We went to Red River, NM. Neither of us had ever been here before, (Lance had never snowboarded before), but it turned out to be really cool. The town is right at the base of the mountain so really you could walk anywhere in town, even to the lifts. There was actually a lift right outside our hotel, I mean 10 feet from our door, but that run wasn't open. Red River supplements their natural snowfall with snow machines which is basically all they had, but it wasn't bad. Kinda icy but still fun. Here is a picture of the town from about 1/4 of the way up the mountain.

Lance did really good for his first time. Ever since I bought him a snowboard for his birthday he has been trash talking that he was going to school me and that he didn't understand what was so hard about it... Well he learned. I was so happy to hear to exact same words come out of his mouth that I said my first time I went, "I can't do it, this was a waste of money." He was ready to give up after the first day. He fell 25 times going down the bunny hill his first run. I wasn't much help though, I yelled out tips in between hysterical boughts of laughter. He was going to rent skis and try his luck there but decided to give it one more chance and caught on. He even did a black run. He also learned the meaning of being sore.  Until you do it, you will never know the pain.

Here you can see the edge of the man made snow. Since Lance was just learning I stayed with him the whole time and took it pretty easy. It was a good ease back into it for me. I got to work on somethings that I needed to practice like 180's and riding switch. As a result I'm really not sore. Something that he didn't like cause I wanted to walk around and see the town today and he wanted to lay in bed. I won, we walked around. It was good for him to stretch his muscles though.

Rach and Carson, I looked it up it took us 9 1/2 hours to get here, it take 9 hrs and 45 min to come from Phoenix. Plus look at the name of the forest it is in! We'll meet you here next weekend.

This is my cousin Josephine.

She was born on October 22. Shortly after she was born she was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, or Edward's Syndrome. She will not live long-trisomy 18 is  genetic disorder where there is extra material from the 18th chromosome (like extra material from the 21st chromosome causes down syndrome.) About 95% die in utero. Of liveborn infants, only 50% live to 2 months, and only 5-10% will survive their first year of life.

Josephine is going strong on 1 month!

My Aunt Lucy and cousin Angelic are hosting an online benefit to help pay for medical expenses. Any bids/donations would be great! Check it out here. The auction will start November 26th and last one week. Check out Josephine's story and her amazing family here.

Sweet Tastinesses

Here is a little something to wet everyones appetite for the upcoming glut. (You all know its true, even if you are on some biggest loser weight loss extrodinare diet thing you will glut yourself on Thanksgiving, and if you don't... well thats just not American.) This is the first turkey I ever made. Looks pretty good for a novice huh. I made it cause we got it for free from our work last year and we thought we had better eat it before we get to more free ones this year. It was really good. I also made turkey pot pies which were amazing. I didn't even use a recipe (i know turkey pot pie isn't that hard, but I am still proud of how tasty they turned out.) The only semi sad thing is eating a whole turkey between just two people can make one a little sick of turkey and they turkey holiday is very near. It will be ok though. I am sure we will find a way to squeeze some more turkey into out guts. Especially if Lances mom make that tasty sounding citrus turkey that she was thinking about, yum-o. Well Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Early Christmas.

Lance gave me my Christmas present early! Yeah I was suprised too! He said he has been looking for one for me for a long time and this was too good of a deal to pass up. Its a 2002 Sportster with only 2700 miles. They must have just rode it home from the dealership, put it in the garage for 6 years and then decided to sell it. I am so happy. I am sooo happy.

I learned my lesson!

Don't worry for all of you our there that thought I was a greedy greedy girl not willing to share my Halloween treasure, I got a stomach ache last night on my way to work due to over indulgence. I guess I learned my lesson and that lesson is: if I am not going to share my candy, I don't have to try to eat it before everyone else does so I should just take it easy and enjoy. Muwhahaha!

Halloween Poker Run

For those of you who don't know, a Poker Run is a biker game. Someone, 

either an organization or a charity, sponsors the run. Everyone pays like $10 or so to get a piece of paper with the 52 standard cards on it. The sponsors have a planned route with 4-5 points of interest along the way. At each stop everyone draws a card a

nd it gets marked on their paper. At the final stop (usually someplace to eat) the sponsor collects the papers and finds the highest hand and the lowest hand. They are the winners and get a percentage of the money raised that day. If the sponsor is an organization you keep the money, but if its a charity its good juju to donate it back to the charity. This weekend was the Three Sands Abate chapter poker run. It was a little differe

nt in that we started out as two groups and met in the middle at the fourth stop and then as one big group went onto the final destination. It was pretty fun cause Lance was the Road Captain (leader) of our group. As his passenger I got to make all the arm signals (like left turn, right turn, watch out for road kill, stop etc.) and be in charge of the drawing of the cards. Th

e two groups met at a veterans memorial in Lamont, Ok. There was 53 bikes all together which is  a pretty good turn out. I really like riding in groups but it is also very dangerous. If one bike goes down, all the bikes behind them do too. This weekend for instence one guys oil line burst open and sprayed the guy behind him with oil. Luckily th

e guy who got sprayed was wearing a full face helmet. So when the oil impaired his vision he just lifted the visor on his helmet and was able to mak

e it to the next stop and clean up. Riding in groups is fun but dangerous.

Halloween treats!

My mother-in-law gave us some Halloween treats. How thoughtful of her. My basket has a witch on it and Lances has a Frankinstine. Don't worry she also gave us a full Ziploc freezer bag of mini candy bars and a full Ziploc freezer bag of regular size bags of M&M's. She got all the candy on a huge sale where she works. She even put a blue glow stick in Lances and a pink one in mine. How cute is she. So if you guys want some candy, don't come to me cause we're not sharin! Just kidding. Happy Halloween!

I rock!

Lets just start by saying that I am totally amazing. Of course you guys already knew that, but I will tell you one of the reasons. I crocheted a baby blanket in one teeny weeny little week. This might be small potatoes for some of you out there but for me it was a big deal seeing as the last baby blanket I made took several months. I only know one fancy pattern so that is the one I used. I learned how to crochet from my mother in Young Women's. We made baby blankets for the Linus Project. (now that I know how good I am at it maybe I will make more.) Anyhow I liked it, the girl I made it for liked, Lance was proud of me (even though he doubted me.) Here it is. 

Here is a close up of the pattern