Holidays!

Happy holidays! I thought I'd give you an update on our holiday season so far. First, Thanksgiving in St. George: we had a great time hanging out with the Broughs (Mike's mom's family) and enjoying the warm, sunny St. George weather. We also did a little Black Friday shopping -- a first for me! Here are some fun family photos from St. George:

A bunch of Mike's cousins -- cute, huh?
Cousins, again
And some of the "grown-ups."
(We stayed with Kim & Brian, on the left. They were awesome hosts!)

And here we are, getting ready to enjoy the meal.

We're enjoying the Christmas season in Laramie so far, too. The courthouse downtown has a charming light show. The lights on and around the building are synced to Christmas music playing on a radio station. It's magical!

When you use one pound of butter in one weekend, you know it must be Christmas. Last weekend I prepared plates of goodies to take to a few friends and neighbors.

Pumpkin cookies, lime sugar cookies, and pecan fudge. Yum!

Autumn

My parents visited last weekend, and we had such a good time. One of our activities was a trip to the Shambhala Mountain Center in Northern Colorado. It's a Buddhist retreat -- in Colorado. Quite unexpected.

Here's the Buddha statue inside the Great Stupa
Mom with a cast of the Buddha's head
Ceiling of the Great Stupa
Mom and Dad in the hills of Colorado. (Dad's making some kind of weird face.)

Earlier this fall I went to Baltimore for the Association of Research Libraries Assessment Conference. It was a really awesome conference, with librarians from the U.S., U.K, and Australia sharing assessment ideas and results. Baltimore is a pretty nice city. Besides attending the conference I got to go to an art museum, visit Edgar Allen Poe’s grave, eat a lot of fresh seafood, spend some time at the beautiful Inner Harbor, and have dinner with a good friend from library school who lives in Baltimore. Here are some photos:

Inner Harbor

Peabody Institute
At the Walters Art Museum
Faidley's Crab Cake -- BEST CRAB CAKE EVER
Downtown Baltimore -- I love visiting urban places, but I also love coming home to Laramie.

We've enjoyed produce all summer and fall from Grant Family Farms in Northern Colorado. We bought a share from the farm and they deliver to Laramie once a week. Here's one of the more beautiful things I've made with the local vegetables:

Leek quiche with tomatoes

The Return Trip

Part of the fun on our trip to Yellowstone was traveling through parts of Wyoming we hadn't seen yet. We covered big swaths of the state since we live in the southeast corner of Wyoming and Yellowstone is in the northwest corner.

On leaving the park, we went through Cody, Wyoming. We stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and looked at art and artifacts there. Here are a few sculptures we saw:

Buffalo Bill Cody himself

Sacajewea

Crazy Horse

After spending some time in Cody, we hit the road again and stopped in Meeteetse, Wyoming. Meeteetse, a town of about three hundred people, has one of the best chocolate shops you're likely to find anywhere. The shop is owned and operated a cowboy-chocolatier named Tim Kellogg. Check out the Meeteetse Chocolatier's website for a promo video that show's Tim's skills in the rodeo arena and in the chocolate shop.

We spent that night in Thermopolis, Wyoming, home of one of the world's largest mineral hot springs. We stayed at a really great hotel. The building is historic, and the amenities were great, including a mineral springs hot tub. If you're ever passing through Thermopolis, we highly recommend the Best Western!

Yellowstone National Park

We had an awesome trip to Yellowstone National Park last week. My parents and my brother & sister-in-law (Rob and Sarah) met us there and we all camped together in the Norris campground. We had a fantastic time reminiscing about past family trips to Yellowstone and showing Mike and Sarah the park for the first time.

Here are a few favorite photos:

A glimpse of the Tetons on our way to Yellowstone
At Norris Geyser Basin on our first morning in the park
I love that I caught these two mid-laugh. Aren't they fun?
(Yes, those are my parents, even though they look waaaay too young to have adult children like me.)
This is one of the most beautiful things about Yellowstone -- steam rising amid the dark green pines.
And here's the other most beautiful thing in Yellowstone -- the grand canyon and the falls are stunning.
Mammoth Hot Springs
Dad & Mom cooking breakfast. We ate really well on the camping trip: stuffed French toast, grilled salmon, corn on the cob, homemade ice cream, s'mores. Yummy.
Here's the obligatory Old Faithful photo. It really is stunning, but also so crowded. This year Yellowstone National Park set a new record for attendance: 2.5 million.
And here are the wildlife photos. We saw tons of bison, but just a couple of elk, some deer, and a wolf (though it might have been a coyote).
On our way out of the park, Mike and I saw a grizzly bear with a cub! I have to admit, that was the most exciting wildlife sighting of the trip. And I didn't even get a photo.
On our last night together, it snowed. Pretty hard. Mom & Dad and Rob & Sarah were staying in Mom & Dad's tent trailer, so we all ate dinner there together, played cards, and ate popcorn. It was great fun.
Mike and I felt pretty tough sleeping in our tent after it had snowed for a couple of hours. But we were really warm and cozy, and when we woke up the next morning most of the snow was gone.

The trip to Yellowstone was great. We're planning to make another family trip there in a few years and hopefully everyone can make it then. It's such a beautiful place. Being there with the family brings back great memories.

(I didn't get a photo of the whole group together at the falls. Mom or Sarah, if you have one please send it my way!)

12,000 Feet

In August Mike and I camped in the Snowy Range and hiked to the summit of Medicine Bow Peak, the highest point in the Medicine Bow range at about 12,000 feet. Here are a few photos from our adventure.

This is our new tent on its inaugural run. Camping at about 9,000 feet is a little chilly, even in August, but we stayed warm.
Here's where our hike started.
And it ended at the top of that peak. It was a steep, rocky climb.
We had this view from near the top. Gorgeous!

Mike's B-Day!

Last weekend, Melissa and I spent my birthday in Denver! We had a great time going to the Denver Art Museum (DAM) and a Colorado Rockies baseball game. The major attraction at the DAM is a King Tut exhibit. We saw some fascinating statues and artifacts from ancient Egypt. Photography was not allowed inside the exhibit, but if you'd like to see some images of a few of the artifacts we saw, you can check out this exhibition preview.

Here are a couple of cool photos of the DAM:

The building on the left is the newer part of the museum.

The above building is the older part of the museum.

Some photography was allowed outside the King Tut exhibit. Here are a couple of interesting pieces of art from the DAM:

Here are a couple of shots of Coors Field, one before the game and the other mid-pitch.


The Rockies beat the Cubs that night with an exciting 9th-inning, tie-breaking home run. It was a thrilling finish!

Simone in the Sink

This morning we found Simone hanging out here:

Simone says, "I'm here for a nap, not a bath."