Christmas in Steamboat & New Year's at the Frio!

What fun we had this Christmas & New Year's!

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We skied Steamboat!

We snowboarded!

We played dominoes, cards, and lots of games.......

........and tried to stay warm!

ATL!

This past weekend a decent representation of PPAAA descended upon ATL for Ben's birthday.

(Picture Gallery)

Things started out decently enough:

However, as the dreaded three-oh approaches, it is apparent that we need to make some additional guidelines for PPAAA membership:

1. Only the penitent man shall pass

2. You must be in touch with your feminine side

3. Giveth and ye shall receive

Of course, the aftermath:

Goodbye for now Austin & Farnish Cove...

Goodbye Farnish and Austin! We have almost 5 years of memories at our first home "Farnish." Many memories of late night pong games, cooking dinner together, Christmas decorating, gardening- watching my cantaloupes take over the field, our infamous 10 feet tall sunflowers, Karl growing his "babies" (trees), and of course our beer can chicken incident! ....Austin, we'll be back...

Disneyland!

We went to LA for the weekend to go to our friends Ben and Melissa's engagement party in Malibu on Sunday. We decided to go to Disneyland all day Saturday & we had a blast! We rode every ride and didn't even go home to take afternoon naps like we did as kids! Little did we know that Christmas at Disneyland started the day before! The minute we walked in the park there were decorations everywhere, Xmas music playing the whole time, and a huge Xmas tree on Main Street. The rides were just as fun as we remembered and some of them totally revamped with a Christmas theme. The longest we waited in line was 40 minutes and that was for Karl's favorite ride- Peter Pan (not!) It's a Small World was lit up with Christmas lights and was incredible looking! Mom would have loved the Xmas theme with all the different countries singing Jingle Bells! So funny! Our favorite rides were Indiana Jones- a new ride where you ride in a huge jeep and twist and turn all thru the dark. Then, of course, the classic Space Mountain. Then, the remodled Pirates of the Carribean was amazing with awesome details and characters based from the new movie. Karl even waited in line with me for Peter Pan's ride which ended up being his favorite..ha ha! We even did Mr Toad's wild ride and Snow White's scary adventure...and it was scary! (For all the 2 year olds!) The evening ended with an awesome fireworks display while they played xmas music and then a shooting star over the castle. They even made fake snow that fell down on everyone! It was just as fun as we remembered it as kids and we never even thought twice about how old we were hopping on all the rides! We were beat by the end of the day after standing on our feet for nearly 12 hours we crashed. The next day we drove to Malibu and went to our friends Ben & Melissa's engagement party hosted by one of their friends that lives in the hills of Malibu. The house was incredible complete with their own vineyard and horses. We had so much fun seeing our California Dartmouth friends that came in from LA, San Diego and Santa Barbara! We then had a fun 7 hour drive back to San Fran. Definitely a very long drive just for the weekend but this time it was worth it!

Boot Camp!

Karl and I decided it was time to jazz up our workouts a little and we joined BOOT CAMP! A change from our normal running routine through Golden Gate Park we decided to try something new. Karl joined a co-ed class in the evenings and I joined a women's only class in the mornings...early...5am! We are very sore and loving it! Carly kicks our buts and 10 minutes into the class I'm peeling off layers of clothing. We meet down bat Aquatic Park, right behind Ghiradelli Sq. and it's normally pretty chilly and pitch black when we meet from 5-6am! We workout in the dark with only the Alcatraz light circling around from across the bay. We do cardio, strength training, obstacle courses, bleachers, stairs and whatever other torture our coaches can come up with! Last week our favorite workout was the famous San Francisco Lyon St. stairs! ...VERY steep and long stairs that we went up and down about 5 times! Oh, and that would be too easy to just go up and down them and call it a and down them and then call it a morning. We alternated doing squats, lunges and pushups in between each set! I couldn't feel my legs by the end of class and I'm STILL sore! The pictures here just don't do them justice. They are soo steep and they keep going..and going. It was a fun change and a good workout! Next week we run the GG Bridge!!

You've come a long way baby!

Happy 18th Riane!

Napa Valley

(More Napa Pics in our gallery!)