An easygoing afternoon at home in Denver
As I sit here with my baby kale and arugula salad topped with sweety drop peppers, an extraordinary amount of goat cheese (c’mon, man, I’m allowed to indulge once in a while), and an oil+balsalmic+fig spread dressing, I’m amazed that I’m now 22 weeks pregnant. That’s more than halfway through! Week 21 blew past me in such a hurry that it almost felt like I started to look “really pregnant,” as my mom said, overnight.
Christmas has came and went, and the husband, two Yorkies, and I successfully traveled from Yellowknife to Edmonton to San Francisco to Snelling for an action-packed holiday. We left the dogs at grandma’s house for some other adventures: a three-day trip to Napa to visit more of my family, a day trip to Kirkwood to ski the fresh pow (my husband and sister did this one together while I hung out with my mom, since I can’t ski this season), and then a day trip to Santa Cruz to relive the good ol’ days when my sister and I were in college and I met my husband. We ate, we drank (well, I drank water and pomegranate juice), and we were merry. And then our little traveling show got back on the road and through the skies to Denver, this time with my sister in tow.
For our final leg of the trip, we checked something like four suitcases, one ski bag, and a moving box, and we carried on two dogs in their little houses and a small bag each. Wow, was that a lot to lug around or what? Also, I’d like to give a shout out here to our extremely accommodating Uber driver for helping us speedily load our things in and out of his SUV while also being completely cool with two slightly barky (but only when we arrived at our house) dogs.
With a night at home in Denver and a couple nights in Vail, we decompressed. My husband’s version of decompressing is skiing hard all day long and then meeting me for nachos, and mine (this season, at least) is walking around the village, shopping at LuluLemon, warming back up by the fire in the lodge, and then sharing that plate of nachos.
Our New Year’s Eve was relaxed for once. I can remember one year, when we first started dating, when we saw a Brazilian band and danced alongside their Brazilian dancers. You know, the ones with the high heels and the even higher headdresses. Another year, we went to Amsterdam and partied with friends of friends who once stayed at my college house when I was traveling in South Africa. We did Italy and the Dolomites with friends. We did the Black and White Ball at the run-down CalNeva in Tahoe two years in a row and had about 8 of our friends stay at our house after. We did a ski and party trip to Whistler and another to the Frisco, Breckenridge area. And this year, we did a homemade hot chocolate with very vanilla marshmallows and a Mussel Shoals documentary kind of New Year’s Eve. And you know what? It was just as great and just as memorable as all of the other years.
Happy 2016, from mine to yours!
An awkward family photo at our favorite Santa Cruz restaurant, Cafe Brasil (left to right: my sister, me, and my husband)
hollanroundtheworld 