Bode the Artist

It has been below freezing for the past five days.  We had a lot of snow on Sunday, and it has snowed on and off all week.  It seems like every time I go out the garage, I have to take an extra ten minutes and shovel the driveway (the Mrs. doesn't seem to know where the snow shovel is kept...)  Fortunately, the forecast is for some sun today, which will help melt the snow.  Unfortunately, the highs for the week are supposed to hover around 30, which will be a warm up, but it's not quite where I would like for it to be to allow me to go outside and do some work in the garden.  And I'm really hoping for a good harvest this year--I've even been reading stuff on the internet on how to plan the garden and the correct timing.  We'll see what happens.

Bode surprised us the other day and brought home the following:

We were quite impressed with the above fish.  He hasn't shown much talent for art, but he's done a couple pictures that show marked improvement.  Perhaps all the piano planning has unlocked the depths of his left brain.

Nothing else exciting going on today.  We rented Big Hero 6 on Friday night, which was quite fun.  Otherwise, Ashley is cleaning (at least the Mrs. knows where the mop is), and I think Bode wants me to order him a 2015 calendar (only two months late).  Happy week to all.

The Mountain Palace...

...is no more.  If you've known us, you probably know we own a little house in Blue River, Colorado, which is about three miles south of Breckenridge.  We bought the house back in 2005, used it for a year, and then we rented it when we moved to Ohio.  It is a charming and quaint little place (both are words realtors can use to hide flaws, but they do accurately describe the property).  We had intended to move there someday.

Alas, I should say, "owned" a house in Blue River because on Thursday, we closed on the sale of the house.  Thus, after ten years, we are back to having only one mortgage.  This turn of events might shock some people, but fear not.  As I alluded to in previous emails, there are some big things going on in McGuirk-land (note the 's' on things).  This is the first of two big announcements.  I'll hold on the second announcement for another month or so (think of this email as the Star Wars Force Awakens teaser trailer).  More to follow.  Happy Saturday.

February Skiing

We spent another weekend up in Breckenridge.  We were tempted to stay home because the weather people have been predicting a huge storm to hit Colorado Springs over the weekend.  We took the chance they'd be wrong and headed up to the slopes.  This entire season, whenever we've gone skiing, Bode would go to ski school, and Ashley and I would ski together.  This weekend, Bode informed us he wanted to ski with us.  We were both excited and a less-than-enthused about this because while we couldn't wait to ski with Bode, we also knew skiing with Bode would mean a lot of time on the greens. But we figured the sooner we start skiing with him, the better he'll get.  And we both agreed sometime in the (near) future, Bode will be a better skier than us, and we will be the ones holding him back.

The weather was decent.  The temperature was right around 30, but it was overcast, with intermittent light-to-heavy snow.  We skied for the morning, and when we broke for lunch, we were ready to do a little lunch, shopping, and hot-tubbing.  We did stop for the obligatory photo on the top of the Quicksilver lift.

We also took a quick break to get some hot tea (for Ashley) and some free Hershey kisses (for Bode).  It was warm enough inside for me to snap some photos.

We woke up early this morning, and Ashley spent an hour on the slopes.  She said it was freezing but awesome (temperature was closer to 5 today).  We then loaded up the car and headed back.  Colorado Springs received 12+ inches of snow Saturday night, and it was still snowing slightly, so surprise, surprise, the meteorologists were correct.  Fortunately, we made it back without a hitch.  I spent an hour shoveling the driveway, and now my back is aching :-)  Bode's school has already cancelled classes for tomorrow.  Not sure if USAFA will shut down or not.  I'm hopeful it will so we can all have a fun snow day.  Pleasant week to all.

Legos

Bode is really into Legos.  He''s very good at following the directions and getting all the pieces in the right places.  At Christmas, he received a bunch of little figures, and he promptly put them all together.  Sometimes, he'll sit for hours working on a design.  We've been feeding this hobby by buying various sets.  He's very into the Lego Star Wars, so we recently purchased Jabba's Flying Sail Barge, which had 750+ pieces.  I think Ashley really liked Legos when she was young (and even now for that matter), so the two of them have some great Mommy-Son time.

Here's a cute movie of Mommy and Bode giving a tour of the completed design.

All is well in Colorado Springs.  In another week, we should be able to announce the first of two major happenings in the McGuirk world.  Tune in next week, same Blog-time, same Blog-channel (I wonder if today's generation gets that reference).  Pleasant week to all!

The Piano Man

Bode has been taking piano lessons for over two months.  We are amazed at the progress.  He's always shown an affinity for memorizing things.  He has flashcards with all the notes on the scale from bass clef up through the treble clef.  He can site-read all notes from low C (two lines below the bass clef) up through high-high C (two lines above the treble clef).  He's probably not at "Mozart proficiency" when it comes to site-reading, but the fact he knows all the notes and can identify them on the piano really impresses me.  He usually practices in the afternoons with Miss Jeanice, so it can sometimes be more than a week between times we hear him play.  We had lunch at the Waffle House today (it's become a tradition), and when we got home, Bode wanted to play for us.  I took the following two videos.  The first is Bode playing one of the Daily Dozen warm-up exercises.

Next are some of the songs he plays from his lesson book.  Yes, there are errors, but if you'd seen him when he first learned what middle C was and compared that with today, you'd be duly impressed :-)

Nothing too exciting going on here...well, that's not really true.  A lot going on, but we'll still wait a few weeks before we unveil the big news!  Happy Saturday to all.

So Proud

We've had a fairly eventful January, but we won't go into the details--lots going on in the McGuirk Family right now, but we don't want to jinx things by celebrating too early.  Hopefully in February we will be able to post about some of the pending developments.  For now, we haven't been doing too much around the house.  A lot of naps fill our weekends.

Evidently Joey and Harley seem to think they own the place and can sleep on whatever bed they want. Sadly, we let them get away with this, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

Bode has had an up-and-down month.  Per previous posts, he spent some quality time in ski school.  I failed to mention one particular episode that happened after ski school.  We were walking back to our condo, and we passed a family.  One little girl about Bode's age was bawling tears.  She was tired and didn't want to carry her skis.  Bode heard this, went up to the girl, and carried her skis all the way back to our condo (this family was staying in the same building we were).  Ashley and I were very proud of our little man--so thoughtful and considerate.  Yes, so proud...until one day this week when we received the following from the school:

Certainly not something we liked reading.   We had a good talk with Bode.  Fortunately, the phrase, "We are very disappointed in you" affects him (either that or he's a good actor).  Bode wrote a letter of apology, and he's behaved since this incident.  Here's hoping he stays out of "consequence alley."

Finally, we are back to being proud because Bode learned a new trick:

Yes, the infamous arm-pit fart.  We are just tickled to death when we see Bode standing in line with his schoolmates, all of them laughing because Bode's doing this wonderful noise-maker.  We had to explain this talent is either 1) done at home or 2) on the playground at school.  He is to NEVER do this in the classroom.  We've yet to receive a second letter from the school; we will see what happens.

Super Bowl is tomorrow.  We don't like neither of the teams.  If only both could lose :-)  Pleasant week to all.

Ski Weekend

This past weekend was a three-day weekend for Bode and me (MLK holiday).  We convinced Ashley to take today off and headed up to Breckenridge for some ski-fun.  We headed up Friday night after work.  We packed a pizza and snacks, so we could check in, get to our place, and then relax as a family, not to mention rest up for some skiing.  Saturday, we woke up and took Bode to ski-school.  He really seems to like it; I'd like never having to wait in line at the lifts too, one of the perks of ski school.   Bode got a pretty crazy helmet hat for Christmas; he looks way cool.

After dropping Bode off, Ashley and I broke the ski-school rules and went to Arapahoe Basin.  I think you're supposed to stay in Breckenridge, but it's not like we went to Vail or anything crazy.  We kept a close watch on our phone just in case there was an emergency call.  Fortunately there wasn't one...and even if there had been one, we could easily claim not to have heard the phone, poor reception, etc. :-)  But back to the mountain.  A-basin had received three or four inches of snow the night before, so we had a great time.  Here's a shot of one of the runs where you can still see the powder.

Here are a couple random shots of Ashley.

We skied until just after noon.  We then headed back to Breck, had some lunch, and toured around Blue River looking at different houses.  We picked Bode up at 3:30.  Ashley got this picture of him at the end of the day.

He's real easy to pick out in that hat.  Thanks to the RF-ID tag on Bode's pass, we are able to track his movements.  He skied 8,216 vertical feet on Saturday, which is pretty impressive (stats unavailable for Ashley and me; evidently A-basin is still in the 20th century).

Because we had such a good time on Saturday, we got up and did it all over again on Sunday.  At first, we were worried, because it was extremely windy in the morning.  Fortunately, the temperature was 30 or so; had it been in the teens, it would have been one short ski-day.  We skied for two hours, and then we stopped for some tea.  We were thinking of packing it in--a little crowded for our tastes.  We went outside and grabbed a photographer for our obligatory Epic picture.

We then decided to try a different part of the mountain, which was a good idea.  We skied for another couple hours, and had some great runs.  We did 11,353 vertical feet and enjoyed every foot of it.  Funny that Ashley's pass only recorded 4,000 or so feet even though we skied together all day.  The highlight had to be the end of the day when we went to get Bode.  He did another 7,572 vertical feet, bringing his season total to 29, 692 feet, higher than Mount Everest.  We got this video on his final run--he's even using polls now!  Sorry about the audio (damn that wind).

Sunday night was relaxing--just the three of us watching TV.

We came home today and did chores.  Joey and Harley were thrilled when we got home, but Joey had a little melt down while we were away, destroying his pillow and two other pillows.  We need a Joey cam--maybe fit a camera on Harley so we could see what Joey's up to.  Oh well, other than that, it was a fantastic weekend, and we can't wait for the next ski trip.  Pleasant week to all.