The snow storm has hit! We got about 8 inches at our house last night and this morning. It was a nice, thick flaked, windy, blizzard for a few hours, and made driving from and back to school really interesting. Mark says the Passat may be ready for new tires, but the Escape is doing great.
Our Christmas adventures have begun!
On Bruce’s last day in St. Louis we decided to take him on a classic day in the city. We hit up a tour of the Budweiser plant, where I click, click, clicked away. Unlike a lot of large breweries, the origional plant here in St. Louis was founded before the civil war, and the company has worked hard to maintain the beautiful and now very historic buildings on the grounds. All of the original buildings are still being used for their original purposes.
My favorite part of the tour is always the stables. This building was built along with the original Anheuser family homestead and was (and still is) used to house the local Clydesdale population currently working the hitch. Horses not currently working are kept at Grant’s Farm in the south part of town. Anyway, the stain-glassed windows, the huge chandelier, the beautiful Christmas decorations and the fragrant smell only of beer and fresh hay are not common sights in most stables. This one is special.
After the beer tour and possibly a bit more time spent in the hospitality room than we were supposed to, we grabbed lunch at Ameghetti’s on the Hill. I think Mark and Bruce both enjoyed their half-specials and another round of Budweisers. For dessert, we dropped in at Ted Drews, which was still open, but had converted one parking lot to the fresh Christmas greens sale lot for the season. There is something interesting about enjoying a frozen custard while shopping for Christmas trees in the warm (70F!) St. Louis evening.
Pictures from the day are found in the photo gallery.
While some families watch football, and others go to parades, the Thayer Family has slightly different rituals. This morning, Mark, TJ, Chelsea and I all ran in the Kirkwood Turkey Day 5k. Mark got an incredible time of 24 minutes, and TJ and I both ran our very first 5ks in which we did not stop once to walk! It was a great morning for everybody.
At 10am the annual Thayer Family Thanksgiving Brunch began. This tradition dates back more than 5 years, and it has grown every year. This year we had well over 50 people, and my old friend Amy from HS stopped by with her new super cute puppy dog named Murray. Supposedly Kirkwood lost the football game today though. A great dinner began at the nice and early hour of 3pm. It was so wonderful having everybody in both families together for such a great meal.
After dinner, we all retired to the basement for the epic Guitar Hero 2 Blowout Play-Off. They all started playing. And playing. And playing. It’s now 3 hours later, and there’s no sign of stopping. Yep, that’s what I call a holiday!
This was my view for most of the day today as we made the trip back to St. Louis for the holiday. Yes, the car is dirty.
Today is the beginning of a travel day. Turkey Day is almost upon us! This picture is my take on the fantastic sky last night. Waves upon waves upon waves.
Earlier this fall, Mark and I decided we would go ahead and make the investment in a pair of 4-packs to Copper Mountain and try to get several days of skiing in this year. Last winter, I had one 3 hour lesson and a very scary and embarrassing experience on a steep green at Winter Park that effectively ended our ski season in December last year. We chose Copper Mountain for our passes this year because the mountain has a large amount of gentle green terrain that doesn’t intersect much with faster slopes.
Last weekend, we had a fantastic two days of early season skiing at Copper Mountain. We really lucked out this year as a couple large snow storms have already blown through, and Copper Mountain had almost 40″ of packed powder base already this year. On Saturday, Mark and I both signed up for full day lessons. It was early enough in the season that there weren’t many other people in the classes. In fact, Mark had his instructor all to himself, and I had only two other people in my class.
We both had a great day and learned a huge amount. I learned to relax and use balance, not force in my skiing. I improved my trust in my turning ski (lean on it, and it will turn!). Mark learned to carve and stop with a right turn.
We cemented our new skills on Sunday and had another great day in the sun and snow. I started to bring in my inside ski for more parallel-type turns and a little bit of a sliding stop. Mark had a fantastic, cloud of snow, skis and poles flying up in the air crash on one of my greens. That was fantastic to watch!
So, now it’s Monday morning. I’m so sore I can’t hardly walk. Mark groans every time he moves. And we both can’t wait to go back.
For more shots from the weekend, check out the photo gallery.
We had a great storm yesterday. The wind started blowing hard enough to make the roof creek and moan louder than the TV. I grabbed the camera and ran outside. After chasing some tumbleweeds around the neighborhood, we all ended up here.
Well, it’s finally working, and it’s great! Cyberhobo wrote this excellent WordPress plugin that takes location data associated with a post and plots it on a Google Map. I installed it on Colocalders, and you can check it out on the Adventure Map page in the menu to the left. Have fun!
