Archive for 2013

One more month of crazy around our house, and then I think we’ll be back in the realm of “normal.” This month, our family had some pretty radical life-changes, including a move from Fort Collins to about 40 miles south into the Boulder area.

Moving is fun!

I started a new job, the kiddo started at a new daycare, and Mark started his new commute all on a snowy Valentine’s Day.

The universe says “Happy first day of work! You should have worn snow boots.”

We have a new house, with our own backyard for the first time in 8 years.

Playing in our own, private dirt

I received a wonderful new camera, a Leice D-Lux 6, as a graduation present, and I’ve been wandering through the snow taking pictures of the mountains around Boulder.

Foggy, snowy morning in Boulder

We spent most of our free time this month cleaning, packing, moving and unpacking. But we did get up to Rocky Mountain National Park last weekend. Our goal was to go sledding, but there was less snow in the mountains than in our front yard. So, we played in the Sprague Lake area and had a fun day.

After walking didn’t work, G decided to stay sitting and let us push him around the lake

After playing around the lake, we went back to the car, and discovered the 12V battery was dead in our Prius. We had to have a tow truck come up from Estes Park to our trailhead and give us a jump start. If you were curious, it takes about half an hour for Bob’s Towing to make it to Sprague Lake. Not too bad.

Mark fixed the car by himself, during a day of amazing electronic skill. He also created a charger for my camera from a cut-open USB cable, some speaker wire, rubber bands and a coffee mug. The purpose of the coffee mug was to contain any unexpected fires. It worked great! This is why it’s nice to have a hacker around the house.

In Colorado, winter drags on. Our springs seem to oscillate between sunny and snowy on a daily basis. The snow falls, the snow melts, and the snow falls again. Repeat ad infinitum. But it gives us time to sit quietly, snuggle with the kiddo, sleep long, and breathe.

Old Roses and Snow, it must be February

My Office at CSU – Where the Magic Happens!

Last Friday, I successfully defended my dissertation and received my Phd in Atmospheric Sciences!

I’m pretty much elated. It’s been so much fun to tell everybody I meet that (1) I finally finished and (2) they should now call me Doctor Kate. Mark says I’m his favorite Doctor since Dr. Horrible.

It’s been more than eight years since Mark and I arrived in Colorado and I started graduate school in a field I knew almost nothing about. So much has happened in those eight years! Mark has had three jobs, we bought a house, and we had a baby! We’ve climbed at nearly every area on the Front Range, and all over Colorado and Wyoming. We have traveled to Italy, Israel, Thailand and Japan. We camped, hiked, mountain biked, photographed, yoga’d, and crossfitt-ed ourselves through the last eight years and had such a blast doing it all!

So, why am I putting all of this on our blog? Well, the last few months have been a very exciting and very work-centered time for us. We have not been getting outside as much as we would like and we have not been able to keep up with all of our fun hobbies. I know now that I really enjoy blogging about our adventures and travels with our kiddo. But I have become more concerned about his digital footprint, and how my blogging might affect his future. So, I am trying to figure out the best way to keep our blog running and protect his privacy.

Since it’s time for us to move into a new phase of life, it makes sense to move the blog around a bit too. I have not decided exactly what I want to do, yet, and we won’t have much time to mess with the blog in the next few weeks. But I have a new camera and a summer of lower work responsibility ahead of me, so you can bet there will be more blogging!

If you have any ideas for what we should do to keep writing but protect our families’ privacy, let me know in the comments!