California Trip!

Here are some pics of our trip to California, seeing my sister and her new baby girl Olivia! It was a blast, we did some hiking and Skylar and my brother in laws went surfing! And of course I held my niece as much as I could! It was a great trip and I was sad to leave!

Its not a boy...its a girl! My new niece!

Here are some pictures of my new niece, Olivia Noel! She was born on Christmas day, after 32 hours of labor, doctors decided to do a C-section. After many many months of thinking it was a boy, they got a surprise when doctors told them that it was a girl!! We all were so shocked but also very very excited and overwhelmed with love for this little girl! God is amazing and has a sense of humor! Both mom and baby are doing very well and maybe going home really soon! Skylar and I get to go visit on the 31st for 5 days. I can't wait to meet my niece! There will be many more pictures to come!

The latest addition

When we first moved into our new house and finished our yard we talked about getting a little play mate for Hooch. A few months ago one of Jamie's patients dog had 9 puppies (pure-bred bull mastiff puppies, my favorite!) But they were pretty expensive so we decided against it. Then we found out that Hooch tore both of his ACLs (that's right, BOTH back legs!) So another dog was out of the question while Hooch is going through his recovery (he had surgery about 2 1/2 weeks ago on one, once I figure out how to get pictures off of my phone I will post a pic of him after his surgery). Anyway, last Friday Jamie got a call from her patient who had the puppies and she said she wanted to give on to her! For free!! It turns out that they are moving, they only had two puppies left, and she just wanted to bless Jamie. Even though another dog is a lot of work Jamie convinced me and I just couldn't say no to a Mastiff Pup. We picked her up last Saturday, her name is Daisy (I wanted to name our next dog Turner but I just couldn't do that to a girl dog).



So now we have quite the hosehold. Especially with my parents visiting over Christmas, they brought their dog too. So we have three dogs, two cats, and 6 people running around the house. Fun fun!

Right now Daisy is about 14 weeks old and already weighs 35 lbs! She is small (relatively) but heavy. Her mom is 110 lbs and the dad was 150lbs, so she will probably end up around 120 or so. She is going to make Hooch look small (he is only 75 lbs these days). It will be fun to see them playing around with each other once he is all healed up. We will try to keep posting pics over the next couple of weeks so you all can watch how fast she grows.

Officer Byrd Comes to Colorado

My college room mate Cage came out to visit us for a couple of days. We didn't do anything special, just a lot of hanging out. I had planned on going on a few hikes and showing him the beauty of the Rockies, but snow and freezing temps got in the way. So instead we hit one of the local breweries, played some video games (just like old times) and hit a local hot spot, "Bruce's Bar" with some of Jamie's co-workers. Bruce's one of two local bars here in Severance (only about a mile from our house) and they are famous for their rocky mountain oysters. Yes, that's right. The sign on the side of the building says "Where the geese fly and the bulls cry" (Severance also has a large geese population because of all the fun things to eat in the farm fields). I couldn't let Cage go back to the Northwest without trying some (I had never had them either, so it was a first for all of us). It is true what they say, it tasted like chicken... kind of. They were fried and looked like chicken strips, just a little rubbery and some had a strange after taste. Nevertheless, I can check that one off my list of things to do in Colorado.


Jamie and Cage after the first bite of the rocky mountain oysters...or maybe not.



Cage and Holly, one of Jamie's co-workers (Cage's favorite!!)

Tacky Sweater Christmas Party

Earlier this week we had a tacky sweater Christmas party with our small group from church. We also did a white elephant gift exchange (the rule was you couldn't go out and buy anything, it had to come from your house). The popular gift was the Monkey Hat, it was stolen every round. Proud to say that was our gift! Here are some pics.

The Group

Skylar is not happy about that Lion on his sweater

The infamous Monkey Hat, Rob was lucky enough to take it home.

Justin and Sara: his tacky sweater was a Denver Broncos sweatshirt. He is a Chiefs fan...didn't go over well in Bronco country, but it was funny.

It is safe to say Isaac was the winner this year.

Wes and Elissa were proud of their matching Santa buttons.

Windsor Football

It is a sad day...the high school football season came to an end yesterday. The Windsor Wizards lost 14-31 yesterday in the quarterfinals of the state playoffs. It was a very successful season, but always sad when it comes to an end. Now what am I going to do, I guess go back to concentrating at work...how boring:) The Varsity's final record was 7-5. We were the 14th seed (out of 16) going into the playoffs with a record of 6-4. All of our losses came to the top four teams in the conference, so our conference sent 5 teams to the playoffs (more than any other conference in 3A). Obviously a tough and talented conference. In the first round of the playoffs we upset the #3 seed by a score of 20-6. This year was the first year since 2002 that they made the playoffs, and I think it has been about 10 years since they last won a playoff game, so everybody was pretty excited. The town gave the team a lot of support. On our bus ride down to the game yesterday about 200 fans lined main street and cheered us on as we left town.

My freshman team ended up with a record of 6-3-1 (there is no overtime for freshman football). A very fun and successful season, my first as freshman "head coach". Our first two losses were by a total of 3 points (it is hard to find a good field goal kicker for PATs these days). The third loss was pretty bad. The kids were a lot of fun to work with and I can't wait for next season. I am going to be running the weight room a few days a week in the off season so that will help me get through the slow months (every month that is not football season is slow...)
Here are a few pics of the Varsity from the season. (I can't seem to find many archived photos on the net so I will work on finding more and try to post them later).

Halloween

This was our first Halloween party in a long time...I wasn't too excited about dressing up at first but we ended up having a good time. A couple from our small group at church hosted the party. Jamie went as Tinker Bell (I am pretty sure she ordered her costume in September, very excited) and I had the option of going as Peter Pan or a Pirate. As you can see, I wanted no part of those green tights.


This is Jamie and her friend Elisa, she is Rosie the Riveter.

This is our friend Wes, he is Elisa's husband. If you can't guess, he went as Dwight Schrute from the office. The best part was his photo ID badge that he made on the computer (hanging around his neck).

Justin and Sara are JD and Elliot from Scrubs.
And then the most popular costumes of the night were John McCain and Sara Palin. The couple on the right hosted the party and the other couple (the guy is Sara and the girl is John just in case you can't tell...) were their friends that we hadn't met yet.