To Thanksgiving... And Beyond!: A photo blog.

I'll begin with Hannah's birthday. So fun! And amply named "Hannah Valian's 22nd Golden Birthday Drunkfest Extravaganza". Its always great fun to celebrate. The evening is.... fuzzy. But highly entertaining! Hannah's funny when she's... er... tipsy. :)

I'm happy that I made it :)


And then we went bowling!!! Yess....
Some videos for your viewing enjoyment.

Jordan's Sixth Gutterball (in a row)

I think they're too high for this.

Jordan's first pins!!
What a silly good time.

After a few days that were greatly needed to recover from said "drunkfest", Jordan and I headed on the long and perilous journey to New Mexico. When I say long and perilous, I mean six hours and driving through towns that if you stop you have a good chance of being brutally murdered. (e.g. San Luis, CO). After a few years of driving between Colorado and New Mexico, I have learned not to drink too much and the safer places to pee. Oh dear.

Finally, arriving in Pojoaque at 1:00 am (and following Jean for a good amount: Match course and speed... Engage!), instead of sleeping we decided to stargaze. My dad owns a big ol' 10" telescope that I can't help but brag about, because if we lived in a place that didn't have such crappy light polution I would want it desperatly. In Pojoaque, thought, the light polution is a lot less noticable. You can see the milky way, and the closest galexy to us Andromeda, with your bare eyes. (Not very well thought, it kind of just looks like a blur, but still fantastic, and much cooler through the telescope.) We
And: Snow on Thanksgiving. Of course. looked at Jupiter, and a half Venus. Later in the week we also looked at Saturn and The Orion Nebula. Oh my goodness my love for astronomy sometimes causes immense sleep loss. We stayed up until 3:30 am the day we were driving home to see Saturn when it rose. *sigh* Love.

(These photos (except for the galaxy) are through the same kind of telescope as my dad's. However we do not use a filter so you can see the stars and moons around the planets. They are a little enlarged. Orion's Nebula looked more like the one on the right. It was hard to find a photo that was close to the amazing view we saw. It was so clear! Beautiful.)

After that we went to a glorious Thanksgiving dinner at the Provans. Mmmm Heidi's applesauce and Dana's gravy. And Idan's stuffed mushrooms. And Lindsay's yam experiment that turned out like heaven. And so much more. Oh, and the spectacular abundance of wine.
Of course it snowed on thanksgiving.

Lins and Idan

I forgot to say that we had a little wine-fest the day before Thanksgiving as well. My morning was, if anything, tough. But I did conquer the world in Jordan's name at Risk. Yess.... although Sydney did insist on keeping the Congo. I'm not sure why.


I saw some people that I hadn't seen in a while. JP and Becca after the meal, and then on the trip to Albuquerque the next day we happened to stop at the Bobcat Bite. Unfortunately the wait was too long for us, but who did we see? Christian of Boulder, CO. What are the odds.

In Albuquerque we met with Tyler and Brittany, Janelle, Emmy, Jersey, and two new friends, Lindsey and Robert, who were being interpreted by Brittany's amazing skill at sign language. She's real good. I admit, I did feel a little uncomfortable at first, but these amazing people made me feel at ease. We played music for a very long time. Enough time so that my neck was swollen in the morning from Jersey's glorious violin that I wanted really really badly. Too bad I'm such an honest person :). No, not too bad. Just jokin'. (Props to Brittany for coolest photo pose so far.)

It was great to see good friends with similar interests. I met the nicest Jehovah's witnesses I have ever met who enjoyed our music as much as we do. We went to Frontier, where Carli was out of the blue!! It's been too long. I miss all the people worth seeing in New Mexico. Unfortunately I didn't get to all of them. Next time :). All in all, it was a good trip.

And now, after a trip to Maria's for some quality New Mexican grub and the best breakfast burrito I have had since Chiliworks, Jordan and I were ready to make our way back to Denver. The long and perilous journey awaited. Yet we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. *DUM DUM DUUUM* (cue suspenseful music)...

It all started smooth sailing. Taos wasn't even bad. The views were beautiful. It was the normal beautiful day, interesting conversation, great music. I appreciate New Mexico every once in a while. Just not Los Alamos. :)

But oh no... this was too good to be true. I have bad luck with drives back to Denver in the winter weather, as Marb well knows. I was hoping that something like that would never happen again. I was only half wrong. We were stuck for at least an hour on the trecherous La Veta pass. Again. At least this time we were moving.. slowly.. for most of it.





This is my "not again" face.And Jordan's angry face.And when I finally believed I was free from all snowy/sticky situations... (or at least not stuck on la veta for four hours...)But.....
no such luck.

We ended up being stuck in the longest traffic jam I have EVER seen. In my life. Oh wow it was so long. We were so bored. It spanned way back. You can kinda tell in this picture. The last white dot on the end is as far as we could see it go back. And at that point we were only about a third of the way to the end. Terrible. And I hate driving in the snow. Like a lot. Here is a nice little video diary Jordan and I made out of bored0m. Hopefully it isn't as boring as we were. Wait, what? (It was about the point where I began losing my mind completely.)

And it was a very, very long time.

We didn't even know what to be prepared for. It finally cleared up a little about 4 miles out of Colorado Springs, but the roads were still really bad. The fastest I was going was 35mph until Castle Rock. We ended up getting to Marb's house at about midnight. And I was pissed, because it was Sunday and we couldn't get liquor. Ha.

And now I think this might be the longest blog I've ever written in my life. Its probably full of errors and completely uninteresting, and if you got this far I admire you. Today was a hell of a day. I had two too many big ass needles stuck in my buttcheeks, and drank one too many disgusting big glasses of icky medicine that made me numb and sleepy. We had to cancel our show because of me. :( This makes me really sad. And the drugs made me super woozy. Which could explain the length and possible errors in this entry. Forgive me?

Anyway, I hope everyone had a magnificent Thanksgiving. More pictures from the trip to come soon. Don't worry, hopefully I won't be bored as hell and stuck on the couch, so they will not be included with long ass ramblings. :)

Goodnight!!