Keeping Up With the Allens

Christmas in Minnesota

This year we braved the bitter cold and headed east to spend Christmas with my family in Minnesota.

Hearth decorated for Christmas — Hearth at the cabin decorated for Christmas

Our trip began on Monday morning with a journey up to my family’s cabin on Lake Shamineau for a quick 24-hour stint. It was very, very cold for our first couple of days, but that didn’t stop us from shoveling off the skating rink that my dad had flooded the weekend prior and taking our new ice skates for a quick spin.

We warmed up in front of the fire that evening and made a traditional Swiss cheese fondue for dinner. I found out that my dad’s retro fondue pots were actually given to him by my grandparents – I had no idea how old they were.

The next morning we woke up and took one last toot around the ice rink before having breakfast and getting ready to head back to town. Our quick cabin trip had come to an end.

The lake looks a little different covered in snow!

Christmas Eve was spent at Kincaids restaurant in downtown St. Paul with my mom. Alex and I joined my mother for a steak dinner while looking out on a beautiful snowy evening. We made it back to Mahtomedi just in time to attend St. Andrew’s Christmas Eve music service, which my dad enjoys.

On Christmas morning we had a little time with my dad before we set off for my mom’s house, 3 blocks up the road. Alex and I opened our stockings and had gooey cinnamon rolls with my mom, then helped her prepare lunch. My aunt Sarah came over for lunch and to exchange gifts. We had some nice conversations and a terrific lunch of prime rib, mashed potatoes, popovers, brussels sprouts and fruit salad. It was a very different Christmas because my grandmother was not present this year, and my brother was absent, as well, so it was a bit unique for our small family.

Later that evening we headed back to my dad’s house and enjoyed a sampling of Chateauneuf du pop and the steak fondue that we never got to up at the cabin. We sure got our fill of red meat in this week!

After several days spent with my family we had some outings planned with some of my friends from high school on Thursday. We met Kelsey at Cafe Latte in St. Paul for lunch and coffee and then drove out to Cottage Grove to Kailey and Eric’s newish house to see a few more friends.

Bentley, my brother's cat, curled up on the sofa at the cabin. It was nice to have a furry friend! — Bentley, my brother’s cat, curled up on the sofa at the cabin. It was nice to have a furry friend!

I had originally planned on leaving to head back to Seattle on Thursday night with Alex but extended my trip to attend my grandmother’s funeral service on Monday. We left the Rices on Thursday and headed straight to the airport to drop Alex off for his flight.

Brrrr!! Almost - 20 degrees outside. — Brrrr!! Almost – 20 degrees outside.

Since Alex left I have spent my time dealing with tasks to prepare for my grandma’s funeral, shopping and just enjoying the extra time with my parents. I’m looking forward to a few extra days to catch up with friends and family before heading back to Seattle on Tuesday.

In Memory of Grandma Tia

After a whirlwind of health issues over the last several weeks, my maternal grandmother Elizabeth took her last breath this morning. She certainly didn’t go without a fight. There were at least three times over the last few weeks that I was sure it was the end but she rallied around and pulled through, not quite ready to go yet. She has always been a tough bird – you’d have to be to go through some of the things she has been through.

circa 1987/88… parents, why is there a wine glass on my leg??

At 94, my grandma had lived a very long, complete life. A woman of determination, she managed to live independently in her home until just a few weeks ago. Into her early 90s she still drove her car, went to the grocery store, shoveled her own sidewalk and refused to wear a hearing aid {against everyone else’s request}. Astonishingly, the only medication she took until very recently was her eye drops. She had so many friends and experiences and had an extremely rich life.

Holding her grandson for the first time. 1990

I’m not completely sure how my grandma became Grandma “Tia” – her friends called her Tin {something to do with Tin Lizzie because her name was Elizabeth} and my brother couldn’t say “tin” when he was little, so I guess “tin” turned into “tia” eventually.

My 18th birthday with my grandma and John, who was named after my late grandfather.

I have so many wonderful memories of my “Grandma Tia” throughout my life. She has been very supportive, especially of my education, and I have always maintained regular contact with her. My grandma was sharp as a tack, witty, smart and very stubborn. She rocked the crossword puzzles and was always so with it. I hear she was also quite the bridge player. She was really involved with her church and her neighborhood.

While I will miss my regular conversations with my grandma, I will cherish the years and years of memories I have of her and know that she is at peace.

Early Morning Walks

One of my favorite parts of the day is when we take Jackson for his morning walk. We generally take Jackson for three walks a day, but the morning walks are the best. It’s so calm and quiet in our neighborhood at 6:30 a.m., but the best part is seeing the sunrise. When we start our walks it’s usually dark but by the time we round the corner that overlooks the mountains the sun is usually on its way up. The last three weeks have been unseasonably dry, which means the cloud cover hasn’t been blocking the sunrise.

Sunrise over Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains with Mount Rainier.

If you’ve been to the ocean and seen the sunset there, you know how beautiful that can be. However, if you’ve never seen a sunrise or sunset in western Washington, you have no idea what you’re missing. The Puget Sound area is known for sunrises and sunsets and it is so special to get to see the show that the sky puts on during clear/partly cloudy mornings. Alex snapped this picture last week, and of course the picture he took on his phone barely comes close to the level of beauty we saw that morning.

Christmas Time

Last weekend we went on a quest for the perfect Christmas tree. We set out to a local tree farm to cut down our tree this year, as we had done the only other time we had gotten a tree together.

The tree farm we went to ended up cutting down all of their fully grown trees already to sell as “pre-cut” trees {read: more expensive}. We opted to not get a 3-foot tall Christmas tree, so our tree hunt took us back to the parking lot to select the “perfect” pre-cut tree.

We found a great little tree and immediately set it up in our living room once we got home, only to find out that the tree was completely crooked! Oh well – you can really only tell if you’re looking at the bottom half from a distance.

It has been 3 years since we have had a Christmas tree in our house and since then we have acquired a lot of new ornaments. My mother in-law has given us skiing ornaments for the last few years, so we’ve opted to have a skiing-themed Christmas tree. We have some sparkly silver snowflake and ball ornaments too. Here are a few of our favorite ornaments:

Apres Ski - a cute little ornament from Vail — Apres Ski – a cute little ornament from Vail

Adorable sled ornament that Carrie gave me a few years ago

This one makes me think of our little Aspen dog.

Our little house is all decorated for Christmas, too.

I spent the better half of Friday baking up a storm of Christmas cookies. I tried all new recipes this year {so, sorry friends if they don’t turn out!}, thanks to Pinterest, so it was fun to switch things up. This year I made peppermint bark cookies, melting moments, buckeye balls and ginger cookies. The ginger cookies did not turn out, but everything else seemed to taste pretty good to me.

The kitchen always turns into a disaster when I bake.

Christmas has really snuck up on me this year! I am finishing my Christmas shopping tonight, thankfully, but I have been feeling very ill prepared this year. I’m hoping that my holiday stamps arrive in tomorrow’s mail so that I can get my Christmas cards out by Tuesday – this will be a record for the latest I’ve ever sent them! Sorry friends and family… I am certainly enjoying the Christmas spirit and holiday cheer and looking forward to seeing my family for the holiday.

Big Changes for the Allens

We’ve got some major changes taking place in our little lives right now! Exciting times for the Allens 🙂

Alex recently accepted a new position within his company that will move him to a new team and will relocate his office to the city of Seattle {in a really awesome neighborhood!} instead of a nearby suburb. He officially starts his new position on Monday but has been going in occasionally over the last two weeks to participate in some planning meetings and trainings. In his new role, he will still be developing software, just for a different team within the company. He is really looking forward to a change of pace and working in a smaller segment of his company.

Last week I accepted a new part-time job that I will be adding to my existing part-time job. I began working as a household manager/personal assistant this week to a family in our neighborhood {a whopping 2 blocks away!}. My new role will be about 8 hours a week {2 hours, 4 days per week} and I’ll be basically just helping this family run their household by doing things like running errands, doing their grocery shopping, folding laundry, planning meals and preparing food for them. It’s a pretty awesome gig and I’m really excited about it!

With these new positions, Alex and I have been trying to work out our new schedule/routine. Since I will have a little bit of extra money coming in, I am hoping that we will both be able to find a good facility to exercise at. It would sure be great to get in a workout routine again. I have a feeling we will be setting our alarms a little bit earlier, though…

I am hoping that Alex will love his new role, team and commute, and so far I am really enjoying my new position, too!

5 Years Ago…

This evening while Alex and I were eating dinner we somehow got on the subject of what we think our lives will be like in 5 years. That quickly turned into a discussion about how far we have come over the last 5 years. Let’s take a trip down memory lane!

5 years ago we were recent college graduates. Alex was 3 months into his career where he still works now, just in a different position. I was unemployed and my short stint as a temp had just ended.

We had left home in the Midwest the summer of 2008 and set out for bigger, better things.

While we fell in love with our new city, it took me almost 5 years to realize we’ll stay put here in Seattle.

We moved into an awesome condo that was located in downtown Seattle. Thank goodness our living arrangements have been upgraded a little bit!

We tried to fit in by going for hikes and exploring our new state – honestly, we had no idea what we were doing!

At least Alex had a backpack for our little Mount Rainier toot.

As a 22-year old, Alex went out a lot! I still didn’t know very many people at that point in living in Seattle, so I mostly stayed in or would grab a drink when I could find a friend.

This was a night out in college... — This was a night out in college…

5 years ago, Alex and I spent Christmases apart, both going back to our respective hometowns for 2 weeks over the holidays.

5 years ago Alex was a beginner skier!

I had only skied in the mountains once and had embarrassing skis {straight, skinny skis!}, boots and ski gear.

Skinny skis and a large down jacket... not my best look! — Skinny skis and a large down jacket… not my best look!

5 years ago {this weekend} we took our first trip to Whistler. We had no idea what we were doing on our first mountain ski trip together, but we picked up my cousin and headed for British Columbia for some of the coldest, rockiest skiing I have ever done and hope to ever do.

Riding the Peak 2 Peak gondola in Whistler

It is amazing how far we have come over the last 5 years. We have both grown up so much and so many different facets of our lives have changed. I really can’t wait to see what the next 5 years bring!

Our Snow Dog

I haven’t written a post about Jackson for a while, so here’s an update on our little pooch.

Jackson is 8 and a half months old now. He weighs around 65ish pounds – it’s gotten kind of tough to weigh him, so that doesn’t happen very often! I’m guessing he’ll max out at 75 pounds over the next few months. He’s a pretty big dog but you can tell he still has some evening out to do.

Since he turned 7 months, Jackson has been a gem for the most part. He still has nasty streaks, but generally speaking, he is acting like a mature dog. When he needs something to do he goes to his toy basket and grabs a toy to chew on. Then he lays down and chews on it until he falls asleep. Only when he’s feeling particularly mischievous will he venture to the laundry basket to select a specific sock or pair of underwear, or he will jump on the bed and hold Henry’s toys hostage until we give him some attention.

Around 7 months we randomly left Jackson out in the house when we went up to grab a glass of wine. He had free range in the house for a couple of hours and did awesome. This quickly progressed into allowing him more time to roam free in the house and now we’ve progressed to the point of him not ever being confined to a space in the house. He certainly has earned it and continues to show us that he deserves it. Hopefully we won’t regress here!

Jackson saw snow for the first time just days before he turned 8 months. It goes without saying that Jackson is a true member of the Allen clan given his sheer enjoyment of playing in the snow. He went crazy when we let him off his leash in Breckenridge – it was so fun watching him bound through snow drifts, launch himself off of piles of snow to chase a little snowball and to just experience something new for the first time.

We continue to enjoy our weekend trips to the dog park, though I think they will start to become second to taking Jackson skiing with us on our days off. Hopefully we’ll take Jackson to the snowy Cascades pretty soon so that he can explore the snow here, too.

We sure love our days at Marymoor Dog Park

Winter Photo Shoot

A big thank you to Alina and Alberto for humoring me and taking some awesome photos of us while we were in snowy Breckenridge last week. I have been thinking for the last few months that Alex and I don’t have very many nice, recent photos of us, aside from our wedding pictures. We never did engagement photos so I wanted to do something like 2-year marriage photos, I guess. Here are a few faves!

Thanksgiving in Breckenridge

One of the perks of having family scattered across the country is that sometimes you get to pick a random place in the middle to meet for holidays. This year, our “central” Thanksgiving location happened to be Breckenridge, Colorado. It has been really fun to watch Alex’s family get into skiing more and more each year, so our Thanksgiving trip to the mountains seemed rather fitting for us all.

The Breck Connect Gondola near where we stayed.

Since Colorado is reasonably close to Seattle, Alex and I opted to drive there so that we could bring Jackson with us. The drive was long but beautiful and we arrived to the house we rented late Tuesday afternoon. The house was awesome – a perfect open floor plan, more than enough bedrooms and bathrooms for the six of us, a big kitchen, and most importantly, a hot tub. We quickly settled in and acquainted ourselves with the surroundings that evening.

Terrible photo, but it was an awesome house!

The rest of the clan wasn’t scheduled to arrive until Wednesday afternoon, which gave us ample time to cruise around the neighborhood with Jackson, brave the crowds at the grocery store and get some food prepared for everyone to have when they arrived.

A great big kitchen to cook lots of food in!

Once we were all together the clock started ticking and time raced by. We enjoyed cooking our Thanksgiving meal together on Thursday. Once we popped the turkey in the oven we took a quick trip to downtown Breckenridge to walk through the village.

Awesome Colorado chair made out of old skis.

Our dinner menu included a turkey, of course, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, rolls, pumpkin pie and special wine that we acquired with Alex’s parents last summer in Yakima, Washington. Although the timing of the meal was a bit off since the turkey was cooking at lightning speed, everything turned out great.

Friday morning we were up and at ’em bright and early so that Donna, Stan, Alina and Alberto could make it to their ski lesson by 8:00. They were taking a lesson from the instructor, Rick Parks, who taught Alex how to ski back in 2007. I will forever be thankful for Rick for providing the foundation for Alex to learn how to ski, as well as for Alex’s parents for affording the opportunity for Alex. While everyone else was at their lesson, Alex and I headed for the slopes to have our first day on skis, too. The groomers were great and just what we needed to get our ski legs back under us!

Once the lifts closed we met Rick and the rest of the family at Breckenridge Brewery for an apres ski drink and some great conversation before heading back to the house to eat leftover Thanksgiving.

Our last full day in Colorado was a busy one! We had a long day of skiing followed by some hot tub action and concluded with a very nice dinner out at Briar Rose in Breckenridge. The skiing was great – we got a chance to ski with Donna and Stan and watch their vast improvements continue to unfold throughout the day. It is so fun to watch people improve at something. I sure have enjoyed watching Alex continue to excel at skiing since he was a beginner and now is an extreme skier, 6 years later. Unfortunately, Alberto was having some foot troubles with his boots, so we didn’t get a chance to ski with him or Alina on Saturday.

Jackson loved being surrounded by new best friends in Colorado.

It was hard to believe how quickly the trip went by. It always goes fast, but this trip in particular really seemed to fly by. Maybe next time we’re in the mountains we can stay awake a little later and spend more time together.

Alex and Jackson making the same silly face :) — Alex and Jackson making the same silly face 🙂

Thanksgiving Road Trip to Breckenridge

For the second time in her short life, our dirty, tired Subaru Forester made the 1400 mile drive to the mountains in Colorado last week. We decided to drive to our Thanksgiving celebration with Alex’s family in Breckenridge so that we could bring Jackson with us. Last Christmas was so memorable having Aspen with us in the mountain town, so we figured it would be a delight to have Jackson with us this year.

We hit the road bright and early on Monday morning, the week of Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful day for a drive – bright and sunny with picture-perfect mountain views for much of our drive.

Since we were driving with Jackson we had to make sure he wasn’t going stir crazy in the back of the car. We stopped at two dog parks along the way to let him run around and get tired out. Something clicked with Jackson at the first dog park and he finally started playing fetch! This made it infinitely easier to wear him out for the rest of the drive.

Crossing the Columbia River from Washington into Oregon.

It was our plan to stay the night in Boise, Idaho as a mid-point, but then I received further confirmation that I tend to be directionally challenged when I realized that Boise is not exactly {read: not even close!} halfway between Seattle and Breckenridge. We scrambled in the car and were able to cancel our hotel reservation and book another room in Salt Lake City instead.

Jackson's first time in snow! — Jackson’s first time in snow!

Jackson did not enjoy the hotel we stayed in. He was awake all night long, pacing and panting, sniffing and whining. Needless to say, no one got much sleep!

Tuesday morning came early and we took Jackson to a park in Salt Lake before grabbing some breakfast and getting back on the road.

Another gorgeous day – it was especially gorgeous because we got to drive next to the Wasatch Mountains and through central Utah and eastern/central Colorado which is spectacularly gorgeous.

We made great time on Tuesday and arrived in Breckenridge at 4:00. It was still light out so we were able to check out the neighborhood and walk around with Jackson. It sure was nice to get out of the car!

It turns out Jackson loves rolling around in the snow! He was so happy to get out of the car.

After a few days in sunny Colorado, it was time to make our way back to Seattle. We woke up early on Sunday, packed up the car and pointed her west. Since we were so close to Vail we decided to take a pit stop and walk through the village on our way out of town. It was so nostalgic being there – Alex and I hadn’t been back to Vail since our wedding in April of 2012.

The Donovan Pavilion - our wedding venue! — The Donovan Pavilion – our wedding venue!

We spent a little too much time walking down memory lane and ended up getting back to the car later than we had hoped. To add to that, I didn’t really pay too much attention to the directions getting back to Salt Lake, so we missed a shortcut that would have cut a half an hour off of our drive. Oops!

The drive west was much more exciting than it was going east. We encountered extremely thick fog in Utah and a few snowstorms in Oregon and Washington.

Our stop at In-N-Out burger was nothing close to “in and out” – more like “in and wait 20 minutes.”

The same thing happened on Monday for lunch. We chose to eat at a local sandwich shop instead of going to Jimmy Johns across the street and boy did we pay for that decision. Our sandwiches were flavorless and they had forgotten about our order, thus making us wait, and the lemon bar they gave us as an apology was soooooo tart we couldn’t stand to eat it. Go figure.

Jackson was so ready to get out of the car.

The moment we crossed over the line from Bellevue to Seattle on Monday afternoon, traffic came to a slow. There was a Seahawks game. To add to that, we hit the city limits at the time that schools were getting out for the day so there were 20 MPH slow zones all through the city streets. Finally, blocks away from our house there was a funeral processional that held up traffic for a few minutes. We diverted and went a round about way back home and finally made it to our house around 3:00 p.m. Oye!

It was so nice to be in the mountains and spend Thanksgiving with Alex’s family. It was well worth the 2800 mile round-trip drive to bring Jackson with us. I don’t think we’ll be taking another long road trip like that for a while, though.