21 Pheasants + "A Beard" = Dan's Perfect Thanksgiving

While I was home in Colorado last week for Thanksgiving, Dan headed to South Dakota to meet up with his dad, brothers, and dogs for a week of hunting. South Dakota is the "bird mecca" of the West and after his first day of hunting Dan commented that he had seen more birds that day than he had collectively seen the rest of his life while hunting. Pretty much everyday Dan and his family maxed out their hunting quota of three birds per person. All the while they were spoiled at the farmhouse they were staying at with 3 delicious meals a day and they even cleaned and vacuum packed their meat for them!

At the end of the week they had 42 pheasants, 1 grouse, and 2 very tired dogs. 21 of the pheasants made it back to California along with my very hairy husband who didn't shave all week ... not a bad beard :)

A Christmas Tree in Palmer Park

Thanksgiving morning we headed out to the big, natural city park behind my house where I grew up to decorate one of the pine trees with Christmas decorations. Hopefully it will help to spread a bit of holiday cheer to all the hikers and runners in the park:

I can still breathe at 8000 feet!

My parents decided that a great way to celebrate my homecoming to Colorado would be to climb May's Peak, one of the small peaks that sit in front of Pikes Peak. We headed out early in the morning in sub-freezing temperatures up to the trailhead on old Gold Camp Road where we met up with some family friends. Although I was convinced that after living at ~40 feet above sea level for over a year everyone was going to have a good laugh at my lack of lung capacity I'm happy to report that the hike went smoothly ... the views of Colorado Springs and the surrounding mountains were gorgeous and although I could feel the final climb it wasn't as bad as I expected! Hurray for high altitudes!

I still don't understand modern art ...

We ventured into San Francisco with some of our neighbors today to try out some Ethiopian food and check out the San Francisco Modern Art Museum (MOMA). The Ethiopian food was delicious and a lot of fun to eat. They put a big round platter in the middle of the table with all of the food and then you use sour pancakes to eat it with your hands.

I entered MOMA with pretty low expectations but although there were a few pieces such as "Three White Panels" (self-explanatory) that I really don't understand, they had a few exhibits that I thought were pretty cool. The exhibit "Brought to Life" had beautiful pictures of some of the original pictures taken of snow flakes through microscopes, amazing lightning shots, x-rays, and a lot of other more scientific pictures that I wouldn't have classified as modern art.

Just about when I was getting tired of looking at art they also had the "Art of Participation" exhibit which was a great break for just looking and actually getting to play with some "art." My favorite was the giant golden bead curtain.

Halloween Puppies

Our family dog Joy and neighbor's dog Daisy didn't miss out on the Halloween action. I thought these pictures were just too cute not to post.

I don't see how they got Daisy (the dalmatian) to sit still long enough to put on the costume as she is usually bouncing wall to wall. Joy, on the other hand, is tolerant as always and looks a bit like a drugged-up clown.

Pumpkin Carving

I've always thought of pumpkin carving as a traditional activity that most of us have done annually since we were young enough to dig gooey seeds out of a pumpkin. However, the majority of foreign students in our building have never carved pumpkins before which makes a night of careful pumpkin design and hacking all the more interesting. Dan and I picked up about 25 pumpkins from Safeway the day before along with some giant pumpkin pies and plenty of whip cream. It didn't take long for our small lobby to completely fill up with newspaper spread everywhere, seeds flying around, and some very intricate pumpkins being carved.
Dan and I went for the classic smiley faces (guess whose is whose).

Halloween at Great America!

After running around planning and organizing a conference since 6 o'clock in the morning yesterday I figured I might as well completely exhaust myself and so joined our fellow Escondido Village CAs for a free night at Great America's Halloween Haunt. I honestly didn't even know we had an amusement park just 20 minutes south of us. It is a nice park with some pretty big roller coasters. For Halloween the whole park was decorated and there were tons of people running around in a little bit too-creepy costumes. They also had about a half-dozen scary mazes and rides set up. I think Dan just about had a heart attack from laughing so hard at how high some of these people could get me to jump and scream while he never seemed to even twitch. I never seemed to be able to catch on to the fact that behind every dark corner there was going to be a freaky masked person. At least it was a great way to relieve the stress I'd built up running the conference all day. Despite repeatedly making a fool of myself we had a great time and explored the park until around 11 when I was just about ready to collapse and headed home. I'm not sure if I would go back if I had to pay for myself but it was a fun one-time experience that got me into the Halloween spirit.