Holy COLD

Last night Ryan and I went to bed rather late for a "school night". He was designing my business card for me (thanks Babe!). After we turned out the lights, it could be seen through the windows that the sky wanted to snow. Yay for snow!! We woke up to pretty little flurries, and I sent Ryan off to work in Boulder with an angel on his shoulder. (His travels were safe today.)

Then I went to school.

If it weren't for this magnificent work of art, I would have froze!

This coat was the most perfect of Christmas presents for a Colorado college student.

It was for days like today and tomorrow that this coat was made. As I walked around campus today, the temperature was a whopping 10 degrees, with a much lower windchill. Tomorrow's high is 2 degrees and all of the public schools are closed. However, the president of CSU is evil and will likely have us all trekking around campus despite the frost bite wielding weather.

But don't worry, Ryan said that I can wear his clava.

Soup!

On Tuesday night I decided to make soup. I very rarely make soup from scratch (or from a can). Not quite sure why; I suppose that soup is just not "amazing" to me in most instances. I usually go for something a little more adventurous and different in my dishes. However, it has been requested of me to cook dinners a little more down-home-on-the-farm. I figured soup was a pretty safe decision.

So I whipped up some Southwest Chicken Corn Chowder that I found in one of my Healthy Cooking magazines. I added a few other spices, but left the salt out so that Ryan and I could both "season to taste". It was a hit! I went ahead and made the entire batch, since soup is such a great leftover once the flavors have melded, and it's so easy to freeze too!

Give this soup a try the next time the weather is chilly. It's delicious!

I left on a jet plane

During Ryan's hiatus in Neenah, Wisconsin, I hightailed it to Springfield, Illinois, to spend about a week with my sister Crystal and her family. It was a fantastic distraction from Ryan being gone! Only bad part about the trip was that Ryan was bored out his gourd and I was..well...not.

The trip started out with a fun surprise fly-in by my dad to celebrate his 28th anniversary with my mom! She was definitely not expecting it, and it was really fun to have him there for the weekend. In fact, Ryan was only a 6-hour drive away, so he came down to spend the weekend with us too! It was fun to have all three couples and my two nieces together for a couple of days.

Every day was filled with fun activities: going out to lunch and shopping with Crystal, going out to dinner a couple of times, going to see The Tourist, playing games, watching old family-classic movies, going bowling, and going to Chuck E. Cheese!

I brought some exercise videos with me, and Brielle loves to "participate". She hangs in for about 5 minutes and then comes and goes sporadically. I enjoy having her company and hope that she always loves working out!

When it was time to go home, it was sad to say good-bye, but I couldn't wait to see my stud-of-a-man waiting for me when I got off the plane!

Thanks for letting us invade you for a bit Crystal, it was a very fun vacation!

I'm alllll alone....

Ryan starts his new job tomorrow!

Before he was officially hired, he asked the HR contact that he had been talking to about travel; how often and for how long. She told him that hardly anybody ever travels, and when they do, it's usually no more than a week.

See that big red dot? The one by Chicago, very close to Lake Winnebago? That is where Ryan is, and I am not. He will be there for the next 2 weeks! So much for sparse travel - his first two weeks on the job are spent more than one thousand miles from ME.

On a happier note, upon finding out about this business trip, Ryan was brilliant enough to suggest that I spend the time without him with my older sister in Illinois! So my mom and I have a flight out there in a few days until the end of Ryan's trip. I am excited for that great distraction, and I hope that the next few days go by quickly!