From Thanksgiving to Spring

Well, I was kindly reminded yesterday by my wonderful friend in Sweden, to update my blog. Anders, you are a good friend to keep me on my toes. Thank You!

Well since I last wrote...Nikie and I went to Denver for Thanksgiving. We had a very nice time! Visiting with family was a great deal of fun. We even spent a night up at my sisters new time share in Breckenridge. We had a huge room (more like a house) with four bathrooms a fireplace, huge kitchen, two balconies and plenty of beds for Me, Nik, Sheri, Peter, Ava and little Tyler. Outside was all snowy and we had a terrific veiw of the ski mountain. For dinner we took a shuttle down to town and ate at my favorite Fondue restaurant. It was Peter and Ava's first time with Fondue and they had a ball dipping and trying new tastes. Then we went back to Parker and visted an orthodontist so they could fix the screw that fell out of Nik's Herpst Device (part of her braces). A day or two later, Nik and I drove back up to the mountains near Leadville and took our first snowmobile ride across the continental divide at 12,000 feet. That was a blast! The day was only about 40 degrees, so it was very pleasant.

After our visit Nik and I had to journey home. Unfortunatley our efforts to keep in touch with the weather failed us. We did know there was a storm coming, but mis judged it's location and severity. Our journey home was a 13 hour torture tour!!! To say the least. We experienced every kind of weather imagineable for 700 miles. We left Sheri's house and the first 45 minutes were fine...then the flurries started, then the 50 mile an hour northerly winds, then snow so heavy you couldn't see but maybe 50 feet in front of you, and forget where the edge of the road was. I saw countless families stranded off in ditches. In my mind I was planning what we would do when our turn came to be off the road as well. We drove along at about 20 miles an hour with my fists gripping the wheel, fighting the high winds. I had decided that if we made it to the next town we would stop and get a room for the night. So we pulled off at the next town, got some gas, and listened to everyone elses experiences. The folks coming off the highway from the other direction said the roads and conditions were just fine. So I then chose to get back on the road. Those folks were wrong. The storm may had not met them yet, but it sure followed us. We battled about 3 hours of the strong winds and snow, miraculously not sliding off the road, and then moved into about 8 hours of rain. But this wasn't your typical rain...no. We had torential monsoon downpours with even worse visibility than the snow threw our way. The whole day I was just a tense wreck! When I finally got home, I couldn't believe the exhaustion I felt. Once we finally got to eastern Kansas, the sun came out long enough for Nik and I to stop and get some dinner. I thought we were in the clear, but once back on the highway, out rolled the black clouds again. We pulled up to our first toll booth near Topeka and I asked the attendent about the tornado reports I heard on the radio. I wanted to know where they were exactly. He told me Overland Park and Paola, but he also told me that they had closed I-70 back where Nik and I had just come from. So if we had stayed the night in eastern Colorado, we would have been stranded there for a couple of days. Anyway, we did make it by some miracle and I'll never forget it.


So more recent in our activities...we had a nice quiet little Christmas. Lee and Nikie are producing wonderful drawings and paintings. Last Sunday we saw Nikie's film at the Blue Note. And currently Nik has been cast in a horror film, Evil's Alter. I finished making her costume last weekend. She is a Killer. Lee has been doing a little modeling for the University Bookstore where she works. This image is for the online store.


Last night I just bought tickets to fly out to Vegas for Spring Break. Lee especially is feeling the need to get away since she didn't get to leave over Thanksgiving with us. School is overwhelming her right now, but I feel she is still doing very well. Tom is going to stay at home and work on learning MAYA software for his sabatical project.

That will be all for now. I'll try to update more frequently so my friend Anders Qvicker will not scold me.

Bye All,
Kim