Kelley's New Laptop!!!!!

Look out world, Kelley is ready to head out from her "commi-condo" office. Now she can break away for the "old school" desktop computer and she can work, and use the internet, at coffee shops!

Today Kelley's new laptop arrived...needless to say, she is excited.

Here she is setting it up:

Here she is ready to roll:

My Brother and Sister and I

This photo is taken from Marilyn's blog (my sister). I just wanted to show it on my blog too.

It is great to have siblings...I love them so much. Kelley and I were spending time with Kelley's side of the family, which my sister Marilyn is a part of because she is married to Kelley's brother, Kent...what...?

We took the children to a kid's museum and we ran into my brother and his family!

This was just after Christmas.

Turned back again

I was supposed to drive into the mountains for a meeting today, but I turned back due to the snow on the roads. I get really nervous about driving out here...I guess it's due to the mountain roads and curves and stuff.

We have school off because of MLK Jr day.

We received some fun photos from our sis-in-law, Amanda today. This one below is cool. It's of our nephew, Colin, at the Detroit Auto Show. He loves cars/trucks so I'm sure this was a day full of fun for him and his parents.

I guess it'll be a study day then!

Bye.

National Western Stock Show

Kelley and I had a new experience last night. We went to the annual National Western Stock Show here in Denver. It's a pretty big deal. Rodeo's, monster trucks, horse jumping, steer herding, etc.

Kelley was pretty pumped about going and I thought she might walk out of there with a horse-n-trailer...but I was able to satisfy her with an ice cream cone instead.

Back to school...and work...

Back to school this week. I really can't believe we had a month off. It was nice to get back to reality (well, reality for me at least...I know my dad thinks my life is "far" from reality).

My classes seem excellent. I have another finance course, macroeconomics, business ethics, real estate development, career development and decision modeling. I think the first 7 weeks will be a pretty full load then we drop economics for the 2nd half of the semester.

I start my internship tomorrow, so no long weekend for me. I don't have classes on Fridays so I am going to work on Fridays at a real estate investment bank. I think I'll learn a lot and hopefully learn whether this aspect of real estate is for me or not? Then, we have no school on Monday due to MLK Jr day, so we are really getting off to an easy start. I will be driving about 2 hours west on Monday morning to a city called Edwards, CO for a meeting with my mentor.

Kelley has had some exciting things happen this week. She started an oil painting class at a local art school, she started a yoga class that meets twice a week, she is playing volleyball once a week and she got a call for a possible free-lance art job. We're really excited about this free-lance opportunity as it will be illustrating a book.

We are starting to talk about plans for this summer. I think we both would really like to move to another city for a few months, but it seems most prudent to stay here in Boulder or Denver. I have talked to companies in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City so it's possible we could relocate for the summer.

That's the update from Boulder. Hope you are well.

David and Kelley

Florida with Grandma and Grandpa Shirkey

We visited G+G Shirkey for a few days in Florida. It was a super visit with time to relax, do a little site-seeing and enjoy the sunshine. This was the best weather of any trip I’ve had to their home down there.

We spent a morning visiting the Manatees and alligators at a wildlife reserve near their home, had dinner with Grandpa John and Cathy one evening, walked along the ocean near Daytona Beach and Ponce Inlet, visited with Aunt Marianne another evening and played a few games of Pinochle each night before enjoying ice cream. This was Kelley’s first visit to their winter home.

Kelley took some time to paint a picture of the old golf course clubhouse which is called The Monastery.

First Ski Trip!

Kelley and I went skiing for the first time yesterday.

All I can say is that it was an awesome experience. We went to a place called “Sol Vista Basin”. It is an off the beaten path ski resort that is about a 100 mile drive from Boulder. The funny thing is that the resort is only 30 miles from Boulder as the crow flies, but you can’t just drive through the mountains. My dad had a good idea to shorten the trip…he recommended getting a helicopter.

We almost didn’t go due to the road conditions. The news was saying that the area was to get between 12-24” inches of show the night before we were going to drive. We decided to give it a try and we didn’t really have any trouble…although, Kelley said she had her eyes closed for about 30 minutes, but maybe that kept us from having any trouble?

Some classmates of mine loaned us ski coats, pants, goggles, hats, gloves, etc. We got skis and poles at the resort. We even had a private ski instructor show us the ropes. We both loved it more than we imagined and stayed on the slopes from 9AM – 3PM.

An interesting thing was that almost all the workers were foreign…mostly from South America, Chile and Argentina. Our instructor, Uwe, was actually from Germany. He is a retired pasty chef and he used to own several pastry shops in California. Now he teaches skiing in the winter and is a tour guide for hikers in the summer. His father was killed as a German solder in WW2. Uwe learned to be a pastry chef because there weren’t any other jobs he could get after the war in Germany.

Not sure how often we’ll do this, but it was a great experience to have. Now all of my classmates won’t make fun of me when I tell them I have never skied.

Michigan

Kelley and I headed home for Christmas. We spent a week at home. It was really nice and we got to see nearly all of the most important people in our lives. This photo is of the Fannin extended family at the end of our overnight trip to East Lansing.

We are heading to Florida later this week to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa Shirkey. It’ll be Kelley’s first time to visit them there. We should see Aunt Marianne also.

Kelley and Grandma Rowlson on Christmas afternoon.

My sister, Marilyn, and I goofing off.