Eating Snow & Clearing Snow

Merry Christmas!!! Here's a few more pictures of all the snow we got. For Francis and Zita, the best part of snow is that you get to eat it. Somehow water or ice from the freezer is not the same as eating snow..It's magical how this stuff that comes from the sky is a tasty treat.

On Christmas eve, the city of Ft. Collins road crew came by our cul-de-sac and cleared out the snow so we could get out of our driveways. This was almost as exciting for the kids as Christmas. The heavy equipment spent about 40 minutes clearing out the snow. They left some huge piles that will no doubt turn into sledding hills.

Blizzard

The snow started falling Wednesday AM, by 10:30 is was a blizzard, by the next morning Fort Collins had received 23 inches of snow!! Contrary to popular belief this is pretty unusual in this part of Colorado. It's especially rare to receive that much snow in 1 day. Both I-25 and I-70 were shutdown for a day. Denver Int'l airport was shutdown for 2 days.

I did a TON of snow shovelling. I had to start Wednesday afternoon, because if you get behind on something like this your really behind. Here's some pictures both during and after the blizzard. I'm done shovelling now, and am ready for a hot bath and beer!.

Dawson Family update 2006

Here's the start of all the updates I'm going to do this year for Christmas. Rather than send out a generic Christmas card... I'm making everyone look here. Sort of cheesy on my part, but the picture images are better off the web than my printer can produce on plain copy paper. ...And lets face it, if I send a picture of my family to everyone it will be looked at for a few minutes (or seconds) then either pitched in the trash, or thrown in a box somewhere. Here you can look whenever you want.

So any posts from this point on will be a 2006 year end review or directly related to Christmas...
Maybe I'll start with a post for each kid!

Samantha

Samantha probably had the most event filled year of any of us. It started out by finding out that the puppy she got for Christmas had distemper, and eventually had to be put down. (For a full description on our experience with Canine Distemper....click here.)

Then she got repeated bouts of Strep Throat. This was after our friends from Indy came out for 3 weeks. (This adventure can be read about here).
In early May she got another puppy...Kodi, the white and black dog that is some of the photos on this blog. 3 weeks later she had her tonsils out and spent about 2 weeks recovering. Immediately after her recovery from having her tonsils out, she spent a week living in the dorms at Colorado State University (CSU) attending a Pipe Organ Encounter. She still plays the piano some, but is really into pipe organ.

By the time August rolled around she was taking a full load of classes at the local Community College and CSU. She's taking 17 units including organ performance, economics, English Comp, Us History, etc..As it turns out CSU has one of the finer pipe organs in the world. As it turns out, Sam's organ teacher plays at our church.

Right after she started the semester we found out she has a type of mono. She's had to take it somewhat easy in the exercise dept for the past few months.

Rebecca

Rebecca is doing well. Her spare time is spent either hanging around a few of the other girls her age in the neighborhood, or with her dog. She plays football with the boys and is bigger and stronger than most of them. I think she feels her lot in life is to keep an eye on Zita and Francis....She also keeps Martin in line when he says something that isn't quite correct.

She always is ready to go hiking, biking or just throwing the baseball around. She sings in the choir at church as well.

Cathy

Cathy is still doing the work of 2 people. She's the primary school teacher (we're still homeschooling), she does the cooking, and runs the house. Because of some health issues, most meals are cooked from scratch using organic ingredients. YIKES!!!

Although Dad get's the role of the "fun parent" for taking the kids hiking, etc... Cathy is still champion for providing TLC. I think she has her own blog around somewhere, but I don't know the URL.

Martin

Martin is now 14 is doing well these days. Here's a picture of hime when we were above the treeline at Rocky Mountain Natl Park. He still has learning issues associated with autism, but his overall health is much better. His intellectual development is going well also.

One of the more interesting things with this is that he has a very hard time with somewhat ambiguous things. He likes things to be defined in clearcut ways. For example:
Movie Ratings seem to cause a lot of confusion. The difference between a PG movie and a PG-13 movie might not seem like much to you and me, but Martin really wants to know WHY. In other words, what EXACTLY makes a PG-13 movie different than a PG movie.

Martin has really gotten into jogging this year. He usually runs about 3-4 miles every other day. He wants to start training for a half-marathon, then a marathon, but I want to keep him at the 5k - 10k distance for now. He has the rest of his life to be distance runner, but for now he should concentrate on speed & strength.
Martin also likes hiking.
Martin is also a loyal Colts fan, but if Peyton Manning has another crummy playoff game.... That may change.

Scott

I started posting from the youngest to the oldest, but seeing how the blog would present the results to a viewer in reverse order, I didn't want to appear that whatever I did was more important than anyone else.... Even though this is my blog... I don't want to get to narcistic about the whole thing.

My big "news" of 2006 is that I really started working out and training again. I have been doing a lot of jogging year round and biking between April through August. I did 3 events this year: A 37 mile mountain bike ride, A 5k run with Martin, and a 50mile road ride. Next year I want to ride a century ride to Estes Park and back. The 50 mile ride I did this year had about 2500 feet of climbing. The url for the event is:
HorsetoothDoubleDip Bike Challenge

The 50 miles involved a lot of hills, but it was an awesome course through the foothills. It took me about 3.5 hours to finish. That was a pretty good time for me.

My usual weekend routine is to go on a bike ride while the rest of the family goes to Church. The other weekend day is spent taking the kids hiking, on bike rides, etc...
We bought a tandem bike this past may and it's a lot of fun. They are so fast it's insane.

I've been working a lot with Martin this year. He ran a 5k with me this past spring and got to the point where he was jogging 3-4 miles every other day. He's taking some time off right now because he has developed
Osgood-Schlatters disease. It's not too big a deal and should not cause any long term problems, but theres no sense pushing too hard at this age.

Other news is that I'm getting balder, and what's left is getting more gray. Well at least haircuts are cheap.
We've spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with dogs this year, then we had to deal with Sam's health problems (She had her tonsils out after several bouts with strep throat, and then got some sort of mononeuclosis). This fall I have been travelling a lot to Chicago to work at the airport. We didn't do any real travelling this year. After 5 moves in a 1 year period, I did not feel like going anywhere. When I took 2 weeks of in Summer, I just didn't go anywhere.

As an FYI, I still have not gone skiing since I've been out here. I suppose I should, but the fact of the matter is that when it's cold I just as soon stay indoors. I do like to go out a night and walk around when it's very cold, usually it's very clear during these conditions and you can see tons of stars.

Work is ...well work. I'm still employed but the Airline industry is still very chaotic. Rumors of mergers, layoffs, etc.. abound. It really doesn't bother me, since I figure if the worst happens, I'll find another job.

Misc Pics Part I - December 2006

Here's some pictures from around the house and Fort Collins. Some of the pictures are when my Dad and his friend Marilyn came to visit, there's pix of Elk in Rocky Mtn National Park, and just around the house. The picture with the snow on rooftops and hills in the background was taken from my bedroom window.

Francis - December 2006

To say Francis is into Star Wars stuff would be a gross understatement. It seems that his major source of activity is light sabre fighting. Usually I am the opponent (uh I mean Darth Vader), and Francis is Obi Wan Kenobe(sp?). He's not so much a movie fanatic as he likes to sword fight.

He also draws alot. We go through 500 sheets of printer paper every month. Most of his pictures are very entertaining, sharks, light saber fights, etc... Francis is in general a happy guy. He will read if he is inclined, but if he's not in the right mood it's just one question after another.... We get a lot of questions like: Why are the days shorter in Winter? , Why do we have bones ? When we die do we turn into skeletons?
etc....

Here's a picture of Francis with our oldest (11 yr) dog Misty.

Zita - December 2006

Zita is now 3. She's is usually a lot of fun to have around. She has a great sense of humor. She likes "girl" toys, likes to wear "pretty dresses" and "look beautiful". Getting her to eat is still somewhat of a challenge. She's not really a picky eater, but it's hard to get her to hold still long enough to get a whole meal in. Usually it's my job to watch TV and drop food in her mouth.

Zita has a special talent for tormenting the dogs. It would be easy to say she's just being overly friendly, but that would be overlooking a lot. ... Anyhow, here's some pictures of Zita