The Curtis Clan - Winter 2013
Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox
We started winter and the holiday season with a family outing to see White Christmas on the big screen at the Hi Pointe. It also celebrated the 13th Anniversary of our 1st date, so we followed with a trip to the lunch buffet at the House of India, our favorite restaurant.
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Hi-Pointe White Christmas
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When in need, Gussie is ready to serve
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Christmas 2012
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Cate's Charlie Brown Christmas
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Jane's Letter to Santa for Gussie
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Christmas 2012 was a day of comfortable and familiar traditions of gathering with family and friends over the holidays. .For Sagemis (the gathering of Bethany’s family over several days) Jane conducted a Root Beer Taste for a Science Fair experiment with results that surprised many but didn’t change anyone’s buying habits (i.e. choosing the budget leader Shasta over their perceived favorite Fitz’s).
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Jane and Cate showing off thier latest Wedgwood
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Christmas Day - The Curti sporting their new ski helmets
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Randy and Bethany at the MO Botanical Garden over the holidays
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Wisconsin Ski Vacation - Granite Peak
The big gift for us all was our first family ski trip, where we spent New Year’s Eve driving northward on I-39 to Wausau, WI to go to the Granite Peak in the center of the state. Wisconsin was covered in snow and felt different immediately. After dinner, we returned to the hotel we were in bed asleep by 930.
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Curti geared up and ready to hit the slopes
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One of the smartest things we did was put the girls in ski school all day (10-3) where they enjoyed the ease and safety of the “magic carpet” lifts and graduating to the adult Santa lift by the end of the day. The adults enjoyed a day of easy Greens slopes getting re-accustomed to skiing after over a decade since our last trips (this being our first trip together). Despite the sub-zero temperatures, there was surprisingly little complaining from the girls.
| Cate and Jane at ski school |
Demonstrating the "French Fry" and "Pizza Slice" positions |
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By the second day, we got to ski together a few times after their all day lesson let out. After two days of ski school, Jane and Cate could slide down the wide Green slopes via the “pizza slice” method (a.k.a. the snow plow) with ease and confidence and were working on the French fries method (parallel skis).
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Curti Skiing Granite Peak
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Our friends the Hammonds joined us the last two days, which led to the kids ditching their dads and ridding the lifts on their own and skiing far more than if it was just family.
| Dad and the girls |
Mom and the girls |
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The Hammonds hotel, the Grand Lodge Wausau, had an indoor water park attached. The four story high tubular tunnel slides that went outside before returning to splash pool were cool enough to ride multiple times but what was worth waiting in line multiple times was the slide generally referred to as the toilet bowl, which was a ridiculous amount of fun particularly for those that could bring a lot more momentum to the ride (i.e. fatter folks). In other words, the girls really wanted to ride with Dad. Definitely a “Let’s do it again!” ride.
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Cate and Jame ready to enter the "toliet bowl"
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Overall a great family trip.
January
The winter offered several unseasonably warm weekends in mid-January. On one, it allowed us the opportunity to enjoying coffee and coca on the back balcony in the morning.
| Randy and Cate goofing on the back balcony |
Gussie and Jane enjoying the weather too |
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Elisabeth, Bethany and Maria at Girl's Lunch
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The following Saturday was even nicer and we went to the zoo with the girls in the morning and caught the free carousel rides. It’s hard to not wonder how many more years the girls will insist on riding the carousel and how far from now it is until they roll their eyes as they’re too old for it (Joni Mitchell’s the Circle Game playing in my mind at the same time). In the afternoon, we conducted another science fair experiment involving soda, this time involving how long until it was safe to open a pop after being shaken (a surprisingly short time of 15 seconds or so).
| Taking a ride on the STL Zoo RR |
Enjoying the free rides on the carosel before 11 |
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Unfortunately, this was also the day that Muscial died.
February
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Our 3rd year for ice cream for breakfast (wearing pajamas is required to get the free mug of coffee/hot coco)
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| Bethany with two fists full of ice cream (for the girls) |
Cate and Jane enjoy their cones |
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Snow Day
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Cate, Jane and Gussie enjoy the snow
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On Sunday, 3 February we woke up to a really good 4-6 inches of snow and went out to enjoy it before it melted later in the day. The girls and Gussie had a blast in the yard before we went sledding on local Suicide Hill at Deer Creek Park in Webster. Their time skiing has certainly given them much more confidence in going fast on the slope but they are still no boys who were going backwards down the hill for additional excitement.
| Cate taking on Suicide Hill |
Jane speeding on down |
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| Maiking the trek back up, no “magic carpet” lifts in Webster |
Randy at the top "No hands" |
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This also marked Gussie’s eight month birthday plus 1 day. She was approximately 16 ¾ inches high and weighed 23 pounds.
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Gussie at 8 months She's the dog with the Devil Dog eyes
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Movies
As one might expect from a couple who met at the movies, we’re doing what we can to pass on our passion for the cinema both recent and classic to the girls. A calendar mix-up to see Ghostbusters at the WG library for free, led us to see the Hobbit in 3D IMAX instead. Pricey but it was exciting and a treat to watch (even though it took great liberties with the Tolkien tale). This quarter we also watched a silent feature: Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr. The family film treats were primarily going to the classic series at the High Pointe Theatre on Saturday mornings: Meet Me in St. Louis, Sabrina and The Quiet Man. I think we also may have started a 2nd February tradition of watching Ground Hog Day. Throw in seeing My Fair Lady, Life of Pi, North by Northwest and Sergeant York and the girls have had another good quarter of film appreciation.
| Sabrina |
The Quiet Man |
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The girl’s favorites were none of these films but rather the three Harry Potter they got to watch as Cate completed reading the books: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (#2); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3); and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (#4). They’ve watched the movies a number of times and Harry Potter is a common topic of conversation at the Curtis house hold. We’ve got at least another half a year of it, depending on how quickly we let them read the books. They would read nothing else if we’d let them. An example of their passion for all thing Potter is when the girls confided in Bethany that they were convinced she and Dad were witches and that is why we kept them from reading Harry Potter for so long so as not to figure it out (as opposed to being emotionally and scholastically ready for them). They shared this common secret between the two of them for months, no doubt secretly hopping they weren’t Muggles and they would be getting their invites to Hogwarts instead of going to 6th grade at Steger (and naturaly be sorted into Gryffindor too.)
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Basement Camping with the dog
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Over President’s Day weekend, the girls set up the 3 person tent in their playroom in the basement and proceeded to go “camping” with the dog for three nights in a row, while listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3) read on CD that Cate checked out of the school library (there’s a lot of Harry Potter in our lives this year). It made for very quiet evenings and mornings as the girls were quite contented in the tent (and the dog was quite worn out even without playing fetch with her ball).
While looking something up on Google, Jane yells to me from the other room: " Hey, there's a Notre Dame in Paris too" Heavy sigh!
That Sunday, we made a Family Adventure of exploring the reconstructed 1700s Fort de Chartres just outside Prairie du Rocher, IL about an hour south of St. Louis.
We followed that by an attempt to cross the river at the Modoc Ferry, which happily didn’t work out and we ended up driving through the flat lands of American Bottom, where we came across five bald eagles sitting in a fallow field a couple hundred feet from us. Four got spooked but one kept coming back. A real treat, especially when we recalled them nearly going extinct in the late 1960s.
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Eagle in American Bottom
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Randy inflicted a short visit to the Corps of Engineers Kaskaskia Lock and Dam (aka the Shady Rest / MVS Boondoggle), which left them all tres unimpressed. We crossed over the bridge and then visited the Kaskaskia, IL on the WEST side of the Mississippi River, orphaned by a flood in 1881, when the Mighty Miss retreated from its earlier channel and usurped about 10 miles of Kaskaskia channel, something the Corps of Engineers wouldn’t allowed today.
The next weekend after a Thursday snow day from school, the girls went to work with Randy while Bethany went to Trout Lodge for the annual Women’s Wellness Weekend with friends for the third year. The girls were great recycling reports and quietly reading and watching Harry Potter while dad worked.
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Lisa and Bethany enjoy the wine tasting "challenge' at the Women's Wellness Weekend
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Seattle & Anchorage or Bust
The last week in February Randy left for a 12 day research trip to Seattle and Anchorage. It was a bit longer than he’d prefer but allowed for many moments of pleasure along the way, which have been a major reason for his working in researching military installations for environmental remediation needs for nearly two decades. It began seeing his high school/college pal Steve Swaine at the airport followed later in the week by an evening out eating way too much Indian food and sharing stories (they don’t see each other often while living in the same metro area).
Work was challenging with large numbers of records to work through. Sure looking through piles of smelly old bureaucratic records may sound glamorous, but it isn’t always as fascinating as one imagines it being. Still research does have other advantages. After visiting the NAVFAC NW at Naval Base Bangor, the quickest and most efficient way to the SEATAC airport was via the Bainbridge Island Ferry offering a fantastic visage of downtown Seattle. Not bad but it got better when we headed North to Alaska.
| A 60 box streamliner of RG 181 All in a day's work at NARA Seattle |
Taking the car ferry from NAVFAC NW near Bainbridge Island back to Seattle |
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We planned the 2 week trip around the one weekend a month when the archives in Anchorage was open on Saturday. It was cold and most of the streets had snow on them for a winter feel to them (probably no more than like Minneapolis/St. Paul). Happily our research coincided with the start of the Iditarod which occurred immediately outside the archives, allowing us to watch the ceremonial start during our lunch break.
The archives closed at 4, which coincided with the Anchorage winter festival Fur Rondy’s Running of the Reindeer, a silly 1,000 foot “run” where they release “angry” caribou on the streets of Anchorage a la Pamplona Running of the Bulls. My co-workers Matt, Pedro and I decided to join in the fun with a couple thousand other folks. It took like an hour or so to get started but it was fun seeing other folks dress up in costume for the event, with no visible public drinking (not that we saw any policeman to stop it). The open container laws must be pretty harsh as there is definitely a beer culture to Anchorage, so we were surprised to see no one partacking in liquid encouragement.
Despite the crowds of people Randy met up with Bethany’s Cousin Erin who moved up to Alaska recently with Exxon-Mobil. The “run” was really more of a trot and the caribou were a little tired and scared (The ASPCA would not approve though I doubt a chapter would have much luck in the Last Frontier). We drank lots of beer afterwards and I had the best Fish and Chips ever at Humpy’s downtown.
| TMNT Donatello meets Clark Kent Cousin-in-law Erin and Randy before the run |
Randy consouls Blitzen? After the Run with the Reindeer |
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The next day was Sunday, and we couldn’t research, so to go further native we went dog mushing. There was local place that did one hour tours but we decided to go for a bit more immersion with the 3 ½ hour one outside Seward. The drive down from Anchorage around the Turnagain Arm to Seward is beautiful, especially with the amount of snow on the mountains. The scenery along the drive alone is arguably reason enough for the couple few hour trip southward (the train takes a similar route which might be fun some time too).
We booked with Mitch Seavey's Ididarod Sled Dog Tours, http://www.ididaride.com/, which gave us 5 minutes of instruction before turning us loose in two person teams with a "B" team string of five dogs (the A-team dogs being en route to Nome with Mitch, who won the race seven days latter). It was a ridiculous amount of fun and we were grinning the whole time. The dogs really seemed to enjoy running and grew very impatient whenever we stopped for too long to rest them or look at the scenery. The only downside was that the dogs were kind of stinky especially when pooping which didn’t slow them down a bit that we could tell. Another unexpected oddity was that they weren’t all Siberian Huskies as we expected but fairly lean Sheppard looking dogs. Besides the additional fantastic mountain scenery, we saw a couple of bald eagles and a few moose along the way to the glacier. A very good day. While sharing the riding and standing duties on the sled, images of Bing and Bob on the Road to Utopia came to mind but with no Dorothy Lamour.
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Pinning for the fjords, Randy took the local transportation to visit the NPS Kenai Fjords Exit Glacier (glacier above NPS shield)
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Meanwhile back at the homefront
Back home the women made do without the masculine mystic, enjoying school and special fun days. Bethany bedecked the girls from her European travels of her youth.
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WGCS International Day Cate represents France and Jane, well read the shirt
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After a week, though the feminine bliss ebbed as the girls grew weary of their maternal guidance and sought autonomy with mixed results. As always, Mother Knows Best and the girls felt remorse. Daddy owed Mama many points before he returned.
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By Sunday the girls had pushed the boundaries too far
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March
On the first Saturday of the month, we had another neighborhood progressive dinner with the Rugers, Kennedy’s, Burketts, Lisses and Dan Burk. It’s always been good to see them all, especially during the winter months when the impromptu meetings in the front yard are few and far between.
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Tuxedo Blvd. Progressive Dinner
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Trout Lodge
The girl’s Spring Break started on the Ides of March, a Friday. We had planned on taking a trip to DC, merging it with a research trip for Randy but canceled that when his mother’s aortic valve replacement surgery was scheduled for that week. So we took Nana to breakfast at First Watch before heading down to Trout Lodge for a few days. One of the biggest advantages of Bethany working a couple hours a week at the YMCA is the hefty discount to Trout Lodge, which gave us activities, food and lodging for about what we’d spend on food on a regular road trip.
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Curti at Trout Lodge
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Friday was a beautiful warm day with a high near 70 which allowed us to paddle in the lake the girls before several game of putt putt and an evening around the campfire with silly songs and schmores.
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Cate and Bethany smiling at the dreaded Hole 11 (nemisis hole for Randy and Jane)
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On Saturday, took an archery class with the Curtis women emulating Artemis or Katniss depending on your genre of choice. Randy and the girls went zip lining with the girls from atop a 35 foot tower. It was pretty scary / exhilarating climbing up to and stepping off the platform but we were glad we went. In the evening there was a goofy “Catch the Gold” family game that was lots of fun even if we didn’t catch a leprechaun.
| Causal Cate |
Jungle Jane
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Relaxed Randy
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Sunday, was a rainy, cold day that saw our planned horse trail ride and lake ride canceled. We did ceramics; tie dyed, played Apples-to-Apples a few times game, some chess, a few holes of putt-putt on the flooded course and “Brave” on the screened projector in a meeting room. We left on Monday after a round of archery balloon pop and lunch. A really nice weekend and end to official winter.
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