unhealthy obsession

M. Ward's Chinese Translation

totally addicted. totally. (there should be a little video "embedded" up there...if you can't see it, go here.) we originally heard/saw this on the flight to denver on frontier airlines. we each had our own little tv in the backs of the chairs in front of us, and this would play every so often, but it was instrumental. i fell in love with the instrumentation and the animation. and when i got back, i searched and searched for it and found it! i guess the instrumental version was just for frontier? i have no clue. but i like the one with words better. i'm not too crazy about the rest of what i've heard by m. ward. it's kind of...i don't know...jaded? maybe not...it's just not me. but I ADORE this song!!! please become addicted with me!!!

more colorado

i don't really have an order or a reason for posting more pictures...i just felt like doing it. so there.

sunrise over the bnb our first morning. gorgeous!



















our tiny room!! the camera was sitting on the bed-side table, and what you see is all that was in there!!














chris, super excited about the slopes!














most peaceful and beautiful fun ever - "snowflake"! that's a frozen pond, not a field!















crepes! chris got strawberry shortcake, i got butter with cinnamon and sugar. YUM!! we like taking pictures of food...see?














shrimp appetizer from RELISH! YUM!!!














meal from RELISH - blue cheese stuffed pork chop with acorn squash and other delicious

things that i can't remember, and scallops sauteed in seasonings that were stupid good but i can't remember what they were, potato/yellow beets mashed together with spaghetti squash in the middle. RIDICULOUSLY GOOD!!!















our breakfast on our last morning - AMAZING!! if you're ever in breckenridge, you should definitely stay at the fireside inn. it was marvelous!!!














beautiful clear blue sky day for our journey home.

more pictures

so...the plan to get home was to ride the free shuttle from breckenridge to frisco and then ride the greyhound to downtown denver, and then ride a public bus to the airport. i had it ALL worked out. until we couldn't get greyhound tickets online the night before...and until we got to the greyhound station and it was full. sold out. no more room. (we were just going to buy tickets from the driver - something you can totally do) *sigh* so. hertz rental has an office at the greyhound station - BRILLIANT! i told chris i was going to quit my job and open a car rental place at a bus station. it really is brilliant. so we rented a car. a 2007 hyundai sonata. NICE CAR!!! i can't believe we didn't get a picture of it...i really can't believe it. here's a stock photo of one. ours was white. and sonata is almost as much fun to say as "MA-LI-BU"...anyway, the first picture is me renting it from dave. good ol dave.

and these are pictures of our journey home.














we pulled off at a scenic view. it was gorgeous! chris says this picture looks like i'm talking to God. hah!















we stopped in idaho springs to eat at beau jo's pizza (once again, i can't believe we don't have a picture of it - we have a little video, but i don't know how to post those...) but they didn't open until 11 - it was only 9:30. we waited in a little coffee shop, but when it felt like 2 hours had passed and it was only 10:30, we moved on. silly me.













you can see the mountains in the background of this picture. this wasn't our plane - we had the fox again on the way home.



then when the plane took off, we both thought it was crashing. i am not being silly or dramatic. it turned really sharply about 100 feet in the air and it was shaking more than any plane i've ever been in. i cried. chris pretended to be oblivious to keep me calm - brilliant move or i would have passed out. the shaking lasted for about 5 minutes. but here's a picture from the sky - we didn't crash! thank you Lord. when i saw nathan in the airport, i cried again. i was really glad to see him...and the ground!! :)

fun pictures!

breakfast in the fireside inn - the food was remarkable!!

here's angua (white) and gaspode (black) - the harris' standard poodles - i love them!!! they're brittish...the owners, not the dogs...and i never got around to asking them what their names meant...oh well.














view from the breck gondola!

views from the most breathtaking lift ever!

chris totally skiing!



















we both got pretty tired...

so we pulled over out of the way and built a snowman!!

we named him geppetto!! notice his amazing face - i told chris to make the head, and this is what he did!! he's an artist - seriously!! i made the buttons...we miss him...

day four!

well, i was going to only post pictures, but they're taking so long to upload, that i might as well describe some of them... these are all from our fourth day our - still breckenridge! WE LOVE IT! this first one is from the top of a giant ski lift over on peak 9. i wish i could piece together the panoramic of it...breathtaking. literally. and the second one is us in the picture! sort of similar to yesterday's but who cares!?!?! what you can't tell from this picture is the fiasco that happened at the bottom of the lift...teehee! it was our turn to go out to get on the chair, but it seemed to be coming too quickly and that we should wait for the next one. so we hesitated. but the guy told us to keep coming quickly, so we did, but it caught chris weird and he didn't get on really well at first and i was like "he's falling off!!" and i instinctively - like an idiot - jumped off. you NEVER jump off a ski lift!!!!! *sigh* and when i turned back, he WAS on it so i felt even stupider. i jumped on the next one with the help of the frustrated operator, and chris says that he heard someone tell him to get off, so then HE jumped off and my chair almost hit him in the head. and i just sat there alone on a four-person lift laughing like crazy!! i heard the guy say to him "you can't just jump off dude!" and chris said that after i had already gone by they told him how to get back on the next chair and the guy told him to "kick over the cone if you need to", so he did, which knocked off his ski!!! and when he reached to get it the guy yelled at him "NO!" and gave it to the person in the chair following. he said that as he was lifting off in the chairlift he heard one of the lift operators say "gah! that guy sucks!" HYSTERICAL. at least we thought so. almost as hysterical as the picture from the previous day of chris busting.
so anyway, the rest are just pretty pictures...remember you can click on them to make them BIG! :)

<-- BRECK!

<-- ME!

<-- CHRIS!

<-- out on the town!

first REAL day

**the pictures weren't loading last night...so this was yesterday's post...click on any picture to make it bigger!

BRECKENRIDGE!!! goodness. i feel guilty and almost like i'm betraying an old friend (copper mountain) but i am really loving breckenridge. the place where we're staying is in breckenridge - pretty much at the base of the mountain - so it's SOOOOOO easy for us to get there. no hour-long shuttle rides. we just walk to the gondola to take us to the lifts!! beautiful!! and the VIEW is AMAZING!! this is the top of the run we did about six times. and chris absolutely ROCKED!!! he totally skied today.

oh, and remember when i said his legs were too weak to hold him up yesterday? and that we called it a day after just one run? yeah. what he WASN'T telling me what that his heart had been racing ever since we landed and that he was short of breath all the time. and when you add that to his lack of appetite and headache and fever...altitude sickness!!! not just acclimating to the altitude. dude. i felt so bad - he said he didn't tell me any of it b/c he thought it was just his body adjusting b/c someone had told him that it takes three days to acclimate. *sigh* so i talked to the owners of where we're staying and they said he definitely had altitude sickness and we needed to get him some oxygen and "altitude adjustment" pills. hah! where we rented our skis had oxygen (you rent these little aerosol bottle of 90% oxygen and 10% nitrogen, inhale a few times and then you're good to go. seriously. he inhaled about five times and he was seriously better. AMAZING!! and then he took a couple altitude adjustment pills this morning and he feels totally normal. thank you LORD!!! and i've been taking a few hits off of it too...it's amazing what a little oxygen can do!!

so anyway, today was stinking awesome. the conditions were perfect - save it being really hot (i skied without my lining and without gloves!) - and chris TOTALLY got it. he didn't fall nearly as much (except for the occasional bust - see left...click on it to make it bigger to really see his poles and skis...it's the new background on our computer! what brilliant timing the camera had!!) and when he did he knew exactly what he had done wrong. he has such better control of his skis and his form is so much better - not the leaning over beginner anymore!!! well...except for when he made it into the trees...don't worry mom - he had already stopped and just gradually slid into the woods. the video footage of him trying to get out is pretty hilarious. i de-skied myself to try to help him out, but i just wound up making things worse!!!

we love breckenridge. and we're probably just going to stick with going there our last two days b/c it's SO easy to get to. i feel bad too - almost like i'm cheating on a friend (copper mountain), but we decided that breckenridge is OUR mountain, and copper can be the mountain i learned on and loved in the past...i'm okay with that! breck ROCKS!! :)

and can i just brag on my husband for a second? he NEVER complains. he has gone through ski school (never fun), falling almost constantly, altitude sickness, not sleeping well, trying to acclimate to a new sport...and he has not complained AT ALL. he's amazing. God totally put us together for a reason. i complain way too much. he's amazing. God has been so good to us on this trip.

colorado mountain high

GREETINGS FROM COLORADO!!! we arrived in denver by way of frontier airlines - we got the fox!! isn't he great?!

here we are on the plane - our first flight together! it was relatively uneventful. that's good.

and here's where we're staying - fireside inn. it's LOVELY! our room has a bunk bed with a double bed as the bottom bunk and that is ALL that can fit into our tiny room!! haha! it's very comfortable though with a fabulous down comforter. we've both taken some time to get used to this crazy high altitude (hence the subject "mountain high"...but it's coming quickly.

chris blew me away on his first day on the slopes! he is a true NATURAL!!! he took ski lessons the first part of the day while i skied around in hopes of getting my ski legs back after five years!! i have a long beautiful story about me getting my lift ticket, but i don't have the energy to type it all out...*snore* then we met up after lunch and skied together - i was literally blown away by how quickly he picked it up. of course he has things to learn, but for a first-dayer - WOW!!!

but we were out there way too long yesterday and we literally only did one run today (our second day) and called it quits. *whew* chris said his little legs were just shaking trying to keep him up and make the turns. so here we are. about to take a nap. mmmm. these pictures aren't the greatest...we'll have more later on in the week. breckenridge tomorrow!!! :)

ode to the scary trolldragon

carrie rollwagen's just the best!
she's always super cool.
her friendship is like a carrie-fest;
over superbness she does rule!

carrie today is twenty-eight.
that's not quite forty-six.
i bet today she's feeling great
and not all down in the sticks.

her creativity is second to none.
her laughter is contagious.
as for awesomeness, she's number one!
she's brave and so courageous.

i miss her almost every day.
i miss my old roommate.
my loyalty to her no one can sway.
for our next visit i cannot wait!

if i could wish her one great thing,
i tell you what i'd say.
i'd pray for peace and everything
that God can send her way!

i mailed her gift with the wrong address.
it was returned to me.
i keep forgetting it! it's bringing stress!
patient i hope she will be.

i hope the address this time's not wrong -
to the post office i'll be scrambling!
this birthday rhyme is getting long,
i'm pretty good at rambling.

so today, dear carrie, today, my friend
i hope today is hearty.
have lots of fun, and don't pretend!
party!! party!! party!!!!!

i wanna go all over the world

okay so i came to announce that we only have two days to go until we leave to go skiing, but i forgot that i had made a little ticker thing!! glad you're all informed even without my updates...WAHOO!!

i would like to announce that my husband, christopher edward slaten, received a score of 350/350 on his dean vaughn medical terminology exam!!! he studied tirelessly, reviewed endlessly, and laughed constantly. this method of learning 350 medical terms is hilarious. for example. you have a prefix or suffix - like "-emesis" - and then, rather than just having what it means, it has a column of what it sounds like - in this case, "hey missus!" (you know, like "mrs.") - and then a little visual that helps you remember what it means - "see the belhop yelling at the woman "HEY MISSUS!" who is vomiting on the carpet in the lobby!" - and then what it actually means - "vomit". and EVERY one of them ended with an exclamation point. all 350 of them!!! but the really best part about it is that their classes were spent watching cartoons of the visuals, so they would actually show a cartoon man shouting at the lady vomiting. BWAH! some of them were TOTALLY out there, but he remembered it every time. and he made a freaking 100. dang boy. you're amazing!!! mad props to ya, man. mad props. oh and that picture isn't from the dean vaughn course. i looked for one, but couldn't find one. so this one is just a lady handing a very stunned chris his award for making a 100. yep.

in other news, diane is leaving. i can't believe she's actually leaving. for those of you who don't know who diane is, she's one of the other secretaries here - she's been here the longest, is the funnest (funnest?) and definitely the one who does the most work and gets the most done. i really don't know what i'm going to do without her! i don't WANT a new girl. i want her. *hmph*

in more other news, i just thought about making oatmeal raisin cookies for our trip. HOORAY! it's the recipe on the under-side of the quaker oats lid, and they are SO GOOD. i mean, stupid good. i've probably posted about them before...a few months ago, i knew the recipe by heart b/c i was making them so often.

1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
3 cups Quaker® Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped pecans

-Heat oven to 350°F. In large bowl, beat margarine and sugars until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. Add oats, raisins, and pecans; mix well.
-Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
-Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown.
-Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered.

the original recipe calls for a whole cup of raisins and no nuts, but i don't like a real raisiny cookie and i love pecans, so i cut back on raisins and added the nuts!! MAKE THEM! they're awesome.

in still more news, gillian welch and david rawlings are driving me crazy - they're in my head singing "i wanna go all over the world, and start livin' free..." that's the only line in know from the song and it's going around in my head over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again....BAH! listen to it here (scroll down and listen to "dear someone") and join in my suffering...it's a SUPER song. it's just enough. gillian!! ENOUGH!!!

i must go file. blast the filing!!!

WHY

i want to find whoever came up with this *expletive* idea and tell them what i think of them. the best - and my absolutely favorite part - of town now costs money to visit!!!! oh MAN i'm mad...

water water water

it's storming in chattanooga right now. about ten minutes after i got to work, i heard the loudest and most sudden crack of thunder i've ever heard in my life! i called chris to see if he heard it across the valley. he didn't. i joked that it sounded like it had struck right outside my window b/c it was so loud. a few minutes later, someone walked by my office and i heard them say something like "where did it strike?!" it took a few minutes for it to sink in for me, and when i stuck my head outside, half of the student body was gathered around a tree in the quad! it HAD struck outside my window!! i walked up to the tree and was amazed at the split down the side. it looks like someone took a razor and shaved off a 2 inch by 20 foot strip with a tiny little split running the entire length! crazy!!! one of the students said he was standing about 10 feet away when it happened and that it was bright red. shoot! now it's just raining, but i hear more thunder coming...look out!


in more water news, i bought a ski jacket from landsend a few months ago and have really enjoyed having a warm, waterproof jacket that fits me. my old one was a large or something - who knows why i bought it so big. so anyway, about a week ago i wore it in some relatively heavy rain and discovered that it was NOT waterproof. the material had, in fact, absorbed the water quite beautifully. EGADS! it's not that i really need my ski coat to be waterproof, b/c i don't necessarily roll around in the snow, but my goal is to have my ski coat double as a rain coat so i don't have to have two coats. i'm like that. so i called landsend to see if i could return it. lo and behold! they have a policy where you can return anything, at anytime, for any reason. glory! so i got virtually the exact same jacket except it's waterPROOF. it came in the mail yesterday and is pictured to your left, and i got in the shower with it. i stood in there for about 5 minutes turning and making sure it had plenty of water exposure. chris thought i was crazy. crazy i may have been, but wet i was not!! hooray!!! and just for kicks, i did the same thing with my old one. it took approximately 3 seconds for it to become completely soaked through. hooray!!!!!

speaking of ski coats, we're going to need ours in THIRTEEN DAYS!!!!!! two weeks from this very moment, chris and i will be shredding up some slopes in a major way!! but we'll be paying about $150 more than we should for a rental car. *sigh* i have panic attacks when i drive through snow (see previous post regarding my colossal wreck), and chris is 23. drivers under 25 have to pay $25 PER DAY to be listed as a driver. dadgumit. i don't know what to do. now i'm wondering if we should just take the bus and not have a rental. SHOOT! but as my mom told me yesterday, i'm sure there are plenty of people in the world who wish they had that problem. [sarcasm]yes, woe is me, i'm having difficulty in planning my ski trip. *sigh* life IS hard, afterall!!! [/sarcasm]