gorgeous!

The saga of the Widdacomb Chests:
My mother tells me that her parents had these beautiful dressers for as long as she can remember -- I'm guessing my grandparents might have purchased them in the 1950s.  They are solid wood & handcrafted; I'd thought they were maple... It was always hard to tell, because at some point, they'd been white-washed.  (Apparently, that was all the rage in the 1970s).
In 2006, it just so happened that we were moving from AZ to CO right at the same time as Adele (my grandmother) passed away.  Since Tom and I didn't have much in the way of furniture at the time (as it was not worth moving, we had gotten rid of most of our furniture when we left AZ), Paul and Kathee offered to store Adele's dressers in their garage until we got settled, at which point we could have the dressers at any time.
In 2007, another little coincidence occurred: we had friends who were moving from CO out to CA, which involved more than one road-trip back and forth between the Denver-Boulder area and the Bay Area.  Through the magic of email and cell phones and persistence on my mother's part to make this all come together, eventually Doug & Michelle brought the dressers from CA out here to us....
Where we've been using them ever since, but neither one of us has "loved" them (mostly because they'd been really ugly).  Point of reference:

At some point, Tom wanted to get rid of them, and get something less horrible for our bedroom.  I whined/insisted that we keep them, and promised that I would refinish them (ha!), as Tom was quite honest about the fact that he was not interested in doing so.
Well, by 2015 I finally admitted that I wasn't going to refinish them, either.... so this freed Tom to find someone whom we could hire to do the task properly.  He ultimately found just the right person ~10 miles away, who runs a place called, "Strip & Dip."  (Fortunately, "Strip & Dip" is actually referring to furniture refinishing.... I really don't want to know what else comes up if you google this.... but I digress.)
The furniture-guy at Strip & Dip wasn't certain he be able to salvage the dressers -- so we took only one in (for starters) to see how it would go.  We have good news to report:

The first one has come out beautifully!  The Strip & Dip guy was able to remove enough of the white-wash paint to be able to apply new stain -- and we have discovered that the wood beneath is actually cherry, rather than maple.  This is doubly lucky, as our bed & nightstands are cherry -- so the dressers look like they actually belong in our room now.
Having had such good success with the first dresser, we're planning to take the second one in this week.  So by the end of March, we'll have a whole new look to our bedroom.
My mom says that the dressers now look exactly as she remembers from childhood.... which I think is pretty cool.

Rosenberg visit

We just got back from Sacramento last night.  My cousin’s wife had a baby a month ago — so we went out to cook for them, with the goal of filling their freezer.  All and all I’d say it was a very productive trip.  We (Tom) made:

4 lasagnas (one eaten, 3 frozen)

32 cups of vegetable soup (8 eaten, 24 frozen)

4 trays of enchiladas (one eaten, 3 frozen)
48 cups of granola (you can't forget breakfast!)

Here was one of my favorite photos, from the first night (when Tom made potato-leek soup).  Who says you need a spoon?  If you're motivated enough....

We had some very nice weather, which made for pleasant afternoons.  Here's Judah on his bike:

And, of course, here's Saskia:

 

night of Burgundy goodness

A few weeks ago, Mark emailed: "I have some really good burgundy I want to open.  Do you want to come over for dinner?"
Now, even without the burgundy, the answer to that question is always YES.  With the prospect of wonderful, old wine, the answer is, "Ohmygod, YES."

We asked what we should bring; Mark's only request was whole-wheat pasta.  Done.
Now, this worked out well: Tom has been encouraging me that I have to "learn the basics."  (Which, defined by Tom, means that I should be able to make pasta, pizza dough, and red sauce.)  So this was my day to learn pasta.... and I must admit, it went quite easily!

Since Tom was relatively freed up in the kitchen, he decided to also make a little appetizer: gougere.  This is, apparently, a classic hors d'oeuvres from Southern France -- perfect for a night of Burgundy.  The best thing about these little pastries: in addition to being delicious, they were EASY.   I'll definitely keep these on the short-list of appetizers....

And, they went perfectly with our first bottle of wine: a delightful Premier Cru Chablis.  Since when did I start using words like delightful?  I don't know -- but this wine was wonderful.

Dinner was a fantastic elk ragout -- served on whole wheat pasta.  Success.

And served with a 2000 Grand Cru Burgundy, that was outstanding.

We are lucky, lucky people.

last day in snowy paradise

 On our final day at Snow Mountain Ranch, we were again very happy to awaken to blue skies and not-screaming muscles.  We decided to go back to our snow-shoes, and take the advice of the woman who worked at the Nordic Center: to head up the Coyote Tooth Trail.

To her credit, it was gorgeous.  To our (eventual) dismay -- we didn't quite have the stamina!!!!

It was a beautiful trail -- complete with what we think were moose-tracks, and snow clinging to amazing aspen trees (I'm not sure how).  But after our previous two days of workouts -- we just didn't have the "oomph" to power up the hills.

When I asked the woman at the Nordic Center, "What is the distance of the Coyote Tooth Trail?" (the x-country ski trails had published distances; the snow-shoe trails did not), she answered, "I'd give yourselves 2 1/2 - 3 hours."  It took us ~3 1/2 hours... and we were beat.

But we would definitely go back -- we had a great time!

SMR day #2

Day #2: more perfect weather.  We awoke feeling extremely lucky that we weren't too sore.  So we headed down to the Nordic Center, which was wonderful:

 Among other things, it had a fantastic fireplace.  I enjoyed this while Tom rented his skis (which, by the way, were only $18 for the day -- and the trail pass was free since we were staying at the Y).

This is only the 2nd time that Tom has ever been on x-country skis, and (of course) he did remarkably well.  We stayed on the greens: level, groomed trails.  It was lots of fun!  We probably skied ~10-12k over the course of the day.

In the evening, we went out to dinner again -- and were delighted by an amazing sunset.  Gotta love the Rockies.

Snow Mountain Ranch day #1

One of the purchases that Tom and I made last fall at the March of Dimes fundraiser was a 2-night stay at the YMCA of the Rockies.  Now, if you have never been to the YMCA of the Rockies, you might be smirking right now (Bill Brown).  But let me assure you: the YMCA is not just a gym, or a multipurpose room!  (That's how I remember it as a kid: a fire pit outside, and a basketball hoop.)  The Y here has almost 3,000 acres, and very cool amenities such as groomed x-country ski trails, ice skating rinks, ranger-led hikes, tubing, archery... and all free if you are staying there.
As we were planning our trip, I thought we'd find a snow-shoe route that was on the way there.  I admit: I was wooed by the description in my guide book: "Heated bathrooms."

Now, I'll admit: these were, indeed, the fanciest vault toilets I've ever seen!

The next part of the description in the book, regarding the trail itself: "Novice... gentle...."

I say: LIES.  (Part of our difficulty, of course, was starting at >11,000 feet.)

This was definitely too difficult for us: straight up the mountain (my cell phone thought we'd climbed 60 flights of stairs) without a marked trail of any kind -- you were supposed to just follow along the edge of a ski hill.  (Mind you, an old fashioned ski hill -- climb up and ski down; no lifts involved.)
Now I will also admit that it was GORGEOUS.  The views from the top were amazing.  And as you can see, the weather was stellar.... but we struggled for nearly an hour going uphill (sinking down nearly to our knees) and then snow-shoed down in 15 min... and promptly collapsed.  Pretty much.
So we proceeded from there to our lodge room at the Snow Mountain Ranch:

Here was our view from our deck -- looking out towards the Nordic Center.  Lovely.
And after the remaining (far more leisurely) afternoon of relaxation -- we went into town, had a nice dinner, and returned to do a puzzle.