Christmas in Colorado Springs

Guy with Pax

For Christmas we went to Colorado Springs and spent time with my family. We were down there for about a week (the 23-30). It was nice to have almost everyone there for the holidays. Katie and her husband Brian decided to go spend time with Brian's family in Montana.

Zeus with his head on Pax

The original plan was for all of us to arrive around 6 pm or so. Guy and I arrived a little after that. My mom had made a beef stew for dinner, so we were able to eat a warm meal after driving all day. My sister Rachel's boyfriend was also coming for the holidays. Poor Keith was coming through a winter storm so he ended up having to sit in traffic for a while. While we waited for Keith the show up we chatted with the family and got to meet the new golden retriever puppies my parents got. The male's name is Zeus and the female is Pax. It's fun watching there different personalities. Pax is just a feisty little thing, while Zeus is a big dude who isn't quite coordinated. Pax will run across the back of the couch while Zeus just runs into the wall. They're both 5 months and super cute!  One of the things my mom said that they love to do is to take what the other one has or lay on each other. If you gave them both a chew stick they would fight and take the other's chew stick. Or, Zeus would take both and lay on one while Pax just stood by and barked at him. They sure keep my parents busy.

Keith McAndrews and Rachel

The gang at NORAD Track Santa

On Christmas Eve we were able to help with NORAD track Santa. This year they had more people in the room that we were assigned to be in and it was a little more chaotic. We ended up not all sitting together (as originally planned) due to the volume of traffic in the area. Since Guy and Keith both speak a foreign language we thought we would have them try answering the phones in their respective languages. I think Keith said he had one call in Spanish, while Guy had no calls in Portuguese. My dad was the designated person for media interviews so he ended up being interviewed while we answered the phones. The kids who call in sometimes ask really fun and random questions. This year Guy had a kid ask, what size Santa's pants are. I had someone ask if there will be more reindeer or reindeer we don't know about. We had a few parents ask what NORAD does and why we track Santa. We also had a few people who thought Google was more accurate for Santa tracking, to which we assured them that Santa tells NORAD directly where he is going. My dad had someone ask all about the technology used to track Santa. The kid seemed pretty skeptical about if Santa was real, but by the end of the phone call he believed in Santa again.

We came home and ended the night with the scripture account of the Savior's birth and some of the prophecies about his coming. We also watched a Hallmark Christmas movie. I was pretty sick while we were in Colorado so after answering the phone for 2 hours I didn't have a voice the rest of the evening or most of the next day.

Christmas was really nice. We had a laid back start to the day and leisurely woke up. My mom made this big breakfast with several different cinnamon roll casserole type dishes that she found on Pinterest. They were pretty good, a little too much egg for me. This year the most common gift was Darn Tough Socks. Between my parents giving them to all Keith, Karl and Guy and us giving everyone a pair there were plenty around. Karl gave me an original set of Lincoln logs which was pretty sweet. I also got a kindle paperwhite from my parents. The kindle has been really nice to travel with since I don't have to worry about bringing multiple books. My parents also gave Guy books all about hiking in the North Eastern Texas area. We both are excited about those, it'll be nice to be able to get outside and do more things once we move to Texas. Guy's work schedule is a 9-9-8-0 which means that he will have 5 days of 9 hours the first week, then 3 days of 9 hours and then a day with 4 hours and then the following day off. This basically means that every other Friday Guy is off of work. We're looking forward of taking advantage of that and going hiking on the weekends.  The rest of Christmas was pretty laid back. We took the puppies out for a walk and had Christmas dinner with everyone. It was nice to be able to be laid back and just relax with family.

The day after Christmas we proceeded with the Taylor Family annual Temple trip. It was also Stake Temple Day for my parents. It had snowed the night before so we left a little early just in case the roads were bad. It ended up being a good thing we did since it took longer to get there. Rachel and Keith held in the baptistry. Mom, Dad, Guy and I helped with Sealings. Rachel said that the youth group that was there ended up not coming and they were the only ones in the baptistry. We had one other family in our sealing session.

During our time in the temple I had a small nosebleed. Luckily I had grabbed several tissues (still had a cold) so I had enough to keep it from dripping everywhere. It was also small enough it didn't cause any problems. After changing we were waiting for everyone to gather and Guy was missing. We waited for a good 7 minutes before I sent dad to see what had happened. He didn't come back right away and when he finally did he just said that Guy had a nosebleed and would be out soon. Guy came and said it was the most epic nosebleed he had ever had. It started as soon as he got into the locker room and all he could do was stand with his head over the sink as it dripped. He said he was also trying to get undressed/dressed one handed so that he didn't get blood all over the white clothes. His nose bleed for a good 15 minutes. I asked him how he was feeling afterwards and he said he had the taste of blood in his mouth and he had a slight headache from the blood loss.

On Sunday we went to church in my parents ward. We've been enough times that the people are familiar and I didn't really feel like a visitor. Guy's favorite part of the day was at the end of church we were gathered getting ready to leave and this 4 year old came running out of the Relief Society room yelling, "WENDY!" My mom, instantly responded with a short "What?!" to which he showed my mom the picture he had drawn. Guy and Keith both thought it was hilarious and spent the rest of the day mimicking the kid and yelling "Wendy."

Olympic Globe

On Monday we got to go tour the US Olympic Training Center. I've been dying to visit/tour it since my parents have moved there. Since this is potentially there last year in the springs and potentially our last visit we went. It was a lot of fun. They started the tour by showing a video about the previous Winter and Summer olympics, and then looking ahead to the olympics this year. After that we went into the Olympian Hall of fame where they had all kinds of pictures of Olympians that have been inducted recently. They also had an old bobsled from team USA as well as one of the balance beams that was used. In the hallway of the visitor center they had the USA flame petals from the Opening Ceremony from the London games for both the parolympic team and the national team.

The training facility has pictures about all of the different sports in the olympics. At the Colorado Springs location most of the athletes come to condition. There are only a few sports that currently stay and train at that location. Most of the other sports are between the other two training centers  (New York and California). The Colorado Springs location is home to the swimming team, wrestling, some gymnastics, indoor volleyball and shooting. We got to see the entirely indoor shooting range they actually have two indoor shooting ranges. Guy really liked seeing that. The wrestling center was pretty cool because they have pictures on the walls of all of the athletes that have won a medal at either the Olympics or the World Championship. It was fun to see how many of those were Iowa State Athletes. Our tour guide made a joke about that all of these great athletes were from Iowa and he had no idea what they were doing but they should keep doing it. There were a few people in our group from Iowa so we all kind of cheered.  We also saw the weight training room. It looks out at Pikes Peak. There is a 100m track to sprint on, and if you train on it you literally are running straight towards the mountain. Guy said the facility was nice but that the Jacobson building at Iowa State is even nicer.

We saw the indoor volleyball team training but didn't get to tour one of the building. After that they took us to one of the gymnastics buildings. On one half of the gym they had the volleyball team training so we got to hear them. We also got to see some of the equipment that the gymnastic team trains with. The swimming team was training but we didn't see anyone we knew. It was interesting though. I learned that they train with cameras above, beside and underneath the athletes. That way coaches can go back and analyze the data on how to make the swimmers better. The last thing they showed us was the olympic torch. At each of the centers there is it's own torch (kind of a giant bowl thing) that is lit and stays lit for the entire Olympic games as well as the Parolympic games. You can see the torch from anywhere within the center.

We left the next morning to come back to Ames. It was a good trip and we enjoyed being able to spend time with family and getting to know Keith better.  We did New Years in South Eastern Iowa.