Colorado Trip

We headed to Colorado to hang out with Dustin's family for a few days. Since everyone in his family is spread out (one sister in North Carolina, one sister in Idaho, two brothers in Colorado) we realized we hadn't been back to Colorado with the kids in about two years. We scored a great deal on some southwest tickets (why drive 8 hours with TWO KIDS when you can fly in 1 hour?) and decided to rent a large 8 passenger vehicle to help drive all of us around (Us, Dustin's parents, his two brothers...grand total...8 people). Your choices in vehicles of that size are a minivan or a large SUV (suburban/tahoe/expedition). We had some credit card points that would get us a free minivan rental - upgrade to a suburban from the credit card points was $180 for the trip...eh, might as well go for the "free" vehicle. Jen figured Dustin could sweet talk his way into an upgrade....boy was she right! Dustin talked Alamo rental into giving us a brand new Tahoe for $60. Yes, a $300 upgrade (so they say) for only $60 for the entire 5 day trip. SOLD! Now I am in love with a Chevy Tahoe...it was SO ROOMIE. I could sit in the same row as my two kids and not be wedged in between two car seats. All the drooling I did during the trip over that SUV and I didn't even get a picture of it!

Okay now back to the trip....so now you know we were cruising the streets of Colorado in style. We had a blast (of course!) and stayed super busy. We visited the "farm" in Fort Collins. Zach and his cousin Korbin had fun going around and feeding the animals.

Logan had fun playing with the pumpkins:
And we had fun smiling at the camera:

We also found lots to do at Dustin's parents house. Dustin's brothers had their work trucks at the house and they were hauling a mini bulldozer for their construction job the following week - guess which little boy was in HEAVEN?!?!

Zach was glued to his Uncles after he realized they had a mini bulldozer. Here is Zach with his Uncle Eric:

There was also a trampoline to jump on:
Logan verified the sticks in Colorado tasted as good as the ones in Utah:

The weather cooperated so well, we were able to eat outside on the back deck several times.


Logan helped with the dishes every chance he got:

Logan also helped Grandma Gray with her movie organization -- he didn't like things alphabetized!
We also went bowling. When ever we are in town we always go to this particular bowling alley in Greeley. This is the first time they had the disco thing going on while we were bowling. Zach had never been bowling before (and was in dire need of a nap when we went) - but enjoyed himself. He had cute little bowling shoes....

...and he picked out his own pink bowling ball and walked it down and rolled it down to hit the pins!

We WILL be going bowling again.

The next highlight of the trip was a fishing expedition at Dustin's cousins the Larson's! They live in Loveland on a lake. The lake is full of fish. They have several canoes and fishing poles and let us come over and have some fun! Our kids have never been fishing before...and the closest they have been to a large fish the Cabela's fish tank....so this was a real treat!

We first started off fishing from the dock. It didn't take long for Dustin and Zach to catch their first fish....

Then Grandpa Gray caught a fish and Logan was able to check it out...look how hard he is focusing/concentrating on that fish!

Then we decided to go in the canoes to find more fish.

Dustin and Zach caught SEVEN FISH!

Jeanette caught SEVEN FISH:

Jen tried to catch some fish....maybe she was just a bit too relaxed...

After about an hour Jen finally caught her SINGLE fish....

You always know you know the day was a success when this is what you see during the drive back to Dustin's parents house.

Before we headed back to Utah we were able to tour the Denver Mint. Jeanette was able to get us "tickets" for the tour about two months in advance. No cameras allowed in that place so I have no pictures :( The Denver mint does pennies!! Everyone loved seeing the process of how they were created, stamped, and cleaned.

Last stop before the airport was lunch at Casa Bonitas. This place served Mexican food and had a great ambiance for entertainment. There were cliff divers, caves, bridges, arcades....you name it...every little kids dream come true. Dustin remembers going to this place in Denver when he was a kid and is always talking about Casa Bonitas. We were finally able to make it to this restaurant during this visit.

A little bit of sibling jealousy going on in this photo....

And sadly our trip has come to a close. The boys are already asking when the next plane ride is going to be....

Spreading the word...

Our company has not really be impacted by the economic downturn....we are always busy, we are opening a new facility in Singapore...and the time has come to start spreading the word about IM Flash as we are HIRING!

Jen headed to RIT in Rochester, New York for a recruiting trip. RIT has a Microelectronics Engineering degree program that educates/trains students specifically in the semiconductor field. This was the first time IM Flash had ever shown representation at a career fair at RIT so we had LOTS to tell the students about! The recruiters wanted to make sure they had "real engineers" on hand to explain to the students about what we do...so that is how Jen was able to get involved.

RIT held the career fair in the "field house". The place was HUGE:

I have to say I was quite impressed how organized the RIT staff was for this event. They had all the booths set up with our shipped boxes already at our tables. They had breakfast and lunch provided to us (dang good food too!). They had so many student volunteers walking around asking how they could help....one of them even went and found a box of tissues for one of the ladies from our group! Here was our booth:

Our sweet "goodies" to give away. When I was in college these were the things you always looked out for as a student...cool FREE stuff. Surprisingly the students didn't really take them. The people that took most of the freebies were professors and other employers!!

Here was our team for the RIT trip, left to right - Robin (recruiter), me (engineer), Angie (engineer), Nikki (recruiter) and Chad (engineer) who was taking the photo.

Jen had a blast. Lots of interested students to talk to. We were even able to meet with the director of the Microelectronics Engineering department and he gave us a tour of the labs they had for the program. It brought back so many sweet memories of my college days. The trip was short....but I did make (and kill) a friend at my hotel room:
Nothing like a finding a spider as you are taking a shower.

Logan is 9 months old!

Yup - it is true....Logan is already NINE MONTHS OLD! Here were his check up stats:

Height = 29 inches = 75th percentile
Weight = 20 pounds 10 ounces = 50th percentile
Head = 45.5cm = 50th percentile

Logan is still quite the happy baby. He flashes his killer smile every chance he gets! His bright blue eyes catches all the ladies around him. He is quite the crawler. Has been for about three weeks now. He started with the army crawl, then the knee crawl and now he does the monkey crawl (on his hands and feet). He pulls himself up to whatever he wants and is barely starting to cruise the furniture. He is VERY active. We can hardly hold him because he wiggles so much and wants to just go explore. We moved his crib to the basement to force him to sleep through the night (we can't hear him cry out loud as much when he is in the basement)....so far so good. He is LOVING every bit of "real food" we give him. He still has NO TEETH.

When dad is in charge....

This is what you come home to see...

A two year old hoodlum! Only a woman/mom would notice all this:

- mismatched clothes (this is NOT what he was wearing before I left the house)

- sideways baseball hat (apparently Zach's location of choice)

- Zip ties on his wrist made to be "bracelets"

- temporary dinosaur tattoos on both forearms

- fruit by the foot in hand (apparently his third?)

I can tell Zach enjoyed every minute of hanging out with daddy!!

Pulling Up

Flames!

They started painting the flames on THUNDERPIG!!! Woot woot!

Geek Week 2010 @ Park City!

Every year Jody makes the trek to Utah to catch up on old times and to play video games with Dustin.. They used to do this every week or two when we lived in Austin and now call their annual gathering "Geek Week"! This year they gamed in style! Since Jody's trip overlapped with Dustin and Jen's family vacation to Park City they were able to spend a few days at the condo rather than at the house! They played hard but made time to relax and enjoy the sites as well!

Here is Dustin, Jody and Glen riding up the chairlift... Glen stayed on the lift and went to the top of the mountain while Dustin and Jody made their way to the zip line.

Can you believe it? Not a single person in line! Awesome! Lets do this!

For being Jody's first time, he jumped into that zipline seat without a problem! What a rush!

After the Zipline we headed over to the Alpine slide.. The only thing between us and 3000 feet of winding concrete was a tiny sled with a hand brake in the center..

I of course let Jody go first so I wouldn't have to hear him screaming in fear as he raced down in the track beside me.. ;-) Just kidding Jody.. I would never do that.. I made it my goal to beat you to the bottom.. Just so the next round you would blow the socks off of my previous track peed record.. lol!

After hitting a few rides, we were heading back up the mountain and crossed paths with Dad as he was coming back down from his trip to the top of the mountain!

So we had to take him on the next big ride.. The Alpine Coaster! This is one of the only graity-propelled roller coasters that I know of.. It zooms you through the mountainous twists and turns at speeds up to 35mph!! I believe it too.. We were cruising!

This is the ride up to the top.. You can see Dad and Jody (well part of him you can see)

We also took Jody to the Olympic park to watch the US, Canadian, and Australian free style skiers practicing.. We watched them for FREEEEEEEEE! Not too many places you can go these days to watch something like this without spending a penny. Coool!

Jody looked like a natural in this sled.. Who knows, maybe we'll see him at the next winter games? Look for a guy with a luge outfit with a joker across the front of his speed suit.. heh heh..

This is the ski jump where we watched several athletes do some crazy aerials.

Wave to the camera and say "Mom check out the insanely talented skier jumping over my hand!"

Ok that looked fun, I had to take a picture too.. My skier was doing the "superman"..

As you can see we had a great time in Park City.. I didn't get any pictures of us playing video games in between all of this fun, because hey lets be realistic.. Who wants to see pictures of two grown men sitting on a couch eating pizza and playing Halo, Army of Two, God of War, and Uncharted 2? Wow.. now that I typed that all out, thats pretty impressive! We played a lot of Vids!! Git yer game on!!! And get ready for next year's Geek Week! It'll be here before you know it! hah!