Sorry for the few days without a post. Thursday it started raining in the afternoon and it hasn’t stopped since….which is extrodinarily rare for Colorado. Thursday night/Friday morning brought a rowdy overnight thunderstorm where several lightning bolts made their way into people’s homes. The working fire that we went on was an attic fire, and the news story can be seen here (if I get any pictures, I will post them). All of that activity left me arriving home late from work and no time to update the blog. 

Yesterday was the only day that Ahna, Ezra, and I could go down to the Fire-Rescue International conference in Denver. It rotates between several cities, and comes to Denver once every three years (for one more rotation). The conference is the annual show put on by the International Association of Fire Chiefs – where my Dad worked for 20+ years. Needless to say, there are lots of family friends that we wanted to see and wouldn’t ever have the chance otherwise. I wandered the exhibit floor for a while with the crew from my ladder truck, then met up with Ahna, Ezra, and my Mom and did some visiting. 

We also had tickets to go to the Folks Festival yesterday and had originally planned to head up in the early afternoon after hanging at the conference, but the rain changed those plans. First to describe the festival: it’s a three day annual event put on by Planet Bluegrass at their place in Lyons, Colorado (they also do the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and RockyGrass). There is on-site camping and lots of great music, but we could only go for one day this year – partially because we have a 9 week old, and mostly because I have to work two of the three days of the festival. The big draw for us this year was Patty Griffin; Ahna’s favorite musician. We have seen her several times before, but were really looking forward to hearing her music at such a beautiful venue…but mother nature had other plans. 

Remember all of that yapping about the 90+ degree days and the streak of no rain? Well that gets to stop for now (will assuredly return next week sometime) as the temperature over the past two days hasn’t topped 55 degrees, and the sun hasn’t been seen since Thursday. It has been a steady rain that intensifies for a few minutes at a time, but has soaked anything and everything…including the festival grounds in Lyons. We drove up there in the evening (to reduce our exposure to the elements) attempting to see Patty. Ahna, Ezra, and I loaded up in a sling, rain gear, hats, long-sleeve clothes, and blankets and attempted to make the show. Unfortunately the rain and Ezra’s non-willingness to enjoy the swing meant that we didn’t get to see the show. Ahna did go into the venue and watched a couple of songs from afar, but it wasn’t the evening that we had hoped for. Oh well, I suppose. 

As we talk now, the rain continues to fall and the temp continues to hover right around 50. They say that this will continue into tomorrow, but that we should be back into the upper 80’s by Tuesday or Wednesday. The mountains did get the snow that was promised, and Trail Ridge Road in the Rocky Mountain National park had to be shut down for well over 6 inches of snow. 

Obama Speech Update: We received notice that we were ‘wait-listed’ for credentials to the acceptance speech at Invesco Field. We were not able to change our lives around this past week and give 6 hours of time to the campaign; therefore didn’t get in (we have some friends that found some time and were notified that they got in). I expressed my frustration to the state and national campaign about the misleading stories about tickets and received the generic replies that actually didn’t answer any complaints or questions. It truly has been disappointing – the way that they have handled the credential dispersion for the speech. Perhaps we can still keep our fingers crossed to get in…..

Here are a couple of pictures of Ezra with some of the hand-made blankets that he has been enjoying. Oh, and one of Ezra’s first rest in his crib (now that we have been able to move the clothes into his dresser). 

Really?! It’s been three days since a posting was done!!! I feel like there should be some grand excuse that has prevented a posting from completion and publishing. Oh yea, there are these little plaid dressed gnomes that are loose in the house. The run around and sing and dance, but shout somewhat offensive (PG-13) remarks between songs. Normally they are easy to ignore, but they have gotten really difficult to deal with the last couple of days; and the time that is normally devoted to writing a post has been consumed by chasing them around.  

I just got home from work – completing my first full tour (3 days) back. During the second night, we had a call at 3am – which I would have thought would have been easier to deal with since that is about when Ezra wakes up every night, but for some reason still held the same difficulty as before. I suppose that it could have been the fact that I only went to bed at midnight, but that would be too easy to blame it on. 

That morning (Friday), I went straight from work to meet up with Dad. Hunter is also in town visiting (before the IAFC conference next week) and he came along on a ‘morning at the office’ of sorts. I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit his new office yet, so he invited Hunter and me along to hang out with him during the morning. We had the chance to attend some meetings on a current project and to meet some people that he deals with daily. It was a lot of fun, and extremely educational on many different levels. That evening, Ahna, Ezra and I went down to my parent’s house to have dinner and watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games. 

Admitingly, the ceremonies were very impressive to watch – and actually held my attention, unlike the previous couple of Olympics. The choreography was extraordinary and the technology was really cool to watch. On the same token, I still have a really difficult time with all of the “I Love China” talk that went into the dialogue and commentary during the ceremony. While we can understand that most of the blame for all of the atrocities in that country can rest with the government, it was still hard to watch it and not have them mention the fact that an entire province’s power was diverted to ensure that there were no problems during the ceremony. The duplicity behind the harmony kanji and the peace dove did not rest well with me, but were apparently completely overlooked by NBC. This really wasn’t a situation where you would have to look for faults to bring up the truths, the faults are always in play and the truths are on the surface…we just seem to be afraid to talk about them (evidence Bush’s speech the day before arriving in China). I suppose that might be partially due to the fact that they own our national debt…oh, and they are funding the war efforts right now.

Enough politics for now, back to the Ezra stuff. While I was at work yesterday, the ladder truck was sent down to participate in the annual Douglas County Fair and Parade. It’s the only parade each year in Castle Rock, and as such it’s highly attended. I know that there were several thousand people there – lining the streets for the two mile route 5 and 6 deep. The best part was seeing Ahna and Ezra standing on the corner near the downtown fire station and being able to have him see me in the truck. Hopefully someone got some pictures that I can find. 

Ezra’s personality continues to develop each day…and his latest thing is TV. We are struggling to keep him away from it, but he is really attracted to the light and movement. When he is sitting with us in the living room and finds the screen, we are now turning it off or turning him around…there will be plenty of TV time for him in the future. But it’s hard for us….the Olympics are on. 

I think that pretty much brings us back up to date. Here are a couple of photos of Pike’s Peak…taken from Castle Rock at sunrise on Friday morning. I happened to look south as I was on my way to meet up with Dad and saw the cool looking clouds. In both pictures (better with the one with Pike’s Peak on the left), you can see our townhouse complex on the bottom right.

More records broken yesterday: 20 consecutive days over 90 degrees, and we were one degree shy of the all-time hottest-ever recorded temperature in Denver – we reached 104 (officially; but keep in mind that the official temperature is recorded in the shade and at the airport – 20 miles from downtown).

As mentioned in the last post, Ahna spent the better part of the day at work, and I spent the better part of the day being relatively unproductive (ie: fooling around with photos). I did meet up with Ahna and Ezra for lunch, then took Ezra home with me so Ahna could have a few hours of uninterrupted work with Judy. 

In the evening two events dotted the calendar, and while we wished that we could have been able to attend both, we had already committed to going north. So, we headed up to Denver and met up with a slew of friends (Johnson, Mary, Tom, Tori, and Jennifer…then Hutch and Rich) for dinner and First Friday Art Walk. First Friday occurs every month on Santa Fe in downtown Denver (the art district); where all of the galleries open their doors and people meander in and out and all up and down the street. Ahna has been a couple of times before, but it was Ezra and my first time. Let me tell you: there were a ton of people – thousands. It’s a really fun time and a great way to get some free art exposure. As with anything, there were some good, some bad, and some favorites.

Before the walk started, we had dinner at the Tequila Company on the NW corner of Santa Fe and 10th. The food was alright (don’t trust your waiter when he says that the red chili isn’t spicy) and the service was equally alright (the servers kept mixing up where everyone’s order went). There was one really significant disappointment: no changing tables in either restroom. I suppose that they thought that the sheikness of the toilet would be ruined if they put a plastic drop-down table on the wall, but their lack of baby-friendliness (we aren’t expecting a lot of a place like that, but a changing table would be nice) will force us to not return. Ah, how our view of the world has changed.

When we got downtown at 5:30, the temperature in the car read 106. When we left at 9:00, the temperature in the car read 99. It was warm. They say that the temperature was supposed to drop to 68 last night (a near 40 degree difference), but when we woke this morning at 6:30, it was already back to 73. Today is supposed to break the triple-digit barrier again. 

One more thing before the pictures: just before I started writing the post, Ezra had a blow out of large proportions. Something like we had never seen before. All up his back, through his clothes, and all over……wait for it……Ahna! She was the lucky one this time! I got the task of cleaning him up while Ahna cleaned herself up, and I think that we went through several changing pads and half a box of wipes. Hmmm, poop.