travis’s brain dump

So,  I guess I succesfully went a whole month without a single post. That NEVER happens. (lol)

Not a whole lot to report. Sure I’ve had my ideas of rants, but not time to put them down. They finally assigned some help to me at work so hopefully I’ll see some of the workload balancing out sometime in the near future. I certainly hope so as much more of this and I’m liable to lose my mind and “off myself” as James so delicately puts it when describing his bad days, lol. At least I have 4 more days off work to look forward to. Maybe I can find something constructive to do other than sit around playing video games the whole time.

On that note, working out has been going well. Amanda and I just started actually doing some really good recording at the beginning of August and I’m actually seeing much better results in both of us. It renews the goals and keeps us focused. When we started recording at the beginning of August I was at about 25% bodyfat. EEEK! However, within a matter of a few weeks I’m already down to 22% and steadily dropping. If the trend keeps up I should be somewhere closer to 20% this weekend when we take our measurments. We’re still keeping up with the P90X routine with some other stuff tossed in along with it. I took up running again, except this time I got a bit more serious with it. My long runs are about 3.5 miles and my short runs are 1.8 miles. I typically put in a long run Mon-Wed-Friday and short ones on Tues-Thurs-Sat. Typically Saturdays over the summer were skipped due to push mowing a 1/3 acre slot of grass but with winter approaching I’ll probably start throwing that in as well. All in all it feels really good to run, the only thing keeping me from increasing the distance on my long runs is really time. 40 minutes is about all I want to take out of my day in the evenings for “working out” due to my daily schedule. Up at 430, workout til 530, shower, head to park and ride at 6, work by 645, home at 5, run til 6, dinner, shower, hour to relax/read/whatever, then sleep… rinse repeat. LOL

All in all I can’t complain. Despite being extremely busy this last month has been a pretty decent one. At the beginning of August we piled into the Highlander and headed up to Bear Lake in Utah for a famliy reunion on my mother-in-law’s side. It was definitely a trip with it’s ups and downs, lol. It was however, good to see Amanda’s family and participate in some activities out there like seeing the Minnetonka Caves. Arwen had a blast of course playing with all her bazillion cousins and being spoiled by Amanda’s parents. We also had the chance to go to Chase’s wedding in Logan, Utah. Talk about timing, the guy got married the day after we arrived and only 30 minutes away. Chase of course jokes that he planned it that way… crazy guy. It was definitely good to see him again and meet his new wife, Shelly. Congrats again to you both!  

Arwen is just growing in leaps and bounds. She lost her first tooth (pictures will be uploaded after this post) a couple of weeks ago and she started first grade just a couple days later. It amazes me to actually think about it since it seems like just yesterday she was born. Travis Jr, is growing like crazy too. The lil guy has officially figured out that ‘ ma ma ‘ gets his mother’s attention and has proceeded to use it whenever he wants her. It’s cute and annoying at the same time. Despite the fact he’s been saying ‘ da da ‘ for a couple months this is the first sign of him actually “using a word” so the win goes to Amanda for him saying “mama” first. The lil guy is also crawling around now… not proficiently but none the less he is mobile and dangerous. I also suspect it won’t be long (few months) before he’s trying to take his first steps as he is able to hold pretty steady on those legs. Considering how quickly he went from sitting assisted to sitting up on his own, I think we’re in for it for sure.

Ok, well if I’m going to upload some photos before going for a run, I’d better end here. Perhaps September will hold more time for me to get back to blogging.

Well, I have to say it’s about freakin time. I think this has been one of the driest winters (in terms of snow) I’ve seen since I left Georgia. LOL I really wish that we had more of this recent snowfall all over the winter. It was kind of boring this go around. Still, can’t say I’m bored with Colorado weather and at least we’ve been keeping some decent bases in the mountains to go boarding on.

However despite it being dry, it was good to see the weather finally dropping some much needed precipitation out there. January was horrible, February saw precipitation at .11″ out of the average .33″ and we sat in March all the way until last Thursday at trace levels with an average of .92″. Finally between then and now March is sitting at 1.62″ which is awesome.

Here’s some pics from last Thursday and Friday’s fun.

The best part? More is supposedly on the way as we roll into April! Hopefully we’ll be getting some more tomorrow and again this weekend. YAY!

I really hope this is the case. I’ve enjoyed getting in some late season snowboarding. Even Arwen has joined in on the fun.

Hopefully the poor kiddo can get cleared to come up with me again this next weekend. I feel it will be unlikely though since she broke her wrist last Friday. Crazy kiddo was jumping off the furniture and got herself good. We thought at first she had sprained it, however when she tripped and fell again Saturday it hurt her again just as much so we had it checked out. Still though, she boarded awesome on Saturday so who knows, maybe she’ll get to go up again despite having a cast on!

You know, I have to say I’m extremely glad to be back into a “normal” routine. There is only so much time off someone should take and I think I maxed it. lol I ended that vacation a wreck. The last two days have been nice getting back up at 430 in the morning to workout and being at work during the day. I miss hanging out with my family but my body is so much happier. It seems to be operating in a little smoother, albeit ready to shutdown by 8pm, mode.  Either way, it’s good to be doing some productive work again. I’ve come into the new year with new projects to get my butt in gear right off and so far, so good. Lots of fun things to work on.

So I’ve picked up Russian again. Hopefully this time I’ll get it to stick a little better and be able to use it more regularly since Amanda is interested in learning it. Due to the fact the kids will be raised bilingual in Spanish and English we have to have something to communicate in that they can’t understand right? lol It’s actually been pretty remedial throughout this first part of the course. I’ve blown through the first two units and have remembered most of the vocabulary and for a change I actually have the alphabet down pretty well. The hard part is that stupid grammatical nonsense. So frustrating but what do you do? I’ll get it. At least this time it’s much easier to remember where and when to change the last syllables of words. At the rate I’m going I should be finished up with Level 1 by the end of the week and be able to move on to Level 2. That’s where the big slow down will be, lol. I’m sure I’ll spend a good solid month on that.

In other news, the kiddo is getting huge. Well, both of em… Arwen is just a couple inches shy of 4′ (46″) and Travis is an inch shy of 2′ (23.5″).  It’s hard to believe she’ll be 6 this year and he’s going into his third month. The little guy is already trying to babble his head off sometimes. It’s amusing. I actually forgot how entertaining it can be to have a baby around.

Well, that’s about it for now.

Finally…  Winter is finally settling in and I can’t wait to get some more board time up in the hills. Goaling for twice this week and four times at least after Christmas hopefully. 

So this weekend was pretty productive and we were just under the wire with getting the Christmas lights up in time before a snow storm.  Sitting here now with -4 and watching it drop. I freakin love Colorado. Here’s the work so far.

I feel like I’m actually getting caught up. Just in time for some much needed time off work! So in catching up, I finally delivered on some more pics. You can find them in the gallery. A new section on my son and more additions to the misc category. Just a few but it’s additions none the less. Now I don’t feel like such a slacker. LOL

Anyway… workouts come early so this is a short post.