The Goodrums

This year, Christmas and New Year's came and went in the blink of an eye. I can't believe we still haven't posted any of the highlights from the visits.

Michael finished school on December 18. My family arrived to visit on December 19. We hung out in Denver the first few days and then took a trip to the mountains to ski. On our second day skiing, one of my sisters managed to slice her butt open on our friend's snowboard. Seriously... you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried! A face first trip down the mountain on a stretcher and beaucoups of stitches later, we headed back to Denver with Christy laying face first down across the seats in the car. We spent most of the time after that hanging out at home, since mobility was limited.






















Skiing at Breck ________________________ Beware of Snowboards

On Saturday the 26th, my family decided to head home. They packed up the car and headed for home. About 3 hours into the 10 hour drive (with a butt laceration patient aboard), they learned that I-70 through the entire state of Kansas was closed. There is no reasonable way to get from the Colorado/Kansas border to Oklahoma when I-70 is closed. You can take 1-25 south to I-40, but that requires a trip back through Denver. So, they turned around and came back. My mom kept comparing their reappearance to the Griswolds (National Lampoons Christmas Vacation). They camped out another afternoon and then tried again. The second trip home was a success. I'm so thankful I-70 was closed as the afternoon of the Griswolds has so many great memories. We laughed until we were blue in the face.

Over New Year's, we took a quick trip to Lubbock to visit Michael's sister and hang out with his family. We had a fun time playing board games, being treated to abundant good food and even going to a skeet shooting range. I know I'm from Texas, but I have never handled a gun in my life. Quite the experience. I only managed to hit one skeet thing and then stopped while I was ahead. I was much better at working the launcher...















Goodrum Family















Shooting Range

We came back from Lubbock and Michael promptly started school again. Not much rest for the weary, but many great memories.

During this time, our external hard drive with all of our files - school, music, pictures - everything dear and precious to us, also crashed. It lends chaos to the holidays to be without addresses for Christmas cards, pictures from the last year, etc., etc. Thankfully we were able to recover the data - albeit 2 months and $1,400 later. Ugh. Lesson learned. Backup your data.

"Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it."
- Elias Schwartz

A couple years ago, a guy named Jim Collins presented at a conference I was attending. Collins is a well known author and speaker on business management practices. During the presentation, we were urged to create a "Stop Doing List" (there's a great article explaining the Stop Doing List at that link). The stop doing list is intended to help simplify your life by looking at things you can stop doing to create more time and space in your life. Sometimes you need to stop doing even good things to make room for the best things in life.

So as opposed to resolutions that tend to increase stress, add to the busyness and keep the to-do lists never ending, this year I am making an effort to simplify. I have started composing a "Keep Doing List" and a "Stop Doing List," not only for the work practices that are Collins' primary focus but also for personal activities. Perhaps I'll share the list once I have it better fleshed out.

The blog has been suffering some serious neglect lately as we did a whirlwind tour of the country. On December 13, we traveled to Houston for my littlest sister's wedding and her fiance's graduation (in the opposite order). Michael and I both threw a couple work days into the mix and celebrated Christmas with both sides of the family. It was pretty much pure chaos and sleep deprivation.

We returned to Denver on Christmas Eve, then woke up Christmas morning and drove to Breckenridge in the snow (in the Chevy Prism - aka "go cart"). We were quite a way into the drive before we saw any other cars on the road. We don't take hints well. :)

We enjoyed Christmas in Breckenridge with friends and a couple SERIOUSLY COLD days of skiing (see also, -24F Thursday morning). We returned Friday to about 18" of new snow in our driveway. It's still everywhere.

On Saturday, we kept one very cute almost 2 year old who provided much entertainment for the afternoon. Monday we hosted a New Year's party for friends. We had a great time. Who can argue with a Texas BBQ and the Nelson game? Another late night, a day to recover, and back to work again. I'm almost relieved to see "routine" again after the busyness of late. It will take awhile to fully recover - and January won't be gentle on us, I'm afraid.

BEST TIMES: Hanging out with friends, family and adding to family. My first brother. Wooohoo!

ROUGHEST TIMES: Lost keys - see also, Wes Whitney, Casey McDonald and Jennifer Goodrum. ...And so tired.

I hope to eventually post some individual pictures/descriptions of events on the blog, but in the meantime, there are a couple albums linked below. The graduation ones are classic!

• Graduation Pictures
• General Houston pictures (with a few pictures of Wes and Teri's wedding)
• Brashares Family Christmas
• Breckenridge

A few pictures from the First Night festivities.



















Courtyard at the Boston Public Library
We took a tour of the art and architecture in the Boston Public Library. This was another stop on our "Boston to do list" that we checked off this weekend.















Jen "Rolling in" the new year















Michael celebrates the year of 7















The elephant in the room



















A tribute to our old locale
Although most of our friends would probably like to detonate the missile in the picture














Fun fireworks in Boston Common



















More fireworks



















The funky Boston Christmas tree
Michael and I would make fun of it everytime we saw it. It was seriously lopsided and ugly.



















Ice Sculptures



















New England's Man of Mystery...

New Years 2007 was memorable holiday here in Boston.

On Friday, we attended a performance of the Nutcracker, which was outstanding. We also discovered a new Boston restaurant that joined our list of favorites. Cottonwood Cafe had excellent southwestern dishes. Yummm! ...and that's coming from Texan/New Mexicans who are very picky about Mexican/Tex-Mex/New Mexican cuisine.

Saturday was nice and laid back. We attempted to organize our lives a bit (ha!) and made some progress on Denver house stuff.

On Sunday, we went into Boston to check out the First Night programming. It turns out that most of the afternoon programming for First Night was very family focused. There were a million people everywhere and most of the programming was not great quality. Good entertainment for families - perhaps not so much for others. At least we got to check out the Shops at Prudential Center, something that's been on Michael's "To see in Boston" list for quite some time now.

Some of the evening programming was better. We attended a concert by Eilen Jewell that we enjoyed. Michael liked the fact that she was from Idaho (he spent a summer in Idaho Falls). We also attended a show called Comedy at the Castle, which featured Tony V. and Frank Santorelli. Attending a show at a comedy club had been on my "To do in Boston" list. So, one check mark for both of us. We also saw two sets of fireworks - one in Boston Common and one in Boston Harbour. It was definitely a memorable night. We left Boston around 1am and finally got back to our hotel around 2am.

Therefore... on the first day of the New Year, we slept in, watched a whole bunch of football, called family and friends, and otherwise took it easy.

Happy 2007 everybody!