It took Kayleigh a long time to figure out how to draw a face. She's so proud of herself for figuring out how to draw "habby baces" (happy faces) that that was all she drew for a long time.

Now, she's starting to put more details into her people drawings.

Gong-Gong on the left and a very tall Po-Po on the right (Kayleigh, age 2.5)

The company holiday event was taking employees and their families to Vail. Beautiful Vail. We stayed at the Vail Cascade Resort and Spa this year. Another exceptionally generous employee appreciation event. We headed up to Vail on Friday evening. A cocktail and dessert reception was held to welcome everyone.

Saturday was a free-for-all day around town. Unfortunately, the weather was so warm that skiers and sledders were out of luck! Last year we had a blast sledding and tubing at the bottom of the ski slope, but this year there wasn't enough snow! Vail doesn't make their own snow and rely on nature to provide. What that meant, though, was the gondola rides were free! So, we took a nice stroll around the creak by our hotel and walked to the nearest ski village, Lionshead.  At Lionshead, we took the gondola to the top of the mountain and enjoyed the discovery center and view.









Back at Lionshead, we walked around the picturesque village and grabbed lunch and something warm to drink from Starbucks. 


As we thought about heading back to the hotel, we saw an ice skating rink.  I hadn't skated since freshmen year of college!  Paul has never been on ice skates and neither of the girls have either.  Yet, somehow we thought it would be a great idea to give it a try!











And you know what?  We had the BEST time!  I think we were there for 3 hours.  Paul even strapped on skates and went around the rink a few times without falling.  :D  Abby loved it so much that falling a few times didn't deter her and she started begging for ice skating lessons, trying to justify how we can fit it in to our weekday schedule.  Kayleigh was all grins and kept kicking her skates and going, "Again? Again?"

Saturday night, our company held our Holiday dinner.  With a face-painter and wonderful magician to entertain the younger kids, the adults enjoyed an interesting and delicious beer pairing dinner while the kids were served a separate kid-friendly buffet, complete with Henry Weinhard's root beer, if they desired.

Abby with her new friend - Derek's eldest daughter, Erica.

Kayleigh wanted to be a purple tiger with pink lips!

Decorations at entrance of the Cascade Resort.a

This past Thanksgiving we spent the long-weekend in Oklahoma City with Paul's brother Peter and his family.

It would be our first time meeting Baby Iylee, not yet 4 weeks old at the time of our visit. She was a doll!

Abby holding her newest cousin.  Iylee is a champion sleeper.

Abby and Annette huddled in Annette's room.  These two spent hour upon hours playing on their own (Kayleigh joined them occasionally).

Kayleigh struggling to throw a ball quick enough for the overly anxious Ayla.

The girls gathering ingredients (pond scum) for a potion.

Grandma mixed a batch of her special hot cocoa.  Abby and Annette both were tremendously helpful.



And during down-times, the girls watched movies on the iPads...


...and we cuddled with the kitty cats.  Jezebel was the most needy of a lap.

On the last day, we finally let Kayleigh hold Iylee for a brief time.  She was thrilled!

Note: Hickory smoked turkeys are delicious!

Ever wonder what exciting tasks are being worked by a software engineer building the next generation GPS system? Well, let me tell you...I have now spent 4 hours trying to resolve a 15 second anomaly in my s-band data time calculation. 15 seconds is so seemingly insignificant, but if I can't figure out the source of these seconds, I can't close on my task.

4 hours spent and I am almost positive the issue is related to leap seconds. Positive! The frustration is that there have been 25 seconds added since the concept of leap seconds was introduced in 1972 in an attempt to synch up the universal time formats. 16 seconds have been introduced since latest epoch (1/6/1980), which is the value I'm expecting for GPS week and time of week in seconds calculations. The most recent leap second was added at the end of June 2012. I am hoping that the time service I am invoking to retrieve leap second information just hasn't been updated for the latest addition.

Such a shame that I find the topic of leap seconds absolutely mind-numbingly dull. Every tidbit of information related to leap seconds and time formats takes 50 times longer to sink in than anything else, so sadly it has taken this long for me to be convinced I'm on the right track to solving my issue with these piddly 15 seconds.

My friends, if you suffer the same boredom as I do regarding this topic, yet you've made it this far in the post, congratulations to you. Bravo! If you want to learn for yourself more about leap seconds and universal time keeping, here are the links that finally helped me understand what might be happening to my seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time
http://adn.agi.com/GNSSWeb/
http://www.csgnetwork.com/gpstimeconv.html

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Abby's first year on a soccer team was a wonderful experience for her.  Her team won just a couple of games, but seeing how far they came from the very first game of the season, we're exceptionally proud of the girls.


Best of all, Abby got to spend a few extra months with buds, Olivia and Emory.  All three are at separate schools now as they begin their elementary school education.  They have been such good friends since 18 months of age.  We would certainly like to see these girls together again for soccer next season. 

This is a big, big milestone for a little girl - learning to put your hair up in a pony tail...all by yourself.

We all love the extra hour for sleeping in, but I'll sure miss driving home and seeing the Colorado skies glowing like this!

View driving up Morningview, turning onto Foothills Dr.

Our community does a wonderful job putting together family-friendly events.  The Halloween celebration included petting zoo, photo opportunities, pumpkin patch, arts and crafts, various local vendors, games and competitions, hay rides, costume parade, etc.

Paul had to work that weekend (again!), so the girls got dressed up in their costumes - Kayleigh was Mermaid Princess Ariel and Abby was Princess Snow White - and I took them down to the Grange for the celebration.






Later during the week, Kayleigh's class at daycare held a Halloween party and her teachers invited Abby to join them for the costume parade and treats.









Our neighborhood has been pretty low-key for trick or treating, but primarily because of the lack of homes built on our street.  We didn't know how many neighbors would go in for trick or treating, so we took the girls to downtown Parker for their Halloween evening celebration.  It was fun, but overwhelmingly crowded.  That evening, we returned home and found that we were swamped with trick or treaters!  Our neighbors even pulled out the fire pit and we had a grand representation.  Endless groups of kids were seen up and down our street.  I guess next year we will need to make better preparations.