Liralen's Adventures Through Life

We had a little time with Jet between the Hawaii trip and the end of the Christmas break, which was nice and we had one adventure during that time that was pretty amazing. I'd bought tickets in October for the Monet exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, titled The Truth of Nature. The full photo album can be found if you follow this link. I've always loved Monet, but never really understood why he was an Impressionist when so much of what he painted is so easily recognized for what it is; but then I didn't understand why that title had been made in the first place. The exhibit features more of his paintings than have ever been gathered in one place and it was beautifully organized by all the places he loved. It also included an excellent explanation of Impressionism, what was, at that time, thought of as characterized by hasty, unfinished work that didn't have the level of detail or meticulous finish that "real" paintings had in that day. I was mildly aston...

The move for Mom and Dad went really well. With John's organization and the fact that they'd been working on it for months, there was only the last little bit to do. But we helped them with the last bit, and John did the labeling and put up signs for where all the furniture was supposed to go in the new place. The move itself only took three hours after the guys and truck all showed up, and that was getting everything into the truck and then out again into the new apartment. It went so quickly, the foreman gave Mom $500 off from their initial estimate since they didn't have to pack a thing. She was really happy with that. We spent a little time and helped Mom and Dad finish off the garage as well, including a trip from 1-800-JUNK, who made off with a truck load of stuff. I rescued a small sewing box that was my father's mother's and a Go board from my father's father. He'd brought it with him from Taiwan in the 80's when he came to live with my parents...

Wanted to check in and say that Jet is safely and happily in Mines, my Mom and Dad are safely moved into Vi and have settled in enough to be truly happy there, and that John and I have finally landed in our house, with all our boxes and boxes and boxes of Stuff. Except... Yeah. I completely blew out the tendons in my right hand and forearm. Couldn't even close my hand or open it completely without pain. So you're probably not going to hear a lot more from me for a bit. But we've landed, mostly in one piece. The house is beautiful and livable , and everyone's actually in their places for a while. Whew.

It took more than four days to finally complete, but I guess in a way we'd really started the preparations more than eighteen years ago... The Jet is launched into The Colorado School of Mines, and he's having a great time. I'm so glad. And relieved, but also just so proud of how he worked through a rather tough situation. On Monday, the day of the move-in, all the Leaning Communities were moving in at the same time, along with the various sport teams, and anyone that had a solid connection to the other communities that were all going to the Ore Digger camp up in the mountains for three days. The setup was something completely new to me, all the parents and their vans/cars/trucks/U-Haul trailers would pull up to a designated unloading zone and would have 15 minutes to unload everything in their car. Hordes of volunteers would descend on the pile and take everything up to the rooms. Many of the drop zones were for more than one dorm. All of the boxes were supposed to...

So when we realized just how much time we were going to be spending in Karen's basement, we decided to do some traveling. Not as much as we thought we might have to do when we thought we'd be living on the road until our house was done, but more than we would if we'd been able to move straight into the new house. The two trips were one to take Jet north to Canada to see some of the sights that John and I saw up there when Jet was in Europe, and the other is going to be to Seattle to stay with John's mom and explore a bit with her and revisit a lot o the amazing Asian restaurants we loved when we were there over Christmas. Jet insisted that we try new things, go to places that we didn't go on our trip so that we'd have a fresh perspective, too, and it worked out really well with John's ability to plan and research things. I'm going to give you the full photo album right up front, so you can see all the views (many have some information on the sid...