Wow- what a crazy couple of days it has been.  My last post was on 10/26 and that was before the snow hit and our quick weekend trip to PA…

Tuesday, 10/27 was our last nice day before a big winter storm rolled into CO.  Castle Rock officially got 24″ of snow but there were some towns in the foothills near Boulder and Denver that got over 4 FEET of snow!  Wow.  A place called Nederland got 49 inches… holy crap.  We (in Castle Rock) got 32+ inches of snow 1 year in a storm that lasted for 3 days and that was the most snow I had ever seen at 1 time- and it was ALOT!  I can’t even imagine another foot+!  Chris decided to stay home on Wednesday because he didn’t want to get stuck down in the Springs with Skylar but I decided to go to work because I knew I wasn’t going to be there on Fri and had a feeling that I wouldn’t be going in on Thurs- so I at least wanted to make it in for Wednesday!  The snow wasn’t bad during the day on Wednesday- I think alot of folks decided to stay home Wed so traffic on the highway wasn’t bad at all.  Then it just started snowing harder and harder Wed night so that by the time we woke up on Thursday there was probably about 16″ of snow on the ground already.  Chris decided to go in that day since he had been out on Wed but I decided to stay home.  I took a couple pictures but none of them really showed how much snow we REALLY had- nothing looks very impressive.  This one is probably the best because it shows the pile of snow on the neighbor’s car and the fact that you can see the grass shows how windy it was.  All the snow blew OFF the grass and ONTO the driveway!

I don’t think I posted this video before- it’s of Skylar “talking” to me on Wednesday (10/28) night- it amuses me to watch it

http://s489.photobucket.com/albums/rr258/dlc136/?action=view&current=MVI_4307.flv

So it pretty much snowed all day Wed and Thurs and finally stopped Fri morning when the sun came out and started to melt everything.  I love CO!  The high for Fri was 50 degrees- the roads were pretty much dry by the time we were heading to the airport at 2pm.

Speaking of the airport, Skylar did great on the plane.  She pretty much slept the entire time.  Chris held her for most of the flight and they both fell asleep while I finished reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife”- it was such a good book!  I highly recommend it.  Chris’ dad was travelling for work that week and was getting back to PHL @~10pm so he got the carseat from Lisa/John and put it in his car.  Then he waited around for a little bit to pick us up when we arrived at 11:15pm.  We made it to their house (after a quick stop at Wawa of course for some food!) by about 1am-ish.  We fed Skylar and then dove into bed!

Saturday we got up at about 8am when Skylar woke us up to be fed- which was 6am CO time (her usual waking time on weekends).  My parents came to Chris’ parents’ house first at about 10am-ish before we headed over to his grandfather’s house.  We hung out for a bit and then left for North Wales and got there by noon-ish? I think… Lisa/John and the girls were already there so we said hello and then ordered some food for lunch.  Carrie and Shaun were stopping by as well so they had lunch with us too.  Hoagies and cheesesteaks- yum!  My parents were the 1st to leave because they wanted to get back down to OCNJ to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters.  Then Carrie/Shaun and Lisa/John and the girls left to head home.  It was great to get to see Carrie and Shaun too- thanks for stopping by!-  Carrie is in her 3rd trimester and I’ll be coming back to PA in early December for her baby shower.  I’ll be flying with Skylar by myself that trip- let the fun begin!  Anyway, we stayed at Chris’ grandfather’s house and had dinner and Aunt Doris and Uncle Dick came over for dinner as well.  We ordered pizza this time- yum!  We left North Wales at about 9 or 9:30pm and got back to Exton in time to feed Skylar and then go to bed.  We watched most of the Phillies game but didn’t see the end of it.  They were losing when we went to bed- I think it was the bottom of the 8th inning?  Anyway, they ended up losing- bummer.

On Sunday we had the alarm set for 7am so we could be up and head over to Chris’ brother Scott’s house by 8am to say hi.  They have a new daughter, Katelyn Grace, who was born 3 weeks ago.  We could only stay for a little bit though because I had invited anyone in the area who wanted to stop by Chris’ parents’ house to meet Skylar and say hi.  We had a bunch of people stop by- thank you to everyone who came!!!  A friend of mine from IR, Craig, and his wife Sharlee and their son Trent stopped by.  They live in West Chester.  Then Aunt Sandy (Karen’s cousin) stopped by.  My parents came up again.  Our high school friends Scott and Suzie and their 2 kids came to say hi.  Their kids have red hair as well (altho their daughter’s hair is getting lighter)- and their son’s head looks like a large version of Skylar’s head- I had to take this picture of their heads together:

Then Lisa/John and the girls and Karen’s friend Josie arrived and then last (but not least!) our high school friends Heather and Michelle stopped by to say hi as well.  It was a full house!  Heather got a little Chase Utley Phillies onesie for Skylar- I had not unpacked it for the game last night but will have to get it ready for Game 6!  It was a great morning/afternoon with everyone and then, unfortunately, we had to leave for the airport at 2:30pm.  Cindy called the house at about 2:15pm to say hi.  I only got to talk to her VERY briefly because we were running around trying to pack and make sure we didn’t forget anything.  Lisa had brought a bunch of baby stuff to give to us so we were packing that.  We had borrowed a suitcase from Chris’ parents back in May after the baby shower in PA- and we brought it back to them this weekend.  I THOUGHT I was going to be able to leave it there but I forgot about Lisa giving us baby stuff and she had also bought 2 cans of formula for us from BJ’s.  Kelly had some coupons for formula from BJ’s but we don’t have that store out here by us.  So Kelly was nice enough to mail the coupons to Lisa and Lisa was nice enough to get 2 cans for us- thank you both!  So we had 2 very full suitcases going back to CO with us!

So we packed up and said goodbye to everyone and headed to the airport.  We ran into a bit of a snafu in getting thru security.  We checked in at the airport and when the lady came by to check our IDs and tag our luggage- she asked to see our boarding passes.  So we handed her TWO (2!) boarding passes- I clearly had a baby strapped to my chest in the carrier thing (this will become important to the story later)- and she just said thanks and handed them back.  We didn’t think anything of it and headed off to security- we waited in line for a bit and then it was our turn to get our IDs and boarding passes checked.  The TSA lady said (in a snotty tone I might add!) “Where’s the infant boarding pass?  I need to see her boarding pass”  We were like “What?  You need ot see her what????”  We had never heard of such a thing.  So the TSA lady informed us that we needed to have a boarding pass for Skylar even tho she was sitting on our laps.  So off we headed back to teh United check-in counter to get said boarding pass.  Needless to say, we were annoyed because we had flown before with Skylar and NO ONE ever asked us for a boarding pass for her- what’s the deal with Philly asking us for one?!?  So we got to the United check-in counter and headed to the Premier line (thanks to Chris’ dad for getting us Premier status!) and said we needed to get an infant boarding pass and we asked “How come we’ve never had to get 1 of these things at either Denver or Chicago when we flew last month?” and the lady (being the ever-helpful Philadelphia person she was) told us ”I don’t know- we’re only doing our jobs and following the rules- those other airports must not’ve been following the rules”- and of course she said this in the NICEST (note the sarcasm) of tones!  Which, of course, just set us at ease with her oh-so-wonderful (note the sarcasm again) customer service skills.  Chris was borderline yelling at her about the inconsistencies between airports (his tone probably didn’t help her lack of helpfulness) and that we didn’t have to get a boarding pass for her before and the lady literally said to us “I can’t help you- do you know how low on the totem pole I am here?  I’m just a peon- I can’t do anything for you”.  I get her point and knew she couldn’t do anyting about it but the fact that she actually said that out loud to us was just amazing (and not in a good way)- those are some mighty fine people skills that lady possessed! (note the sarcasm again)  Has anyone else ever had to get an infant boarding pass for a child you’re holding on your lap?  I was annoyed because we flew from Denver to Chicago (BOTH are United hubs) and neither leg of the flight were we required to have an infant boarding pass.  Just at crappy ‘ole Philly were we required.  Chris also asked the lady we were speaking to why the lady who checked our bags and boarding passes didn’t ask us about the infant boarding pass (when clearly I had a child strapped to my chest)- and the lady just said “Oh, she just checks bags…” and we were like “If YOU know about it and the TSA lady knows about it, shouldn’t the lady asking for our boarding passes know about?!?”  Anyway, I’ll stop bitching about it- we got the boarding pass and headed back up to security and made it thru with no other problems.  As we were walking to our gates, some guy said to us “Oh, good- you made it through?  I was in line and saw the hard time they gave you…” so he was comiserating with us about how annoying it is to travel these days.  Skylar was great on the flight again- slept in my arms the entire time.  I think she was probably tired from all her excitement in the 2 days!  We made it home by about 8:30pm, fed Skylar and dove into bed again.  Monday was going to be painful to get up!

Monday was indeed, rough- we both missed Skylar after spending all weekend together and I especially missed her (not that Chris didn’t…) because I had gotten to spend 4 days in a row with her!  So I headed home as soon as possible to pick her up and then get the dogs.  We watched the Phillies game and what an ending.  I was actually feeling a little ill because of being nervous that they were going to blow it!  Chris went to his hockey game and missed the game but I filled him in when he got home.  And now it’s Tuesday and I’m counting down the minutes til I can leave work and head home!!!  I don’t have any of the photos on my work computer so I’ll have to add those later tonight at home.  Stay tuned for photos…