Take Our Children to Work 2016.

Today's post is brought to you by our favorite guest blogger, Griffin Anderson, founder and CEO of Anderson + Co. Griff lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with his wife, two children, and the family's geriatric cat. He enjoys catching Pokemons in his spare time.

A few weeks ago I received an email about upcoming Take Our Children to Work events at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise offices in Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. When I worked at Blazent in Cherry Creek, Mollie brought the kids by the office a few times. To be fair though, all that did was make them think I played foosball and ate candy all day which was only half true. With HPE, they know that I either travel or work from my home office in the basement. Madelyn was within the recommended age for the event so I thought it would be good to expose her to the greater HPE. Plus, the agenda looked really fun!

On Wednesday morning Madelyn and I drove to Colorado Springs. I don't go into that office too often, but as we walked in I told Madelyn that sometimes when I leave the office there are deer lying in the grass outside. We agreed it would be cool if they decided to show up while we were at the office. I checked Madelyn in with the security team and we headed to the conference room I had reserved for the day. Madelyn and I spent the morning working together since the formal agenda didn't start until after lunch.

Madelyn designed her own website with a Shopkins theme.

She and Sawyer have been really into Shopkins this summer. She seemed to really enjoy building her website and later demonstrated it for Mollie and Sawyer. She says she wants to be a police officer and fashion designer when she grows up, but she definitely has some great technical skills!

After a kid friendly lunch in the HPE Café, it was time for the official event to begin. HPE and DreamWorks Animation have a very strong partnership, so the theme of the event was centered around the release of Kung Fu Panda 3. We got Madelyn all checked in. She was part of the yellow team. I headed back to my office for the day while she took part in different events including "The Panda Express (an obstacle course), "Folding Crane, Inking Mantis" (origami), "Kung Fu Demo" and "Photo Booth".

When I picked Madelyn up four hours later she reported she had a great day and "was glad I worked for HPE". In addition to the fun activities they also got to learn a little bit more about HPE and see things like the data center, at least I think that is where they went. Madelyn reported they had been in a very cold computer room. They also saw a 3D printer in action. The HPE volunteers did an amazing job with the event and I can't wait to take Sawyer in another year or two.

I really enjoyed the time with Madelyn and giving her a glimpse into what I do at work. As we left the office at about 5:30P there was a beautiful doe laying in the grass just outside the office door. It was a nice ending to a wonderful day.

"I am Po. And, I'm gonna need a hat."

Master bathroom.

In addition to running a half marathon this past Spring, my (our) other labor of love was a master bathroom update. Like my blog post on the subject, this was LONG overdue. There were a few aspects of this bathroom I HATED from the moment we first walked through it in early 2011. To the folks who think the mammoth-sized full wall mirrors with mirrored outlet covers and ugly stage lights are good design choices, I do not understand you. 

Oh, we also had some worn out, dirty linoleum floors which it turned out were not the originals. As our contractor discovered, the original linoleum floors were underneath these and were actually pink. Blech.

Let's take a look back at the listing agent's picture, keeping in mind that this was the best shot. Sorry for the blur and poor quality but I didn't have a digital copy at my disposal. So, this is a picture of an old picture.

And, here we are now.

I breathe a sigh of relief just looking at these pictures. Griff and I but mostly Griff replaced the lights and mirror ourselves. Thank goodness the ginormous mirror was not glued to the wall as it left minimal repair once we took it down.

The catalyst behind our bathroom update was the shower frame. No matter how hard we worked at it, the frame was rusting and there was never ending mildew in the seal between the glass and frame. It is so frustrating to clean something and not have it look clean when you're done.

When we researched seamless shower surrounds, we decided that if we were going to spend $x on the shower surround, we could spend a little more and fix the shower surround plus other stuff we don't like so we can really enjoy the bathroom. 

We kept the bathroom footprint the same but replaced the shower base, tile, fixtures, and surround as well as tub decking and apron, tub fixtures, flooring (this was a big ticket item), lights, mirrors, and baseboards.

A few years ago, I painted the existing oak vanity and have been really happy with the results. We like the size and look of it, now, so didn't feel it necessary to replace the vanity. The vanity top, sinks, and fixtures are on our short list of things left to do. However, after the hail storm in June, we're taking care of exterior repairs first before tackling the vanity top and sinks.

I absolutely LOVE the way the subway tiles in the shower and tub surround turned out. When the tilers were here working and I first came up and saw half of the subway tile in place, it took my breath away. The floors are a marble herringbone and they actually were not my first choice. My first choice was a marble basketweave but there was a mistake in ordering and these came instead. They are Arabescato Carrara Herringbone and they weren't cheap. But, they were and definitely are worth the money.

So, the short version of this story is our shower surround is now clean and rust and mildew free and we are happy. And, just in case you need another reminder -

Before.

After. Ahhh...

Ice cream social

Wednesday evening, the Highlands Ranch Metro District (HRMD) hosted an ice cream social at Civic Green Park. The weather was beautiful, the food trucks were aplenty, and the ice cream was all you can eat. We actually didn't pig out which was a little surprising. I think it was, in part, because there were so many other things to see and do like -

Run into several friends and their families from softball. Go Orange Crush!

Sit front row, curbside and watch the Littleton Fire Department demonstrate and extraction USING THE JAWS OF LIFE! It was awesome. Enough said.

Visit the Douglas County Mounted Patrol. They brought a thoroughbread, a pinto, and a smaller brown horse that Officer Domenico let Madelyn and Sawyer hold the reigns and see the horseshoes. So interesting!

Collect swag from the various booths. These kids had a plethora of bubbles, pens, stick on tattoos, candy, water bottles, and much more.

It kind of reminded me of Rusty Griswold from Vegas Vacation. "Well, four slot machines and I won four cars. You know, I put a dollar in, I got a car. I put a dollar in, I got a car. I put a dollar in, I got a car. I put a dollar in, I got a car." However, in our case, the cars were trinkets and the dollars were just waiting your turn in line.

Visit with another Sheriff and discuss handcuffs and whether girls can be police officers, too. According to Officer Blanchard, women are some of the better officers given their natural intuition. Who knew?!

This was the first big HRMD event we've attended and it was really fun. Perhaps this will become a new summer activity for us. And, who doesn't love ice cream on a hot summer night?!

Ice cream! Ice cream!

They waited patiently, oh so patiently, for the ice cream truck today.

Ice cream from the ice cream truck has been on our summer list for a while and today was the day.

So, from our house - sticky fingers, faces, and all - to yours, happy 4th of July!

Friday funny.

What's this Ewok's name?

#ewoksforlife

#thiscatwillletmedoanythingtoher

Friday funny.

They blinded me with science.

Platte River Half Marathon (2016)

The Platte River Half Marathon has come and gone.

According to my watch, my time was 2:07:47. Not bad considering my goals were to: (1) stay mentally strong and actually enjoy the race; (2) beat my time from 3 years ago; and, (3) beat a 10:00/mile pace. Check, check, and check -- I did all three!

Officially, I had the world's greatest (and cutest) cheering crew. Griff and the kids met me at mile 3, mile 10, and about 50 feet before the finish line. The two littlest Andersons ran across the finish line with me. It was so encouraging to see my family along the way and definitely helped me keep going.

And lastly, following are my results according to the race's website:

     Time - 2:07:41 (9:45/mile pace)

     Overall place - 613/1367

     Place in my gender - 264/825

     Place in my division (gender + age group) - 47/154

I thrive on numbers and statistics. It's the accountant in me! If you would like to see the above information in graph form, please let me know. Ha ha. While I didn't win the race, I'd say overall I had a good race.

Not sure what my next running goal will be. I'm thinking about shooting for 1000K miles in 2016 as I'm already one-third of the way there. Stay tuned.

Friday funny.

Spring break, no wait. It's another snow day.

Griff was in San Francisco for work. The kids are on Spring Break but had a scheduled day of fun at Mrs Olson's house. Mrs Olson is Sawyer's teacher. Madelyn had her for preschool two years ago. We love her and when a day of fun with Mrs Olson was up for auction at the BENefit Bash last November, we couldn't not jump at the chance. I was looking forward to it as it would give me the opportunity to sneak in my required 5 mile training run.

However, I woke up to this.

I swear this is snow day number 18 of the year. Day of fun at Mrs Olson's was postponed a day and we'd be staying home. Rats...

So, we dyed Easter eggs. I only had a dozen but a dozen sufficed. We'll do more later this weekend after Griff gets home tonight. Oh, wait... Now, the airport's closed. When is he coming home?!

Our eggs are pretty. We only lost one. Sawyer dropped it on the floor.

The snow is pretty too although the magnitude of it isn't done justice by this picture. Every hour or so, I had to tap off the screen on our sliding glass door to let in what little natural light there was. The pergola had become a solid roof with all the wet snow up there.

Our poor pine tree! I shook off the branches in the morning and a second time later in the afternoon. I don't love this tree but I sure don't want to lose it. You can actually see how dark it is as a result of the pergola "roof".

Oh - But I did have a chance to Konmari fold a few drawers during the afternoon while the kids watched a movie in the basement.

Finally, around 300P, we went out front. I wanted to clear the driveway and the kids have never shied away from an opportunity to play in the snow. Never.

This picture doesn't even begin to show how much snow there was. My guess is we had 18" at the end of the driveway. The further down our driveway I shoveled, the deeper the snow became. Our neighbor's snow blower was jamming up the snow was so deep. Thankfully, he and another neighbor helped me finish clearing the driveway. And, the kids played and played.

Of course, we had hot cocoa after coming back inside. I contemplated adding a little Kahlua to mine but decided against it.

This little snow trooper couldn't even finish his snack without falling asleep. He was patiently, so patiently waiting for hot cocoa. Needless to say, by the time I woke him up, his hot cocoa was no longer hot. And...he was grumpy but that nap was needed.

Griff can't get back to Denver until Saturday. BUT, he was able to get routed to San Diego where he'll spend a few days on Coronado with his dad. Hopefully, he can see Uncle Jerky and family as well as a few friends while he's "stuck" but there are much worse places to be stuck than in beautiful San Diego.

I hope you all survived the March blizzard without major incident and are digging out!

I'm on a dam.

Please pardon me while I brag. But, last week's long run took me from our house out to Chatfield State Park and I ran across the dam. Hot diggity-dog!

It's funny because I was in the zone and didn't really notice until I was all the way at the top. Talk about a view! And, I got a lot of sun even after having applied sunscreen.

The last 3-1/2 to 4 miles home from the dam were pretty tough. It was a fairly steep incline BUT I'm ready to take it on again sometime.

Three weeks left until the half marathon!