Christmas in Fredonia

So we're obviously a bit behind with the blogging as it is currently January 11 and I'm finally getting around to doing an entry on Christmas. Perhaps this will help all of us to rekindle that Christmas spirit that causes everyone to be so nice to strangers for a month or so.

For Christmas we traveled to Fredonia, NY to spend Christmas with my (Bryant's) parents. It was the first time I had been home in four years and the first time Becky had been there since we had just started dating. My sister Sarah and her husband Josh also spent the week at my parents house and we all had such an amazing Christmas together.

We arrived at the Buffalo airport right on schedule at 12:15 AM on Christmas day. We all then slept in that morning making it the latest either of us has ever woken up on Christmas day...much different than waking up super excited at 4 AM when I was a kid and then going into Sarah's room to wake her up so we could both be super excited for 3 hours until we were allowed to wake up our parents to open presents.


Christmas presents are fun.


Becky manages to pose with three Christmas gifts in one picture...very impressive.


One theme of the week was the incredible amount of food that Josh can eat. Shown here is Josh putting away a large bowl of noodles after a full meal of spaghetti and meatballs.


As with any good relaxing vacation, a large portion of our time was spent in our pajamas. I usually got around to showering at around four o'clock each afternoon. We spent most of our time playing a wide assortment of games: pool, Settlers of Catan, Wii mario kart, Wii Tiger Woods golf, etc. I even managed to turn puzzle making into a competition for awhile, mostly just because I was bored of everyone working on the puzzle and wanted it to be finished.


Becky and Josh also experienced a momentous event in their lives with their first visit to the Anchor Bar in Buffalo. For those of you who are unaware, the Anchor Bar is the birthplace of buffalo wings. They celebrated this joyous occasion by the two of them ordering a bucket of wings (50 wings) for them to split...no they did not eat them all but they put in a respectable performance. I also experienced a landmark moment when I consumed my first ever "suicidal" Anchor Bar chicken wing. It was very hot, but it was also the most delicious chicken wing I have ever tasted.

Hope all of you had a nice Christmas as well.

__

San Francisco

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to San Francisco for the GRACE Science Team Meeting (GRACE is the acronym of a NASA satellite which launched in 2002. The science team meeting is a two day conference with almost 100 scientists who are involved with the project or use the data for research).

It was a short trip but I managed to fit in quite a bit of fun both nights once the conference was over. As you can see, I had a good view of the city from my hotel room. I roomed with my friend David (who has the same advisor as me), who I have roomed with many times on various work-related trips.


On the first night I had the privilege of hanging out with my Aunt Wendy who has lived in San Francisco for many years. We had such a great time and ate some delcious food at a middle eastern restaurant on Haight Street. My food theme for the weekend was kabobs (night#1: shish kabob, night#2: salmon kabob, night#3: sushi...which is kind of like a kabob except there is no skewer...and it's not cooked).


Towards the end of our dinner some loud music came on and a belly dancer appeared in the middle of the restaurant. After swinging a sword around a few times she then balanced it on her head and did a belly dance routine. This was the first time I've ever seen a belly dancer so I was impressed and a bit frightened.

On our last night in San Francisco, David, another grad student, and I hung out with my advisor Steve, and one of his friends. After dinner we hopped on a cable car and headed to a place called Buena Vista, which apparently invented the Irish Coffee. From there we all needed to take a taxi back to the hotel we were all staying. After some smooth negotiating by Steve we ended up getting a sweet ride home. You can see a picture of David and I getting out of our "taxi" below.


_

A Dinner With The Dudes

To see the complete slideshow of the
Dinner With The Dudes click here.

_________________________________

Becky and I have been a part of some very cool events throughout our years volunteering with our church middle school ministry, but this past Saturday night might have been the coolest. The 8th grade guys put on a formal dinner for the 8th grade ladies to show their respect and appreciation for them, and also to raise money for the Outrageous Love family that we are sponsoring as an 8th grade class. (Outrageous Love is something our church does every year where ~200 struggling local families are nominated and then sponsored at Christmas time, so they are able to have a few Christmas presents and buy groceries and what not).

Prior to the event, fancy-pants invitations were made and then hand delivered to the 8th grade girls several weeks ago at our Wednesday night youth group. The guys were required to wear a long-sleeve collared shirt, a tie, and slacks and requested in the invite that the girls also dress up for this formal occasion. One of the 8th grade guy's parents very generously offered the use of their beautiful home and also purchased all of the food for the ladies, so that all of the money that was raised could go directly to Outrageous Love. Another one of the 8th grade moms also generously donated pizzas for the guys to eat before the girls arrived, as they were not welcome to partake in the amazing food we served the girls.

All of the dudes showed up at least 2 hours before the girls arrived in order to get the house decorated and to start the preparation of the food. Below you can see what an incredible job they did decorating the room and setting the table. They also spread out about 200 candles throughout the house.


Shown here is Rambo, the executive chef, and Sander, his sous chef as they took a short break from preparing the food. The three course meal consisted of a salad, a choice of spaghetti with meat sauce or chicken alfredo, and a brownie and ice cream desert. Everyone, including Becky, said that the food was great...very well done kitchen staff.


Hal, Chris, Drew, and Josh looking quite studly as they waited to escort the ladies inside as soon as they arrived. Upon being escorted into the house each 8th grade girl was given a pink rose.

As you can see, I'm as far out of my league as the 8th grade guys were.


We ended up having 31 8th grade girls attend and every one looked so nice.


In addition to preparing a meal and serving it, the guys also serenaded the girls with a couple of Christmas carols, with Becky on piano. The night ended with the sweetest middle school dance party ever...our 8th grade guys are seriously good dancers. I should also mention that one of the leaders who was there was a professional break dancer when he was younger.

Group photo.


Becky with a few of her students.


Everyone is still smiling after a very long night of work.


At the event we raised over $1000 for our Outrageous Love family! Between the Dinner With The Dudes and the bake sale the 8th graders have been doing on Wednesday nights, we ended up raising more money than is needed to support our original family of 8, so we added another family of 6 to sponsor this Christmas!

I could not have been more proud of the 8th grade dudes for everything they did this past Saturday night. They were complete gentlemen and worked so hard to put on this amazing event for the girls. Becky and I were overwhelmed when we got home and realized how much money our students had donated. We are so blessed to get to be a part of these student's lives and are very excited to see how God is going to use this incredible group to continue to impact people's lives for many years to come.

_

Thanksgiving in Chicago and Michigan

Becky and I took a mini-vacation to Chicago and Michigan to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family. Now that Becky's brother (Marcus) and his wife (Sarah) live in Chicago, we were able to fly directly from Denver to Chicago. While Marcus and Sarah worked on Wednesday, we spent the day in downtown Chicago. Neither of us had been to Chicago for many years and had really looked forward to spending a day in the city....We love Denver, but for the record, it barely even qualifies as a city. It's more accurately described as a big town; so getting to spend a day in one of America's great cities was something we were very excited about.

The picture below shows Becky with a big grin on her face, which she had the entire day walking up and down Michigan Ave.

In Chicago they have entire men built completely out of Lego's...we don't have Lego men in Denver.

My one requirement for our day in downtown Chicago was a visit to my favorite pizza place in the world: Giordano's. My family once drove something like 4 hours out-of-the-way on a road trip just so we could eat at Giordano's. That may sound a little crazy, but I bet you don't remember the time you didn't drive 4 hours out-of-the-way for dinner.
After our day in Chicago we drove with Marcus and Sarah to Becky's parent's house in Michigan. We then managed to celebrate three major holidays in a span of three days: Thanksgiving, my birthday, and Jesus' birthday. It was a bit of a whirlwind of family events but we had a great time at all of them. We also managed to fit in a meal with our great friends Joel and Sarah. We miss being around our amazing friends from Hope so much that it is always such a joy whenever we do get to see them.

The day after Thanksgiving Becky and I went with Becky's parents to cut down a Christmas tree. The tree farm we went to took us on a hay ride to the middle of the tree farm where we could then pick out the perfect tree. After some intense inspection of many trees we finally found a great one. Shown here is the tree that is now in the Byker's house while it was still connected the the ground, along with Joyce, Becky, and Bernie.
Later than night I was caught in this candid photo while decorating the tree.

On our last night in town Becky grandparents (Joyce's side) came to Becky's parents place for dinner and to celebrate Christmas with us, since we'll be in Fredonia with my family for Christmas this year. After many failed attempts with the camera self-timer we finally came up with this great picture of the family.

I'd just like to say that we are both so thankful for how blessed our lives are. We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with friends and family as well.

_

Why I'm Bad at Blogging...

There are two main reasons why I'm bad at blogging:

Reason #1. I don't take pictures.

It seems that in order to post a new blog entry you need to have pictures to accompany the story/event/or whatever you're writing about. The simple fact that I hardly ever have my camera with me prevents me from keeping the blog up-to-date. Fortunately Becky does take some pictures so that they can some day end up in the scrapbook, and on the occasions when this happens I usually do get around to posting something.

For example, two weekends ago I went to Pasadena, CA for a job interview. While I was there I got to see 6 friends from college (Noel & Heidi Snyder, Brian Hanning, Dave Fisher, Ben Iliev, and Barry Teshema) and one friend from High School (Rob Lefferts). Over the course of the four days I was there, and all of the various fun activities, I didn't take a single picture, despite the fact that I had brought my camera all the way to Pasadena.

This is too bad because this would have made a great entry to the blog...especially the part about Hanning being a special agent for the U.S. Diplomatic Service (he is a stud).

It seems that once we have kids we will have plenty of pictures to post because people's cameras seem to become attached to them once babies are around.


Reason #2. Fantasy Football.

_

Steamboat Springs

We have been terrible at posting lately as life has been a bit busier than normal. Last weekend Bryant and I took a 4-day vacation to Steamboat Springs, CO. This was the third year in-a-row that we have taken a long weekend together to Steamboat as it has become our favorite place in Colorado to visit.

We took our bikes up, and went on a long bike ride along the Yampa River. It was great to try out my new bike (a birthday present from July) and enjoy the beautiful weather.

We also spent time at my favorite bookstore and I treated myself to multiple mochas!

Each time we've visited Steamboat, we've hiked along Fish Creek Falls. This time we completed the 10 mile hike and enjoyed the view from Long's Lake.

Sigur Ros at Red Rocks

Two weekends ago Justin Mast, one of my closest friends, came out to Colorado for a visit. The highlight of the weekend was a Sigur Ros concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. For those of you who are unaware, Red Rocks is the greatest place in the country to see a live show, and if you enjoy live shows then you must add seeing a show there to your list of things to do before...it's too late. This was my fourth Red Rocks show with the previous three being Incubus, DMB, and John Mayer. I hope there will be many more in the future.


Sigur Ros has been one of my favorite bands since college. Their music is incredible, as long as you don't mind that the lyrics are in Icelandic, except for the one CD they did where all the lyrics are gibberish (they call it Hopelandic). On this tour Sigur Ros was without the Icelandic string quartet Amiina who they usually tour with. Usually at any given time during a Sigur Ros show there are 12+ musicians on stage. They still produced a very polished and powerful sound but a few of the songs seemed to be missing a little something without the additional instrumentation that usually accompanies them.

We had a great time and it was a beautiful night. Below is a picture of Sigur Ros on stage with the lights of Denver in the background.


Below is one of two large rock formations which outline the sides of the venue.


An interesting side note (to me anyway) is that since college I have had a list of three bands that I really wanted to see before...you know, it's too late. Those bands were Silverchair, Radiohead, and Sigur Ros. I had the incredible opportunity to see live performances by all three in the past 11 months. (Radiohead was the best show of the three).

_