First, the boss's 70th birthday party. If you can't tell from the pictures, it was a Hawaiian theme. (Kyler even wore a pink Hawaiian shirt the night before!)
The boss rented out one of the performance halls at a local casino. When we arrived the curtains were drawn, but a few flashing lights and the music from "2001: A Space Odyssey" later - - - we saw the curtains open and our dinning tables rise up from below the stage. Quite a production, but it made for a fun dinner.
Next, a little bit of the outdoors. Our first hike of the year was to Mt. Rose. We were originally just going to do a nice little loop, but due to focus, determination (and mostly missing the loop sign) we began to hike to the mountain summit.
And we would have made it, but unbeknownst to me (okay, so the boots were probably 10 years old) my hiking boots had begun to rot. We ended up deciding to turn around because it was like I was hiking on flip flops!
Not to worry though - Kyler, the ever ingenious eagle scout, devised a solution of sweatshirt arms cut off and used as a kind of legwarmer/slipper. While I wondered what people were thinking as we headed back down, it worked great. Needless to say, we stopped by the Sierra Trading Post shop on the way home and I got a new pair of boots.
This way - - we were able to take another hike a few weeks later with our neighbors/coworkers, Bruce and Deb. Hiked to the Loch Leven Lakes. It was a good, hard six miles, and we couldn't understand where the girls in flip flops with only an I-pod and their 6 week old puppy thought they were going when we passed them on our way home.
And just to stick with this outdoorsy theme, we took Bruce and Deb up on their offer to borrow their giant two person sea-kayak one Sunday evening. We strapped the kayak on top the pickup and took a quick jaunt up to Pyramid Lake (about 15 minutes north of us). Roc either ran alongside us on the shore or swam out to meet us. Kyler hauled him up into his seat, and our pup seemed quite content to observe the lake from above the water.
