Friday, December 28, 2007

Christmas Hike

We had a wonderful hike on Christmas day up to the top of the "PC Hill" behind our house. Tom and Tracey tested their new backpack for Marin, and Joe and I got to test out our new flip video camera. We made it to the top of the hill just as the bright sun was about to set. It was a perfect hike with the exception of the last 5 minutes when Marin's hands became ice cubes!

Now we'll have the opportunity to post more videos!

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Here comes Christmas!

I can't believe that Christmas is just around the corner! With our long, warm fall, it seemed so far away, but now it's nearly here. We now have snow and cold weather, and the ski resorts are finally getting enough snow for good coverage on the slopes.

Before the festivities of Christmas and New Year's consume us, I thought I'd better get another blog posted with some other events from this fall.

Our most exciting event was a trip out to Utica, IL for a Cronley family gathering to celebrate Mary's 70th birthday and Thanksgiving. It was such a treat to have all the Cronleys together! We all met at Grizzly Jack's Resort and stayed in two great cabins. The resort is adjacent to Starved Rock State Park and is complete with an indoor water park and amusement park. This provided constant entertainment for the kids (including my big kid!), as if being together with 12 cousins wasn't entertaining enough! What a wonderful reason to celebrate and be together.

Joe and I took a weekend trip down to Orlando in October. I was pleasently surprised at how much fun Disney World can be for adults! Thanks to our friends who work for Dinsey, we had great tickets and all the inside scoop on the parks. We visited Animal Kingdom, the Magic Kingdom, Epcot (where we enjoyed the International Food and Wine Festival), and MGM.




Joe got to spend a couple nights with John, Suzanne, and Clare in St. Louis after a meeting for work. We also had a fun visit from Tom and three other Navy pilots. They came to Utah and landed at Hill Air Force Base and stayed with us for the weekend. While we thought skiing might be an option, we opted hiking, since it was still to dry and warm at that time. My dad was able to prove to us that not too much has changed in Navy flight suits since the time he was in Meridian! Unfortunately for Tom (and Tracey) the trip home wasn't so fast after getting stuck in Oklahoma City.


We had a nice trip to Denver the first weekend in December for and early Christmas celebration with our close friends there. We also celebrated my parents' 60th birthdays (Dad's was in Nov, and Mom's is coming up in Jan!) with a small surprise gathering of their friends at Holly's house. We (the Brewers) are sure lucky to have so many friends that have essentially become our family! Joe and I also got to visit some of my high school and college friends.



Now we are taking care of our last-minute preparations for Christmas and enjoying all of it! We are very much looking forward to Tom, Tracey, and Marin's visit, as well as my sister and Tracey's mom. We have lots of fun activities planned, and hopefully we'll be able to keep up some blogs to share them with you all!
Merry Christmas!

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Notre Dame-UCLA 2007

Kelly's parents, Kelly's sister Holly, Kelly and I went the ND-UCLA football game on October 6, 2007. Jerry and Susan went to UCLA, back in the day. It was a great time, mostly because Notre Dame won its first game of the year, 20-6. UCLA played their 3rd string quarterback and turned the ball over 7 times. We ate lunch at the "The Beach Club" prior to the game, toured a bit of the UCLA campus, and tailgated at the ND Club of LA designated tailgate area. I spoke with former ND football stars Aaron Taylor (one of my classmates at ND) and Derrick Mayes. Derrick and I had a speech class at St. Mary's together my senior year. The game was great, but I don't think Jerry, Susan and Holly would be willing to sit in the ND section at a football game in the future. Prior to ND's 2007 game, ND hadn't played at the Rose Bowl since it won the 1925 Rose Bowl against Stanford. The coaches that year were Knute Rockne and Pop Warner. You may have heard of those guys.