Mi Abuelo

One of the main reason's there have been so few posts in the past two weeks is not only the move, but lots of traveling to and from St Louis. I just got home today from St Louis after attending my grandfather's funeral. Today's post is dedicated to him - Joseph "Sophie" Menendez.

He was born Joseph Menendez, but all his soccer buddies and the Spanish society of St Louis knew him as "Sophie" or as my grandmother used to call him: "Soph". This was due to the fact that so many of the Spanish society had similar names - Joseph, Jose, etc that they all had to have nicknames. His best friend was "Apples" and there were others: "Cotton", "Big Blo" (because he was really loud apparently), "Gloves" (the keeper on the soccer team) and I can't remember all the rest.  He was "Sophie" because that was his mom's name (my great-grandmother) and they all knew her. I knew her as "Wella" because when my Dad was a kid, he couldn't say "abuela" right! Wella was the one who came over from Spain.

My grandpa had two brothers - the older brother died when he was just a baby. He also had a younger brother named Vincent. They were some handsome boys!!

Joseph and Vincente Menendez

When my grandpa was in high school, he met my grandmother - Rose Burgess. They used to go out dancing with their friends all the time.

Grandma and Grandpa dancing, one of these photos was inscribed with the message "Always You - Sophie"

 It turns out my father did not inherit any of these dancing skills (or desire to dance) which is kinda sad. But Grandpa and Grandma used to go out dancing, he swept her off her feet, and they got married.

Bridal Party 

Rose and "Soph"

Grandpa also fought in World War II. He was in the army and saw a good bit of action. He used to say "hey Val, have you seen my horse?" and pulled out a photo of him on Goering's horse after the war had ended. Otherwise he never mentioned the war at all. Here are a few more handsome photos of my Grandpa - the soldier.

                       

          
                                   

"Pacific War Ends"

Spanish Society (Grandpa is middle row on the Right)

As I said before, my Grandpa was part of the Spanish Society of St Louis. He played soccer with a bunch of them as well. In fact, he tried out but did not make the 1950 US World Cup Team. This was the team that beat England and was a HUGE upset for the World Cup. They made a movie about it -The Game Of Their Lives.  This team was made of guys from St Louis and New York. Some of my grandpa's friends and teammates from St Louis made the team. If you look at the IMDB link, one of the characters is Harry Keough. He was at my Grandpa's funeral this weekend along with his sisters. A really nice guy, and it was almost like meeting a celebrity, as he is a common name in our house and famous soccer player as well!

Eventually Grandpa was inducted into the Soccer Hall of Fame (along with Harry Keough and many of the others). At the funeral, about 8 of the Hall of Famers showed up in their medals and were a sort of "honor guard" for him. They wore their jackets and their medals around their necks, and it was beautiful. Very moving and touching, and none of us had any idea that they were going to do it. It was really nice. 

After my Grandmother passed away about 5 years ago, my grandpa remarried a wonderful woman named Butsy who really was great for him. She was truly a blessing and took great care of my grandfather. We had a great time taking him to dinner every weekend last year. These next few pictures are from one of my favorite dinners with Butsy, Dad, and Grandpa at a Tapas restaurant for dinner. 

"Topless?!?" - Grandpa 

"No Tapas!" - Dad 

"Topless?"

 "NO.... TAPAS!" 

"Butsy... Steve's taking us to a topless restaurant!!!" - Grandpa

We were celebrating Christmas so we got funny hats. Butsy wasn't a fan, but Grandpa was a good sport. I think the elf hat was made for him!

It's really hard to believe that this was just a year ago. My Grandpa passed away last friday after being in the hospital for several weeks and the hospice for one. I was lucky to have been able to spend lots of time with him last year when I was in St Louis for rotation, and we went to dinner every weekend. I also got to spend time with him recently when he was in the hospital, and he sang his spanish songs to and with me. Always wanting hugs and kisses before we left, always "doing fine". He was always in good spirits, ready to tease and joke and sing.  I miss him so much already. 

"With Love - Soph"

Happy Fall!

A tragedy my friends, a tragedy! I truly intended this blog to be completely full of lots of photos and very little words. But, oh patient friends of mine, my camera cord has mysteriously disappeared! Ok so maybe not that mysterious. Basically it wasn't in the box marked "cords" which probably means it was left behind in NC, or in one of the few boxes I haven't yet unpacked (i'm getting close)!! This is very sad as all the wonderful pictures of mountains and Kansas (hah) and wine making (yum) and llamas are all stuck in my camera with no way out!! you'll have to make do with your imaginations for now.

I'm currently sitting on my new, comfy love seat! Until now, I have been sitting on the floor (no chairs yet)! I also bought a desk chair today, but it's one of those build it yourself types, and I am wayyyy too tired for that tonight. I was lucky to have Carolyn's husband Paul and one of the Air Force Cadets (Paul is a captain and teaches at the air force academy) move the love seat for me in the Cadet's truck! They were wonderful. I pulled out my baking skills so I could have something to give the Cadet. Luckily I planned right, and Rachel's Mexican Brownies were a huge success and he ended up taking most of them home for his friends. I'm finishing off the rest of them now... yum!

Sadly, not too much going on the past two days besides me moving lots of boxes, tearing at pounds of duck tape until I found the box with my pocket knife, unpacking things, cleaning things, and shopping for things. I have acquired a GIGANTIC  bed.  It is a wonderful pillow-top bed, and this time I decided to invest and get Queen size. I truly thought my last bed was a Queen, but turns out it was just a Full. How did I discover this you may be asking yourself (or why didn't I know this in the first place). Welll I go to put my sheets and wonderful "fluffy chicken butt" down comforter on the bed, and the sheets BARELY make it, they dont even go under all four corners! The comforter looks ok, but not quite covering the edges. OOPS! Oh well, for now it will work, and I have a wonderful gigantic comfortable bed.

I ran today (and by ran I mean jogged a little, stopped to huff and puff and catch my breath, walked a little, jogged a little... not used to the altitude yet) through these beautiful running paths just down the street from where I live. There are gorgeous views of my apartments against the mountains, but of course, no photos here. *sigh* I had promised Nikki, my wonderful amazing ortho rotation CI (clinical instructor for you non-PT types) lots of beautiful mountain pictures so she could live vicariously through me, and to convince her to come visit soon, but sadly my plan is being foiled by the runaway camera cord.  Well Nikki, you will just have to come out and visit to see the beautiful mountains! You know little Peyton is itching to start skiing ASAP (none of this basketball stuff, I see winter olympics in her future) ;)

Did you all see the moon tonight? A beautiful Harvest moon! I can't believe its fall already. I can't believe I'll be starting work in a little over a week. Exciting times my friends, exciting times.

Thanks to ALL OF YOU for being such wonderful readers of my blog (even if there is sadly a remarkable lack of comments. Except from Theresa... thanks T!) But I love you all and you are all wonderful! Thanks for reading despite the lack of photos, the inconsistent blogging, and the forgetting to mention some VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE on some of the busier blog days. You are all wonderful and you need to come visit!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for coming all the way out here and knowing only one person really, but then I look at the mountains and feel the breeze blowing through my windows, and I'm quite happy.  It helps to have all my wonderful friends and family supporting me! I miss you all!

Happy Fall! :)

"I am drinking the stars!" Dom Perignon, on his first sip of bubbly Champagne

Yesterday evening, Carolyn and I drove out into the prairie lands of Colorado. Let me back up. For those of you who have no clue who Carolyn is, she is the wonderful older sister of one of my best friends from middle school. Her and her husband have been feeding and housing me the past 3 days, until I move into my apartment (today!) they have been really wonderful and helpful to me!

So she and I drove into the prairie. Think rolling hills of wheat and long yellow grass and this weed called Mullein that looks like a furry cactus-type plant. Here's a photo I found via google image. The rumor is that the tallest one you see shows how much snow you can expect for total accumulation during the winter. They are looking pretty tall right now so that is exciting!! Every time I drive through the prairie lands I think of this:

An Emigrant Train Attacked by Hostile Indians on the Prairie

So we end up at this beautiful farm in the middle of no where. Her friends live there with their 3 adorable daughters (ages 9, 6, and 3) and 7 llamas. Apparently llamas deter Coyotes (and save you money on your taxes).  Abby's (the 6 year old) favorite is Google, but I didn't meet him as he was far out in the field with the other boy llamas. I did meet Andy (a female llama), the girls took us to the barn to show us, and she came running in. Those things are HUGE! And Carolyn told me not to pet her or she may spit at me, so then i have this huge think poking its head towards me and snuffling, and the kids are all over it petting it and I am freaking out! The little girl was telling me "it's ok, don't be scared! I'm not scared!" And she gives me a treat to give the thing, and it comes over to get it and i drop it before she can get it! So Abby tells me that she can give me a longer one. So I give that one to the llama and survived without getting covered in llama spit. I did get some cute pictures!

So the whole reason we were at the farm was because this family had built a warehouse and started making their own wine! And I'm not talking one or two bottles here, last year they put out about 1500 bottles! So Carolyn and her husband Paul are now in on the collaboration and expect to make/get 70 - 80 bottles this year. We went there because the grapes were at the perfect fermentation for pressing! There was this huge slatted barrel thing that you put the grapes in, and the juice drips down into a big bucket. You put slabs of wood on top of it and turn the press to squish the juice out of the grapes. When you're done, they pump the juice into carboys (5 or 3 gallon jugs) to store until its time to "re-rack" it, essentially remove dried yeast. After you take all the wood out of the press, there is a cake of dried grapes! It looks really cool. So we pressed about 7 or 8 giant trash bins full of fermented grapes. Carolyn and I were pressing queens! There were about 8 of us there working, cleaning and sanitizing carboys, pumping grapes, sifting the grapes out of the bins into the presser, pouring the juice, cleaning the press, etc etc. We were there from 5 until about 11 pm. The sunset out there was gorgeous! And the moon was HUGE last night. It was beautiful. We took one break for dinner but otherwise pressed through the night. I learned lots of interesting things about the wine pressing process! The mix of the yeast, and the handling of the CO2 and preventing oxidation and all sorts of wonderful things you never really think about when you're drinking wine!

Also they got to pick the type of wine they were making based on the grapes (of course), but there were some really interesting mixes. Of course we got to drink some of the wine from previous years, my favorite was the Alicante! This year they made an alicante/Merlot mix. One of my favorite wine's to press was the Pinot, but we also did cab sav/merlot and a shiraz/cab sav among other combinations of more grapes i can't remember. It was lots of fun! Now it's the next morning and my hands are still stained purple from all the grapes! We've had 3 bottles of wine the past few days I've spent with them, the wine that they made last year. And it was really interesting because 2 were the same bottle of wine but had a different level of bubbly or "frissant" almost like champagne! It was slightly carbonated and delicious. Yay wine!

Today will be eventful, as I am moving into my new apartment!! I'm sooo excited to have my own place and to start getting things settled and organized. Tonight I think I will bake some brownies and have some wine to celebrate!

"uhh well, this was an evil, magic SPACE rock, Jimmy! ooooo!"

http://comics.com/get_fuzzy/2010-09-21/

Photographic genius

Courtesy of National Geographic. http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/239/cache/mahout-elephant-underwater_23937_990x742.jpg

A Huge Thank you to Theresa for sending me this link! Can you imagine what this is like for the photographer? They get paid to travel the world and see AMAZINGLY wonderful things. And not just to see them, but they find them! Their own crazy photography adventure. I mean how do you think one accomplishes this shot? And I'm no photographer by any professional wonderful means, but this couldn't have been easy. The other question is... HOW DO YOU STAND ON ELEPHANT TUSKS??! So yeah, I'm a little jealous of the national geographic photographer's life. They get paid to travel to exotic places to see unique things. When I retire (IF I can retire!) I'm going to travel the world. :)

Next on my immediate list of foreign travel destinations, in order, are Sweden, Greece, back to Spain and Vienna, Alaska, oh and New Zealand would be awesome. One day my friends, one day!  

"Are you from here?" "Why yes, as of two days, I am!"

Hello my chums! I am alive!! And finally updating the blog!! I apologize profusely for those of you that have missed your daily dose of absurd updates. But it has been quite a busy few days! Thank you for following up and reading despite my awfulness at keeping up with the blog. I <3 you all!

Last Friday, Dad and I left St Louis at 9:30 PM and drove allllll night to Colorado Springs! We did the drive in about 12 hours or so, and probably about 8 of those were spent in Kansas. Let me tell you, driving through Kansas is boring, but driving through Kansas through night is worse! The only good thing is the extreme amount of stars you see! Lots of stars, trucks, and more stars, and the occasional gas station. There were t-shirts that said "Dear Auntie Em, hate you, hate kansas, taking the dog. love - Dorothy"  Now we have all seen that quote before, but it is HILARIOUS and so wonderfully true when it's 3 am and you are in BFE, buying m&m's to keep you awake at a gas station from a huge fat old trucker guy who talks in grunts and one syllable words. But we finally emerged from Kansas into western Colorado prairie and all I could imagine was riding through on a wagon being chased by Indians!! There is no where to hide!

We got into the springs around 8:30 AM and found the most delicious crepe place! I had a crepe that was stuffed with Brie and Almonds and pears! Then I found an apartment and applied and got it! It's in the foothills of Cheyenne Mountain (which apparently is where N.O.R.A.D lives) and is beautiful.  So the first couple days were spent finding a bed and some basic furniture.

Yesterday Carolyn and I drove out to Cripple Creek, an old mining town in the middle of the valley of the mountains. The ride there was gorgeous, lots of gold and red and yellow Aspen leaves. Then we got to Cripple Creek and found a brothel museum. Yes that's right, a Brothel Museum.  It was in this beautiful old historical building. And we walk in and there's this 75 year old woman sitting there. So we give her our money, and she took us on the downstairs tour. Apparently this house the gentlemen had to be screened and show proof of income (mostly millionaires). They charged 100 per trick, and 250 per night, which is the equivalent of $9000 in todays money.  Technically it was illegal, but the city charged taxes on their profits, and they used the money to pay the policemen to keep the town safe! They were only allowed out downtown when the "respectable ladies" would be at home doing their laundry.  The house itself was gorgeous! Old antique furniture made of hand carved oak and cherry. There was a tiger wood framed mirror in one of the girls' room! A beautiful old piano downstairs, apparently they had a hired musician. They also had a bar and card-room, the wall paper was original (from 1890) and it was made of oatmeal paper imported from Europe. It was beautiful! The girls bedrooms were upstairs, and there were beautiful hand made quilts made of silk, one was made of handkerchiefs sewn together with lace. There was even a hand pump vacuum cleaner which looked something like this. vacuum cleaner  you have to scroll down, but it's the one advertised in the paper. So we went back downstairs to look at the merchandise, and ended up buying shot glasses. They have a picture of the house on it and says "Old Homestead House - where the customer always comes first"

Then today, after going to work and chatting a bit with my bosses and meeting everyone else, I decide I was gong to go for a hike! So I went up to Seven Falls, which turns out is about 4 minutes away from my apartment. Before I headed out there, I went to REI to pick up some sunscreen and bear spray. Yep, bear spray. My boss said I should get some, and that it works on any animal, including humans, and that mace is illegal in the city.  Carolyn says that every 8th time you go hiking, a mountain lion tracks or watches you!! So i went to REI to look for some, and of course I couldn't find any and felt like an idiot going up to the guy and asking "do you have any bear spray?" so I decided to chance it, and bought sunscreen and a hiking trail guide for colorado springs area hikes.



There will be a blog hopefully on wednesday that is just packed full with pictures from all these adventures!

"Lion!!! Raaarrrrrrrr!"

Kids are adorable. I got to see my three cousins yesterday, Jenna, Joey, and Jace. Yes they are all J names and yes it is on purpose! My Aunt Jamie and Uncle Joe decided to make it a family "J".  I haven't seen Jace since he was two and stringing maybe 3 or 4 words together. I got to spend 3 months with them last year, and it took him almost all of that time to accept me as family. I knew I had reached that point, when I walked into the door of their house and runs up to me, hands me his bottle and screams "MILK!!!" "MORE!!!" It's good to be loved :) 

He is 3 now, and yesterday I saw him and the kids for the first time this year. :Jenna (who is 10 tomorrow!) and Joey who is 6; both ran up to me and hugged me and started talking about school and soccer and all sorts of things, and Jace didn't really pay me any attention. So I finally asked... hey Jace do you know who I am? and he yells at me "VALRY!!" By the end of the day he was hanging onto me and slamming his face into mine for kisses. TOO CUTE.

Tonight I am hoping that I'll get to go to see Joey's soccer game! And Jenna's birthday is tomorrow so I'm off to find her a card and a gift. What do you get for a ten year old girl? Do you go traditional 'Claire's' route with cheap jewelry that will last maybe 5 days? A purse? Lipgloss? A toy or puzzles? Yesterday she came up to me and said "Valerie... in 3 days I'm going to be a pre-teen!" And of course, her head is up to my shoulder now (I know I know, not hard to do cause we're just sooooo short). They are all growing up!

And Joey is this adorable tiny little blond boy (He's six but looks four) who wants to play hockey, and soccer, and do karate. He also came in and said "Valerie, guess what? We're getting a lion!"
"oh you are? and where will the Lion live?" - me
"he's going to live in our backyard. In a cage. wait not a cage, we're getting a fence for the lion! And it will have to be careful cause we have a trampoline too" - Joey
"LIONNNN! RARRRRRR" - Jace (attacking me with 'claws' out)
"it's going to be a BIG Lion!" - Joey
"RARRRRRRRRRR" - Jace
"Joey.... we're NOT getting a Lion!!!" - Jenna
"Lion!!! Raaaarrrrrrr! Lions eat you!!" - Jace

Miss these kids!

Oh and today there were about 400 motorcycles parked in front of our hotel! I got lots of good photos... but can't put them on here yet. :(
Thanks for reading despite my horrible lack of photos! It will be more visually exciting as soon as I get to Colorado and find my cord!!