Into the Wild Wild West...

29 January 2014 - Happy Birthday my dear wife (37)

For Waileng's birthday, we went for a wonderful brunch at the Broadmoore in Colorado Spring. This place is really beautiful!!

Mila is enjoying her plate...

...and Waileng too (too many choices...)

...and at night, Mila had a special moment with mummy...

Happy Birthday Mummy...

...I love you!!!

...and sang her a beautiful song:

24 January 2014 - What? We are still renovating??? (Part II)

This easy closet web site is really addictive ;-)

A week ago, I was upgrading our lobby's closet and now I am starting the second part of the project in Wai Leng and Mila's rooms. (Need to make the dear wife happy, right?) ;-)

Wai Leng's room:

Waileng's closet projet

The "before"...

...and the "after", nice isn't?

Not very obvious as my measurements were a little tight and I had to cut one shelve to make the whole thing fit well. Next time I'll take more margin...

Overall it looks great and Wai Leng has much more storage than before. Even the baskets from Walmart fits well.

The famous Walmart basket ;-)

Mila's closet:

Mila's closet was super easy to fix after I learned my "mistakes" on the two previous ones.

This one is slightly bigger and I designed the shelves for the baskets so that to fit better.

Mila's closet project

And the final view...

During the same weekend, I also furnished Mila's room a little better as she has so many books all around:

A cute little girl's room...

The final project will be my closet but I'll do it this summer!!

19 January 2014 - Ski day like I love it...EXTREME!!!

Sometimes, it should be better to stay at home...but when the snow it too good, nothing stops me from going to the Rockies!!!

Today's destination: Vail, CO (100 miles / 160 km, it usually take 1h45min)

Denver --> Vail: 2h30min

Vail --> Denver: 5h30min

It's cold today, really cold (08:00am) @Vail resort

Lots of snow, yeah!!!

Traffic jam, the worst I ever been into...

I don't have more pictures but at some point, I could not see the car in front of me due to the strong wind blasts, crazy!!

I personally love this type of extreme conditions, and you?

18 January 2014 - More ski with Mila...

This winter season is amazing!! So much snow that I can't stay still in the house. Even the renovations can't make me stay more than a day ;-)

As usual, Mila and I (too bad that Mummy does not ski) are hitting the roads early in the morning (take off by 05:30am or 05:45am latest)... This is the price to pay if you do not want to be stuck in the traffic.

Today's destination: Breckenridge and ski school!!

Breakfast in Breck is the best (@La Française)

Blue bird day today, awesome!! (as usual)

View from the brand new "Peak 6", it's really windy up there!!!

Me and my new POC orange helmet ;-) (with built-in headphones!!)

Gorgeous view from the top (Imperial Express)

Mila is now "Level-4", congratulations!!!

Pick-up at the base (Peak-9). This was a great day!!

16 January 2014 - What? We are still renovating??? (Part I)

No sure why, but every now and then, I need to upgrade, renovate, replace something. I guess I am like that ;-)

So on the program today is to improve the (few) closets that we have and make them more usable.

I found this website while browsing around: http://www.easyclosets.com and I decided to give it a try.

Most of the houses here have built-in closet with a simple bar to hang things but this has the disadvantage of wasting a lot of space as there are no shelves. The "EasyCloset" company offers the possibility to make your now custom closet. You can choose from a variety of shelves, storage options. Everything is done online: you measure your closet, choose what you want and within 5 days you get everything at your door step. Pretty cool isn't?

To see what the product was like, we decided to start with the small closet in our lobby:

This is how the project rendering on their website

Boxes have arrived...what? so many?

This is how the "standard" closet look like in most houses (any closet)...pretty bad.

So the first step is to remove the old shelves / bar

Then patch the holes if you like things well done (like me)

Everything is very well protected for the shipping, awesome!!

Looks good, fits perfectly and I could add three shelves, sweet!!!

The shelves loaded with all our mess...

...and the final touch, an IKEA light which lights on when one opens the doors ;-)

"L'essayer c'est l'adopter" as we say in French ;-)

Love this thing, easy to fix and it looks really good!

For this closet, the cost was about $180.- a custom cut solution, this is really cool!

Next projects:

Mila's closet
Waileng's closet
Yanick's closet

10 January 2014 - Strong winds...really strong winds

Even with 300 days of blue sky and 65 days of snowy days (ok, it still rain a few days here and there), the wind can be really strong over here.

On January 10th, our BBQ, fully equipped and loaded with a full bottle a gaz just flew away...

Look by yourself:

This is a fairly large BBQ and it literally rolled over the heavy umbrella stand that was supposed to hold it.

Luckily, this is some good american quality and it is still working great!

25th December 2013 - Christmas holidays in Breckenridge

For the 2013 - 2014 Christmas holidays, we decided to rent the same cabin in Breckenridge as we did last year. The place is really convenient and the landlord has made the place a little bigger...surprise!!!

We celebrated Christmas at home this year (24th) but this was a rather small celebration as we had to leave early the next day for Breck. Here are a couple of pictures:

Our tiny Christmas tree. Next year, we will buy a real one ;-)

Thank you Levi for the Giant Hello Kitty

Thank you Tata Sabrina for the chocolate and the ski-school pass (xoxo)

Mila opening all her present

Mila and her new friend: Ubooly

Thank you Grand-Pa and Grand-Ma for the beautiful book

Now I am all set, we can go to the mountain ;-)

The next morning, we loaded the car and drove up to the beautiful mountains covered by snow!

Here is a view of the upgraded cabine: new TV, finally a dining table and a living room...but still with a poor internet connection (mandatory for Wai Leng has she does not ski...). You can see how it was before here.

The upgraded cabin...and there is as well a "fire place"!!!

We had a lot of fun in Breckenridge. We went to ski (of course) but we also walked around the village. Here some of the best pictures:

At the French Bakery on the Main street ("La Française")...

...Mila giving a hug to a wooden bear, so cute... (in Breck)

Mila next to a giant Marmot in Vail

Mila is having a special hot chocolate...with sprinkles ;-)

Mila digging a block of clay and searching for some precious rocks...

Mila at the ski-school in Keystone

Mila and Levi in a wagon in Keystone

Mila the ski-champion

Mila is helping carrying the clean clothes (Breck)

Watching a movie is better than getting ready for bed...

Beautiful Keystone ski resort (typical weather)

Ice Castle and Shrimps:

Like every year, Breckenridge is crafting a castle out of ice next the main car park, this place is really big, with colourful lights and fire places all around. A really cool place to visit before dinner.