This last weekend was pretty good. Friday night we were still out skiing at Tyrol Basin. I had a ski along with a potential new candidate that went really well. I hope this guy decides to stick around and do all of the training. It's a lot of work the first year, but we have so much fun on patrol that you hardly notice the hours go by. And Friday night was no exception to the fun. We were joking around all night since there was hardly any patrol work that had to be done. And as usual, we closed the bar after closing the hill 8-)

On Saturday we slept in a little bit and then we went to look at new Subaru's at Don Miller. They were actually having a sale, which doesn't happen often on Subaru's, since they're so popular they don't need to hold sales to sell cars. With our Outback pushing the 130k mark for miles, it looked like a good time to look for a new one. We were planning on looking mostly at a new Outback, but after looking at everything they had, we ended up buying a Forester instead. Very comfy, lots of room, great visibility, Julie got her heated seats 8-), same performance as an Outback, but Forester is cheaper. Less storage room than an Outback, but we're going to get a ski rack this time, so that won't matter. We'll also need a kayak rack, because besides over $2800 off the price of the vehicle before , it also came with a free kayak! Julie was very psyched for that! We also got $3000 for our trade in, which considering the miles, replaced odometer, door dings, and as we washed the car and found the rusting out bottoms of the doors, was actually a pretty good price. I had been hoping to get more, but as I went over the vehicle and found more and more things wrong with it myself, I felt pretty good on getting the 3k. Because it was the weekend they had to wait until today to get all the financial stuff through, but we get to pick it up after work today.

That night was our friend Todd's birthday. We hit Old Chicago for beverages and munchies. Unfortunately, Renee was being really colicky, so Julie decided to stay home, but she let me go out. Officially, as we're all telling Julie, the party sucked. Unofficially...well, it may have been highly entertaining, but that's classified information. Of the six of us there, I found out that only one other person had ever heard of or done an Irish Car Bomb. Still being on a St. Paddy's day kick we ordered up a round of them. To find that at Old Chicago, it's served in pint glasses! That was the biggest one that I've ever done. Two of the girls took about 4-5 tries each to get it all down, and so it was curdling on them. Eeewww... I started third or fourth among the six of us, and of course I finished first 8-)

On Sunday it was Scott's birthday. His wife had planned out a surprise day for him months ago and somehow kept it mostly a secret. Scottish dad let slip that a bunch of us were going to Chicago for the day, but he didn't know what we were doing. So when we pulled into the parking lot for the Briar Street Theater, home of the Blue Man Group, he got quite excited for the show. I was the only one who had never heard or seen them before. Obviously I knew what kind of stuff they did, but not much more than that. But everyone had an awesome time. I was laughing so hard at some points I was fearing for my health. 8-) Afterwards we hit an Italian restaurant up the street and then made our way back.

The best part of this day was that my in-laws were watching Renee all day, and she did so well for them! We were gone for almost exactly 12 hours, and she took bottle feedings from them with no problems and hardly cried at all. Julie was ecstatic that it went so well. Which means that we might finally be able to do things like go out to movies and nice dinners again! Well, and pay a babysitter too, but hey, I'll take it!