Way too long since an update, so let's see how short I can keep everything.

Took 5 weeks off to stay at home with Renee. That was pretty cool. Time went really fast, hard to believe that I'm back at work already.

We put a few more pictures of her up, and more should hopefully be coming soon.

John and Lisa got engaged! A huge congratulations to them! Julie and I are both very happy for them. They'll be getting married on St. Patrick's Day 07! John has asked me to be co-best man, and Lisa asked Julie to be co-matron of honor (yup, two of each!). We're so excited! It's a huge honor for one of us to be asked, but both...that's very cool. To make this more interesting, John is one of my last guy friends to get married. Can we say bachelor party to end all bachelor parties? I'm wondering how many days we'll need for it. Vegas has high probabilities.

Oh, and just to scare everybody, John said kilts for the wedding will be acceptable. Yup. Me in a kilt. Be glad there's lots of beer. 8-)

Took 8th place in the last finals of Badger Poker which was very cool. Got a nice chip set for making the final table of the finals. Lost to a 3 outter on the river which always hurts, but no other poker story matters other than this: A bit over an hour in to the tournament I flopped a royal flush. And after checking, the other guy in the hand pushed all in with his AQo that hit top pair. I took that deck with me when I left for the night. 8-)

The skiing season is sadly over, but we had some fun banquets to end it with. At the Tyrol Basin Ski Patrol banquet, I received the award for Instructor of the Year, which was very cool. Also, Julie was elected to the board of directors, so she'll be joining me in an at-large position. Guess we'll need to line up baby sitters for board meeting nights!

A few weeks later, the South Central Region banquet was held. It was held at the Capital Brewery, so we had really good beer, and food catered by Club Tavern. They've got really good BBQ...mmm... When the awards portion of the evening came out, Tyrol ended up getting four, which was huge! John Kokott received a Purple Merit Star, which is awarded for saving a human life, and even then is not often given out. It's one of the highest if not the highest individual honors a patroller can get. We were all very excited when Tyrol Basin Ski Patrol was named the large patrol of the year for the region. Nancy Cahill was awarded a National Appointment, which is another very high honor for a patroller. To get it you need at least 10 years on patrol, at least senior standing, and have been active in the region or as a patrol director for your patrol. Not many people meet the qualifications for this, and Nancy got it in her second year of eligibility. And last but not least, I received the region Outdoor Emergency Care instructor of the year award for the region. I had no idea that I had even been nominated, so it was quite surprising and left me (almost) speechless when I got it.

Hmm...that's about all that I can think of right now. I'm sure I've missed something, so I'll just have to post more when I remember it lol.