suckers!

Matt and I are such suckers. If you're high school age or younger (none of this $40 magazines to help some twenty-year-old "underprivileged youth" earn points to go on a trip), we will buy something from you. Popcorn, cookie dough, cookies...we're so easy.

So let's just ignore my blog radio silence of half a year and proceed, shall we?

horseback riding to (well, from - that's why we're wet) a waterfall

This summer we went to Costa Rica with Mom and Dad after having the winning bid on the trip at BBQ with the Band. It was pretty freaking awesome. I'd love to go back sometime, sooner rather than later. It's the kind of place (especially where we were) that makes you want to come back and bring along someone who hasn't been there before to show it off. And the Costa Rican people are so incredibly nice! We are really thankful to the Lundbergs (the villa owners) for putting together such an amazing package to donate to the band auction and being so helpful with planning our trip.

I zipline upside down

Matt on the Tarzan swing after ziplining

my first time surfing!

boogie boarding

I love this picture of Matt

being tourists at Manuel Antonio

Mom being fabulous at the villa plunge pool (don't shoot me Mom)

Matt and I show off our "war paint" on our rafting trip down the Savegre River

More pictures at roberts.overt.org.

In July Emily and Rick gave us all the gift of Liam Wallace Roberts. Matt and I are loving being an uncle and aunt. Liam is such a cool little dude. He is sitting up now and just had his six month check up. He's 28 inches long and over 17 pounds. And I have SO much respect and admiration for Emily - she delivered all 9 pounds of baby naturally, in labor for almost an entire day.








At the end of September Matt and I went to Telluride, Colorado and stayed at Uncle Charlie's place. The cast of characters included John and Susie, and for week two, Luke, Aunt Shell and Uncle Mark (and minus Matt - he had to go back to work). We got to watch the colors change, and right at the end of the trip, we had six inches of snow!

John and I took a hike through the snow. There was a snowball fight.

Before we actually got to Telluride, we stopped in Durango. While Susie cruised the town, John and Matt took me on my first backpacking trip. We spent two nights in Chicago Basin, accessed by the Durango/Silverton railroad. They basically stop the train in the middle of nowhere, throw you your gear, and wave goodbye. You hike up to the basin and camp, then when you're done, you hike back down and catch the train back to Durango.

view from camp

I was happy I lugged my hammock along

It was a lot of fun, but I got SO cold at night. Also, we (I) had this ridiculous hope that we could climb a 14er on the trip, but having no time to acclimate to the altitude made that not happen. We were all sucking wind on our day hike and had to accept it wasn't possible. Later we heard that the way up was pretty much impassible anyway, so we would've nearly killed ourselves trying to summit and been foiled near the top anyway. We met a couple that intended on marrying each other at the top and they couldn't do it (apparently you can self-marry in Colorado with the proper procedure).

Our time in Telluride was very fun, full of hiking and fishing, enjoying the beautiful weather, playing games at night, and eating good food (everything tastes better after a hike!). I'm so thankful for getting to go. Colorado = happiness.

Let's see, what else...

My one-year anniversary of my brain surgery was October 20. I celebrated by getting my DBS unit turned up to 6. It's nice to have hair again, although I am enjoying keeping it short.

Thanksgiving was a festive affair. Emily, Rick, and Liam hosted us at their place and Rick's smoked turkey was fabulous.

And in the blink of an eye it was Christmas. We celebrated with all the usual suspects. My big presents were a Kindle Fire and a portable cross-stitching frame, and Matt got an ASUS Transformer Prime tablet, which is really fun to play with.

And then it was 2012. At which point I started feeling guilty about my poor neglected blog. So three weeks later I'm doing something about it. Hi people! Pene and Piper say hi too.

Maybe I'll write more now that Matt's starting to become the invisible husband thanks to tax season...