Thanks @leafields. I appreciate your kind words. I've trained a few dairy food products teams in my day and always use that Napoleon Dynamite scene for motivation.
Spring break for Teacher started on St. Patrick's Day. She had all the fixins for corned beef and cabbage so I picked up things for dessert and headed over. When I arrived she had just gotten out of the shower so needed to dry her hair and I put together the meal and popped it all on the stove. While we waited for the corned beef to cook, we enjoyed cheese and crackers and pears. Let me tell you, Vermont goat cheese with blueberries and ripe pears are a delightful treat.
Just as we were dishing up the food, one of her friends from the east coast sent her some photos of a new granddaughter and asked what Teacher was doing, so she sent a picture of me plating up the meal. This caused many texts to be sent asking about who I was. Friend asked if I was her boyfriend. Teacher said she didn't like the term boyfriend at her age. So they settled that I was "her guy." I like that title.
We enjoyed the corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots quite a bit and finished off with chocolate pudding and whipped cream and green sprinkles. Then we watched the season premier of Ted Lasso and had some wonderful snuggle time.
On Sunday we ventured out for a final cold weather hike with a group of friends. We were going to an area that we haven't been to before in the winter (even if it was the last day of winter) so packed more gear than we needed. 17F at the trailhead! Snowshoes, ice treads, poles, etc. I decided to not even bring my snowshoes and it turned out fine. We only hit a few patches of packed snow and ice and while gingerly stepping along, I realized I didn't need the two pound ice treads and heavy trekking poles in my backpack. And by the end of the hike, we were all peeling off layers of cold weather gear.
But we had a wonderful hike. I've hiked and played with 7 of the folks that were along and made 3 new human friends and 5 new canine friends. One of the new human friends hiked with us for about a mile on the long uphill climb out of the canyon and she asked how we had met. So I told her a bit of the story of matching online, meeting on a group bike ride but it took us a while to actually talk and starting doing things together. Teacher chimed up that she agreed about our hesitancy, but for her, it all came together about 7 months after we started doing stuff when she went to Thanksgiving two years ago with my son and I to meet my family and decided that since I came from good people, maybe I was okay after all.
That brings me to our upcoming plans. Teacher and I got together to try and plot out the remainder of her spring break. She wanted to make sure and spend some time with her sister and nieces as well as trying to get in another day or two of skiing. As we talked about ski areas closer to her sister, we settled on one along the Front Range. She pointed out that we could maybe go see my parents on this same trip and as we looked at maps it became clear that my folks are sort of on the way to the ski area. It didn't surprise me that she wanted to include my people since she just fits in like she belongs with them. While we were planning, I went ahead and called my folks and they said they would be tickled to see us. We'll go spend the day and night with my folks, go skiing and then go to her sister's house for a few days.
Teacher said, after the call, "You know, I just love your parents and always want to see them!" Made me smile even more.
[This message edited by countrydirt at 4:22 AM, Tuesday, March 21st]