Strawberry Hot Springs is just a few miles outside of Steamboat Springs and the drive there is beautiful. See the ski runs on that mountain?

Bob and I scheduled 1 hour massages at Strawberry Hot Springs. There are two separate massage huts built into the landscape. This was my hut. I felt like a hobbit:

My hut was built on top of a spring with 140 degree water, so the slate floors were naturally heated by the water below, as was the entire room. Strawberry Hot Springs runs off the grid so it was pretty cool to have my hut heated by water.

The springs have natural mineral water and there are several pools to soak in- the coolest of the hot pools is 102 degrees. Have I mentioned clothing is optional after dark?

See the pool with the ice on it? Well, it feeds into another pool below that was open for swimming. Bob was brave and climbed right in. I stood 2 steps deep in the water and that was enough for me. I made Bob promise not to pull me in and he stuck to his promise by not pulling me into the cold water. He carried me instead. I’m pretty sure I yelled “Oh gosh it is 8 degrees Celsius in here!” (So cold that I couldn’t even think in Fahrenheit.)

We climbed back into the hot water and soaked for about 45 minutes before heading back into town. By the time we left it was dark (still no naked people though). As we walked on a trail to get back to our car we saw the resident fox!

And now some random photos of nearby mountains:

In the photo below, those aren’t cows at the base of the mountain, they are buffaloes. Bob yelled at them as we drove by: “You suck this year!”.

Bob and I saw dozens of hand painted signs advertising a store called F.M. Light & Sons and we got sucked into their advertising and visited the store in town. It is a western store with thousands of boots and cowboy hats.

Cowboys must be rich. See that hat my cowboy is wearing? $70.

Those boots…the least expensive pair I saw were $200 and some were upwards of $700. Frankly, I wouldn’t spend a couple hundred bucks to step in horse poop all day.

Draw! I need to work on my finger guns because I don’t look threatening at all. I also look constipated. Hubster really needs to tell me when I make a stupid pose.

After our small cowboy adventure we moseyed across the street to a candy shop. That is my hand pointing to what I wanted. You can’t tell in the photo, but I pointed to one of everything.

We also went to the town gift shop/ drug store/ ice cream shop all in one. There was a retro soda fountain counter so of course we had to get ice cream. I was immediately impressed when the clerk coated the sides of my sundae dish with hot fudge and sprinkled peanuts inside BEFORE putting the ice cream in. How many times have you eaten the yummy top part of a sundae only to have the bottom plain with just ice cream? Not at this place. Toppings all around!

I sat next to a lady at the counter who told me the shop’s peanut butter ice cream was the closest she’s come to finding an exact flavour from her favourite ice cream shop in Fairhaven, NY. She seemed amazed that I heard of Fairhaven so we chatted about NY, Wolcott, salt potatoes, Dinosaur BBQ and other great NY foods. I love meeting people from little NY towns. Reminds me of what a small world it really is.

Next stop…Strawberry Hot Springs!

Bob and I went to Steamboat Springs for 2 nights to celebrate our 3 year anniversary. Bobby booked a cute condo located at the base of the ski slopes. We don’t ski.

Our first evening there was the town’s Merry Main Street parade. How convenient, I love touristy things and holiday things!

There were three Santas throughout the parade, which I thought would be confusing for children to see so many at once. One Santa was throwing candy canes to children and a little girl next to us didn’t get one. Her dad told her she was too naughty and that is why Santa didn’t give her candy. Poor kiddo.

There were groups of carolers around main street. This group was so cute and changed the words to christmas songs to reflect various local restaurants and businesses.

There was also a fruitcake tossing competition but we didn’t see where that was. We had dinner at Mahogany Bar & Grill instead, which was delicious! I had some cranberry stuffed chicken and Bob ordered elk. The chef is a hunter and killed the elk himself a few days ago. I tried the elk, ya’ll. Crazy, right? I’m the pickiest eater in the world and only order chicken when we go out to restaurants. Elk tasted no different than regular steak. It also helped that I had 2 margaritas before voluntarily trying elk.

Sunday: Coda realized the baby lock on the kitchen garbage cabinet was broken. He and Wells enjoyed some pizza crust before I caught them and cleaned up.

This is a good time to point out that Bob has a herniated disc in his back. Or maybe it is a slipped disc. Or maybe his back is broken. I can’t remember and that makes me a terrible wife. This back problem means he’s only been able to sit on the couch with heating pads and ice packs for the past few days. Every so often he voluntarily electrocutes himself with some electronic shock pack to increase circulation is his back. As a result, he hasn’t been able to help me with anything during the past few days.

Monday: Wellesley reeks. I don’t really want to google it to get the facts right because I’m sure the real explanation is utterly disgusting. Let’s just say dogs have glands where the sun don’t shine and the glands contain highly concentrated fart juice. I gave Wells a half bath- just washed his face and butt. A few hours later we realized that Coda smelled as well (we had only assumed it was Wellesley as his nic-name is Smellesley for a reason). I had to give him a bath, too. Then the house smelled like wet dogs all night.

Tuesday:

6:30 am: I arrive at work and my iPod is missing from the speaker dock that is always kept on my desk. Our office manager reviewed the surveillance video taken outside my office door and the only person to enter my office after I left was the cleaning dude. I decided not to file a police report. The cleaning dude has 2 small kids and if he’s that desperate for items to sell for profit around the holidays, I feel bad for him.

5:00 pm: Bob informs me that Paco appears to have lost more weight. Back in July he weighed 13+ pounds. At his annual check-up 10 days ago he had lost 2 pounds since July which is quite a lot for a cat. I called the vet to see if I could bring Paco in quickly to see if he was maintaining his weight from 10 days ago.

5:45 pm: I’m at the vet with Paco and he weighs 9 pounds 11 ounces. He lost another 2 pounds in just 10 days. Yikes. I make a lame joke to the vet about how I would like to lose 20% of my body weight in less than 2 weeks. The vet draws blood from him for testing. While that is happening, I cleaned up Paco’s stinky turd that he left in his car crate. Blood results pending. Should know by Thursday if they found anything wrong.

6:30 pm: I’m back home and give Paco a full bath since he pooped on himself again on the way home from the vet. Then I cleaned more poop out of his car crate.

6:45 pm: Bob informs me that Wellesley still smells and my half-bath from yesterday did not do the trick so I had to give Wells a full bath. I learned that he curls his lip up like Elvis when I wash his face. Yes I am wearing a plastic glove. If you could smell what comes out of him you’d understand that there is no way my bare hand is washing his rear end.

Wellesley Smiling from Bob Spryn on Vimeo.

7:05 pm: I tried to take a photo of wet, scrawny Paco. He was furious.

7:07 pm: Bob offers Paco some wet food, which he was never a fan of in the past. Paco is half wet half dry from his bath but he looks like a total sleazy grease ball.

7:11 pm: Paco finished every last piece of wet food. I just don’t understand how he’s losing weight when he still has an appetite. He licked the bowl so clean I could put it back in my cabinet without washing it.

7:12 pm: While I was busy watching Paco chow down the wet food, the dogs had gotten into the master bathroom trash and shredded some kleenex all over the floor.

In case you didn’t want to read all of this, I will summarize it for you. 1 kitchen garbage mess. 3 dog baths. 1 cat bath. 2 cat poops cleaned up in a cage. 1 bathroom garbage mess. 1 stolen iPod. 1 husband with a cripple back. 1 drained Jen. As a result, I’ve hit the bottle pretty hard the past few days.

Paco and I are getting ready for Santa’s visit so we’ve been wrapping presents to place under the tree and testing out milk and cookies. Personally, I think Paco has been “helping” because he’s been naughty all year and he’s just sucking up at last minute to get back on the nice list.

Tuck the ribbon under:

And pull into a knot while looking like a gremlin:

He did a very good job with that present.

New neighbours moved in next door last week so I made some chocolate chip cookies for them. I had about 8 dozen cookies so I kept some for myself and made a milk-tini. I prefer dirty milk-tinis (chocolate milk). I think Santa would appreciate the presentation of this.