Melted Karpen

Last weekend, I spent an evening with Ellie and her parents.  To my great delight, when I arrived, I discovered that she has learned to say my name!  Turns out, when you hear "Karpen, hug!" (that's about what it sounds like - the 'm' isn't quite there yet), you'll do just about anything for the rest of the evening.  Including laying on the floor and being a jungle gym. 

Okay, I would've done that anyway, but it was still too cute.

Proof.

End of the evening: "Nigh nigh, Karpen!"

Aww.  Night night, Ellie!

Rage

Another reason I love where I work: my amusing coworkers.

Several of us often use our lunch hour to play games.  The recent game of choice is a card game called Rage.  (Compliments of my friend Mex.  You didn't know your influence had spread like that, did you?  It's a hit at work.)

After lunch one day, we go an email from the winner.

"Sorry you all lost.

Signed, Laura"

A response was immediately sent.

"Laura:

Signed, Brian"

Bet You've Never Seen One of These Before

A couple of weeks ago, my company sponsored a snowman-decorating contest for its 600ish home office employees.  The actuaries in our company usually aren't known for their creativity in such pursuits.  This year, a few of us decided to form a team and try to change that.  Ideas were floated around before the actual day of decoration as to how we should decorate our snowman.  These suggestions ranged from the more traditional to the rather inventive:

• Snowman with a sled
• Snowman in a penguin costume
• Snow angel
• Snow bunny
• Actuary snowman
• Cowboy snowman
• Beach bum snowman
• CEO snowman
• Sumo snowman
• Repunzel snowman
• Fire-breathing dragon snowman
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle snowman

The winner: fire-breathing dragon snowman!  Can't say we won't get points for creativity.... if we can do it in such a manner that anyone else will know what it is, that is....

This is what we started with.  Austin wasn't at work the day we picked up the snowman, so it ended up in his cube when he got there the next morning.  As you can see, he's no small snowman!

The notes on the snowman particularly cracked me up.

Some of the competition.  I never knew so many snowmen wore vests!!!

Here's what we ended up with.  I was quite impressed!  If nothing else, we certainly win the least-traditional-snowman award.  He wasn't quite completed in this picture, but it's the one where you can see his head the best.

The completed fire-breathing-dragon-snowman, complete with a few unfortunate competitors on the ground in front of him. Oops, must've gotten a little too close.

Unfortunately, with 30-some entrants, we did not even make top 3.  This year, we worked on the creativity end of things.  Next year, we'll work on making more friends so they can vote for us :)

Snow Much Fun

What do you get when you take 2 snow enthusiasts, a pile of snow, and a weekend together?  Scroll down to find out :)

A trip to Spring Mill State Park

The first part was all nice and plowed, though some chose to ignore that...

Uh oh.  Can't go any farther?  Fleece is appalled!

We can fix that :)

Ah.  Fresh, undisturbed snow.  Let's walk!  Here are all of the pretty snow pictures, before we get to the goofy ones.

Thumbs-up for the swimming pool.  Who's in?

 

Trails!  Trail 5 goes straight to... the lake??

Kam thought it would be great fun to see a duck fall through the ice.  Or something like that.  Whatever it was, she was wishing harm on the ducks.  Gasp!

 Documenting our adventure

There shall be no guessing who's been here.

An artist always signs her work.

Look at all of that snow!  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  It's too.... neat.

Before:

How much damage can we do?

Quite a bit, turns out

After: our Family Circus-style tracks

Good thing....

A) We're not vehicles

B) There's no grass

Next stop: Playground.  In the end, this slide didn't make the cut.

This one did.

A little action for you....

 

Getting "warm" and doing a little adjusting - to be honest, this pic made the cut just because I like the top of my hat :)  Gives new meaning to the term "snow boots" too, doesn't it?

Pretty scenery, pretty Kammy :)

Then there's goofy Kammy :)

And finally, destructive Kammy, playing the role of giant destroyer of tiny snow cities, a la Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame.

I think we go left here.

Quick!  Hide Fleece!

My turn for some destruction.  There were a lot of 'no ____ beyond this point' signs, including one for 'no games beyond this point'.  But we never saw one for 'no destruction beyond this point', so we took it upon ourselves to do so.

This was our 'destruction in honor of Kyle' moment.  We were sure if he were with us, he'd be knocking the icicles off of the bottom of the bridge with a long stick, or some such activity.  These are for you, Buddy!

I give this day 2 thumbs up!

Kam and Fleece each give it a big grin.

After our day in the park: Jug Rock of Shoals, IN, and a lookout point also in Shoals.

Congrats - you made it to the end!  Fun weekend with my Kammy :)