On New Year's Day, my cousins (Todd and Tyler) arrived to do some skiing. It was nice having guests, although one of my cousins clearly doesn't know how to behave away from home. We went to Winter Park on Saturday and had alot of fun.
It snowed most of the day, so the slopes were in excellent condition.
I was shocked the lift lines were so short. The economy must be keeping people at home. That means more skiing for me! 
My next guest was my sister, Becca "Smickers" Marshall. I was very excited for her to move out here. Timing became an issue with her move, so she needed a place to stay for a few months. She reveled in my cookie dough.
One of her first nights out, it snowed around 6". We hit the local sledding hills for some night sledding over the sleeping prairie dogs.
Beck was not adjusted to the altitude, but still was a trooper climbing the hills. I was looking pretty BA after a few sick runs down the hill.
Here is a video of Big Bad Beck flying down the hill face first. Listen closely because the first sound you will hear is the painful yelp of a prairie dog being treated as a mogul.
The next weekend I had more flatlanders visit. HL and the Gang from Kdot were in town for the national ASCE conference. We had a ridiculously good time in LoDo with the majority of the proof posted on facebook. Like a true Coloradoan, I awoke the next morning at 6:30am with a bumping head to go skiing.
I met more Kdot friends, Hovey and Frits, at Winter Park for more skiing. Little icy, but still fun.
Since my lease was up at the end of January, I decided to look at buying a house. I had saved quite a bit of money up since I am cheap, so I figured why not. I looked at 6 places in the Lakewood area and settled on this one.
It is a nice neighborhood with lots of parks nearby. The back yard is sizeable with lots of room for a dog. I loved the patio. It has a full basement, so it shouldn't feel too small for quite some time. Hopefully, if everything goes well, I will move in by the 24th of January.
For Christmas, I received a pair of snowshoes. I tried them out a bit near my apartment after we received all the snow we sledded on. I decided to go to Rocky Mountain National Park for a real test of the shoes.
The area was amazing with all the snow. I could not believe how many people were out there though. The parking lot was nearly full. The weather was unusually mild, but there was still plenty of snow near Bear Lake.
I hiked up to Dream Lake, then Emerald Lake. Snowshoeing was actually easier than I thought. The shoes have large claws to grip the snow. One thing that became a problem was I thought wearing gaiters would enough to wear since I would not be tromping through too deep of snow. I wore normal hiking pants under my gaiters. My lack of snow repellant attire became a problem when I discovered snow was flicking up on my backside with every step. Pretty soon the entire back of my pants was soaked. This became a greater problem as I approached Emerald Lake and the temperatures started dropping. Soon my pants were starting to freeze! This was not very comfortable. So the lesson learn is to wear snow pants even on a nice day. 
On the way out of the park (while my trousers were unthawing) I was surprised to see a herd of elk along the roadside.
I saw even more elk in the Moraine Park meadow.
More pics
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