Welcome to the Hotel Skocik

I had to travel to Boulder, CO for work this week. The meeting went well and I was even able to go for a hike with my brother-in-law, Mark, before I had to head to the airport.

We went on a hike West of Golden in an area that had fires recently. There were a lot of scorched areas and trees but it will most likely recover in several years. The wind had picked up a lot throughout the day and some of the gusts during the hike nearly knocked us over.



While I was away, Chris was busy getting the house ready for guests. My parents and the car club came down on Thursday evening for our Friday White House tour. We all traveled into D.C. and got to stand in the really long line. Finally, we made it in the White House (with only one incident) and were able to make our way through the East Wing. While we were near the entrance area, the Obama’s dog, Bo, walked past to go out for a potty break. He was incredibly well trained – he was off leash and didn’t even look at anyone in the hall.

After the tour, we all split up to do other D.C. things – we went to the WWII monument, Tidal Basin for the cherry blossoms, and the FDR memorial.

We had 6 people staying with us and another 6 came for dinner and a house tour on Friday night. They were all very impressed with the work that we’ve completed (I’m sure they’re hearing plenty of stories from my parents!).

On Saturday, we went with my parents to Old Ellicott City to walk around for a little while. It was a nice day – but cold! The rest of the evening, we chatted and played games.

Everyone left early yesterday so we did have time to do a few things around the house. It was a much milder day so we worked outside for awhile. Chris took the chainsaw to half of the walnut tree near the garden – it was huge! We spent a long time cutting it up and preparing bundles of branches to set out for the county to pick up tomorrow.


We plan on working in the house over the next few weeks to start organizing – it makes it very difficult to work when you don’t know what you have or where it is located. Oh, and we have a little thing called taxes to finish…