Thanksgiving Roundup

We spent Thanksgiving in Bozeman with Jeff's family, including our new nephew, and stayed after the holiday for some Bobcat sporting events. It was an exciting and eventful time, so I'm going to take this post to give you the Roundup of all our activities!

We arrived in town on Wednesday evening and went more or less straight to Katie and Josh's house so we could see them and meet our new nephew, Brandon!


Jeff and I love him so much, already! He is a perfect little peanut and we're so excited to be a new Aunt and Uncle! It was pretty fun to see him, meet him, hold him, and watch how much he changed and grew even in just the short four days or so that we were there.

Harvey traveled with us this time, too, and so he met Brandon as well. Harvey was good with him.  He was cautious and gentle, but more than anything he was sort of afraid and leery of the baby. He did sniff him occasionally, but if Brandon started crying, Harvey pretty much hid. He doesn't like loud noises. Too bad for Harvey, he's going to have to learn to deal because Brandon isn't going anywhere! :)

Wednesday evening we also decided to head downtown to the Pour House to take in Cat Chat. It's a fun radio call-in show, typically featuring heavily on the football team and their season's progress. This week, Coach Ash also brought a few players along, Alex Eekhoff and Odin Coe, and they all discussed Thanksgiving plans and the upcoming FCS Playoff game against South Dakota State. I've been to Cat Chat a couple of other times and it's always fun. Cool to see the players and Coach relaxed and having a good time.

Alex Eekhoff, Coach Rob Ash, the radio guy who's name I don't know, and Odin Coe.
Photo by Carol.

 The next morning, Jeff and I participated in Huffing for Stuffing, the local Thanksgiving Day fun runs for charity. Stay tuned for a full race recap of the event coming soon on the blog!

Me and Jeff, after completing HFS.

 The rest of Thursday was spent at Katie and Josh's house. We helped Carol prepare Thanksgiving diner and enjoyed eating a great and lovely feast with family. Sadly, I have no photos, but it was really nice. I also got a call in to my parents and brother in Iowa, and it was so nice to catch up with them, too! Jeff and I are looking forward to seeing them in a few weeks when they visit us around Christmas time.

 Friday, Jeff and I spent some time taking Harvey to some of his favorite parks in town. He's almost never on a leash at our house, so being on a leash here in Bozeman seems to stress him out quite a bit. We did find a few off-leash parks where Harvey could roam more freely, and he did great!

Gotta love a running Vizsla!

One of our favorite games to play with Harvey is something we call back-and-forth, where Jeff and I spread out a ways and then say, "Go Get Mom!" or "Go Get Dad!" and he runs to whichever one of us we've called, back and forth, for a while. It's good to get him to sprint, and he loves to run! That's what we were doing in the above photo.  The next several photos are from a big off-leash park on the edge of town, in the foothills of the Bridgers.


These are all still shots, but I promise Harvey did his fair share of running and romping around with other dogs!

I love the views of town and the mountains you can see from this park. It's a nice place to be!

Friday evening, the Bobcat Men's Basketball team had a home game, so Jeff, Tom, and I went over to the arena to watch them play. It was their first home game of the season and the first home game for new Head Coach Fish.
 The game was awesome! The Cats played really well offensively, and scored a TON of points, including lots of threes. It was exciting and fun to watch. The final score was 104-81, Cats won.
I will admit, however, that we three were a bit distracted by the Bobcat Football players who had come in to watch the game, too. Specifically, we were focused on Quarterback Dakota Prukop who had missed a few games this season with a sprained MCL. We spotted him in the student section wearing his knee brace and spent much of the game checking in on him and the other players, trying to somehow divine whether or not he'd be playing in Saturday's playoff game against South Dakota State. You can see him right above Champ's bicep, in the gray and green sweatshirt.

Saturday morning before the game, Jeff and I again took Harvey to the dog park to try to wear him out a bit. It was there that I spotted this next unforgettable image, which I took as a sure sign of an upcoming Bobcat Victory over the SDSU Jackrabbits:

A Bobcat carrying a jackrabbit in it's mouth!

Just kidding. I found this photo online. But, I still thought it was cool!

 The weather in the morning was still pretty awesome. When we went to the dog park, it was 47 degrees and sunny, but by the time we left the dog park it had dropped ten degrees and had become very windy. The cold front had started to move in.

By the time of kickoff for our 2:00 p.m. football game, it had dropped down to 20 degrees and was snowing hard. This was the scene at kickoff:

This photo is proof that we're no fair-weather fans!

Jeff and I filed into the stadium in time to hear the starting lineups announced. When they announced Prokop was indeed starting at Quarterback, the stadium erupted into happy cheers! Without him, we didn't think we'd have a chance to beat SDSU, but with him playing, we thought it could be done.

By the end of the game, the temperature had fallen all the way down to 4 degrees and it snowed the entire game. Nevertheless, the game was very exciting, with many great plays by both teams. Dakota Prukop played really well, despite not being 100% mobile on his banged up knee. He proved once and for all that he was the starting QB all season long (before his injury) for a very good reason and showed that he was a very effective pocket passer, which, thanks to his excellent mobility heretofore, fans had not seen much of. Our running backs played well, too, and our receivers made some very excellent clutch catches. Unfortunately, the SDSU offensive attack was too much for our defense to hold off and the Cats fell by a score of 47-40. They had a great last-ditch effort in the final quarter, but couldn't quite get it done. So, our season of Bobcat Football is over.

Jeff and I stayed through to the bitter, cold end of the game. Then we stayed and watched the men sing the school song in the end zone, and then watched and cheered them back into the tunnel into the locker room. We were trying to show our support and love for our team, but still felt sad and disappointed that it was all over. When you're a fan, you love your team, win or lose.

Looking on the bright side, however, I don't think very many people expected that this team, this year, would even make it into the playoffs when the season began, but they did. This was supposed to be a building year, and it was a building year in a lot of ways. Jeff and I are already looking forward to next year, when we'll be even better. Prukop still has a couple years left at QB and he's only going to get better. He said it best in his post-game interview on Saturday, "I feel sorry for whoever we play first next year." It's gonna be awesome!

Sunday morning, we were sad to say goodbye to Brandon and Josh and Katie, but also ready to be home. We have no travel planned for quite some time. I'm looking forward to the peacefulness and still of winter.