Cookie Rock

Travis here...

Today we were doing a small project at the side of the house that involved some digging around in the landscape rock. FFM was helping me with the " 'struction", and before long appeared with this piece of antique concrete in his hand.
"Look at this rock, Daddy!"
"What kind of rock is that, FFM?"
"It's a cookie rock!"
And so it is; what do you suppose we'll dig up next time?

It's Been a Big Week

We like busy weeks, which is great because we've had a lot of them lately. This past week (give or take) we got a lot of good news, had a lot of good times, and got to see some family and friends.

We learned our cousin Matt got into pharmacy school and he's in the process of moving from Kansas out here to Denver to attend Regis University. Go Matt!

Another cousin, Sarah, set a date for her wedding to a great guy, Brian. He makes her really happy and that makes me happy :)

FFM, Travis and I were all featured photos taken at the Denver Museum of Science Members Night. They had a professional photographer taking photos for new marketing materials they are working on for some of their new exhibits and we got snapped (OK, he really liked FFM and sort of followed him around the museum). I had no idea they were public and online until a friend of mine spotted us on facebook. Thanks Mollie!

F I and got our tongues dyed blue all in the name of science!

F found a bench shaped like an alpaca and went on a joyous ride.

FFM started a Spanish class and is learning numbers, colors, and who knows what else all in Spanish, a language I have an extremely limited vocabulary in. The teacher kicked out all the moms on the first day so all I know he's learning for sure is the fun bird song they end each class with. I can tell you birds say cheep cheep in Spanish just like they do in English (and they do it in the car all the way home, too).

Our neighborhood picnic was this past weekend and at the last minute we learned that someone arranged for the fire department to come with one of their fire trucks. Oh my, what a hit with all the kids. Not only did they get a hands on tour of the outside and inside of the truck, they all got to sit in the drivers seat (F was FIRST in line) and honk the horn, turn on the lights, and run the siren! The open space where the picnic was held was at the end of our street so that's where the truck parked. FFM is still talking about the fire truck that parked on his street.

My Grandpa Minnick just celebrated his 85th birthday. He and my grandma and uncle came all the way out here from Kansas so I was lucky enough to get to celebrate it with him. FFM was in heaven with all the attention.

The fall term of preschool starts tomorrow, we went to the open house last week, and during the open house FFM announced 'I love Miss Walker. Can I go to school NOW?' Tomorrow morning cannot come soon enough for F, who is the ONLY kid on our street who is excited about school starting this week!

Tiny Town!

Little boys and little houses and a little train. This, is Tiny Town. Even complete with tiny picnic tables at the picnic area.
(what is it with these two always in matching outfits? It's reverse green and red day today).

And a tiny windmill (and church, jail, etc) to goof around in with your pal, Haaken.

For very small fee young ones can gallop and cavort around in this tiny little village in the foothills of Denver that's been around for, ahem, long enough that I galloped and cavorted around it when I was their age.

I think FFM gave a token glance to most of the houses, being mainly interested in the TRAIN. He wanted to ride in the caboose, so my photo of him looks a bit like kids locked up in the pokey. Nevertheless we came home happy and tired :)

Then and Now

We reached a milestone in our homeownership this weekend. We finished our last major painting project. Like a lot of homeowners it seems we will have home improvement projects until the end of time, but luckily our house came to us in exceptionally (knock on wood) good shape, just in fairly funky colors. I liked most of them, they just didn't quite go with any of our furniture. However, the violent green in the kitchen and the 50's hospital green in the bathrooms had to be fixed immediately. The other colors, we've taken our time on.

We've done a few other cosmetic improvements along the way, too. We divided up the space in the basement using sliding panels so the space still feels nice and open but guests can have some privacy and our storage room can be a little more hidden. We took out a killer bush, changed all the rock in our front yard, gave ourselves a little more privacy by putting in a fence, and even updated some light fixtures around the house.

But it was the culmination of the painting that made us feel like the house was finally totally OURS. The last vestiges of decor-choices-made-by-previous-owners-we-wouldn't-have-made-ourselves are gone. Anything left now we're happy with for the time being. Next project, on to the furnace before winter moves in!

It's Always an Adventure

This weekend was a camping weekend for us and we headed out to Redstone with Travis' mom. I spent a lovely morning hiking with my family at Colorado's famous Maroon Bells and thought to myself, "Wow, we've had fairly uneventful camping this year. How great! No wind storms that flatten our tent and unbend the 'S' hooks that hold our fly on. No middle of the night rabbit migrations. No snow, no freezing cold, no flaming hot, and really no rain. What a great year so far for camping!"
After we returned to camp, a little early (another adventure, story for another time) we all just relaxed and kept an eye on the weather which was looking a little cloudy.
35 minutes later our campsite was totally underwater and looked like this-
That is indeed a river running through our site. I dashed to the car to get my camera and after I returned to our shelter Travis remembered that FFM's books were on the floor of our tent. Since I was already wet I dashed out again to toss them into the middle of the tent onto a sleeping bag where they'd have a better chance of staying dry. When I got to the tent it was FLOATING. The entire tent. I've never seen anything like that. Luckily it's a new and very weatherproof tent and the inside was still dry. Floating, but dry.

The deluge and windstorm continued for about half an hour, then turned into a steady rain, and then let up to a hard drizzle. We discussed sleeping options, tent vs car vs calling it a trip and heading for a motel/Avon/home. While discussing, our campground host pulled up and informed us that we were stranded, the deluge had let loose a massive mudslide that covered the only entrance to the campground in 4+ feet of mud. Not only that but it continued to slide onto the road leading into the campground, also closing that road. Well, that solved our where to spend the night dilemma, and having solved that we of course had to go take a look.

Here's the entrance to the campground. The silver car is stranded and on the left side by the bush you can barely see a mailbox peeking out above all the mud.

It doesn't look that deep but it's 4+ deep and full of boulders the size of watermelons to curbside garbage cans.

Our tent was mostly dry that night, it got cool enough that we had a lot of condensation inside so FFM and I slept in the car. Penny's tent did the same thing and she camped out in her car, too. Travis stayed in the tent and reported that he stayed dry but the underside of his sleeping pad got wet. Not bad for all the rain we got (it continued to rain all night).

The Forest Service started digging us out Sunday morning around 8am and announced at 12:40 they were going to be able to release anyone who was ready at 1pm but after that they were going to need to dig out some more. Boy, we wrapped up our lunch fast and boogied out of there!

All in all it was a big adventure, we felt very lucky as we were well prepared for the circumstances and weren't wringing out sleeping bags or throwing away ripped tents like some of the other campers.