Colorado Skies

Fall is full of change, here we can have 80F one day and blowing snow the next. Shoot, sometimes that's all in one day! It make for interesting skies, and here are some we've had lately.

On the way home from a Broncos game the sky was soft blues, pinks, and oranges.

Travis caught a sunrise from his office this week

 Last weekend we went to Glenwood Springs for an anniversary getaway. On the way we saw the last of the fall colors.

And about ten minutes later ran into this:

 Not much snow, but the road was a solid sheet of ice for a couple miles. Travis did some remarkable driving and saved us from half a dozen near missed. There were several time we were sure we'd end up in the ditch, preferable to colliding with someone, but we made it unscathed. The pass closed shortly thereafter and some of my family were stuck for three hours while a string of accidents were cleaned up.

On the way home on Sunday our drive looked like this!

Corn Maze and Yarn Crawl

In case you think ALL we do in the fall is work on the house, here are the other fun activities the Moores have been up to.

I went on my first ever organized "yarn crawl." Yes, it's like a pub crawl but instead of lots of bars and drinks it's lots of yarn shops and wool. I went with my Mom and Debi, and we hit every yarn store from the south end of Colorado Springs to Boulder. It was SO MUCH FUN! Luckily the crawl coincided with my first paycheck so I went a little crazy buying all kinds of cool stuff. I even bought a drop spindle and am going to try to spin some yarn. I'm also going to learn how to needle felt a fun toy.

While I was driving across the front range Travis, FFM, and Emma did fun stuff, too. Travis was taking pictures to post this -

 on craigslist. Before he could do that Emma and FFM decided it would be a fun thing to play with in the greenbelt.

 Later that day Travis took both kids to the corn maze and fall festival at the Botanic Gardens in Chatfield. They had such a fun time that I'm almost sad I missed it.

Once they made it through the maze, which was just the right level of tricky, they spent hours playing on all the fun toys at the festival. 

 The bouncy, uh, bouncer? That's FFM flying in the air above the yellow stripe. Emma's getting up on the green stripe. They are still talking about "that cool bouncy thing."

 I got home late and called Travis to tell him to go ahead and feed the kids. They weren't home yet either so they stayed at the festival and ate fair food.
Snow cones and

 hand battered corn dogs and hot dogs

To top off a perfect fall day Emma spent the night at our house. Funny thing, though, both kids were asleep within 15 minutes of going to bed, festivals are hard work!

DIY Season

In the summer and winter we don't get much work done around the house. I'm lucky if I manage to even get any cleaning done. Fall and Spring we make a concerted effort to work on the "stuff around the house that needs work" list. It's not all DIY, but the DIY is the only stuff that is fun to blog about (who really wants to see a picture of Travis working on taxes?).

Project #1 - Fireplace screen.
I saw this screen in a copy of This Old House magazine and decided it was just what we needed to cover up our drafty fireplace. We enjoy having a fireplace, but it is so leaky that on cold winter days that whole end of the room is chilly. My biggest hurdle, finding the wood. A friend suggested craigslist, and the next weekend we found someone advertising free wood, help yourself from the pile in the driveway.

Travis got me a board and a can of matte black spray paint, I painted the back board, he cut the logs into discs, and we both glued them on. We ended up with a nice variety of colors and sizes, and they stacked pretty easily.

 Voila! It's a great addition to our family room.

Project #2 - Deck Landing
Like most lots in this part of town ours slopes. When we built our deck that meant that the step down on the east side is nice and manageable, but on the west side really only Travis could step up or down easily. We thought for a long, long, long time about how we wanted to address this corner of the deck and finally landed on this plan - an oversized landing step big enough to put our hose on.

Travis painstakingly leveled, framed, leveled, backfilled, adjusted the downspout until it was exactly right. He used the same stones that run along the border of our deck so it coordinates nicely. Now I can store the sometimes leaky hose reel on stone instead of the wood deck. It's also nice that FFM and I can now step down easily.

Project #3 - Bathroom update
When we moved in to this house FOUR years ago (yipes!) the paint colors were nice, but all a little on the gray side. The upstairs shared bathroom was a shade of green gray that grated on my nerves. Late one night as I was getting ready for bed I decided enough was enough and I pulled out a can of paint leftover from painting FFM's room (it had been blue gray) and painted the bathroom until the wee hours of the morning. I decided as soon as my achy joints could take it I was going to repaint. Four years later I finally get around to it, and FFM gives me his design input. He requested a blue bathroom with a guy theme. Rock and Roll baby!
Before - malfunctioning light fixture, outdated mirror (it's already gone here) and lots of wall patching. We repainted the medicine cabinet instead of replacing it after we discovered it's a bizarre size that isn't available at Lowe's or Home Depot.

 We decided to replace the towel bars with hooksto make it easier to hang up all the towels FFM uses for swimming. The previous owners used interesting hardware to attach the bars, when removed it left gaping holes in the drywall. Lots and lots of patching.

New mirror, shiny metallic royal blue medicine cabinet, and new light fixture. The mirror is my favorite part, it's etched all around with a pattern reminiscent of a bar code. 

The blue color looks weird in the photos, it's a cheery turquoise blue from Benjamin Moore. We all get happy whenever we walk into this bathroom now!

The opposite wall is where we replaced the bars with hooks. After searching high and low FFM and I finally found GUY hooks. Goodness, there are a million fun hooks if you do something feminine. The mirror discs are still in progress, I put the first few up before the paint was fully cured and they didn't stick well. When finished it will be a wave pattern swooping down to below the sign.

That's about it on our list of fall projects, after we pack in all our garden stuff we'll be ready for ski season!

12

It's been twelve years now, and it still seems like a blink. Digging through the archives I looked for the first picture ever of Travis and me. The one I found is *just* before we started dating. This was taken at the party after Travis' fraternity formal. I went to the formal with a mutual friend (Hi PQ!) and had a great time. My brother was also in the same fraternity and was there with a date and Travis' sister was there as a guest of one of his brothers. Someone suggested a snap (back before any of  us had digital cameras) of all the Moores so we four grouped up for a shot.

If you'd told me that day that 1) In about a month Travis and I would be dating and 2) That we'd end up getting married, I would have laughed a hearty chuckle. Good thing Travis and I got ourselves sorted out in the end!

Excuses

Holy cow it's been a month since I blogged last! I've got plenty of excuses, but I promise news is coming soon. The new job is going very well, I like it even more than I thought and am baffled/amazed/blessed every day that luck landed me the perfect job for a mom who really is happy being stay at home.

FFM is adjusting well to first grade. My return to work was the more difficult adjustment for him. While he's happy to be at school he also (we both) really enjoy our time together in the mornings and after school gets out. The first week of work was filled with special training and certification meetings and our schedule was so crazy that he often had to get rides to/from school with someone else. I think it finally sunk in this week that won't be the case anymore, and we're happily back in our school time routine and only ride with friends when it's a playdate day.

My official title - Health Asst.
When I work - 3 hours a day only on school days. If either F or I are sick I don't go in. This is a new position and our school has had the office staff running the school clinic for years so they handle things just fine without me. I'm there to ease their load, and they are always so appreciative when I get a project done.
What I do - manage student health records, dispense meds, and lots and lots of bandaids and ice packs.  Since that doesn't take up all of my time I assist the office staff or anybody that needs a hand that day. I don't see how I could ever get bored, it's a totally different job every single day. I'm not a nurse, but I did have to renew my CPR/AED/1st Aid. We have an actual nurse who is contracted through Children's Hospital, she covers several schools in our district so is there to answer questions and provide training and support, but she's not actually in the school to stick bandaids on boo boos.

When I took the job I was really excited to be able to work in our school with our wonderful staff but had some trepidation about dealing with sick and whiny kids all day (for a whole three hours). Turns out there really isn't any whining and it's incredibly fulfilling to fix up a hurt, sometimes crying, child and have them walk out smiling and waving. I'm learning who the actors are, who just likes to come in and visit, and who the serial minor-injury-must-have-bandaid for my microscopic cut kids are. I'm slowly getting to know more and more of the school staff, who all know who I am already since I had to stand up and get introduced at a staff meeting. So far everyone is so nice and seem to be happy working, which explains the good vibe Travis and I had when we picked this school.