So many words

Mats has always been a talker, but he really wasn't into words until maybe three weeks ago. He pulled out "boo" for balloon back at his first birthday (because he was obsessed with the balloons we had up around the house), and would do mommy and daddy, but other than that it was mostly just emphatic babbling. While we were in Steamboat Springs on vacation a few weeks ago, though, something just clicked with him, and he's been adding words with regularity. He discovered "hot" and "up" that week, and hot is still one of his favorite go to words.

Parenting magazine just rained on my parade - they have an article online that says that by 16 months, girls have an average of 50 words and boys an average of 30. If that's true, Mats is apparently way behind average on verbal skills, but I'm okay with that. Hmm, although WebMD says that at 18 months, kids may say 10 words. Clearly there's a spectrum. Either way, I'm still super proud of the words my sweet 17 month old does have:

1. Dada (always with gusto)
2. Mama
3. Balloon
4. Ball
5. (sign for) All done
6. (sign for) More
7. Hot
8. Up
9. Shoe
10. Cheese
11. (sign for) Help (which is only distinguished from "More" by context)
12. Please (also does the sign)
13. No No (with a shaking head)
14. Nose

The cutest thing Matson's learned to do recently, in addition to pointing to his nose and crinkling it up while saying, "Nose" (seriously, adorable) is kissing! I'll ask him for a kiss, and if he's in the mood, he'll run over, pucker up his lips, and kiss me straight on the lips. So endearing. If he's not in the mood he'll just ignore me.
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We got to enjoy a vacation in Florida with the little tyke last week! Scott's middle sister got married on the beach in Pensacola, so we flew down for the festivities and tacked on a few extra beach days. We had an amazing time playing in the waves, laying on the sand, making sand castles for Matzilla to smash with a fierce growl, and hanging out with family. Highlights of the week included several night swims, jumping into the ocean with our clothes on post-wedding (the bride and groom led the charge!), collecting seashells, taking a long moonlit walk on the beach with my sweet husband, catching mini sand crabs, watching Mats dance at his aunt and uncle's wedding and subsequently having everyone at the wedding dancing "The Matson".

And now, I can't believe that it's suddenly September, all of our summer vacations are over, school's back in session, and the days are getting shorter. Does this mean that summer is over?

refi, baby!

yellowstone was last week, and it was so fun!  i went in with basically no idea what to expect, and was very pleasantly surprised.  we stayed at a camp site right next to the grand canyon of the yellowstone, so lots of tall pine trees and waterfalls and rivers in the area.  hands down our favorite area of the park.  we did a day over in geyser country - old faithful and all that - and it was neat, but not a very comfortable place to be, if that makes sense.  a) the geysers smell like sulfur, which is gross, b) watching the ground randomly jetting out steam and hot water and seeing mud "boiling" is cool until you think about why it's happening, at which point you remember that you're on top of a gigantic volcano.  there are some truly breathtaking places up there, though!  and, i saw a bear for the first time in my life!  actually, five of them.  one set of mama grizzly and her two babies just off the road, one grizzly from a really far distance, and one black bear (which allegedly had another one with it, but i only saw one at a time) on a nearish hillside.  also, lots of elk including a massive bull elk, some deer, tons of pronghorn antelope, and herds of bison.  i highly recommend a visit to yellowstone - they have great roads with amazing sights very accessible to the road, plenty of good day hiking trails with

the highlight of this week so far is that we just locked in to refinance our house!  when we closed on our house at 5.875% two years ago, we thought that was amazing and were so excited to get such a great rate.  a coworker refinanced earlier this summer and said she's saving a fair bit of money, so i started looking up rates through our current mortgage company and bankrate.com - i was slightly overwhelmed with the multitude of info, though, so we e-mailed the mortgage broker we'd used when we bought the house, and he just locked us in at 4.375%!  all in all, it should save us about $260/month since we will hopefully not have to pay mortgage insurance anymore - wow, right?!  even paying closing costs out of pocket, we should officially be saving money within the year.

mice

pardon the interruption to my normally scheduled blogging; my life has contained much drama over the past few weeks, including things like friends visiting from out of town and mice in my pantry.

first the friends - we've actually had three sets of nu friends come through town over the past month, which has been so much fun!  first was chris and lesley, who graduated from nu a year after us, moved to wisconsin for her to go to grad school and him to work ... then up and moved to kenya for a year!  they just got back earlier this summer, and passed through denver with their moving truck on the way from the midwest to northern california, where they have lots of friends and family and she has a job.  we had a great time hearing about their time in kenya, seeing pictures, hearing what they're looking forward to in california ... just generally catching up for the four years it's been since we last saw them!

next was andrew and anne, a friend from nu and his new wife as of last labor day weekend.  they had originally planned to be moving from wisconsin to portland, oregon, but there are still some question marks surrounding andrew's job status there - but they'd already booked his mom a one-way ticket from denver back to illinois so that she could join them on the roadtrip through kansas and see her family with them.  since they knew they had to be in denver and didn't have any commitments until late july, they figured they may as well seize the opportunity to take a three week camping roadtrip around the national parks of colorado, utah, and arizona.  why not, right?  so we got to see them for a night between roadtrip with mom and camping adventure and had a lot of fun.  we went out for their wedding last fall, but hadn't really had any opportunity to get to know anne at all, so their stop with us was doubly fun in that we got to catch up with our old friend and also get to know his new wife who we thought was fabulous and perfect for him.

third nu friend of the summer was clair, one of my best friends from college (and my maid of honor), who was in town for a few days for a training seminar for her work.  i don't think i've seen her for more than maybe a day at a time at the occasional wedding over the past few years, and that was always in the midst of tons of friends coming together, so it was extra nice having her stay with us and getting more time to catch up.  we went out for pizza, took a long bike ride, ate ice cream, stayed up late talking, she told us all about her new boyfriend, and i tried to sell her on moving to colorado.  and, the night that she got to our house, i discovered a mouse in the pantry, which leads me to my next point:

we have mice in our pantry.  ick.  i had scott stop on his way home to get traps the first night i saw the mouse (last tuesday), and it took until thursday morning before we found him in the trap.  hooray!  we were mildly optimistic that he was the only mouse, since our kitchen's right next to the garage and we didn't think it was unreasonable that he might have hopped in from there when we left the door open at some point.  sadly, that night, we were in the kitchen talking, and scott saw another mouse scuttling under the stove - boo.  we went to home depot and got another 8 traps, which we placed throughout our pantry, next to the stove and behind the fridge, and in the crawl space under the kitchen, and got this thing that you plug in and it sends vibrations out through your house's wiring that is supposed to annoy mice that may be nesting between walls so that they want to leave.  no sign of mousey in the trap yet, and i saw him running into the pantry when we got home from hiking on saturday ... but last night, i bought a bunch of plastic bins, cleaned all of our non-canned goods out of the pantry, and didn't see anything that had been nibbled on other than an open bag of pine nuts (that was cleaned out!  the first mouse had found an open bag of chopped pecans that he had been going to town on) ... so i'm unsure what food they think they'll be eating from our house.  i'm hopeful that the mouse realizes that he's cleaned out his food sources and moved on, but i don't know how realistic that hope is.  any idea how long we need to wait to sound the all clear?

july commitments

for the last year or two, scott and i have instituted july as a no tv month in our house.  july's a good month for it because, well, all of our shows are on summer break and there aren't any sports scott'll be missing (although we do allow for watching major sporting events, like the world cup or olympics).  it's oddly refreshing, too.  we usually allow tv to be our relax time at home - get home from work and working out and veg on the couch watching tv for the night.  when tv's not an option, though, we talk more, read more, get more little projects done around the house, are more active, sleep more.

last july we were in the midst of our commitment to explore colorado with our vacation time, so we had a few small trips lined up that month, which made the no tv thing easier.  my favorite was a two day trip to a cabin in twin lakes, co at the base of mount elbert - no tv, just a two room cabin in the cool mountain air surrounded by aspens with a hummingbird feeder hanging in the window and a babbling brook running behind.  it was glorious and refreshing, and made us really glad we didn't have tv to distract us from relaxing and enjoying the world around us.

anyway, this july we're again doing the no tv thing.  we don't have any trips planned (i'm sure we'll come up with a few hikes to throw in), but we do have several friends coming in for a day or three at a time.  it'll be very different from last year's experience, but hopefully just as refreshing and meaningful.

in addition to no tv july, though, we're also doing no dessert july.  (this is beginning to sound like "no fun july"!)  i've been working out more regularly for the past year or two and have certainly gotten into better shape and maybe lost a pound or two but have been holding pretty steady for a while.  not that i think i have a ton of weight i need to lose, but i could stand to give it a shot.  anyway, i realized over the past month that i eat a lot of sweets.  chocolate chip cookie dough ball after i get home from work here, mid-afternoon cupcake from the denver cupcake truck (yumm) there, brownies with small group on occasion, etc.  anyway, i decided that it can't be good for me.  not in terms of the fat and sugar i'm putting into my body, and not in terms of the habits i'm getting into.  so, i'm taking a break from it.  (as is scott.)  i think i'm going to have a lot of sugar cravings at the beginning of the month, but hopefully by the end i'll be happy i did it.

overview

ooh la la, a non-bargain-hunting post!  as i find the boundaries provided by numbering things comforting, i'll do list form (also to keep my verbose narrative in check):

1. we officially have our camping reservation for yellowstone in august!  plus, i spent the morning reading my frommer's yellowstone guide, and i'm getting steadily more excited.  there's just so much to see and do, i'm starting to wish we'd planned more than three to three and a half days there.  our campground is near the grand canyon of the yellowstone, and near the upper and lower falls, which are two of the things that i'd most hoped to see.  it's going to be challenging to balance getting out and hiking and experiencing the nature of the park with driving and wanting to see everything because it's all so cool and beautiful.
2. whoops, went onto facebook to find a link and got totally distracted!  our friends zach and casey, who were our first friends in denver, are moving to africa to work with friends at the recreation project.  their website explains it better, but basically uganda has tons of kids (and adults) really emotionally scarred from the history of war in their country and from being forced into fighting, so they're building a ropes course and sports rec leagues as a sort of recreational therapy, to help the kids channel their aggression and competition and passion into constructive things, and help build leadership.  we went to a fundraising bowling night last night to see them before they leave.  (we haven't seen them as a couple in ages, and casey and i haven't hung out since we both left our first apartment complex, but scott and zach still play poker, watch football, and do the occasional sports team together.)
3. in celebration of being alone in the office today, i had a diet coke with lunch (which i just finished drinking now, four hours later - i'm a slow drinker), and i've totally got the post-caffeine jitters.  i hate that feeling.
4. scott and i pulled our first weeds of the season yesterday.  we do have some more to do, but thankfully it's way less bad than last year - i'm hoping that if we start early, we can keep it under control and not have a thistle forest in our sideyard by mid-june.  we're also planning to call our tree trimmer who also does general landscaping work to get a bid on taking out some dead aspens and pulling out one of our dead-bush-and-dirty-river-rock areas so that we can start making our yard look pretty.  (it desparately needs new weed barrier and bushes, and we're debating whether to clean up the river rock or switch it out with mulch - either the traditional wood stuff or the rubber stuff.)  we're undecided how much to do ourselves vs hiring someone else to do ... it's just so much easier to write a check to someone else, but also obviously more costly.  also, we're excited to start re-planting trees this year!
5. tonight is my last night of tutoring gerardo.  (actually, not tutoring - it's the end of year celebration/dinner.)  he's ending 5th grade, which means that next year he starts middle school.  whiz kids is thinking of opening up a middle school tutoring site in the area since there are so many 5th graders moving up, but i'm not sure if he'll continue with it next year.  we shall see - it could be my last night with him ever, or i could get three more years!  (when i asked him about it last week, he said that he wants to not do it so that i can stay with the elementary school kids and tutor his little brother, who'll be in first grade next year.  how sweet is that??)

2012

scott and i really like watching movies.  as such, redbox is approximately the greatest thing since sliced bread to us, and we rejoiced when one came to the grocery store across the street from us.  anyway, on easter weekend scott came home with the movie 2012, and it was awesome - wonderfully cheesy action, so much unintentional comedy, and somehow predictable yet suspenseful at the same time.  if you're not familiar, the premise of the movie is that the earth's core heats up which makes the plates of the earth shift, which in turn leads to crazy huge earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and megatsunamis, wiping out everyone on earth except a few hundred thousand world leaders and super-wealthy people who can afford tickets on huge arks.  oh, john cusack and his family survive, though, because they manage to get their car/rv/plane out at precisely the right moment - specifically about two inches ahead of the giant chasm opening up in the earth, wheels spinning wildly on the crumbling pavement, but then speeding away ahead of the death crack in the nick of time.  their plane runs out of gas in china rather than the pacific because of the earth's crazy land shifting, and then mere moments later they happen upon a tibetan monk with a pickup truck who happens to have a brother who can sneak them onto one of the arks - something that apparently no other ark workers considered!

when it all comes down, the movie is totally absurd and laughably wonderful - BUT, because we watched it in the midst of this year of heightened awareness of earthquakes, i just can't stop thinking about it!  everytime another major earthquake is reported on the news (and i think there have been six in the week and a half since then), i find myself wondering if this amount of earthquake activity is normal.  when i heard the news of iceland's volcanic eruption and that the subsequent ash cloud is prevent air travel across the uk and europe, i a) wonder how many active volcanoes there are and if they're related to the earthquakes at all, and b) laugh because in the movie they fly their plane through tons of volcanic ash with no problems.  i saw an article this morning about earthquake swarms in yellowstone and found myself pondering the state of the yellowstone caldera, and specifically wondering what the odds are that it would erupt when we're up there this summer.  silly, i know, but still things my brain hangs on to.  no, i am actually concerned about any of it, just something i find myself pondering occasionally.  besides, as the book of matthew says, no one can know the time or day of the end times.
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vaguely related, we're planning a trip to yellowstone for august, and i'm excited!  i have a copy of the 2010 frommer's yellowstone/tetons guide on hold at the library for poring over this weekend.  we're doing the trip with mike, maura, and kinley, but i'm hopeful that it will work out with both of our schedules and with camping availability to do the first week of august to coincide with our 5 year wedding anniversary.  (5 years!)  if so, we were talking about maybe stopping in jackson, wyoming (an hour or so south of yellowstone, through grand teton national park) to enjoy the view of the teton mountain range, explore and stay the night at an inn somewhere in the valley.  fun, right?

i want sunshine

in honor of denver's second winter storm warning in a week (5-10 inch forecast this time), i am officially looking forward to summer!  we still haven't made any plans or reservations yet (but it is only march), but i am researching.  the three specific things that have me excited for warmth and sun:

1. my parents got me a subscription to outdoor photographer magazine*, and the april edition has a fabulous article about the national parks.  there are some beautiful pictures, and it reminded me of all the fun we had exploring our lovely state last summer (even though we didn't hit up any national parks).  and, it got me excited to play with my lovely new-to-me nikon d50 this summer.
2. today i was reading an article about the rockslide on i-70 up in the mountains, and it mentioned its proximity to the hanging lake exit, which reminded me that scott and i have wanted to go hike hanging lake for the last four and a half years, which reminded me that we want to get daypacks since both of us are still rocking the jansport college backpack, and then THAT reminded me that i need to figure out the daypack/dslr thing.  the daypack/dslr is slightly challenging only in that i want to have water and normal daypack stuff - layers, food - in my pack in addition to my dslr and maybe an extra lense, but a lot of packs i was initially seeing were these $200 monstrosities with spots for the huge pro-size camera bodies and like 5+ lenses, and that's just not my style.  so i've been shopping around online for packs, and i think i'm coming up with some good options, including getting a neoprene pouch for the camera and just putting that in a normal daypack.  anyway, back to why this gets me excited for summer - bike rides and hikes and camping will all be enjoyed much more with more appropriate gear ... plus i'll get to play with my lovely nikon d50!
3. daydreaming about where we'll go this year - i think i've mentioned before that we've talked about yellowstone, durango, and aspen among others.  i also want to go to the black canyon of the gunnison, and to the grand junction area, and and and ...  i think we've mostly nixed the long distance travel vacations for this year, which i'm fine with - i'm looking forward to road tripping around the region!

* - outdoor photographer also had a neat article in the march issue about shooting abstract bird pictures that looks like a lot of fun to play with.  (btw, parents, i got my first issue of op on my birthday, three days after i got your card mentioning it ... and then got my second issue a week later!)

vacation planning

i keep trying to convince myself that vacation traveling isn't really a necessity, that i'd much rather do something pracical and useful with the money we'd spend on a vacation - like putting it toward student loans, or into a retirement account.  i'm not sure i have myself convinced, though, since i've researched five different vacations in the past week.

the vacation i had talked about surprising scott with was to san francisco.  (i told him about it this last weekend - i just can't make that level of decision by myself!)  i had great plans of renting bikes to ride over the golden gate bridge, taking the ferry to tour alcatraz, riding the cable cars, etc.  i couldn't commit to it, though, and plane ticket prices went up a bit, which made me waffle even more.  then last week i saw a 50% off special on rooftop seats for a cubs game, so i was looking into a springtime trip back to chicago - fun, right?  i've also researched cabin rentals in yellowstone for the late summer, going to a marriage conference (campus crusade's "a weekend to remember") in lake tahoe, seattle, and spring cabin rentals here in colorado to go snowshoeing.

i finally told scott this weekend that i don't really care what we do, i think i just want to have something on the calendar to go somewhere fun this summer, even if it's just back to the mountain cabin where we spent a lovely long weekend last year.  it's entirely possible that i was spoiled by the last two summers of amazing vacations - alaska two years ago, and our grand tour de colorado last summer.

welcome to fall

i have the greatest husband ever. need proof?

last spring, fox showed a 1-hour premiere of glee, which is about a high school glee club and is billed as a "musical comedy". read: very much my type of show, but scott groaned when i described it to him and told him how much i loved the premiere. anyway, just now, scott was setting up new tivo season passes online, asked me when community (nbc's new office-esque sitcom about a community college that looks hilarious) starts, then asked, "do we want to tivo glee?" i responded with a giant smiley and approximately ten exclamation points after my "yes" (we're on im at work), but seriously, isn't that sweet? not only that he remembered four months later that it's a show i'm interested in watching, but then that he proactively offered to set up a tivo for me - aww. it's the little things, i tell you.

we've had a very busy but super fun five days! this weekend was andrew's wedding in wisconsin/mini-college reunion. we flew in on saturday, out on monday, and in the middle had a wonderful time seeing some great old friends and catching up with people that were in our group of friends in college but that we haven't stayed in close touch with. it was really amazing to me how easy it felt to fall back into life with them. natalie and axel were adorable, and it was so fun getting to see two of my closest girlfriends from college as moms. it was crazy, though, because i think saturday night a bunch of us were crowded around a table for dinner, and i realized that no one lives in the same place anymore - we have people in birmingham, boston, chicago, portland, minneapolis, milwaukee, north carolina. i know everyone lives in the city they live in for a reason, but i have to confess i would love it if all of them wanted to pick up and move to denver. (which i say very selfishly, because i don't want to leave denver to move anywhere else - especially if that elsewhere has humidity. eesh. two days of that was enough.) anyway, it was a really great time, and i'll be getting pics up on facebook as soon as the photo uploader starts working again.

on monday, we flew back to denver and drove straight from the airport up to breck to hang out with scott's parents and sisters for a few days - also fun. we went hiking with them the last two days, then would get back to the condo and play yahtzee and spades and watch movies. very relaxing. for me, at least - i thought his sister wendy would have a nervous breakdown from the tension of our spades games!

i just want to enjoy the sunshine

my house is the place where phone service goes to die, i think. we tried all of the jacks in the house last night (which is a lot - at least one in almost every room), and alas, none of them picked up a line, so we get to pay qwest $85 to come fix the problem. hoorah! they're coming this afternoon, and i really really hope it's an easy fix.

i'm debating what to do tonight, still. scott's going off to a fantasy football draft party with the guys. the guy who's hosting it's wife is inviting the wives over to hang out and play games ... but i'd already told myself i would stay home and start stripping caulk in the main bath. i'm torn, though, because it would be fun to hang out, but it could also be nice to hang out by myself at home - and more productive, for sure. but there's not really so much of a time crunch on doing the caulking that not starting tonight would throw our timeline completely off ... we'll see. i meant to do the caulking before my parents got here in june (sorry, guys), so my next goal is to have it done before scott's parents get here a few days before labor day weekend. which is less than two weeks away, now. crazy - where did this summer go?!

i'm also going berry picking with the girls bright and early tomorrow morning. as in, meeting at 7:30 to leave early. it should be fun, though. berry picking and browsing around the farm's organic farmer's market is totally one of my favorite parts of summer. they put together bags of fresh produce with a recipes - like a bagged kit for pasta sauce, or salsa, or tomatillo salsa. i got the bag for tomatillo salsa last year, and it was amazing - i really hope they have it again this weekend. it made a ton of salsa, though, to the extent where after two weeks we made nachos for dinner solely because we wanted to get rid of the tomatillo salsa before it went bad.

i think one of my favorite things about denver is its great mix of midwestern and west coast life. you get casual clothes and lots of sun, fun things like tomatillos which i never knew existed before we moved out here, but still have comfortable oaks and maples and pines in the backyard rather than exotic palm trees.

fall is falling

whoops, it's been a while since i posted. two weekends ago we had my office's cubs tix for all 4 games in the cubs v. rockies series, and the cubs very miserably lost 3/4 games. i think between the disappointment of that and being overwhelmed by spending so much time around so many people, i didn't particularly feel like writing much of anything.

i've mostly recovered, though, and we spent this weekend camping with our sunday school class. it was very fun - we camped down near lake isabel in the san isabel forest, southwest of pueblo. we had a group site that would hold up to 60 people at night/120 during the day, and we only had 15 people, so we had plenty of room. it was a nice site, though - private (non-flush) toilets for our site, lots of big trees, plenty of fire pits and grills, big covered picnic area, and a nice creek that ran next to the site. plus, it was on a private road just for the 3 group sites, so there wasn't a ton of traffic running next to it. it was a good time - we cooked over the fire for dinners, and had a fun hike up to an abandoned mine and waterfall on saturday. a few people had trouble sleeping with the cold weather (lows in the low-40's both nights), but i think we've found a perfect system. from the bottom up: fleece blanket, foam sleeping pads, sleeping bags, quilt. oh, and i sleep with a fleece hat on - and our tent is a bit smaller than our friends, which keeps our body heat trapped a little better. it keeps us well insulated, cozy, and quite comfy.

last night when we got home, i noticed some leaves from our russian olives had fallen on the lawn, and it occurred to me that we're already past the middle of august. school is starting, nights are cool, labor day is three weeks away, we just finished our last summer vacation, and fall is just around the corner. i love fall, but it always makes me a little bit sad when summer is winding down. where is the year going?

steamboat springs

i think i've had too many things floating around in my head to sit down and blog anything since we got back from vacation. i'll start with a synopsis of vacation, though.

scott went backpacking last friday-sunday with a couple of guys from our sunday school class, and had a good time but (thankfully) came home and said that it was a good experience, but not one he needs to repeat. we're definitely car campers - load up the car, go camp, do day hikes, but leave all of your gear set up at your site rather than strapping it to your back. whew. i think it helps my case that i get a liiiittle bit whiney when i get tired or my legs hurt from hiking, and scott realizes that that situation would not improve with 35 pounds strapped to my back.

anyway, the drive to/from steamboat is gorgeous. lots of rolling ranchland surrounded by still-snowcapped mountains. monday was our touristy day - according to a free map i picked up in town, the fish creek falls hiking trail was the number one tourist destination, followed by the strawberry park hot springs. fish creek falls was really neat - 1/4 mile down the trail you hit the main (lower) falls - there's a cool wooden bridge over the creek, and lots of families playing in the water and stuff. if you want to, though, you can continue on a 2.5 mile hike up the mountain to the upper falls, which was definitely worth it. i haven't uploaded my pictures from the hike yet, but hopefully they turned out. it was a hot, sunny day, so we went back to our motel room, turned up the a/c and collapsed for a while post-hike. there was a huge rainstorm late afternoon, which was actually really nice because a) we were inside and didn't have to deal with the rain, b) it immediately got sunny again afterward, but c) the storm really cooled the evening off. we went out to dinner, then to the hot springs!

on the website for the hot springs i found two things interesting. the first was that after dark, it's clothing optional, and the second is that people said they would go the first time for an hour or two and then love it so much they wanted to come back for a full day. because of the first fact - the nudity clause - we made sure to plan our visit so that we'd be able to leave by the time dusk hit at about 8:30, and we did. (it was very interesting - there was definitely a change of crowd at about that time. there were three or four other groups that i saw walking out around the time that we did, but there were also a crowd of college age people coming in. not going to lie, i was a little bit sketched out.)

regarding the staying all day thing, though - when we first got there, we were both sort of like, "meh, it's fine, but nothing i'd want to spend 8 hours doing." the more i looked around, though, the more i could understand it. there are a few different hot pools, and we soon realized a cooler pool off to the side. despite the fact that the pools were definitely built in, they did a good job of using stone to keep it looking natural - but in the pools, they have some ledges for sitting and stuff like that. so we would hang out in the hot pools for a while, then go into the cooler pool (which i think is maybe just the creek running next to the hot spring - but the hot spring definitely feeds into the creek a little bit, so the creek isn't freezing). anyway, i realized that there are also some hiking trails with trailheads on the property, so you could go pay your $10/person entrance fee in the morning, enjoy the hot springs and swim around for a while, dry off and go do a day hike, then come back and chill in the water/on the chairs on their little gravel beach for a while. the $10 is a little excessive for an hour, but becomes a good deal if you stretch it out like that.

anyway, that was monday. tuesday, we had to check out of our motel room, then decided to go bike around downtown. scott loves the water way more than anyone from arizona should, and wanted to see if there was a trail on the river that runs through town - lo and behold, there is! we found the yampa river core trail, which is about 6 miles long, but nice and wide and smooth and flat. we sort of got on in the middle, rode to the end one way, then turned around and did the rest of it. the botanic gardens backs up to the trail, and is free, so we did stop and walk around there. it's small, but well taken care of and very pretty. the trail could have been longer, but was really a perfect fit for us - enough work that you're not just coasting both ways, but not so much that you're getting overly sweaty or exhausting yourself. plus, we got to see the whole town, and enjoy the river at the same time.

i'd definitely go back to steamboat on a family vacation when we have kids someday. one of the things we saw but didn't get to do was people renting tubes and floating in their tubes down the yampa river, which would be super fun. and there's a neat sport park in town that has things like an alpine slide - not to mention plenty of other hiking trails. plus the drive there is fabulously beautiful. i think the major thing i'd change is getting a cabin or condo so that we could cook our own meals and not have to eat out constantly. i really enjoy eating at restaurants for special occasions, and picking up something cheap when i don't feel like cooking, but i just hate spending the money when i don't have to. i don't know why we felt it necessary to decide on this just yet, scott and i decided that of our summer vacations thus far, if we were to add kids to the equation, we'd do twin lakes again if we had a 2-3 day vacation, and steamboat if we had a 5-6 day. 4 days we'd go either way.

elbert in review

last weekend was our mt. elbert adventure - and it was pretty fabulous! scott was totally surprised by the rafting, we both really enjoyed it, and scott ended up being the only person to fall out of our raft ... in completely calm water, after we bumped up against a small rock. granted, he had taken his feet out of the footholds and wasn't really paying attention. i laughed. i did not, however, get any pictures - you obviously can't take your camera on the boat since you're getting soaked the entire time, and they do take pictures of your raft as you go through one of the rapids, but it was $20/picture, and it just wasn't worth it since we didn't know the other people on the raft. maybe if the whole raft is buddies and you can split the cost of one picture ... oh well, we have memories!

i ended up feeling a little bit sicky friday night/saturday morning, so we nixed getting up at 5am to leave on the hike of mt. elbert and attempt to summit. scott offered that we could do a light hike that day and try to summit elbert on sunday, but i was fine with just doing a hike on elbert rather than needing to summit. plus we had small group at 6pm on sunday back in denver and i really didn't want to go to group totally exhausted and covered in sweat. so we had a fun time hiking on elbert on saturday. pictures, of course:

1) hmm, thought that would be bigger. oh well - it's a profile of the elevation of our hike. i put a little red arrow to show how far/high we got ... about 2000 foot gain over 2.25 miles. and other 2.25 miles/2500 feet to go. we were both glad we nixed the summit plan.

2) we had a pretty sweet view even if we didn't make it to the top.

3) we got within view of south elbert, at least. i should have marked it on the profile shot, but it is the little peak (just over 14,000 feet) that then goes into the camelback before the summit. so you climb climb climb, little plateau, climb up to south elbert, then drop back down before climbing back up to the summit. yeah, we got stuck back in the climb climb climb stage.

after we recovered from the hike, scott built us a fire in the private little fire pit we had next to our cabin, that happened to be right on the black cloud creek. while he did that, i took pictures of the creek and the waterwheel and played with my camera settings. here, i was discovering aperture and film speed. (my camera's a little limited - aperture range is from f/2.8-8.0, and iso range is 100-800.)

4) iso 800, f/2.8

5) iso 100, f/8.0

i finally settled in to read next to the fire with scott, but i saw a plant and i just couldn't resist playing with my newfound aperture skills.

6) ooh! the top is f/8.0, the bottom is f/2.8. neato.

now that i knew how to do cool close-ups, i just had to do more.

7) this was scott's favorite picture of the weekend. i'm pretty sure i had my camera camped out on iso 400, f/2.8 at this point ... plus i was using the special "close-up" button.

8) and this was one of my favorites! you can see scott sitting by the fire back there.

then i sat back down for a while, but as it got darker and the fire got bigger, it was just too much to resist, so i grabbed the camera again.

9 & 10) another two of my favorites. having to choose a favorite picture is like having to choose a favorite child, i swear. i'm incapable of doing it.

anyway, so saturday was very well documented. sunday we decided to just take a little hike on a trail towards interlaken (a turn-of-the-century resort on the shores of twin lakes that's no longer running, but had some restoration work done a few years ago). we forgot to get directions to the trailhead from the binder in our cabin before checking out, so after driving back and forth for a while, we stopped at one of the two stores in twin lakes and got directions. the chick said that there's a road about a mile before the highway that leads to the dam - you turn in there, park, and the hike is along the colorado trail. okay, good. we drive back that way, see a little road that leads straight to the dam, and there's a little parking area right at the base of the dam and it looks like a footpath across it. we parked, i saw a sign off to the right noting the colorado trail, good. we start across, and quickly come to some no-trespassing signs. hmmm. well, this is where she told us to be, and oh look, there's a biker coming this way off the dam, it must be okay. so we went on our merry way. halfway across the dam, we see that maybe a 1/2 mile down the road, there's a road that turns in and leads to the other side of the dam, and that there's more parking over there ... oh well, we're already going this way, no biggie. ahem. as we approached the other side, i see a guy in a gray uniform climbing up the rocks at the side of the dam, looking at us. hmm. i glanced at scott and thought, "we're so busted." lo and behold - i guess the federal government takes its dams very seriously. so we got arrested and had to pay a $7000 fine.

just kidding! the security guard was a total jerk at first, making really snide comments like, "oh, aren't you so glad you saved the gas money by not driving down to the entrance, but there's a $3500/person fine for trespassing on federal property," etc. it was a simple mistake! he took down the info on scott's driver's license and wrote down my name/dob since my license was back in the car, and said he'd turn over the info to the fbi to investigate us. and told us that if it was higher security, he'd have to call in backup and put us down on the ground and have us searched. oh, and we weren't allowed to walk back across the dam to our car - we had to walk the mile back down the road. and he wouldn't give us a ride. he was nice enough at the end - told us to enjoy our hike, etc. i hate getting in trouble, so it kind of freaked me out, and made me very mad at us for not taking the signs seriously and mad at the biker who didn't bother to mention that you'd get stopped at the other end of the dam for trespassing. (and mad at the security guard for being such a jerk to us at the beginning - seriously, you don't have to be mean to me to make it stick that i did something wrong. tell me and i'll feel really bad and won't do it again, i promise.) scott thinks it'll be fine, though - we didn't get a ticket, and according to scott, they won't just send you a bill for a $3500/person fine without arresting you or something first. we'll see. maybe i'll have a note on my permanent criminal record - "7/19/2009, walked across a dam wearing a backpack."

so, that was my weekend! whitewater rafting, hiking on a 14er, playing with my camera, and a brush with the law. whew. hopefully we can at least nix the brush with the law part on our trip to steamboat next weekend.

planning for adventure

currently making my packing/grocery list for this weekend. i think the longest we've ever hiked before is like, 4-5 hours? so this will be an adventure. tomorrow we're leaving the house around 7am (earlier than i leave for work!) to head down to buena vista and go whitewater rafting - scott thinks we're canoeing ... ha! rafting starts at 10 and lasts about 6 hours, so we'll be able to check into our cabin that afternoon/evening, have a nice chill evening, and get to bed nice and early so that we can be ready to go for our mt. elbert expedition! we haven't firmed up a time to leave yet (maybe around 6-6:30??), but we did decide that we're going to do the black cloud trail that leaves from right next to our cabin. the goal is to summit mt. elbert, but if we don't, that's fine. either way, i'm packing plenty of aloe, icy hot, bandaids, and advil. and swimsuits so that we can go make use of the lodge's hot tub that night. scott was asking what we're going to do saturday night, and i told him to bring a book, because i don't think we'll be moving around too much.

being the planner that i am - and having such copious amounts of free time during the day - i've been a little worried about hiking mt. elbert, that it might be too much for us, etc. then i was looking at the trip reports page on elbert to see what the summit looks like right now (ie, should we pack for snow, or just chilly weather), and came across this posting ... yeah, those kids are like 7. and they summited elbert just fine. yes, we are taking the more challenging route, but i don't think i need to worry too much.

mt. elbert

holy cow, the more i look at mt. elbert, the more i think i may need to scale back my expectations for this weekend. consensus is that it's wise to leave from the trailhead as early as possible - ideally around sunrise, so just before 6am. also, there's a trailhead about 100 yards from our cabin, which would take us up the southeast trail, but the standard/easier trail is the northeast, the trailhead for which is about an hour drive from our cabin. and the place we're staying says that their guests who use the trailhead nearby usually spend about 8-12 hours on the hike, roundtrip. i think i might should bring this up with scott and get his input, since i don't think i see us getting up before the sun to spend a full day hiking ... although it would be really awesome if we did.

vacay pics and planning

oh! i forgot to post pics from our vacations thus far - i got them uploaded and into an album on facebook last week. i'm clearly not going to re-post here the 40+ that i put on fb, so if you want to see the whole shebang, go there. here's a selection of my favorites for now:

(above: us with the beautiful sunset on hwy 50, the rainy gondola ride down into telluride)

(above: sunset at the bluegrass fest, all of our gear for camping that weekend)

(above: my dad and mom during their visit with us the weekend after telluride.)

good times! hopefully the formatting will work with those pics ... it's so hard to tell sometimes.

scott ended up being sick all weekend - i counted last night, and i think he spent something like 20 hours in bed between 1pm saturday and 8pm sunday. he was feeling mostly better this morning, though, and went to work. i'm crossing my fingers that the worst is over with, and also that i don't get sick!

this next weekend is our mt. elbert adventure, which i'm getting really excited about. i think it'd be super fun to summit it - it is the tallest 14er in the state, but also one of the easiest, or so i've heard - but if we don't make it, it's not the end of the world. we can still enjoy a good hike. friday is whitewater rafting, which scott still doesn't know about, so shhhh! i was very proud of myself - i was at target last night picking up more advil for scott, and decided to take a look at their activewear, since all of my normal active stuff is all cotton, which is very comfy, but not so good for a river situation. i found a good inexpensive pair of workout shorts and a cute duo-dry tank top (that i'm still debating - it'd be fine with a swim suit top on the river, but wouldn't necessarily work with a sports bra for general working out) for myself, and even found a duo-dry t-shirt for scott to go with his board shorts. i am quite positive that i can sneak all of it into our luggage to have it ready to change into when we get to the rafting place. while i definitely prefer to know that a surprise is coming so i can anticipate it, i think scott will be quite thrilled. my plan is to just give scott directions from denver straight to the rafting place on friday, although i'm not quite sure how i'm going to get him out of the house that early in the morning ... we need to leave by 7ish to get there by 10 with time to spare. i think as long as we have all of our stuff packed and maybe even in the car by thursday night it shouldn't be too bad. i might need to come up with an excuse for the early morning on our day off, though - any suggestions? i also need to come up with a menu for the weekend - our cabin has a full kitchen, so we can make our own dinners and whatnot. i think i'll try and pre-make some easily heated things like enchiladas that we can just throw in the oven in the evenings. fun fun. i love summer!!!

saturday night at home

we're enjoying a good weekend for the most part. last night, we took goo to black hawk (a casino town just outside of denver) as a birthday present. we meant to take her last year, but house crises intervened (i think that was the night the hose in our bathroom burst and flooded the room), so we did it for her 22nd birthday instead. we had fun hanging out, but i think goo and i quickly realized we aren't gamblers. it just seems like such a waste of money: sure you have the chance to win big, but you also have the chance of going home with nothing. if you don't gamble and just keep the money you came with, you're guaranteed to not lose it! i did mostly penny slots with a little bit of quarter video poker thrown in - gambled $7 and at the end of the night was down $3.68, which wasn't bad. just this month black hawk started doing more table games like craps and roulette, but there weren't that many tables with them yet, and they all had the minimum buy in of $5. whatever, i enjoyed the experience, and i think i'm good to go with having my gambling fix for, you know, life. and i still have zero desire to ever go to las vegas.

today was fun for me, slightly less so for scott. our good friends lori and aaron who moved to mexico to teach two years ago are finally back in colorado, so they and their three month old daughter clara, and mike and maura and kinley all came over for lunch and hanging out - we were tentatively planning to go hiking down in roxborough. while he was at men's group this morning, though, scott started feeling sick. he laid down for a few minutes before everyone got here, made it through most of lunch (but didn't eat anything), and then came inside and went to bed for almost 5 hours while the rest of us hung out. i think he's feeling a little better now, but we're cancelling our plans to play kickball with friends tomorrow. all that to say, though, it was really fun getting to see lori and aaron and meet their sweet (and very pudgy) baby girl. i'm glad to have them back nearby.

i think scott and i are heading to blockbuster to pick up a movie for tonight. we're still in the midst of our no-tv month, and it's been really good for us, but a) movies don't really entirely count, and b) scott's sick and i think having something to do while lounging around will be good. it's really interesting to realize how much we - who really don't even watch that much tv - use it to sort of fill the void, or just provide background, or let us just veg. i don't think tv's bad, but i think this month is a great exercise in making us realize how many other things there are to do at night. and in making us realize how much we tend to rely on tv - for instance, dinner's ready, so we both grab our plates and start to head to the basement to watch some tv while we eat. instead, we've been sitting outside on the patio and talking and enjoying the fresh air. two weeks down, three to go.

i'm so excited! (genuinely, not channeling jessie spano)

our 4th of july weekend was fun - lots of hanging out with friends and eating food that we didn't cook and lounging around. i did get a sunburn on friday because i decided it would be fun to lay out and tan, but skipped the sunscreen step. it wasn't that bad of a burn, though, and thanks to my constant aloe-ing, is mostly gone by now.

but what has me tremendously excited, though, is labor day weekend. yes, we have tons of fun just-us stuff planned this summer in colorado - mt. elbert and steamboat this month, camping with our sunday school class next month. but labor day weekend is when our good from andrew from college is getting married. it's been kind of a whirlwind romance - andrew and his fiancee met last fall when he moved back to the midwest for grad school, started dating last winter, and are now engaged to be married this fall. it'll be fun to meet the girl of his dreams, but the best and most thrilling part is that almost all of our good college friends will be there! two sets of friends will be bringing brand new babies - they're both due around the beginning of august, so depending on when the kids come, caleb and abba's axel and keith and amy's tbd will be 2-6 weeks old. not only that, but we haven't seen most of these people since our own wedding almost 4 years ago! it's going to be like a mini-reunion, and it's going to be fantastic. i've already started looking at dresses. (by which i mean, i was shopping for swimsuits at kohl's last week and walked past a dress that i thought was really cute, and then tried it on when i went back with scott this weekend to buy him shorts.) this is a fabulous summer!!!

how is it july already?

thus begins our tv-free month. we talked about cancelling cable for the summer since nothing's on, which spiraled into the idea of just ditching tv for the month of july. last night scott helped a friend move and i went swimsuit shopping, but we got in an episode of the closer and one everybody loves raymond before turning it off. i'm excited for us. i don't think we've ever done a tv-free month - scott did a sports-free month a few years ago - so it'll be a learning/growing experience for sure. one of our goals for the summer was to start reading the bible more together, so i think this will help us get in the swing of things. plus we have yard work, sunshine to enjoy, a pool to go to, plenty of fun things to do in denver ... and two vacations this month. (we also need to figure out how to limit internet for the month too, since it would make no sense to turn off the tv but still be camped in front of our computers all month ... maybe just e-mail at home and that's it? tbd.)

the weekend with my parents was really fun! we finally drove the length of guanella pass, which was beautiful, went to the botanic gardens, took in a free jazz concert at city park, grilled out and enjoyed our new patio set, and played a few rounds of boggle and scrabble (i won them all, of course). i took plenty of great photos, which are currently sitting on my laptop at home (with the bluegrass fest pics) waiting for me to sift through them and get them posted. maybe i'll do that at work tomorrow since no one will be in the office ...

speaking of photos, my dad brought his dslr out and let me play with it a bit. i've been wanting a dslr for a while, but have never used one before, so he explained some of the iso and aperture settings to me - fascinating stuff, let me tell you. since things often make more sense to me if i can either write them down or see them in writing, i went over to check out the pioneer woman's photography blog to see what she had to say. lo and behold, there's an entire section dedicating to dumbing down cool manual settings. as i was looking at my dad's camera this weekend, i had sudden realization that my point-and-shoot camera has some of those very same manual settings! since i do not have $800 stashed away to drop on a dslr at the moment, my plan is to see what i fun things i can do with my current camera while saving my spare pennies and trying to soften scott up to the idea of buying me a super nice camera. obviously there are limitations to my point-and-shoot, such as not being able to switch lenses, but i can at least teach myself the basics in the meantime. i think i do need to upgrade my memory card, though, since i'm still using the 256mb card the camera came with. oh 2004.

itchy

one downside to camping is the mosquitos, especially since i am more allergic to bug bites than the average joe (no, i'm not just being a wuss - i really am). i brought bug repellant with me, but totally failed to use it, and now have big itchy swollen welts on my legs as a reminder for me in the future. i just counted, and i only have 9 bites total on both legs, but good heavens it feels like a few dozen at the least. one at the top of my right calf was swollen to the size of a quarter yesterday, and i have enough on my ankles that every time i walk, the movement of the skin sends itchy hurty feelings all down the tops of my feet and up my legs. grrrrr. scott very sweetly asked me last night if there was anything he could do, and i asked if he'd be willing to do a below-the-knee amputation for me. he didn't go for it. i think they're getting better today, though - the swelling's all down, and they don't feel burning hot anymore.

our friend miranda (we went to telluride with her and her husband jordan) is an ecologist, and was telling us about a study she saw that concluded that mosquitos only purpose in the whole circle of life is to keep humans in check. i'd say that's about right.