Fall

It's a beautiful time of the year here. The leaves are starting to change in our neighborhood and the mountains are already showing golden streaks of aspen. It's chilly enough for making soup and sitting on the couch reading a good book. I'm especially happy about fall because it says that now I'm almost into my second trimester-no more feeling sick, tired, or grumpy! I haven't felt like doing much of anything since the beginning of August so I figured I'd blog a bit.
The big news this summer was of course...

But before that I had a chance to work in Maine for 10 days with professors at Unity College. I helped hunt for dragonfly exuvia, tagged stugeon, hunted earthworms, played in soil pits, walked on bogs, and learned how to properly paddle a canoe. I also made some wonderful new friends and ate at a lobster pound. It was amazing!


Last month Eric went to Washington DC for a week to take a film class. He had a great time and even made a short video with Kathy as his subject (if you are a Facebook friend you can see it there). She was able to head down from Delaware for a day to help and then go to Jaleo with Eric. The restaurant is owned by Jose Andres, one of Eric's favorites chefs. I would have been jealous if I had wanted to eat food that week!

Eric also enjoyed eating at another burger place, and it was so good he took a picture before diving in.

The other big happening was that we remodeled our bathroom and the transformation from pink to modern is amazing.


Not the best after picture but it is so amazing that I've forgotten that for four long weeks I had to trek downstairs to use the bathroom 1-2 times each night. Next up is installing our newly purchased pellet stove. The one feature lacking from our house is a fireplace and pellet stoves are more efficient and cleaner than fireplaces. It should heat the entire upstairs so we'll also save on heating costs.

Grady and I are both growing larger at alarming rates. He's only 4 months old but wearing 6-8 month clothes, and I'm only 13 weeks and wearing nice comfy elastic waist pants. Grady is super sweet and mellow, and he loves his sister!

He even slept through Oktoberfest, where I sipped on hot chocolate and ate Tropical snow while the others enjoyed local brews. Even Everett took part!

Our plans are to have a relaxing fall-it could be the last for years to come!

Summer

Just had to post this picture of Audrey...


Ah yes, baby Grady was born two weeks ago and here are a few pictures of him.




It's finally summer so that means lots of work on the landscaping, biking to the coffee shop in Windsor 3 times a week, and having back porch parties at our house. Erin also knows it is summer because she has her own pool...

Biking

It has been a busy week. I took my 7th grade students to the Poudre Learning Center to do independent scientific research. That sounded like a good idea last winter when the idea was born, but it took me all week to get things organized and make sure the students would be ready for the trip on Friday. Overall it went well and I'm looking forward to reading their final papers.
On Friday night we went to the Farnsworth's for a cookout. Erin was her usual cute self and here she is with Courtney.

And Cheryl...

Saturday Eric and I went looking for a patio set. Instead we ended up trying out couches for our basement. After sitting on many couches, we decided to try a very cushy looking one that was actually two recliners you push together to make a mini couch. Despite the awful color and very squishy appearance, we fell in love with it. If this fits in our basement you will all be happy, trust me!

Today (Sunday) Joanna and I rode in the Community Classic Bike Tour. We had fun despite a few flats and lots of climbs.

Here are our bikes resting while we get some yummy food. Carter Lake is in the background.

Here we are in Masonville. Some nice guys changed Joanna's first flat on the ride.


Yet another nice guy, James, changing a flat tire...

And then there was Roy (I think that was his name), a professional bike repair guy who found that Joanna's rim had a little sharp point that was causing all the flats. He fixed that and we were on our way to the finish.

I would recommend this tour for anyone. There are 10, 30, 37, and 62 mile options. We'll definitely be doing the 62 again next year!

Smores

The title says it all! We had a nice evening on our porch, grilling and making smores for our small group. Here's Erin making her first smore! Unfortunately she likes "raw" marshmallows better than gooey toasty ones. You can see that Deborah is still very pregnant, and like Eric says "she looks like an engorged tick."

Eric is the grill master, as he demonstrates here... Eric's birthday gift was rather disturbing to some of our guests, including Cecily who exclaimed to Eric, "Is that your head?" (See my Facebook page for more information on this gift)

I had a lovely weekend working on the side of the house. It is the last "jungle" area I need to tackle in our yard. I think I can see potential.

Here's to many more summer evenings on our porch and lots more landscaping!

Dog

As Kathy put it, "Audrey must have felt like she died and went to hell." They managed to tear open an entire bag of dog food but were only able to spread it around with their snouts because they were muzzled! Ha!

The Bungalow

Many of you know that I have two addictions (currently), coffee and biking. Last year I'd ride with friends from Greeley to Windsor and stop at the Bungalow coffee shop . The shop is located right off the Poudre Trail in the perfect location for bikers. The coffee would call my name and I'd push on to enjoy a good cup and a yummy pastry of some sort. Then last winter I found out the place went out of business and confirmed this by driving there to see. I was very, very sad. Then two weeks ago I went for a bike ride with a friend and we were about to turn around at the end of the trail when I decided to ride to the shop and make sure it was closed. To my surprise the sign glowed "open" so I went inside to see for myself. Turns out two girls from Boulder decided to buy the place, make some improvements, and reopen. Thankful I brought some money we bought a cup of coffee and made plans to ride again. Ah happiness...
Here's the route we take. This map was created from my Garmin 405 GPS watch. It's an amazing way to track routes and pace.

Anyone up for a coffee ride?

I think I'll get back into blogging...

There's something about actually saying something to people, not just updating your status and posting pictures with explanations rather than captions. Facebook got me there for a time, and still will since I'm addicted, but I think it's time to get back into sharing what's really happening here in Colorado.

Eric and I ran the half marathon and had a great time. I was afraid that my prodding Eric to run 13.1 miles was going to turn him off to yet another one of my interests. Some of you may recall that I took Eric to hike a fourteener while we were dating-the first time- because I am very passionate about hiking and wanted to share that with him. After we hiked Mt. Belford (aka "Holy Helford")we only lasted another 7 days. Just check out his face...

Ah, 2005...He has yet to do another fourteener with me.

Back in September, when running 13.1 miles was inspiring and far enough away to seem like a great idea, we signed up to run the race under 2 hours. Training didn't go quite as planned, with life getting in the way and two weeks prior to the race I was pretty sick. You start the race according to predicted finish time, so we were in wave 8 out of 33...yikes! Race morning was rather warm and sunny. We were advised by the race coordinators not to push for personal best times and to be sure to drink enough fluids. I had already run the race two years ago so opted to run with a good friend who had a plan to run/walk the course and joined her back in wave 25. Eric still wanted to try to finish in under 2 hours and as he took off all I could think of was his bad experience with fourteeners and that we'd never do this again. I had a blast running with my friend and chatting for the first 10 miles but in the back of my mind I was hoping Eric was also enjoying the bands each mile and the feeling of running with 30,000 other people. I felt great and my friend encouraged me to go ahead for the last 3 miles so I took off for the finish and came in strong. I knew Eric finished way before me, having started about 40 minutes before my wave, and as I walked to find him I saw people fainting, staggering to the medical tents, and being carted off on stretchers. It was sobering. We found out later that a 26 year old guy died after finishing the half marathon in 2:15. I was thankful I felt so great and worried Eric had pushed himself too hard...but when I found him he was smiling and told me he had run the course in 2:06. Not great but respectable considering the heat and hills. Even better was that he asked me if we were going to do it again next year!

We were pitiful that evening but managed to spend time with family. Eric's family came for the event(they live in Huntsville and North Georgia) and we were staying with my family. My nieces love it when we are there and we watched Sam run the kids marathon the night before. Here are some great shots of her.

At the starting line

Good start

Strong finish


Alyssa loves Uncle Eric!



We also watched Sam play volleyball. We were about 6 hours post race and Eric's face says it all.


We had a great time and I think we'll end up going to Nashville again next April. Here's to blogging again.

We are alive...

Eric and I are still alive. We have been busy though, training for a half-marathon, working, I'm taking a 3 hour graduate class, our dogs are crazy... the list goes on and on. I can't access the blog on my phone so I keep up with people on Facebook, since there is an application for my phone. SO- go to facebook.com and sign up for a FREE Facebook account. You get to choose who can see your information and it is a lot of fun! Plus you'll get to see status updates (usually made daily) of what your friends are doing. Check it out!
Mom, even Amy is on Facebook :-)

A Crazy Trip to Nashville

Eric and I took a road trip to Nashville for Christmas this year. We thought it would be a wonderful time, since we could take the dogs and not have to worry about leaving them with anyone or boarding them. So we took off on our adventure...
We stopped in Kansas City at a world famous barbecue stop, Arthur Bryant's. It was much needed after 9 hours in the car, with temperatures outside hovering right above 0, with 30-50 mph winds. Brrrr! Everytime we tried to fill up the tank or take the dogs for a jog we immediately came back to the car because it was unbearable outside.

That night we made it to somewhere in Missouri, and when we got to the hotel the dogs must not have been in the best of spirits because they got into a fight. They have fought before and Eric body slams them to break them apart. It isn't pretty and we started wondering how we were going to manage them on this long trip. We divided the room and went to bed thinking all would be fine in the morning.
The next morning we loaded up the car and put the dogs in the back of the car and as we started to pull out the dogs started fighting again. This time it was harder to pull them apart, and Eric got a nasty bite on his hand. We realized we had to keep the dogs apart for the rest of the trip. We also bought muzzles to keep everyone safe and blood free. Cache was not in the Christmas spirit...

We stayed with my sister and thankfully she loves dogs, even ones with issues. Their basset, Molly, is quite a handful too so our dogs fit in. Unfortunately, Audrey went after Cache that night, even though Cache was muzzled...so we got another muzzle for Audrey.
Christmas was fun. Eric is "the world's greatest uncle" because he takes Sam to get cookies and they eat junk food. Here they are at the mall eating cookie slices.

I don't have many more pictures due to all the drama surrounding the dog issues and Alyssa was not feeling well. But I did snap this photo of Christmas morning. Messy wrapping paper drives Dave crazy!

We went down to Alabama to see Eric's family and had a wonderful time, but had to head back to Colorado. The dogs were ok on the way back, but once we got home they got into a few more tussles. We have decided to keep the dogs muzzled when they are together in the house, and to run them as much as possible. Most dog problems are from not giving dogs enough exercise. Many people have told us that we need to get rid of one or both of them, either by putting them down or finding new homes for them. However, Eric and I firmly believe that when dogs have behavioral issues, it is the human's issue-not the dog's. Sure, the dogs have baggage from other humans (both our dogs had previous owners) but if you implement the correct methods the dogs can adjust and the unwanted behavior will cease. We knew something we were doing or not doing was triggering the aggression so we've decided to take some classes to learn methods to help Audrey and Cache to get along.
We'll let you know how it all turns out.