Home Sweet Home

It was an unusually clear day on Sunday when we flew out of Portland, OR on our way back to Colorado. There were four peaks visible which we think (but are not certain) are: Hood, St. Helens, Rainier, and Adams.

Well, I'm not so sure about the sweet part of the title, as we were all pretty sad to leave the Pacific Northwest, but it is nice to be back in our own space after two weeks of travelling. We spent Christmas day and the week before with my whole family at my older sister's house near Portland. The day after Christmas we headed up to Washington where we rented a house in West Seattle for the week and got to visit with Pat's family in Tacoma and our friends in Seattle. There were of course a few bumps (we may or may not have brought some sort of 24 hour stomach bug with us to Portland), but overall it was a really great trip.

It's been kind of crazy since we got back with trying to get the house organized again (Christmas stuff is still up and it's driving me crazy!), a bunch of appointments on Monday, and then me having minor dental surgery yesterday. I now have a shiny new front tooth to replace the one I ran into a parking meter with when I was eight years old. I never thought I'd say this, but, please--no. more. ice cream.

Anyway, so for now here are a few very random iPhone photos. Will hopefully be getting to the others this week!

Niamh & her new cousin Ila

Disgruntled Ila B.

Christmas tree at the Pittock Mansion

Another Christmas scene at the Pittock Mansion

To Seattle!!!

Muriel at the Museum of Flight

While in Seattle Muriel attached herself to our friend Jay



Waiting to get into the Harry Potter Exhibit at the Pacific Science Center

Halloween 2010

We had a great Halloween and the kids are super sad this morning that it is all over. There was a visit from the Great Pumpkin, deliciously spooky stories, haunting music, time spent with friends, roasted pumpkin seeds, eyeball soup, mummy dogs, costumes, and trick-or-treating, which of course ended with a lot of candy. Muriel was a little scared at the beginning of the night when everyone started getting into their costumes, but warmed up once she got into the spirit of trick-or-treating. My only regret is that in all the chaos I did not get a photo of Pat, John, and Jennifer dressed up in their costumes (Darth Vader, and two characters from Mario Kart). I did not have a costume, but have big plans for next year. As do the children. They are already dreaming of next Halloween!

Two Toothless Kids

Rowan and Gwenyth--September 26th, 2010

Fun With Uncle Mike

A few weekends ago (actually, the same weekend we went to see Thomas) Uncle Mike came to town for one last fling before he becomes a father.

It was a great weekend! The kids had fun with Thomas, picnics, stomp rockets, and playing (or pestering. It's a fine line.) with Uncle Mike. And I believe a good time was also had by the big boys, revisiting favorite college past times.

Day Out With Thomas 2010

A couple of weeks ago we headed back to the Colorado Railroad Museum with the Metcalfs for the museum's Day Out With Thomas event.

The kids all had a great time, though I think the thirty minute ride on Thomas, in which the train circled the museum four times at an agonizingly slow speed, was probably not a highlight. There was much more fun to be had sifting through gravel, playing with trains, petting ponies, sitting in fire engines, and eating ice cream.

There are a few more photos up on Flickr.

Letterboxing!

On Monday the Metcalfs joined us in driving to Boulder for a morning of hiking along the South Boulder Creek Trail. Other than the fairly strong winds, the weather was just about perfect for hiking.

I think the wildfire must have started shortly after we began hiking. It was odd to see clear sky looking one direction, and look the other way and see the smoke piling up.

At any rate, I was excited to finally get to do some letterboxing! This is something I've been hearing about for a couple of years, but I don't think there's a whole lot of letterboxing going on in Switzerland. The day after reading this blog post on Dim Sum, Bagels, and Crawfish, I raced out and bought all the supplies needed to do our own letterboxing. There are a bunch of letterboxes around Loveland, and I'd been meaning to get the kids out to do some hunting every weekend since Lucia's post, but it just hadn't happened.

We hadn't set out on Monday with letterboxing in mind, but I grabbed the bag on the way out the door, figuring that Boulder of all places was sure to have quite a few letterboxes scattered around. And sure enough, after consulting Clue Tracker on the drive down, I saw that there were several letterboxes on the very trail we were going to be hiking. Finding the letterboxes with their handcarved stamps was a lot of fun. And we actually found every letterbox we searched for, unlike all of our attempts at geocaching which have failed miserably.

Another highlight of the hike was playing in the creek on our way back. The water was crystal clear, and shallow enough that the kids could wade from bank to bank without worry. It seems like, in hiking with children, having a water element along the trail always helps to cut down on the whining.

What a great way to spend our first Labor Day back in the States!

Weekend Photos

On Saturday the kids got to attend their very first parade for the Corn Roast Festival. Rowan was initially pretty scared, being sure that there were going to be cannons. But there were of course no cannons, and even the marching bands turned out not to be too loud for him. I think the loads of candy that were thrown at the children probably helped too. Niamh's dance studio had a float in the parade, and Niamh was thrilled to see her teacher in it. After the parade we made a quick stop at the festival itself, but it was too hot for anybody to get much enjoyment out of it. We will have to try going in the morning or evening next year.

Then on Sunday morning we got up bright and early to watch the hot air balloons being launched. So beautiful! And much more pleasant than watching hot air balloons in the bitter cold!

Weekend In Seattle

At the beginning of this month I was able to spend a wonderful, but all too short, weekend in Seattle. Had breakfast with my parents, got to hang out in Ballard with friends, finally met a sweet baby that had been born while we were in Switzerland, and-the point of the whole trip-attended a baby shower for my dear friend Eve. I'm afraid that I came back to Colorado fairly homesick. But I'm so glad that we are at least close enough to the west coast now to be able fly over for events like this!

my mom at Señor Moose
(wishing I had thought to get a picture of both my parents!)

sweet baby Corbin

house in Ballard

at the Ballard Farmer's Market

Eve

More pictures can be found on Flickr.

Fishing: Round Two

On Saturday we went back to Trout Haven Ranch to try our hand at fishing again, this time with the Metcalfs. For the first two hours or so we were almost completely unsuccessful.

The fish (and there were a lot of them) swam past most of the worms without any interest.

But not always! They were really good at taking the worms off the hook and hardly having their mouth touch it at all. There were a couple of times when a fish was hooked and even out of the water, but still managed to wiggle away (see above photo). Using the worms John was the only one of us who caught a fish. We were just about to give up and go home with only one, when Jen saved the day and asked the guys inside the shop for help. Before that they had been very hands off. But when asked they not only gave us corn as bait instead of worms ("corn is like a steak dinner to the trout"), they also came out gave us pointers on actually catching the fish.

I unfortunately have no photos of fish being caught, but we did walk away with nine between us, which made the children very happy.

One of the nicest parts about fishing the easy way is having someone else clean the fish.

That evening we all convened back at our house for playing and a delicious, if bone-y, dinner of grilled trout. John did most of the cooking and he did a really great job. I think we all agreed that while the experience was worth it, the trout had entirely too many bones to make eating them very enjoyable, even if they were tasty.

There are a few more photos from our day up on Flickr.