Adams Falls

We had a great playdate Saturday, hiking to Adams Falls with our summer friend Cash and his mom. He's started preschool down in Denver now, but — since his dad runs the local bike park — we'll see him again next year. He doesn't have any brothers or sisters and decided on this trip that he's going to adopt Arden and Sawyer as his siblings. Too cute.

Roll the 'Little House' theme song ...

Steamboat

I met my Leadville roomie and great friend Sarahgirl in Steamboat Springs last weekend for a little bit of girl time. We enjoyed a drink by the river and dipped in the Strawberry Hot Springs. Fall has finally arrived in the high country and the aspen and cottonwood trees are vibrant yellow. It was a perfect little get away.


The hot springs were far better than I anticipated. Great, even, for kids — although I left mine behind.


This was the bathroom.




We didn't stay, but next time I really want to. They have these great little gypsy caravans that you can camp in during the summer. They also have rustic cabins and nicer places for those who'd rather not rough it. It'll be a great side trip for folks who visit us.


Oh, the best part of Steamboat — a drink by the river with a best bud.

Recipes for Picky Eaters No. 4

Burrito Night

This one is simple. It's all about the process. Put out a lot of different ingredients and let the kids decide what goes in. A little piece of tinfoil around the bottom makes for easy holding (and keeps the bottom together). This is by far the most common dinner in our house. We shake it up with different kinds of leftover meat, chicken, cheese, veggies, sour cream, etc. But, for my kids, we pull out a batch with no taco seasoning. Then we season a batch for the adults. Always a winner.

About the Quilt

I've been working on this quilt since long before Arden was born. The batting — the heart — is an old tattered bedspread from my very early childhood. Other children cling to a blankie. I clung — apparently — to an entire, quilted, twin-sized bedspread. You'd probably even recognize the pattern — if you could see it. It's one of those recognizable early 70s bedroom patterns. Like, um, this:


Orange roses on green vines. Woodies, maybe Hecht's circa 1976. My parents tried to match the color of the stems when they painted their walls. Ah, good times. It was like that for years ... That green room used to be my sleepy place. I think about that, sometimes, when one of the kids crawls in bed with me at 5 a.m. I think about the green room.

Back to my quilt. The old comforter traveled with me and got softer and more wonderful straight through college. By the time I headed into my outdoor life I had made a white duvet for it out of two old army sheets my mom had in a trunk in the basement. I decorated the closure with buttons I'd collected over the years. I have no idea what happened to it — probably made way for a real down comforter.

When I moved into the Leadville house I found a huge popcorn tin full of pre-cut fabric and started stitching the squares together for fun. Then life got interesting, and sitting around stitching things for fun became a thing of the past. The quarter quilt and my giant binky moved around with me six times and across 5,000 miles before landing here.

IN THE MEANTIME — we got this awesome wedding gift from our dear friend Joanna. A quilt. It lived on our bed for a while. Then I had to rescue it from the boat, where it was growing too comfortable. I washed it up and made a baby mat out of it:

Learning to crawl

Last winter, the wedding quilt became Arden's winter bedspread and kept her warm until it was literally shredding on the backside from love.

AND SO — I have taken the three sentimental quilts — the Giant Bedspread Security Blanket, the Leadville Quarter Quilt and The Wedding Quilt — and married them into one crazy but much loved and far-traveled blanket. There is some serious sentiment in that thar' blanket. And, assuming, if I manage to finish it before winter, she will love it forever. Until she decides she'd rather have a Dora bedspread. (Over my dead body.)

School Notes: Vegetable Garden

The preschool grew a vegetable garden this summer and the kids have been helping harvest it over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, this mom has been enjoying the fruits of their labors more than any of her kids. But Arden was willing to try a sugar snap. Otherwise, it was really fun to see their excitement as they unearthed and picked vegetables.

A friend of my mother's recently posted on Facebook that she was in the check out line buying acorn squash and that the cashier said: "Oh, so is that acorn squash? I heard about it on Farmville."

I hope to never hear one of my kids say something like that.

A sad farewell to these cute boots, which Arden has finally outgrown.

Our beloved Miss Molly.

Funny things

Arden, after falling down and getting a boo-boo: I need a new Arden.

Sawyer, What is Easter? I start with spring and rebirth... But, Mommy, it's snowing and cold at Easter ... and, then ... Will I be born again?

Arden, sobbing after being told to go to bed: That makes me sad!

Arden, What is the deal here?

Arden, I want to cuddle.

Arden, Whenever there is mention of snow, reindeer or Santa ... My birthday's at Christmas!

The bells go off

Sawyer has just started creating his first representative artwork. Always before it was pretty much just scribbles. The breakthrough came — I think — with all the coloring he did on the plane to Virginia.

I love kid art, so I've had art materials around my kids since they were 12 months old. I've been waiting and waiting. But, its just been scribbles, and Sawyer never really took much interest in art at all. The teachers kept saying: It will come.

The first thing he drew this week was a picture of his family, which is hanging on the wall at school. I cried and hugged him. (I can't believe I had to wait until he was 4 and to see his first stick figure.)

This picture, he said, is of Mommy and Daddy getting married — which is why we don't have any kids. I'm on the right, playing the guitar for Daddy to calm him down ... although originally I think that was supposed to be me on the left with my wedding dress. So, maybe I'm really just marrying myself. I love it anyway.

Arden, who has always had a better since of color and line, painted me this, which she said is an eye.

Camping: Flat Top Wilderness

Cold Springs Campground, Flat Tops Wilderness near Yampa, Colo.

We took the kids camping for one night this weekend — get this — for the FIRST TIME EVER! I can't even believe it. Me. The woman who camped more than 200 days in 1998. We drove about two hours west to the beautiful Bear River valley at the entrance to Flat Tops Wilderness — where all the mountains are ... flat!

We camped by a clear blue/green pond w/waterfall.

The last time Scott and I camped like this, we didn't have Sawyer and Arden. We went camping a handful of times with Justin in Virginia — winter camping once, beach camping two or three times, and camping with the boat twice. I have a negative-30-degree down sleeping bag that I've owned for almost a decade and this was the first time I actually slept INSIDE of it.

Scott's custom marshmallow roaster travel with us everywhere.

Other than the sleeping bags, most of our campgear is 15 years old. We pulled the trip together on a last minute whim when I had a Labor Day, "How-has-an-entire-summer-flown-by?" revelation that I had not fulfilled a promise to my kids to take them camping. In the rush to pack, I didn't check the camp stoves. Despite my expert skills at disassembling and then reassembling Whisper Lite stoves — the VW of all camp stoves — our fuel pump appeared to be shot. We resorted to cooking our meals, hot drinks and dessert by campfire. Scott did a fabulous job. Never has saltless ground beef/red potoato/carrot scramble tasted so good (uh, remembered spice kit, forgot to replenish it). Eggs and bacon at breakfast were to die for. (The 7-year-old Tabasco sauce would have made my parents proud — separated and chunky — that stuff could survive nuclear warfare, just not 7 years in storage.)

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O O
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In the blank space above should have been a photo of Scott circumnavigating a small lake with a bundle of four long dead trees trunks hoisted on his shoulders. It was a total Survivor Man moment. As much as I laughed at the time, I was glad to have all that wood by the fire ring.

Kids enjoying a cuppa before bedtime.

Camping – with all its wild and elemental experiences — can test the most traveled adult, not to mention play with the mind of a preschooler. Arden slept and ate like a trooper — basically the perfect camper. She hardly complained about being cold (even when it was). Sawyer, on the other hand, had a harder time — eating/being cold/pooping/falling asleep. I eventually pulled him out of the tent so he could have that post-dark camping experience sitting by the fire roasting marshmallows, playing with headlamps and watching the stars emerge.

It was — hands down — the starriest sky I've ever seen. And I've slept under hundreds of night skies. Snuggling by the fire with Sawyer, stargazing and just talking, was one of those intensely special kid moments that make me wonder: why don't I stop and enjoy this more often?

Keeping us safe from small, high-alpine varmints.

There was one thing that completely shocked me when the stars came out. Low on the eastern horizon there was an object so intensely bright that I thought it had to be man made. So intensely bright — it nearly blinded me in my right eye — that I figured it had to be the International Space Station. Which I've never seen before. It was only beginning to be constructed in 1998 and was barely visible when I moved east, where you are lucky to even see a star in the sky at all. So I googled the International Space Station and tracked it. Turns out, it couldn't have been the space station.

Which leaves only one possibility: It was JUPITER! Read this Earth and Sky article. Jupiter is closer to the earth that its been in 60 years.

Happy summer's end everyone!

Recipes for Picky Eaters No. 3

Spaghetti Carbonara

This is another meal my mom used to make. One of my all-time favorites and a nice change from regular pasta. It's basically breakfast pasta.

The key is to warm the bowl in a 200-degree oven. Cook the pasta, save some hot water when you drain it (add it back in to pasta if it begins to look dry). Transfer pasta into warm bowl. Beat two eggs and then add them to the hot pasta. (The heat from pasta and bowl cooks egg). Add crumbled, cooked bacon, grated parm and salt.


Voila! A meal even picky eaters will love. (Unlike all my other recipes, there is no butter in this meal, but it's still a guaranteed artery clogger.)