Reminescing on the silliness

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about how Margaret and I have sore bums.

Really.

What?

The first bike ride of the year causes that. Click over here to read my brilliant observations on butt soreness.

I had originally intended to include this picture of me riding my bike:
And then, of course, I didn't use the picture. But I did find a whole bunch of other pictures that made me chuckle.

From these pictures I realized that my kid has always had a great sense of humor. For that I will always be eternally grateful.

Vegas is fun ... who knew

So I'm sure you all know by now, Bill and I went to Vegas.

It was fun, eat drank a lot (you can walk down the street with drinks, just like civilized people should), we ate a lot and I started out my family's Biggest Loser Challenge by gaining one pound (Bill reminded me that I should be happy it's only one pound considered all the eat and drink).

But because I can't leave well enough alone, here are some photo highlights from our trip:

Yay and brrrr

This view out my front door surprised me as I was on my way to work.

I know, I know, the weather dude said there'd be snow. But I expected it to later ... like the end of November. And yes, I know Denver and the mountains are getting hammered right now, but they are supposed to get hammered with snow. We high desert dwellers are supposed to be treated better than that.

But I'm not complaining, I'm just sayin'.

Because really, I'm excited about the snow. Snow = skiing and skiing = beer at the resort lodge. Ah, it's a beautiful world. Plus, remember, I got new skis last year. (And I think I'm going to sell my almost-brand-new-but-I-don't-want-to-use-them-because-I'm-too-old-to-be-all-fallin'-on-my-butt snowboard boots and board — any buyers? I'll make you a good deal!)

And in addition to my new skis last year, we got Mar new skis while we were in Denver a while ago. Then on our way traveling home from our yearly Washington, D.C. trip we were able to stop in Silverthorne (where I started my Christmas shopping big time ... yay) and scored her brand new boots for a screaming deal.

It was such a good deal that we actually hurried away in case they realized what they had done and changed their minds.

So, what I'm getting at is that we're on the cusp of ski season and we're all set. So snow, bring it on.

Of how the others must see the faker

No, that's not Bill singing with his band.

It's Bill singing karaoke at the Livery in Palisade. He charmed us all with his version of David Bowie's "Changes." Dude rocked it.

And he wasn't even that drunk nor tricked/forced into it.

It was actually quite easy to get him to do it. I said, "Why don't you sing a song, Bill?" He pretended not to want to. But after about 3 seconds of encouragement, he was up there looking through the song books.

The only thing surprising about it was that this was his first time singing karaoke.

And guess what?

He's a natural.

The princess

Nastia. Our little kitty. Man is she spoiled.

She's almost a year old now and she's completely won over our entire household.

Nastia (whom I've taken to calling just Liddow Kii-yy) got our cantankerous Billie Holiday cat to not try to kill her every time they were in the same room together. That alone is a miracle.

But the biggest feat she was able to achieve was getting to lay on my mother's bed.

For those who doen't know my mom, she doesn't like animals to touch her stuff and especially not her directly.

She's fine with them in the house — for the most part. But she did make me promise that we'd never get a bunch of big dogs that would slobber all over her. That was easy as I myself am not a fan of big dogs slobbering all over me.

My mom spent the first couple weeks living with us training (as much as any of our animals can be trained) our pets to not — under any circumstances — get on her bed, touch her stuff and especially not touch her.

They all learned this ... except for Nastia.

The little kitty is very persistent with her princess ways and took advantage of my mom's limited mobility.

If the dog looks at my mom too long or in the wrong way, all my mom has to do is point a finger and Quincy makes a hasty retreat. If Billie or Ella get on her bed, my mom moves her leg and off they scamper.

Not Nastia. She just moves out of my mom's reach and goes back to sleep.

The other day I saw her snuggled against my mom's leg!

Like I said, Nastia's the princess of the house and we all seem to have that figured out now.

Girls

Goofy, chatty, screamy, giggly, smart, silly, wonderful.

Ketchup gets a friend

Thanks to Emily who was kind enough to swipe Ms. Mayo to go with our lonely Mr. Ketchup.

Half-century Bill

Last Monday was Bill's 50th birthday.

Yeah, yeah. I know, he doesn't look 50. He looks younger than me, despite being more than a decade older.

I've heard it all before. So has Bill and he loves it.

To celebrate his oldness, our awesomely awesome friends, Boom Boom and La La threw him a shindig.

Just for the record this is what a punk-rock legend looks like when he turns 50:

Happy 9th birthday, Mar!

Rain, rain ...

It's been raining a lot this summer. And I am loving it.

Yeah, we haven't been going to the pool much and I have a new swimsuit that I actually like this year (despite the fact that I'm verging on the saggy-boob-sock look), but I don't care.

We've been sitting outside every evening after work and many evenings we have a fire in our firepit, often roasting marshmallows and eating s'mores. Although yesterday, Bill and Davy burned all the rose bush trimmings and it smelled not at all like roses.

It makes us look like a nice, normal family (unless you listen to our conversations, then you know that we are far from a nice, normal family).

On top of all that, our yard has never looked better. Our flowers are all blooming happily and heartily. I guess all those years of planting, thinning, adding, moving and weeding have finally paid off ... big time.

And the best part is that we've done almost nothing to this year other than a little weeding (there's lots more weeding to be done, but the flowers are so happy and full that I'm happy leaving well enough alone).

Hiking to Hanging Lake birthday style

I wrote back in March about hiking to the top of Mount Garfield for Scott's birthday. Well this weekend we hiked to Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs (notice the "near Glenwood Springs" part — hiking followed by soaking is the most glorious combination I can think of).



See how smug I look here. I'm all, "Wha'? Like that was hard?" (Um, it wasn't easy, chick, remember the panting and soaring pulse rate?)

Bill, Mar and I hiked this two years ago with my brother and his family on Mother's Day and I was happy that this time I didn't quite need the defibrillator paddles at the top.

It is truly a gorgeous hike and well worth the time and effort up the rocky, steep trail:

Check out Bill giving me his "come hither" stare to encourage me to keep hiking and quit complaining.

He's so cute, I can hardly remember the steep, nasty trail.
And before I knew it, we were standing in front of Hanging Lake:


It is a truly a sight to behold. The water is so clear and blue and green. Just lovely.

Plus there were friendly chipmonks that didn't seem to have the plague, which is a good thing because the kids got a big kick out of feeding these greedy critters:

After the hike, we headed to our campground to set up our camp: tents had to be pitched, chairs unfolded and beers drank:
There was also a little wildlife in our camp that need to be inspected. A nest was perched on the ledge of the woman's bathroom window:
But the nest was too high off the ground for us to see what was inside. So Laurena did what any good mom would do, she made her only son act of stepstool:
Wha? Notice she took off her flip flops first. Gah!

Then she snapped this picture of the lovely blue egg resting inside:
The rest of the trip included a long soak in the hot springs, a delicious dinner of Bill's chili along with hot dogs and all the fixin's and a long sit next.

I asked Bill what we were laughing about all night long and he said that it was best to not remember that way we can laugh about it again next time we have a fire.

Sunday, saw us having Bill's version of the Egg McMuffin and then a slow roll up of the camp in between rain showers.

It was a great weekend away and a fabulous way to celebrate getting older.