Father's & Sons 2014

Favorite campout all year--the Father's & Sons. My boys really love each other and love spending time together. It rained the entire drive up, but stopped when they arrived. Thank goodness there were no soggy s'mores. They got a slower start than hoped for, which meant dinner was pretty late . . . and there was rain as Nathan went to bed, but they stayed dry in the tent. The suburban definitely needed a car wash when they got back, so that equates to a success?
I think so.

So excited to haul around the backpack while getting ready to go

Ladderball and my favorite boys. The setting isn't bad either, is it?

Close friends

Nathan really loves cooking on a campout. While many of the dads are content with hot dogs (not to mention their sons), he wants to eat a real meal and goes the extra mile to make a tin foil dinner happen. I don't think the boys appreciate it now very much, but they might some day in the future.

We were camera-free, but I took the girls out to dinner and we got the "Muppets Most Wanted" from Red Box. Then in the morning we went to Hobby Lobby. I am used to going with Ed and trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, and without breaking anything. They, however, loved it and we stayed for well over an hour, walking up and down most every aisle just to see what was for sale.

Summer 2014: Week 8

This week band camp started. There may have been protest about needing to RIDE bikes there after the car rides to swim team every day since school let out.

This week was party week: Nathan's work party & the swim team party. Both fun & involved more swimming.

Also notable this week was our day in Cheyenne. We went for the pancake breakfast, which is part of Frontier Days. We stood in line for awhile with 10,000 of our closest friends to eat a free meal. It's pretty impressive that they host this event every year. It's very organized and was fun.

This is only part of the line . . . they keep you moving in lots of switchbacks so it doesn't feel as long.

Then, we went to a friend's house to watch the Thunderbirds.

They were not at Frontier Days last year due to budget cuts, so we decided it was worth it. Mostly it was cloudy, which delayed their start, but also made the weather very comfortable.

We met up with cousins there and ate popsicles while we waited. Then, back to Grandma's house for lunch and cousin time. We went to see the animals the cousins raise through FFA.

Andrew and I did some school clothes shopping online this year. We'll see how that works out when they arrive. Also, I am in denial about needing to do school supply shopping. It's so soon!

Saturday we had two fun outings. First, the longest bike ride our family has ever done. We rode between 9 and 10 miles on some of the lovely trails here. We left from home this time, but have discussed renting a trailer to take our bikes somewhere even more scenic. Someday. . . . It took awhile to get out of the house--checking every tire and helmet, but was a lot of fun. We will have to do this again. I have a photo but have been asked not to post it . . . email me if you want to see.

Then, in the afternoon, we went to the pool. Always more fun with Dad there.
While we were there, Caitlin broke her 5th bone while playing catch with a tiny football. The proximal phalanx of the left 5th finger. It's going to be just fine . . . . good thing we are friends with the ortho guys.

The sling is a little over the top for a broken pinkie finger, don't you agree?

Sunday was Nathan's birthday. He asked for cinnamon rolls for his treat. Caitlin was SO excited about that.
We are saving for something so the birthday gifts were minimal. BUT, the kids worked hard all day Friday to contribute to Nathan's gift from them, a pocketknife to replace the one TSA took last year. I knit him a reversible hat for his winter camp-outs with the Scouts.

Striped on one side

Grey on the other

So glad he's part of our lives!

Seabiscuit

In a quest to only read and listen to uplifting things, I have generally avoided adult fiction. (Sadly).

I enjoy biography or autobiographies, because they often offer inspiring stories with minimal trash. Nathan and I enjoy reading a book together from time to time. We were thrilled to realize this would be simpler, faster, etc. if we listened to an audio book together. I can't remember if he picked this one or if I did, but Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand was our first. (Neither of us have seen the 2003 movie).

We loved it!

(Of course, there was that section on the prostitution house right near the racetrack that we skipped and the the whole topic of gambling, and the occasional expletive that I want to warn you about).

The unique partnership of  Charles Howard, Owner,  Red Pollard, Rider; Tom Smith, Trainer; and Seabiscuit, horse; was inspiring. Each needed the others, and each was very successful. Mostly they trained to win a race called the Santa Anita Handicap, whose purse was $100,000, an incredible amount of money in the 1930's. (Wikipedia told me that now the purse is $750,000). I won't tell you if they won, but I will tell you they overcame many hurdles in their time together.

The reader had a great voice and it was very well written. Lots of background information went into the telling of this delightful story.

Going into this book I knew very little about horse racing. It was interesting to observe it through reading about it. I was shocked by the poor conditions the jockeys endured, and their low payment. I was impressed by how many miles Seabiscuit traveled, and had a particular fondness for his trainer, Tom Smith for the kind and gentle way he worked with the horse. Charles Howard, the owner, truly loved Seabiscuit. 

Scoutmaster

Think Nathan's enjoying his new calling?

(He told me how much the boys liked driving through that particular mud puddle).

Flood Update (Saturday Oct 19)

This morning Nathan took Andrew and the other 12-13 year olds to dig in the mud in Berthoud. They went to help a family whose property had been buried under feet of mucky mud.

The owner boards horses . . . well, used to until the flood. His corral was buried under tree branches, weeds, and mud that were swept along. He was able to get all of his animals out successfully, but lost a pair of chickens to the neighbor's dog who was keeping them for him.

The boys worked on clearing out 2-3 feet of mud from this shed. (Nathan estimated it was 15 by 20 feet).

Before--see the waterline?

Outside . . . see all the debris in the mud?

Part of the pile of mud they removed from the shed

It would have taken the family a LONG time to get it done, but the boys and parents who accompanied them were able to clear it out in 3 hours. The owner has been using a front end loader to clean up his property, but because of the small doors to the shed, the only way to clean it out was by hand, with shovels & wheelbarrows. The owner offered them lunch, but they'd brought it with them, so they worked and then came home. He thanked them many times.

Our nephew was visiting our family this weekend, and since he's in that age group he got to go along as well. It was a good experience for them, I think they'll sleep really well tonight.

They've made mention about keeping the cleanup efforts going until the really cold weather is here . . . we had a little snow (only an inch or so) this week, so we'll see. Several people we know have spent their Saturday mornings each week involved in the cleanup efforts.

Nathan said the property was beautiful, even with all the mud. The basement of the house was flooded, with three feet of water, but the main damage was to the barn, corral, and shed closer to the river.


Update: Sunday evening
Today at church they read some numbers about service hours. They said that over 2400 people from our stake have given over 8000 hours of service. 33 unique projects have been undertaken, 18 of them in Berthoud (one of the hardest hit in our stake). Quite a thing.

Flood Update (Tuesday, Sept 17th)

Took this from the Gateway Baptist Church's Website so you could see the water . . . which has receded even more than this photo shows

 Nathan works with the young men at church and wanted to use the weeknight activity for flood recovery. He used a link from Just Serve to contact the pastor at Gateway Baptist Church, Loveland, CO
to see if they could come help.
(Just Serve has different daytime shifts available for serving there, but the young men & leaders needed an evening shift).

Click on the link above to see some of the photos of their church building and the flooding.
They had at least 2 feet of water inside. Also, their church website found HERE: has a flooding update. They seem to be making steady progress--over 125 people showed up to help on Monday, and more today.

Tonight the deacons from our ward, and the entire young men's group from a neighboring ward, went to help. Other volunteers had brought the muddy, upholstered chairs, outside for cleaning. They were clean and drying outside in the sun when Nathan called, so the pastor said that the boys could help carry them in. He estimated there were 35 or so from our church who formed a fire line and brought them in and then hauled them upstairs. He said the ruined carpet is out, the subfloor is showing, and they've made a lot of headway, as you will read about on their flood update.

I asked Andrew about it and he said, "Their chairs are heavier than ours and they don't fold up." I asked if he had fun, and he said yes.

Labor Day Adventure

During the summer of 1995, I worked at a camp in New Hampshire. The story of choosing that camp is a long one, but a good one if you talk to me in person. It is called Camp Calumet Lutheran, and if you want to know more about it, click on the name earlier in this sentence.

Every three years they hold a reunion for the staff members who worked there in the 1990's. I was invited to attend and we decided it would be fun to take Andrew & Bryn there. The price of plane tickets and distance did not make it an attractive option to bring everyone. We enlisted my mom to help and made our reservations.

We left on Friday and came back Monday. It's a short time to go so far, but it was worth going.

Looking away from our tent

Road on the property

Family by the lake

Approaching Camp from the lake

Camp road

Memorial garden

Random granite or marble on our hike

Jackman's Ridge (a 10 min hike from Camp, owned by camp)

Hike

Bryn's footprint photo

Frisbee rescue attempt

Frisbee rescue success

Playing on the beach

It was nice to see people I haven't for a long time. We are all older, many with children, all with daily work, many with spouses. The site is beautiful. It rained about 5 inches while we were there--which illustrates why it's so green. We were very unprepared for that kind of moisture. Next time.

We enjoyed tying a quilt, playing frisbee, riding in a canoe, on a pontoon boat, playing basketball, attending a Lutheran service in the outdoor chapel, a gong meditation session [more than one member of our family may have fallen asleep during this], singing camp songs, and visiting with friends. Nathan won the 5 K race.

There were lots more photos, if you are interested, click HERE.

The view

We may or may not have surprised our babysitter.

One year older

For our birthday(s) this year I had an idea to see what was playing at Red Rocks. I found out that they show movies. Most are not our taste, but there was going to be a showing of Princess Bride just a few days before our birthday. I booked my mom as our babysitter, since I knew we'd be out LATE and Nathan got tickets.

It was a sold out show--5,000 seats.

They also offer yoga and give tours, so you can go even if it's not for a concert. We left around 4 and stopped for dinner on the way. Nothing fancy, but nice to eat alone together.

I just loved this parking lot.

38 yr old us. His version of this photo turned out better because he has longer arms.

Tons of steps. Some people come here to work out.

This large group of "Men in Black"a few rows down was great for people watching. The thing about Red Rocks is that you have to go early. There is an expensive section in the middle roped off. But all the other seats are first come/first served. We got there close to when the gates opened. There was some LOUD music playing for the first hour and a half . . . not our style, but part of the package of getting a good seat. This is the view from our seats . . . . except more focused on the people in black than the stage.

Amazing view . . . . this is closer to the top. Weather was perfect.

When Tara & Stephen came to visit last year, she met a friend for breakfast. They introduced us to the Silver Grill's Cinnamon Roll french toast. We've been a handful of times--it's your typical local diner. Nathan had also been invited there for a work breakfast. We took our whole family one morning and most of us ordered the C.Roll french toast. After getting the bill, however, I decided we'd try it at home. We went the day before Nathan's birthday to buy the rolls & everything else we had at home. It worked really well and we saved about $50.

 

 If you try this at home, (which you should), I have two tips.
1)Put the cut side of the roll down first in the pan. It works better.
2)Get cinnamon rolls that have more of a glaze than a frosting . . . like what's picture below.

It will probably be your best breakfast all year, and you don't need syrup or anything else. We put powdered sugar on the table but you don't really need it.

For Nathan's birthday we bought a used backpacking type backpack from Craigslist for not very much. He is our new scoutmaster, so will be using it lots with all those boys.

Scoutmaster is Nathan's dream calling and I am hoping he's not still in when it's Eddie's turn.

He asked for zucchini and squash for dinner, so along with other things I made him this:
Zucchini Gratin

He went easy on me for dessert. Oatmeal raisin cookies from the freezer made into an ice cream sandwich.

I wanted a new helmet for my bike. My former one was from 1993 and looked like it. Bike helmets have changed a LOT in the past 20 years. I've already been out with it and plan to ride more frequently. Maybe someday I will ride to a store????
I found a sour cream angel food cake on sale so I bought it and made this fruit dip to go on top, served with berries. It was exactly what I wanted.

Happy birthday us.

Big "D"

We've got the best dads around.

Bryn wanted to make a treat, so she and Diana baked Oatmeal Raisin Cookies together. They made a giant cookie shaped like the letter, "D." They estimated it was the equivalent of 8 regular cookies.

Other than that, we had a nice quiet day at home. It was stake conference today, so we had even more time than usual together.

Happy Father's day!

World Record Pace

Nathan finished his marathon this morning.
Last summer, he and his brothers started running a marathon, in sets of two hundred meters. Stephen made a google docs spreadsheet so they could see each other's progress. They ran ten 200 meters intervals with 200 meter rests in between.
How many 200's to make a marathon?
211.
Nathan ran a 1:56.4.
The men's world record pace for the marathon is 2 hours 3.6 minutes.

We live close to a high school track. Last mother's day, bought me a key. He paid the school district $25 for a key to get in. Many times he's gone alone, but often we go with him. 80% of the times we go, we are the only ones there. Ed is pretty happy to sit in the long jump pit with a bucket and shovel. The other kids play/run/sit/cartwheel and keep themselves entertained as well, which has been helpful.

Great job, Nathan and thanks Stephen for the challenge.

Buried

My kids are still hoping for a snow day to be called for tomorrow. I doubt it, but we do have a LOT of snow.
It's close to a foot. It came down really fast.
Nathan never changes out of his suit on Sundays, but today he put on his jeans to go shovel. His white shirt stayed on.
Lots of shoveling today--he completely cleared the driveway 3 times so we could get in and out.

Through a window

Our friend brought his 4 wheeler to church to clear the sidewalks at the building. The evening meetings were all cancelled.

(After shoveling 30,000 lbs of snow, then he came in and baked 6 loaves of bread. 3 banana, 3 whole wheat. I made hot chocolate, dinner, and wrote 3 blog posts. Not bad for a day at home).

"Klondike-ing"

They left Friday and got back Saturday.

The slept on snow and tromped around on snowshoes. They had a blast and came home smelling like campfire.

Heaven?

Orienteering, fire-building, snowshoe race, (Andrew tied for first), stew and hot dogs, oatmeal, and hot chocolate, painfully long time working out how to perform a stretcher carry, and good old guy bonding time.