Random Things

So, I have an awesome friend who has some awesome blogs. She does this thing on Wednesdays where she posts a "Midweek Randoms" post. She's always completely adorable as she jumps from topic to topic to catch people up on what's been going on in her life. Well, I feel like I have a LOT of random things that never made it to the blog, and since I'm still super behind, I thought I'd throw them all together into my own random post. Of course, I can't seem to edit myself and I'm not nearly as cute as my buddy, so this may be a long one... We'll see...

• You may remember from way back in May that I started sewing purses. I posted a quick post with a couple pictures and never really mentioned it on here again. Well, even though it never made the blog, I kept sewing and sewing all summer. It was a good way to pass the time as I stressed about finding a job. As you know, I found a job and I now have very little time for sewing. But I managed to gather a little collection of purses before I went on hiatus for school. My aunt hooked me up with her hairdresser, and I am now selling all those purses in a hair salon! Look at my pretty display:Unfortunately... by "selling" I really mean "storing." Not a single one of my purses has sold yet, but at least they're not sitting in a bag in my craft room. I also made a second blog where I am collecting pictures of the various things I've made. I don't have a lot over there yet, but you can check it out here.

• I was recently looking through some old pictures on my phone and I saw something that made me long for one of my favorite summer traditions.

From a trip to Oskar Blues this summer. I miss OB's bluegrass nights. And their satchmo burger with sweet potato fries. Yum.

• Continuing the journey through old phone pics: Back in July, Denver got our very own IKEA store. It was very exciting. Matt and I even headed down to Centennial on opening day (after a stop at the car dealership to get our new Subie's oil changed). It was CRAZY how many people were there. We waited in long lines to park and fought our way through the crowds, but it was pretty cool. We got some decorating ideas and a new vase, and headed home. Then our car died on the highway. Fun! Apparantly, the dealership didn't get the oil plug back in and our engine was DESTROYED! Luckily, the dealership took full responsibility, gave us a rental car, and took care of the repairs.
  

Long line of cars at IKEA and our pretty car getting towed.

• I've been a real teacher for about 3 months now, and things are going ok. The parts of the job I was worried about aren't that big of a deal, and the most difficult things took me by surprise. So far, the hardest thing has been traveling between two schools. I just always feel like out of the loop or like I'm missing something important at the other school. But I'm starting to get into a groove. It helps that I have awesome kids.
  

One of my classrooms, decorated for our pumpkin party by me and one of my students. And the awesome pumpkins decorated by me and my colleagues. Mine is the black spiderweb.

• Now that ski season has arrived, Matt's gone crazy. In preparation for the many ski adventures to come this year, we went to a premier of a ski movie downtown. The film was Solitaire, made by Sweetgrass Productions, and it was really good. Some of the athletes were at the theatre, so I got autographs! And they tossed merchandise into the audience, so I got a free Dynafit hat! Actually, Melissa got a free hat, but she's a good friend (and she didn't want it) so she gave it to me.
  

Yay for being surrounded by other ski fanatics.

• A while back, my youngest nieces earned a trip to the Lakeside amusement park by having awesome behavior at home. Because I like amusement parks, I went along. Lakeside is a small park that has been around my entire life. It's starting to get a little run-down, and many of the rides aren't even operated any more. In some ways, it has the feel of an old, abandoned park - you can see the remains of what used to be an amazing place. Of course, the kiddos didn't notice, and they had a blast.
  

Old, closed rides and games.

The kids enjoying kiddieland.

Woohoo!

• One of the great things about Matt's job is that he gets to work with a large variety of local businesses and companies. The Brown Palace, a fancy-schmancy hotel downtown, is one of these businesses. Through his association with some of the higher-ups, Matt got a pretty good weekend package at the hotel that we got to take advantage of. It included a night in an awesome corner suite, valet parking, dinner for two at The Ship Tavern, and breakfast for two at Ellyngton's. The whole package was worth somewhere around $700, by Matt's estimation. It was pretty nice to get out of the house and feel pampered a bit - and the service at this place certainly makes you feel pampered. But before we pretended to be rich for the weekend, we went to see the touring production of Hair, which made me want to run away and join a tribe somewhere. Until I realized that I really just want to run away and join the cast of Hair. I miss theatre. Anyway, the Brown Palace experience was great, but will probably not be repeated any time soon.
  

The lovely surprise left by Matt's client.

Our pretty, pretty, suite.

The fancy-shmancy Brown Palace. So pretty.

So, that's about it. My first attempt at collecting my random thoughts from the past few months may have been a little long, but I'm that much closer to being caught up on here, so that's a good thing.

Still Catchin' Up: Camping in the Cold

A while back, Dave somehow convinced us (mostly me - Matt was excited) to go camping - in SEPTEMBER! In case you didn't know, the mountains can get a little chilly in September. And in case you haven't read my blog in the past, I HATE the cold. Seriously.

But Matt has learned the proper way to get me to do something I don't want to do: tell me it involves the purchase of new toys - and then buy me new toys! This time, we got new, fancy sleeping bags! They're down and cozy and extremely warm and awesome. So, I quit my complaining and packed my bag for a weekend of fall colors and cold.

It wouldn't be long before I would regret ever deciding to go.

Ok, not really. I just like being super dramatic. But there were some crazy, bad things that made the weekend quite adventurous. We'll get to that in a bit.

Anyway, off we went to the mountains - more specifically, the area around Marble, Colorado. And after a quick stop at a roadside waterfall...

Ahh.

We made it to our campsite!

I snapped this picture of our beautiful car - so proud of it. I had no idea that my pride would quickly change to disappointment. Massive disappointment. (Ha, this dramatic thing is awesome!)

Anyway, we had a delicious lunch at a local barbecue place, and readied ourselves for a little hike to see some fall colors. This was when I came face-to-face with "disaster" #1: I forgot my shoes! I was wearing awesome North Face sandals, but I'd meant to bring my trail shoes for the hike. Since I'd forgotten them, I had to hike in sandals. And it wasn't fun.

But oh, well. The hike was still nice. Unfortunately, the fall colors were not quite what we were hoping for ("disaster" #2). Dave had planned to get some good photos on this trip, but the aspens at the higher altitude were not turning the beautiful yellows we were looking for. So, we hiked and saw some pretty views and got a few glimpses of some pretty colors in bushes and lower altitude trees. No wall-worthy photos, but still fun.

Hiking.

See? Still pretty.

Hiking. We came across the old foundation of what was supposed to be condos for Marble Ski Resort - before the resort closed. Matt and Dave, being the avid skiers they are, were pretty giddy about this discovery.

After our hike, Dave had the bright idea (that's right, I'm blaming it all on you, Dave) to head up a rocky road to Crystal Mill. It's supposed to be beautiful up there, and Dave was still hoping to get some awesome pictures on this trip. We started up the road, which was 4-wheel-drive only, thinking our nifty little Subie could handle anything it came across.

Enter disaster #3: The Big One.

To give our Subie a little credit, it wasn't the car itself that failed us, but one of the tires. And to give the tire a little credit, it was a REALLY rocky road. We just hit a rock perfectly, and our tire was very suddenly flat.

The bad news (other than the flat) was that the road was very narrow and pretty busy. There was no way than another car was going to be passing us in either direction. The good news was that the boys changed the tire faster than I've ever seen anyone change a tire in my life.

Flat tires suck.

The other bad news was that we still had to make it back down the 3 miles of road we'd already traveled (we obviously were no longer trying to make it to the mill). They put on the flat, turned the car around (in a terrifyingly narrow section!), drove to a wider section of road, moved the spare from the front tire to the back tire (which involved putting the flat back on, switching the spare and the back tire, and moving the back tire to the front), and VERY SLOWLY drove back down the road, watching carefully for rocks.

It was so fun! Don't believe me? Well, that's because it really sucked.

After driving back to the nearest town and searching for anyone who sell us a tire at 6:00 on a Saturday night, we finally gave up and went back to camp. We were in desperate need of relaxation, so we had some hot dogs, some beer, and some fire before heading to bed.

Camping!

I somehow made it through the freezing cold night, despite the fact that my toes were exposed to the elements through my stupid sandals. My new sleeping bag was ridiculously warm, and we woke up to a beautiful, new day. The bacon Matt was cooking when I got up may have made the world look a little more lovely, but it was a nice morning, nonetheless.

Good mornin', good mornin' to you.

I took a walk to see the lovely fall colors, which were prettier at our campsite than anywhere on our hike. I took lots of pictures to show my kids at school!

So we packed up and drove off to find a tire, which resulted in the purchase of FOUR tires for LOTS of money. But now we have awesome tires, and that's good.

Goodbye, pretty mountains.

So, it was actually not a bad weekend. Things didn't go quite as awesomely as we'd hoped, but being in the mountains on a crappy camping trip is still WAY better than being in the city doing work. Even when it's majorly cold.