Catching Up

I've been wondering how to get all I have to catch up on in one post. Maybe I'll just have to catch the highlights! It's been such a busy summer and I've been neglecting my blog.

So, before my son's wedding, in early July we went on our 2 week vacation to Colorado. I had gotten a cortisone shot in each knee and I timed it perfectly so I was able to do a lot of hiking. I also made an attempt to hike up a mountain again. Did you catch that? I attempted it. No, I didn't succeed - and I decided that I like the valleys just fine! The mountains towering above us in the valley are beautiful and much easier to enjoy!! The guidebook said that the hike up to Mt. Sherman was "easy". Ha!!! For a billy goat maybe. We lost the trail at one point because of snow fields and ended up on an area of scree. The rocks were largish and unstable and I am afraid of heights. At one point I almost sat and cried - I was afraid to go forward and couldn't go back. Yikes. We met several people that were just picking their way along without hesitation but I just couldn't do it. I ended up crawling along until we found more stable footing. While we were doing that we observed other people hiking across the snowfield to avoid the rocky area and that's the way that we got down - still not easy but more doable. I hiked up to the pass or saddle area of the mountain to humor the Compadre. This is a picture at the pass - as high as I got. He claims that the best part of hiking in the mountains is seeing the other side. Oh, I didn't mention that there were gale force winds blowing up there too and it was cold. We weren't the only ones that didn't continue.

We did do many, many enjoyable hikes during our trip. I logged 34 miles of hiking. I had great intentions of continuing to walk when I got back but....


On our way to Colorado we visited Pete and Carol, some good friends who live in Texas. Yes, I know that Texas isn't really on the way to Colorado from Minnesota but they live in the panhandle and it wasn't really that much out of our way. We really enjoyed our visit. While we were there we were able to see the church that Carol is pastoring and meet some of the people from the town. The town was getting ready for their annual festival and they had a fund raiser that I had to participate in. It was called horse drop bingo - and it is played just like it sounds. The field is marked out in a bingo card and a horse is let into it and the first place he, er, drops his load so to speak, is the square that wins. I didn't win but it was fun just imagining the game. I wish that we could have seen it! Rural people have a different perspective than us city folks!

After we got back from vacation we had to hit the ground running. A wedding happening in two weeks and....we had decided to have almost all the windows and the front door in the house replaced . What were we thinking!!! That meant of course that the workers had to get to all the windows. And I have stuff!! So we moved and cleaned and shoved the piles into the areas that didn't need to be accessed and somehow it got done. Then of course after the job was done I needed to move it all back. I took the time to organize the "fiber room" and now I can actually use it! And since I had to move all my fiber related books out of the bookcase that they were jumbled into I organized them and even entered them into Ravelry. At least all those that Ravelry currently has in the system. I found a couple of duplicates that I gave to Amy. What I should do is print out a list of my books and carry it with me so that I don't by duplicates any more. The downstairs family room/sewing area is still a disaster area but I'll get to that the next time I have some panic deadline - maybe Christmas. I know myself. In the meantime I'm enjoying the newly clean areas and hoping that I can keep them that way.

Amy, Eric, and Abigail came for the wedding and we had to try to babyproof this house. It was next to impossible so we blocked off areas and did a lot of supervising of Abigail. This is getting really long so I'll catch up on their visit in my next post.