I debated bringing books to read on this road trip. I usually don't get around to reading much in the car, but this is a nearly 10 hour each way drive and surely I'll have time. I ended up shoving a couple of books in the back seat and of course never cracked them open. No matter how long of a drive it is, if it's through these mountains every moment I'm looking out the window I feel like I'm missing something awesome. And I am. I feel so lucky to be living in this part of the country.
All weekend Colorado was teasing me about Utah. Colorado, a lovely state for sure, started by showing me how she is just as aesthetically pleasing as Utah. It's true, the Rockies are amazing, but I had to remind Colorado that I've driven through her eastern half, her kinda boring looks like Nebraska half. So what Colorado? I have awesome hiking trails in my back yard too and I don't do any winter sports anymore so I don't care about your ski hills.
We stayed our first night in Denver where I know some awesome people that I got to meet up with. Colorado was all look at me, filled with your friends already, don't you love me more than Utah now?
I'm not sure why Colorado has this grudge against Utah.
Anyway yes, Colorado you have a point, but I have friends in Utah that I'd miss if I was in Colorado so again it's a draw.
My friends and I got a beer at Chipotle and sat on their patio to catch up. We didn't order any food because it was late and we'd already eaten, and then Chipotle closed before we had finished but didn't care than we stayed. Colorado gave me a knowing look. Utah law says you can't order alcohol without ordering food first unless you are at a bar. I'm sure there are some nice bars in the state, but the ones I've seen in Ogden don't look like my style. OK Friday night gives one point to Colorado but only one because how hard is it to order an appetizer right?
The next day was my aunts birthday party and it was lovely. Josephine charmed everyone with her stories and dancing and fell in love with one of her older cousins by the end of the night.
Finally, Sunday we headed for home by driving though the tiny town of Leadville because we had lived there 15 years ago and it's always fun to travel through time. We had lunch in the cute town of Basalt and the people that owned the cafe we stopped at had a three year old boy, Jack, that was their PR person. He sat with us while we waited for our food and played with Josephine, it was cute. Colorado gave me a wink.
We got back home around 8:30 last night, got some tacos and drove around to look for a place to watch the fireworks. We eventually found the leftover signs the city put out yesterday to keep people out of the cemetery because it's a fireworks drop zone. OK, Utah, minus 100 points for you. Independence day cannot be shared with the more important Sunday holiday, church.
I don't have the means to pick up and move right now, but if I did...
7.01.2010
sometimes i want a fast-forward button
I get it, really, Joey is learning something important.
Her brain is so busy working on whatever it's working on that she is having a hard time remembering words and paying attention when I'm talking.
It is frustrating for me to have to repeat everything a million times and then watch to see if she is actually doing what I asked her to do...but it must be one hundred times worse for her to spend 10 seconds trying to remember that it's called a fork right after I handed one to her and said "here's your fork".
Her brain is so busy working on whatever it's working on that she is having a hard time remembering words and paying attention when I'm talking.
It is frustrating for me to have to repeat everything a million times and then watch to see if she is actually doing what I asked her to do...but it must be one hundred times worse for her to spend 10 seconds trying to remember that it's called a fork right after I handed one to her and said "here's your fork".
6.29.2010
also, her answer to "what's for dinner?"
When something happens here that would typically get a "dang!" or "what the hell?" Josephine says "Cheese and Crackers!"
It's pretty awesome.
It's pretty awesome.
6.28.2010
the birds don't hate her
So here's my problem. I plan on posting here but I have pictures that go along with the post I have in mind and I am only getting worse at finding my camera's cord and uploading the pictures to my computer...so then I don't post anything thinking I'll get to it soon but obviously I don't. I'm gonna try something new, something crazy, something you've never seen before, I'm gonna post when I have something to say and leave the picture uploading to Flickr when I get around it. WOW! I am a blogging genius!
We are back from Yellowstone and no one got mauled by a bison or scalded by a geyser. Success! Josephine played nicely with her cousins she met for the first time which was fantastic. I made tote bags for everyone, well, I screen printed on pre-made bags, and filled them with cowboy hats, cowboy boot shaped can coozies, and jerky. We ordered M&Ms with my grandmother's face on them and I made fortune cookies and stuffed them with Wyoming fun facts. The cookies were yummy, not pretty, but still worth making.
I got my last haircut with "my" stylist because she is moving and even though I loved it I took the scissors to it a few days ago and while it's not fabulous it's not bad either...
Josephine has been growing ridiculously fast lately. Physically, she's been mostly napping and eating for about a week, but mentally she seems to be putting so much together in her head that she hadn't done before. Unfortunately she is also repeating all the awful things she's heard in the past two years that everyone thought she was ignoring... I want to go back in time and glue everyone's mouth shut. It's odd to hear here say "dang it!" which isn't bad, but she's called me a jerk, said she hates me and also that the birds hate her...The jerk one was easy to figure out where she got it (sister) and I've probably said it in front of her too, but the hate one really threw me for a loop. I never say I hate things and I'm especially careful to never say I hate any person. Hearing someone say they hate another person makes me super uncomfortable. My heart broke for a little bit with that one.
While I'm on the topic of annoying things my 2 year old does...She is obsessed with driving... I made a car out of a cardboard box but that was only good enough for about a day. Every day, all day, for the past few weeks Joey asks, begs, demands that I let her "drive" which means sitting in the driver's seat in whatever car is in the garage and pretending to go to the beach or on a hiking trip. I don't know how to type out how annoying it is because I know right now it sounds pretty tame but oh my gosh she won't shut up!
Joey, my parents and I are driving to Colorado this weekend for my great aunt's 90th birthday. Wish me luck.
We are back from Yellowstone and no one got mauled by a bison or scalded by a geyser. Success! Josephine played nicely with her cousins she met for the first time which was fantastic. I made tote bags for everyone, well, I screen printed on pre-made bags, and filled them with cowboy hats, cowboy boot shaped can coozies, and jerky. We ordered M&Ms with my grandmother's face on them and I made fortune cookies and stuffed them with Wyoming fun facts. The cookies were yummy, not pretty, but still worth making.
I got my last haircut with "my" stylist because she is moving and even though I loved it I took the scissors to it a few days ago and while it's not fabulous it's not bad either...
Josephine has been growing ridiculously fast lately. Physically, she's been mostly napping and eating for about a week, but mentally she seems to be putting so much together in her head that she hadn't done before. Unfortunately she is also repeating all the awful things she's heard in the past two years that everyone thought she was ignoring... I want to go back in time and glue everyone's mouth shut. It's odd to hear here say "dang it!" which isn't bad, but she's called me a jerk, said she hates me and also that the birds hate her...The jerk one was easy to figure out where she got it (sister) and I've probably said it in front of her too, but the hate one really threw me for a loop. I never say I hate things and I'm especially careful to never say I hate any person. Hearing someone say they hate another person makes me super uncomfortable. My heart broke for a little bit with that one.
While I'm on the topic of annoying things my 2 year old does...She is obsessed with driving... I made a car out of a cardboard box but that was only good enough for about a day. Every day, all day, for the past few weeks Joey asks, begs, demands that I let her "drive" which means sitting in the driver's seat in whatever car is in the garage and pretending to go to the beach or on a hiking trip. I don't know how to type out how annoying it is because I know right now it sounds pretty tame but oh my gosh she won't shut up!
Joey, my parents and I are driving to Colorado this weekend for my great aunt's 90th birthday. Wish me luck.
5.21.2010
at this rate, the end of the world might come before i post again...
You know how there have been a lot of bad earthquakes lately, a tsunami, and then that volcano in Iceland that just wont quit? Yeah, so if you wanted to think of this as like a natural disaster opening ceremonies then you would look down the line and see the the grand finale is the eruption of Yellowstone. How you seen the movie 2012?
Guess where we are hosting a family reunion this summer? YELLOWSTONE! Let's hope that if mother nature is going to provide a fireworks show that it's when we are there to see it! (or we have all boarded the ship that's moving us to the moon, not like we could survive it even if we are back home).
.
I made homemade pop-tarts the other day, some with boysenberry jam and some with nutella, delicious.
And since I'm thinking about food, let me give you the best tomato soup recipe ever. Like, ever. I don't like chunks of cooked tomato in my chili or marinara sauce and I think the cream of tomato soups in a can are only OK but this soup totally changed all my ideas of what tomato soup can be. Please try it.
Slice several garlic cloves but not too small, I like being able to bite into my garlic, you will too. Cook the garlic in a little oil for a few minutes.
Peel and dice 8-10 plumb tomatoes (I think I ended up using Roma because we had plenty already and the grocery I went to doesn't have plumb tomatoes)
Simmer tomatoes (and garlic) in a good quality stock until they start to break down. Like 15-20 minutes.
In each bowl place a slice of day-old crusty french bread...or buy a baguette the day of and toast it because who buys bread and leaves it out all day? Your cat will jump up on the counter after you've gone to bed and get her cat germs all over it. Gross.
Crack an egg over each piece of bread.
This is when you are supposed to ladle the soup over the egg and put the bowl in the oven for 5 min at 400 but when I did that the first time I ended up microwaving the bowls for a few seconds because the egg whites didn't cook enough and everyone was grossed out. Sooooooooo, I put the egg and bread in the oven first so that I could watch them better, until the whites have just set, and then ladle the soup over them.
Top with chopped parsley.
I have some parsley growing in my little garden. I mean, I have a parsley MONSTER growing. I planted some last year and didn't even expect it to grow because that was the soil that Josephine decided to "help" me with and scooped it up and plopped it into the basil pot... I scooped it out, the parsley flourished, the basil never grew. This year the parsley came back pretty early, it's gone through some snow and freezing nights but it has persevered. The last time I went to cut some I decided to cut it back before it took over the rest of my herbs and I cut through stalks that were as big around as a quarter. Yeesh.
Anyway, the leftover soup is great alone too but the bread really makes it so toss in some croutons or something, because you at the rest of the baguette loaf before the dishes were even cleared from the table.
Guess where we are hosting a family reunion this summer? YELLOWSTONE! Let's hope that if mother nature is going to provide a fireworks show that it's when we are there to see it! (or we have all boarded the ship that's moving us to the moon, not like we could survive it even if we are back home).
.
I made homemade pop-tarts the other day, some with boysenberry jam and some with nutella, delicious.
And since I'm thinking about food, let me give you the best tomato soup recipe ever. Like, ever. I don't like chunks of cooked tomato in my chili or marinara sauce and I think the cream of tomato soups in a can are only OK but this soup totally changed all my ideas of what tomato soup can be. Please try it.
Slice several garlic cloves but not too small, I like being able to bite into my garlic, you will too. Cook the garlic in a little oil for a few minutes.
Peel and dice 8-10 plumb tomatoes (I think I ended up using Roma because we had plenty already and the grocery I went to doesn't have plumb tomatoes)
Simmer tomatoes (and garlic) in a good quality stock until they start to break down. Like 15-20 minutes.
In each bowl place a slice of day-old crusty french bread...or buy a baguette the day of and toast it because who buys bread and leaves it out all day? Your cat will jump up on the counter after you've gone to bed and get her cat germs all over it. Gross.
Crack an egg over each piece of bread.
This is when you are supposed to ladle the soup over the egg and put the bowl in the oven for 5 min at 400 but when I did that the first time I ended up microwaving the bowls for a few seconds because the egg whites didn't cook enough and everyone was grossed out. Sooooooooo, I put the egg and bread in the oven first so that I could watch them better, until the whites have just set, and then ladle the soup over them.
Top with chopped parsley.
I have some parsley growing in my little garden. I mean, I have a parsley MONSTER growing. I planted some last year and didn't even expect it to grow because that was the soil that Josephine decided to "help" me with and scooped it up and plopped it into the basil pot... I scooped it out, the parsley flourished, the basil never grew. This year the parsley came back pretty early, it's gone through some snow and freezing nights but it has persevered. The last time I went to cut some I decided to cut it back before it took over the rest of my herbs and I cut through stalks that were as big around as a quarter. Yeesh.
Anyway, the leftover soup is great alone too but the bread really makes it so toss in some croutons or something, because you at the rest of the baguette loaf before the dishes were even cleared from the table.
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