Taken on the Junction Creek Trail. It was such a great hike and I'm loving all of the colors.

Kate and little snow friend on the road up to Silverton. Beautiful! ~ We met a young lady at the Avalanche coffee shop who has been on a "mission" with Engineers Without Borders through Fort Lewis College. It might be a good avenue for Kate to try some day. Apparently people from a variety of degree plans go on these trips. Too cool!

Junction Creek Trail Hike

Here are some photos from our hike up Junction Creek Trail today with Papa Tony and Guapo.  It was so beautiful and the perfect distance for getting out and seeing the mountains.  We met up with tons of trail runners and a few mountain bikers and we were all in awe of their stamina and rock solid calves.  Once we got to the top the view was amazing and we had a nice lunch of tuna fish, apples, plums, goldfish, and a few chocolate chip oatmeal cookies that we made last night.  We were all commenting on how we wish yall were here (vise-versa would have worked as well).  Mom and I just finished eating the yummiest pizza that we made and playing some Gin-Rummy, and now we are settling in for the evening.  

Starting out on our hike.

"It's gonna crush me!!!"

Crossing Junction Creek about to start the long climb up.

The view from our little bench.

About to start the hike back.

Love yall buckets!!!
-Kate

Snowy Drive To Silverton

Mom and I had a very nice drive up to Silverton this morning/afternoon.  We marveled at the bright fall colors but what was really cool was all of the snow.  I had no idea that there would be so much snow this early in the season but apparently this is normal.  We even got to drive in a light sprinkling of snow which was very exciting.  Eleanor had some trouble keeping up to speed on the steep grades but we made it and 3rd gear did wonders for the trip back.

 Just past Purgatory

Mom and I acting like giddy tourists

Ah, fresh snow under my boots...

 Mom posing by the toilets

It looked just like a Christmas card.

Sitting on the coldest rock in Colorado at Big Molus.

We had a great time walking the main drag in Silverton and we had a yummy lunch at the Avalanche Cafe before heading back home.  We are now both pleasantly exhausted and about to make oatmeal cookies for Papa Tony.  Wish yall (D and Na) were here with us to enjoy the colors, views, eats, and cold.

Love yall!!!

-Kate

Greetings From the Dwelling

Hi sweet family,

I just looked through all of the posts from the last month and officially feel part of the family again. And Kate/Mom, nice work on the comments on one of the photos in particular. YOU know what I mean.

Hugs to everyone! More to come, sometime. My last classes are on December 3. Finals are as follows: 12/8 (9-12; 2-5), 12/10 (9-12), 12/13 (9-12), 12/14 (2-5). My last final is the second to last final time block for the entire university. Empty campus...

12/14- 5:01 Selina speeding toward Marble Falls screaming in glee and drinking serial venti non-fat iced caramel macchiatos.

1/18-Selina excitedly racing back to school to do it all over again!

Selina

Carol's new standup desk...that she is probably just too proud of. I think I get more accomplished and it feels like I have more energy. Three beers for standing!

Adair is saying, "I see that arm around that cute guy." Selina's trying to be discreet. Kevin's saying, "Mmm.. I like that hand on my back!"

This is the Peace Garden at Holy Communion Church Shepherd Hills. Several of us got together to weed and just play. In the second picture, Lori is kneeling by the dove and Jeanie is probably searching for the next space to attack.

CASA Run day. Fun, humid, fun, humid. Susan RAN the last bit through the finish line! Yee Haw!

Too Much Hill Country

Sometimes there's too much hill country for a patient with a pelvis fracture.  We couldn't drive him out from behind Wildcat mountain, so we called in StarFlight to lift him up in a basket.

Here's a video of the same (notice the dorky firefighters with their dorky smart phones doing nothing better than capturing the scene in dorky photos or even dorkier video form):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xUbaqa_eoM

And for small entertainment, here's a link that will send you to one of my recent mornings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmr228hUGA0

The Mothership Has Landed

So, I picked up Mom at the airport last night after miraculously finding the airport in the pitch black, foggy, rainy night through tons of construction and unmarked lanes.  After some much needed sleep we laid in bed this morning and talked for about an hour while watching the deer in the backyard and the rain and fog over the mountains.  I have a feeling that today will be an inside day so we might do some shopping, make cookies, and do some crafts.  Unfortunately it is supposed to rain all weekend, but hopefully the weathermen are wrong.  I wish the rest of yall were up here with us to enjoy this beautiful overcast day.  Love yall!!!

-Kate

Foggy Morning

I know the pictures don't do it justice, but I got to wake up this morning to the snow covered mountains and the colorful valley all covered in a thick layer of fog.  Hopefully the weather will clear for Mom's flight.  We do have a winter storm advisory for this weekend so...

Love yall more than fall leaves and first snows!

-Kate

Walking + Fall = Falking

On this beautiful overcast day I just had to take a walk when I got back from school so here are the photos I promised of the fall foliage in the neighborhood.  I wasn't quite able to capture it like I would have liked, but these will do.

Love yall!!!

-Kate

Snow on the Mountains

We woke up this morning to tons of snow on the mountains around Durango.  It is so exciting but it is also a reminder of the freezing cold that I am about to be surrounded by 24/7.  It is in the low 30s every night now and it stays in the 60s throughout most of the day but you could not imagine more beautiful weather and scenery.

[Photos taken from back porch...lucky me)

Missin' yall and lovin' yall more every day :)

xoxoxo

-Kate

Hum-diddly-dum...

Just staring out my window at the fall foliage impatiently waiting for the mother figure to fly her way up here and see me....*9994 bottles of beer on the wall, 9994 bottles of beer.  Take one down, pass it around, 9993 bottles of beer on the wall...*
xoxoxo

Sweetland

So, here are the elementary tools of the honey-robbing trade: white jacket and veil (bees are less threatened by the color white than darker colors), gloves, a bee brush (in yellow) for brushing the insects off the frames you will see later, the smoker (bees are somewhat sedated by the presence of smoke), and other odd gadgets.

Not a terribly bad idea to suit-up first.  You can't see them here, but I'm wearing some pretty thick gloves, too.  When I got to messing with the bees a few minutes later, one of them crawled up the inside of the suit and spent a few panicked minutes buzzing around the inside of the veil.  It never stung my face, but I think it was scared, nonetheless.  Where did it think it had been imprisoned?

You can barely see it in this picture, but the hive is composed of two large boxes on bottom and one small box on top.  Today we will be robbing honey from the top small box.  The lower two will be left alone.  They contain new bees and honey they are storing up for the winter.

Here we've pulled out one frame full of honey from the top small box.  The bees are in the process of capping with a white skin of wax all the cells full of honey.  The uncapped cells contain honey, too.

We are simply cutting out comb with a knife.  The comb will be placed into a sieve and squeezed, letting honey drip through and into a jar.

It's unfiltered and specked with waxy comb.  Pretty good stuff, this simple harvest of a sweetland.

When Life Gives You Lemon...

 

Making bread and sitting with faux-Whitman

Hello All,
I finally got a full day off so I decided to make bread and it was an astounding success!  After about an hour and a half of trying to find a good bread recipe for high altitude that did not require anything too special (ie. anything that I didn't already have), I finally settled on one and went to work.  The first hurdle was trying to get the yeast to rise.  Some websites said to use cold water for the yeast at high altitude and some said it didn't matter and some said to add sugar and some said not to and some said to use a 1/4 cup water and some said to use 1 cup water, so...I ended up with three different batches of yeast to see which worked best.

  The bowl in the middle is cold water, 1 cup, no sugar, the bowl on the bottom is room temperature water, 1/2 cup, some sugar, and the small measuring cup is warm water, 1/4 cup, and sugar.  In the end bowl #1 did nothing, bowl #2 was somewhat active, and bowl #3 exploded beautifully as the directions said it would.

The rest was pretty easy after that and I succeeded in covering myself in flour while trying to knead the dough with one hand and measure flour with the other.  However, not too long after I had three beautiful mounds of dough ready to go on the pan.

But, as with all cooking adventures, there was the mess left behind.



Once the dishes were done and I couldn't wait any longer, I pulled three beautiful loafs of french bread out of the oven.  A little butter rubbed on top and this fledgling baker was very proud.

I am now sitting on my bed with faux-Whitman writing yall and getting caught up with the news in the world.  It is such a beautiful day I think I will go take a walk in order to keep myself from pacing back and forth in the kitchen waiting to cut into my masterpiece. 

Love yall!!!

-Kate



A Few Days' Fun

Here is our kitchen after I decided to put dish washing liquid (the sort that is supposed to go on a piece of cloth or foam with the aim of being directly applied to individual pots and dishes in a sink) into the machine.  I spent the next hour with the shop-vac sucking suds.  It just wouldn't stop.

Then yesterday, after our 6:30 a.m. appointment at MD Anderson, Hope and I drove down to Galveston for a few hours on the beach.  If you are ever wondering when the best time to go to a Texas beach might be, the answer is October (assuming a hurricane isn't twisting the Gulf to pieces).

This shot below was taken at the cemetery where I conducted a small and informal memorial service for our friend Ellen.  You'll see Vance standing in the back right, Joanie seated in black on the grass, half of Hope's head to the right behind a white-haired Nancy Pressler, and (yes) the Honorable Judge Herman Paul Pressler the Umpteenth (if you ever wanted to spell "loser" in gold letters, I just did it for you).  But the ceremony was beautiful, and everybody seemed to enjoy sitting on the grass in the cool evening.  We had good things to say about dear Ellen.

And so the grasshopper didn't eat them all . . . .