Living in Munchkinland

We drove to Durango this weekend for fall break/mountain bike state competition. Davis did not make state this year (only 2 freshman boys from his team did), but he still wanted to support his team. We had never been to Durango so we decided to do it. We booked a really nice VRBO right downtown and headed out Thursday morning. The drive was lovely and though fall foliage is over in the Denver area, it was still really pretty near Durango. It was a long drive though- six and a half hours. We stopped in Del Norte for a picnic lunch on the way. That afternoon we checked in and Michael worked and the boys and I walked downtown to explore. We went to the train museum and looked in the shops. We bought hot chocolate and cream soda and tried to buy tour tickets for Mesa Verde, but it was sold out. Next year! That evening Michael went with us to dinner in the saloon at the Statler Hotel. Then later, we curled up in the living room with the gas fire to watch City Slickers as we had discovered ...

Yesterday (Saturday), was a lovely day. The cold front was over and we had gorgeous fall temps again. We spent the morning doing house things. We had a visit from Isabelle, Davis did homework, Michael turned the sprinkler back on and took Davis's tires to the shop to get tubeless. I made a loaf of pumpkin bread and worked on next weeks lesson plans. That afternoon we went with the Danielsons to the Chatfield Pumpkin patch. It was warm and bit crowded, but we still had fun. We drank beer and played cornhole and sat on a blanket in the sun while the kids ate ice cream, ran through the corn maze and picked out pumpkins to decorate. We really love spending time with the Danielsons and had a great day though we all agree that next year we are doing a bigger corn maze.

I substituted at the school on Friday morning and then drove to the airport to pick up my mama. She was in town for one night only before she flew to California for a wine tour. We went to Parry's pizza with the kids and Paul. The food, when it came eventually, was good, but the service was horrible. We didn't get our food for hours. Luckily the company was excellent and we still had a good time being with mama. We came home and listened to Sam jam out on the guitar and then fell into bed. Seeing mom twice in two weeks was so absolutely amazing. Wish it would happen more often!

This week was crazy. Sam had minor surgery to remove two ingrown toenails on Monday which was super stressful for him. Tuesday evening, Davis had a mountain biking accident coming down from Waterton Canyon where he fell over the side of the single track down the cliff and took the skin off of his knee. We had to take him to urgent care in the dark so they could get gravel out from under the remaining skin flap and xray his knee for fracture. He turned out okay, but has NO skin on his knee so it will take a while to grow back. I worked my usual full days on Tuesday and Wednesday and spent Thursday at the school again working in our storage unit. We also had a major cold front blow in on Thursday. Wednesday we had highs of 80s and Thursday the high was 23 and we got four inches of snow. Luckily the sun came out on Friday and melted almost all of it, but it ruined our fall foliage. The cold front did encourage me to switch all our house in to winter mode. Michael blew out the sprinkler, ...

Sunday after Homecoming, the Eagle race and the Casa Ball we decided to not leave the house. Instead I cooked, we did house stuff and spent the afternoon watching the Saints play football. That evening we had a skype call with the Davis family about the river bottom in Texas and then Michael grilled and we drank some Rose wine out in our backyard enjoying my gorgeous fall flowers in the garden. It was exactly what we needed after that crazy weekend. The last picture we received Sunday afternoon from Mike, who is Sam's Coming of Age mentor of him climbing the rock wall the day before during the COA retreat. Apparently he had a fantastic time doing a scavenger hunt (at the same time as the Zombie crawl!) downtown, going to the bookstore and sharing favorite books, taking the train and eating lunch. We are so grateful for our UU church for leading our children through those activities and our friend Mike for agreeing to be with Sam as he does it.