In the Land of Milk and Honey

One of my neighbors posted on Facebook that she had butternut squash, spaghetti squash and cantelope on her front porch free for the taking yesterday. I was glad there was still plenty left when I took Coda out for a walk this morning. I'm so in the mood for butternut squash soup!

The peaches have not been free, but I've been stopping by the Burgess orchards every week for the past 6 weeks and picking up a box of juicy, sweet peaches. This is the last week of the season and I'm sad about it, but thinking the magic will begin again same time next year makes me very happy!

A Walk in the Park

It was good to have my walking buddy, Suzanne visit me one more time befire before she heads home to Baltimore. We had a great 4 mile walk in Lambert park this morning. It was fun to show her my new trails. They don't have as many trees as Baltimore,  but the views of the mountains and Utah Lake can't be beat!

We worked up an appetite and decided to try out a new salad restaurant in Lehi called Mad Greens.

I had the delicious Don Quijote salad, and we shared a humuus sampler plater. The beet humuus was surprisingly scrumptious!

I'm looking forward to Suzanne's return trip in January. If we can't go hiking maybe we can go snow shoeing!

Frosting on the Mountains

After three days of rain, we finally got out this afternoon for a nice walk in the crisp, clean air! It was beautiful to see the snow on the tops of the mountains!

The view from our back yard was spectacular!

Our pretty little rose of sharon is in full bloom, seemingly defying the snow in the background! Let's stave off winter just a little longer!

Band and Baby

Mabel had a partial sleepover at our house last night. It is practice for two weeks from now when we'll have her for the weekend. It was fun watching her crawl all over the house and take a few tentative steps. We're hoping she learns to walk at our house when her parents go to Colorado!

While Mabel slept, the as-yet-unnamed band met in the basement. There is a good possibility we kept her awake with our rollicking music. We barely got through all our songs, but spent a good portion of the time trying to pick a name for the band. John said, why couldn't we think of a great name like Whistling Prairie. Brittany pointed out that we probably wouldn't like that either if we thought of it today. Maybe we'll have a name by the time we get a gig!

Memorial With the Melzers

My mother invited me to go to a memorial luncheon for Ray Lowry yesterday. He was my mother's second husband's first wife's sister's husband. Is that confusing? The nice part was that Ed Melzer's children and some of the grand and great grand children were there. It was fun seeing them again. When I asked Dwight and Glen if I could take their picture with my mother, Dwight answered, "You mean with OUR mother!" This was a sweet tribute to the way they welcomed her into the family 17 years ago. It was fun seeing my step-siblings again!

Work Zone

The work has begun on our new home. We're finishing a previously unfinished room in the basement. We've opened the wall (which had a door in the middle) to make it more of an integral part of the basement, and would like to make it a media, game, entertainment room.

We're hoping it will feel like an extension of the family room, where the pool and foosball tables are.

We're also having a shed built in our back yard for the lawn tools. We're hoping it will make more room in the garage for Ed's workbench.

All this controlled chaos is giving us the bug to maybe get started on remodeling the kitchen soon.

Food, Art, Music

The Nortons invited us to the BYU Jazz preview last night, It was fun to meet at PF Chang's for dinner before the concert.

We had time before the show to stop at the BYU art museum to see the beautiful Minerva Teichert exhibit. I love her style. The exhibit runs till April. See: http://moa.byu.edu/project/minerva-teicherts-book-of-mormon-paintings/

We heard from 3 instrumental jazz groups, one Dixieland band and one vocal group last night. Ed and Chuck really enjoyed an arrangement of Fantasy by Earth, Wind and Fire. I liked the Dixieland band, because they had a banjo and fun hats!

Horsetail Falls Trail

Suzanne stayed last night with us, so we took the opportunity this morning to show her one of the prettiest hiking trails in Utah, and the trail head is only a mile from our house!

Horsetail Falls trail, is aptly named for the beautiful waterfall that fans out like a horse's tail!

Finding the falls was a little tricky, as the trail is not well marked! We crossed a stream several times, and went though some boulder patches, but mostly it was a steep grade uphill!

Fortunately, we ran into several hikers who knew the way and we were able to find the lower falls, as wells as the upper falls with its beautiful pools of water!

The view of the valley below from the top was spectacular. You can't see our house because it is right behind that ridge on the left!

Coda was happy to go along, and never seems to feel the burn as much as we do! It must be great to have four paw drive!

Coda was also happy to have her best friend, Suzanne come see her. We found out that Coda loves trail mix. She likes the cashews best, then the dried cranberries, followed by the almonds! Who, but Suzanne, would think to feed a dog nuts!

Bye Bye Bookies, Hello Utah

The Bookies celebrated 20 years of the Highland Bookies today. We started our book club on October 2, 1996. We're so grateful for Sojourn which gives us the opportunity to gather once a year to enjoy one another's company!

Suzanne, Martha and I took one more walk before we left town. This time we explored the trails at the top of the Steamboat ski area. The views from the top were fantastic!

Martha made us all light and fluffy omelettes for breakfast with spinach and cheese. They were perfect to fortify us for our long drive home. I hope the omelettes become a new tradition at the end of each Sojourn weekend!

Suzanne and I drove from Steamboat Springs to Alpine mostly via US 40 (no freeways). When we got to Vernal we had to stop and see the new (to me) museum where my Uncle Elbert's dinosaurs are now housed.

It made me happy to see them displayed in such a beautiful setting!

It was great to see my dinosaur "cousins," Rex and Triceratops again. We had some good times together in West Yellowstone, Montana over 40 years ago!

We made it home to Alpine by 5 p.m. Ed had followed our progress on our Family Locator app, and was waiting on the front porch for us when we drove up! It's good to be home again!

Literary Sojourn 2016

The main event today was the Literary Sojourn at the Sheraton hotel in Steamboat Springs. This is the 14th year that the Bookies have been there. We came from coast to coast this year. Martha (Colorado), Judy (Utah), Nora (Colorado), Suzanne (Baltimore) and Sheryl (Oregon).

Our favorite author this year was Anthony Marra, but we also loved the emcee, Jess Walters.

Guess who found a good sale on hats! Judy, Martha and Nora!

We made a new friend, Tyler, who had been enjoying the Octoberfest beer fest a little too much. His brother took our picture, but couldn't talk Tyler out of the chair!

After Sojourn we enjoyed walking home with the sun on our backs. It doesn't get any better than this.

We even had enough time for some shopping, popcorn, snacks and visiting till late.

Martha, Suzanne and I ended up with about 17,000 steps, because we took an early morning walk up Mount Werner. We had to step aside for the winning runners of the Steamboat Springs 100 mile race. They had been up 24 hours! Maybe next year we'll do that before Sojourn.

Steamboat with the Bookies

What a beautiful weekend to go to Steamboat Springs for our annual literary Sojourn!

Suzanne flew in from Baltimore, and Sheryl met us at Nora's house to drive up the mountain together.

We stopped for a really late breakfast at Hilldaddy's Wildfire restaurant in Idaho Springs.

We must have all been on the same page, because we all ordered the Omelette Loraine, with Hollandaise sauce! We just might have to stop back again next year! Mmmm!

We were happy we got the same condo as last year. We love the view from the balcony!

We went to visit the Botanical Garden in Steamboat. It was so beautiful, with the turning leaves and fall flowers.

The sun coming through the leaves was breathtaking!

We walked along the Yampa river and had to work hard to keep Sheryl out of it! Fortunately she left her waders at home, so she couldn't do any fly fishing this trip!

Martha had to come up late, as she was working, but she joined us in time for dinner at the Smokehouse BBQ.

After that we went back to our condo and looked at wedding pictures. When you only see each other once a year you have a lot of catching up to do!

Shopping Day with Crystal

We celebrated Crystal's birthday belatedly by going shopping together today. We started out with a walk to Walmart along the Highline canal trail. The weather is so perfect, and it reminded me of why we loved living in Denver so much.

We cooked both breakfast and dinner at Crystal's house, which was fun for me. Crystal makes a wicked breakfast burrito!

After breakfast we wore ourselves out at World Market, Costco and Park Meadows Mall. I impressed two clerks with my clever use of Samsung Pay at the register. They both told me it wouldn't work at their store, but it did!

We invited Aunt Verlene for dinner. She couldn't go shopping with us, as she had to work. Working always gets in the way. Happily for her, she only has 122 more days before retirement! (But who is counting?)

Denver Again

I drove to Denver all by myself today. Ed was so nice to let me drive his fancy new car. I was afraid mine might get another flat tire!

It is fun to see Crystal in her own home (apartment).

I enjoyed going to Crystal's dulcimer lesson with her. I liked her teacher because he not only makes beautiful arrangements, but also thinks Crystal is a dulcimer savante!

We met Aunt Verlene for dinner at Sweet Tomatoes, and she brought me her prize winning wolf painting for my lodge room in the basement! He won best of show at her painters' club art show! I'm excited to take him to Utah!

Everything was great, except for the leaf bug over Crystal's doorway. He scared the daylights out of us and almost kept us from getting home!