Night Adventures

As I write this, it's about 12:30AM, and no I'm not a night owl. I'm not out of bed much after midnight, but Aspen's running around like a crazy lady right now. She had to go back into her crate all day today---or I guess technically I should say yesterday--since I'm back to work now, and clearly after sleeping all day she's just not ready for bed. We took her to the dog park after work and tried to wear her out, but the transition has been rough on both of us. We've been up since before midnight. I let her outside first off, and she destroyed two pots of flowers by pulling them down off the deck and tearing the flowers and dirt out in a matter of minutes while I was sitting on the couch half asleep. When I roused enough to go see what she was doing, she decided she wanted to race around the backyard with a broken piece of one of the pots in her mouth, trying to coax me into a game of keep-away. I responded by scolding her and making her go into the house, which she didn't appreciate. This isn't the first time she's broken or torn out flower pots--she seems to have a fixation there--but I feel less about to deal with it in the middle of the night. So now, she's racing around the living room, chasing the cat, and playing with her ball, while I hang out on-line. I've already surfed the web for half an hour, so I figured I'd share our adventures with you. I'll post this in the morning...

We finally made it back to bed around 1AM, and Aspen slept for the rest of the night. I, however, wasn't so lucky as I was wide awake by this point. It took me about an hour to fall back to sleep, so the 5:30AM alarm came very early, and it was easily to use that snooze button more times than I want to admit. Still I made it to work by 7:00am, and I'm here now, working tiredly, but working...

Congratulations!

Welcome to Austin David Allen, born Tuesday August 11, 2009! 8lbs 14 oz, 21 inches.

Hail to Summer!

We had some hail a week ago when Jeff and Fran were here, but that was nothing compared to the hail we had last night. We experienced the biggest hail I've ever seen, and I was glad I wasn't out in this hail. Luckily, it didn't last long, but these hail had a good half-inch to three-quarter inch diameter and made quite a racket as it came down. In my last pictures, you couldn't even see the hail because it was small, but it's definitely visible in these pictures. We've had such a strange weather year as it is, but do these pictures look like August? A lot of the pumpkin plants now have big pits in them where the hail ripped through, but the garden seems to have survived, other than some holes in the leaves. Is this a sign that my summer is coming to an end?

Back to it!

I know I've been neglecting my blog this week, but I don't seem to have much of interest to write about. I'm transitioning back to full-time work now. Summer is pretty much over for me and the chaos of the rest of the summer has died down as I have turned thoughts to what I will teach this year. School starts August 17th, but I'm back to prep and plan now. It's tough to transition back into the hectic mornings. I never really learned to sleep in much, so it's not so much getting up early, but I've been spending and hour with the newspaper and breakfast, a nice glass of orange juice and some quiet time every morning, so it's hard to give that up! Oh well! I always like the beginning of the school year when everything is fresh and new, teenagers are more positive than usual, and I still have some energy.

On the upside, I won a competitive grant to purchase materials to create a podcast program and accompanying blog with my Advanced Word Power (vocabulary) class, so that will be fun. When we get it up and running you'll all have to check it out. Right now, I'm waiting for the check to come so I can buy the equipment we need, and then of course I have to learn to use it so that I can teach the students!

Fun Craft Project

It's been awhile since I posted any craft projects, so here's a fun one. My mother-in-law showed me these mini-albums when we were on vacation and I made one then. I made the second with my friend Rolayne, whose baby is due any day now. You'll never guess what they are made from! Not that I'm going to keep you in suspense. You make them from empty toilet paper rolls! You just iron the tube flat, cover it with papers and embellishments and punch holes in the end. You can create pull out cards with tabs and ribbons that go in the opening created by the flat tube, and then connect the tubes with book binder clips.

As you can see, I haven't put any pictures in mine yet, but I will soon!

Visit with Jeff and Fran

We are having a lovely visit with Jeff and Fran, who arrived Monday evening. Yesterday, we went up the Poudre canyon for a picnic lunch and visited several lakes in the area. It's been rainy here all week, but we decided to get out and go for a walk around Belair lake anyway. It started sprinkling right after we set out, but a little rain is no problem, right? So, we kept going. 5 more minutes went by and suddenly it turned into a downpour, followed rapidly by a hail storm. We spent the duration of the storm huddled under a pine tree until it stopped hailing and the rain returned to a mild flow that we could walk through to get back to the car. Fran and Jeff were very surprised to get caught in a hail storm in July, in 70 degree weather, but that's Colorado for you. So, we have the dubious honor of getting our guests drenching wet and hit by hail. We were all getting cozy with that pine tree!

Today, Fran had to work so we stayed at the house. Mike and his dad got the new shower door installed (finally!) and poked around in town. I spent the morning making, rolling, and cutting fettuccine, then made a Bolognese sauce, an apple cobbler, and 2 loaves of zucchini bread in the afternoon. Tomorrow, we'll have fresh pasta for dinner with the Bolognese so I won't have to cook much. Tonight, we are having homemade pizza, but I made the dough yesterday and cut up the veggies this morning, so that should be easy too! I think we are heading up to Estes Park tomorrow for the day.

Oh baby! And new carpet and a new bathroom!

I spent a great three days visiting with my dear friend Rolayne, who's due to have a baby any time now. Little Austin or McKenzie (they don't know which) is due August 8th officially, but they are hoping the baby comes early. Right now, their biggest issue is keeping the cats out of the baby's crib and beating the heat.

Then, I came home yesterday in time for the installation of the new carpet. The workers worked from 8:30am to 9:30pm to get it done in one day! Today, we have been working on moving back in. The house isn't quite back together yet, but we are making progress. We are also looking forward to Jeff and Fran coming to visit this next week, which means getting things back together by Monday!

Oh, and we did get the bathroom done somewhere in there (mostly anyway--shower door hasn't been installed yet, but it has arrived). It looks much better now, although it's hard to take good pictures.