Adventures with Jackson and Aspen

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Good bye Fall, Hello Winter!

Aspen is

thrilled with our new weather, though the rest of us could have used a few more days of fall first. We had quite a snowfall through the night. She loves to play in the snow, and it was also quite comical to watch her try to "help" Mike sweep the snow of the back deck. I've attached some video clips of the two of them as well as pictures of playing in the snow.

It is pretty, but it's cold outside. A high of 36 today, so I guess it's time to get the big coat out!

Lesa and Colin are coming to visit next weekend, and we were hoping to be able to do some fall hikes and

explore the mountains with them, but it may turn out to be a different sort of getaway. Bring your coats!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Aspen the Escaper

Oh dear...Here's the chain of e-mails Mike received from Lynette, our neighbor, first thing this morning. We definitely owe her!

Sent at 9:16am:

It's official - she's an escape artist! 7:30 a.m. heard her howling, playing the oh-woe-is-me escape artist; 8:30 a.m. not a peep, worried, investigate - she's roaming your backyard. We go for a long walk, try to put her in the back yard again when we got back, but she was in my front yard before I could get to our garage. She's in our backyard right now. I'll put her in her crate later when I've got to leave - about noonish.

Great engineering on the dog run cover for rain runoff, however it won't do with a dog who's learned that she can climb and jump.

More on the continuing "Aspen saga" later, Lynette

Sent at 9:33am:

Continuing saga:

She's decided to jump our fence now. Spent the past 20 minutes trying to chase her, but have a 10 a.m. interview to prepare for. Hopefully, she'll come back home soon and then I can put her in her crate for the day.

Sent at 10:44am:

She returned back here on her own- finally - and is at home in her crate. Not happy, but safe.

Luckily we have a neighbor who really looks out for our dog! Apparently, the little brat will have to return to spending the days inside in her crate from now own.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Helping in the garden

Aspen decided to "help" me in the garden this morning. If mom gets to dig in the dirt, then Aspen should get to too, right? Of course, I was digging up carrots, and Aspen was just digging for fun, but she didn't see the importance in that distinction. At least she kept to her own box and didn't get into the carrots.

We pulled up the rest of the garden today, so the boxes are all empty now until next year. We had quite a few carrots, although

most of them were very small. I also picked my 3 pumpkins today. I am in

credibly

proud of these since I grew them myself. They are currently serving as decorations for the front porch and then maybe as halloween gets closer
we'll carve them.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Saturday

I had a very enjoyable day, running errands and grocery shopping with my husband in the morning and going to a movie and doing some shopping in the afternoon with my friend KC. We went to see the movie Bright Star, which tells the story of the British romantic poet John Keats and his love affair with Fanny Braune before his early death. He died of TB at 25, before ever getting married. The movie was very good, although very slow and very British. You may need to be an English major (or a British) to enjoy it, but it was reflective and well written. It's interesting that Keats was penniless and basically a failure before his death and is now one of the most well-known British poets from the Romantic period. Here's the poem the movie is named after:

Bright star, would I were stedfast as though art--
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the mores--
No, yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon in death.

While I was at the movie, Mike spent the afternoon working in the yard and playing with Aspen. I came home in time to see Aspen guarding a tree. She'd chased a squirrel up said tree and was staking out the bottom of it. She's come close to catching the squirrels recently. I hope she never does catch one!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Such a long time...

Dear blog,

I'm sorry I've neglected you of late. I've missed you and longed to write to you, but life has been complicated lately. It's no excuse, but please allow me to catch you up on what's been going on in my life these last few weeks.

School has really heated up these last two weeks. Today, I spent all day grading essays and exams that have piled up. Yesterday, we had to go out to Greeley for the homecoming football game, and then drive down to Boulder to drop off a broken yearbook camera at a repair shop. Last week was homecoming, so there were after school and evening activities on top of the usual teaching responsibilities. In addition, my student teacher has taken over control of my classes now and for the next six weeks, which has me seriously stressed out. I spent a great deal of time worrying that my students aren't learning what they need to. That's not to say that she isn't working hard and learning, because she is and I'd rate her as advancing just fine, but there are still some gaps in her educational preparation that make me cringe. I've had the truth of the statement "You don't know what you know until you start, and you don't really learn the material until you have to teach it" in front of me for these past weeks. It's shocking what she can't explain to students, but I was probably like that too. And, she can't spell! This really drives me crazy. Of course, I'm willing to admit that I'm a control freak and just don't like giving up control of my classroom too, so I fully admit that all the fault is not with the student teacher. It's going to be a long time until December when I get my classes back!

In other news, the low cost remodel of the guest room is done....sort of. We switched plans slightly in the middle, and now the wall color behind the bed doesn't quite work. We were originally planning a bedspread and pillows that were green, which would have worked with the wall color, but the blue we ended up with clashes a little with the yellow and green tones in the wall color. So, we'll have to repaint sometime, but that will have to wait for a little while. We did well at keeping the changes affordable. We didn't buy any furniture but rather painted existing pieces. And, we used paint that we already had leftover from other projects. The most expensive purchase was the bedding.

I've also been fighting illness the past week. It started with a head cold and an inability to sleep on Wednesday, which hung around but luckily didn't get worse. So, I've been tired all week and then dealing with some other personal issues as well. But, this part is getting better too. I'm still tired, but I'm slowly catching up!

I took breaks from paper grading today to do some grocery shopping, go on a quick bike ride around the neighborhood with Mike and Aspen, and to paint the frame for the bedroom artwork, so it's been a busy day. Aspen also got stung by a bee today, poor girl!

I'll try not to let so much time go by before I write again. I hope everyone on the homefront is doing well. Give my best to everyone.

Faithfully yours,

Lori

Monday, September 14, 2009

Arrgghh!

I was planning to write more in my blog tonight, but since I've gotten home today, life's been going downhill faster than a sled on a snow hill. We put dinner in the crock pot this morning before heading to work--on low--and it still burned during the day...argh. We ended up having hotdogs for dinner which wasn't nearly as exciting. Then, we discovered that Annie has scratched and put big holes into the brand new sofa! I knew it was a bad idea to get leather. So, now I'm threatening to go to bed at 7pm :). Nothing more can go wrong if I'm asleep, can it?

In all reality, Mike's gone off to band practice, so I think it's rest of the night off for me. I'll make sure I write a longer, more interesting, more positive post later in the week!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Products of Fall

I had a busy day yesterday, trying my hand at canning for the first time. I made homemade pasta sauce and canned it as well as canning pears and peaches. And, I made a batch of peach jam as well. I love the fall colors of the jars, which turned out so prettily.

I also made a peach pie-which turned out pretty well if I do say so myself-primed the wall in the guestroom with Mike's help, worked on laundry, schoolwork, and put out my fall decorations.

Sadly, one of my scarecrows has already fallen victim to the cannibalism of Aspen, so I m

ight have to put these away again to save them. All that appeared left after the massacre were some straw and a sad little hat lying on the floor. We later found the body outside on the lawn, chewed into many pieces. So, I have to keep close watch on my remaining decorations!