Wild life

One of our favorite and least expensive family past times is exploring mountains, scenery and small towns (which usually means lots of day trips)! We like to pack up snacks and a picnic meal and head out for some exploration. Yesterday we decided to go on a road trip (a whole day trip, really). We drove all over the central region of Colorado. We explored Georgetown, Guanella Pass, Clear Lake and Buena Vista before coming back home on Hwy. 24 through some of the towns we've visited before.

We had a lot of fun and got some really great photos of beautiful Colorado!

The no-name tunnel on 1-70 west of Denver.

Clear Lake.

Clear Lake.

Guanella Pass was closed past Clear Lake so we had to turn around and head back down to get back to I-70 and these mountain goats stood in our way! It was quite a sight!

The Eisenhower tunnel on I-70.

It's always interesting to see the ski slopes in the off season!

Leadville, Colorado (tiny town USA)!

I believe these are part of the collegiate peaks.

The pumpkin plant that was a squash that really is a pumpkin!!

Remember this garden post where I told you about my "squash". Ha! Well, it really is a pumpkin after all. Just look at it!

This was taken on 8/17. Please disregard the crying 3 year old who DID NOT want to take a picture with the pumpkin!

And this was taken on 8/21.

You Capture - nature

I LOVE this week's You Capture - the theme is nature! Nature is one of my favorite things to photograph (in addition to my kids and old/dilapidated wooden structures such as barns).

We went to Helen Hunt Falls this past weekend for a short bit and it was beautiful. We've had a lot of rain and add to that the snow melt from the mountains and you've got yourself a rushing river!!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Rachael's first hike

I'm so glad our weather has turned nice, we were really itching to do some hiking and exploring and today was the perfect day. Michael took the afternoon off, so it was a great time for us to get out. We drove out to Cheyenne Canyon and set off on one of the trails.

Today was Rachael's first hike (she was born late last summer) and she LOVED every bit of it! I wore her in the Beco Butterfly II (this was her first time on my back) and it was wonderful!

The boys adore this time of "exploring" and it is so good for them to have a change of scenery to explore and just be boys. Of course, they still make this mama's heart skitter when they get too close to the swift river many feet below or they try running downhill, but they are amazingly well behaved when we are on these walks.

Aren't these the cutest boys? They definitely fill my life with finer things.

It's HOT.

Have I mentioned before that we do not have central a/c....... Not that we really need it, but there have been just a few days where I've longed for it.

Colorado Springs has a very dry and mild summer climate, thus, negating the need for central air in most homes. Builders do not include a/c as a part of the regular plan/contract, etc. If you want a/c (in a new home), you either have to contract it in pre-closing or you pay to have it put in later. The builder's price was exhorbitant, so we opted to leave it off and decide after our first summer in the house, if we really needed it or not. The consensus so far, in mid-July, is that no, we don't need it. However, Thursday I was quite sure I might just die from sweating (seriously, I think I drank about 2 gallons of ICE COLD water that day)! I looked at the thermostat in the late afternoon (for the central heat we do have) and it read 88° - the temp outside was 95°!! Typically, I lean toward the cold side , but 88° in my house is, well, HOT.

In reality, it's not nearly that hot every day. We average mid to upper 80's most of the time and we've been fortunate to have cloud cover many afternoons, which means the house doesn't get nearly as hot as it would otherwise. The good thing about a new house is that it is insulated very well and this floor plan in particular gets really nice circulation, due to the placement of the windows. The downfall is that we face east, so we get full afternoon sun on the back of the house, which has the most windows and most frequently used rooms (kitchen, dining room, play room and the kids' rooms).

So, over the past 2 years we've come up with some ideas to help us keep cool on the hottest days (none of these include leaving the house to seek out air conditioning or pools, etc...... that's a whole different post!!!) and make the nights more tolerable on those miserably hot days and I thought I'd share them with you:

* Take a cool shower before bed and I do NOT blow dry my hair. I start out my shower warm and then gradually get it as cold as I can possibly stand before I get out.
* If it's suppose to be sunny all day, we do not open any windows, blinds or curtains until around 6:00 pm. Then we open them all to get as much circulation thru the house as possible until bed. If it isn't going to rain during the night we leave our window and the baby's window open (for cross-breeze) and close all the downstairs windows (for safety). Keeping the bedroom doors open during the night helps A LOT because of the cross-breeze.
* We have an oscillating stand fan in the living room (purchased for around $30) and it sits in front of the window to circulate the air it pulls in.
* We have small desktop type fans in the bedrooms and we point them directly at us/kids.
* We dress our kids in diaper/underwear and shorts only at night. No shirts and remove the comforters/blankets from the bed.
* Keep a water bottle with mostly ice and a little water in it on the bedside table and have a sip if we wake up hot.
* Last summer, we also purchased something called a 'swamp cooler' here, better known as an air cooler. It's portable and you fill the basin with 1/2 ice and 1/2 cold water and then it runs a fan over the mixture and blows the air into the room. It has several different speed options, an oscillating fan and will run for about 10 hours before it needs to be refilled. It beeps really loudly when it's low (so I don't have to worry about remembering). If you live in a dry climate, it works wonders, however, if you have high humidity, I wouldn't recommend it because it just makes it more humid. We love it!
* I suppose turning off the computers/printers, etc. would probably help, too, but I just never think to do this....

~ Here's another tidbit I picked up in a magazine article. The fastest way to cool your body off is to cool your blood. Dip your hands in ice water making sure to submerge your wrists as well (veins near the surface), which will in-turn cool your blood a little, thus cooling your entire body off a bit as your blood circulates. Keep your hands in the cold water as long as you can stand for maximum benefit.

What about you, what do you do to keep your house and family members relatively cool?

Garden update and my first harvest!

My first harvest from my Colorado garden is a pretty Roma tomato. It's hard to tell in the photo, but it's about 2.5 inches tall and just looks oh so yummy! I'm going to partake of this beauty with my lunch tomorrow and I think that even if it's the most disgusting tomato I've ever eaten, it will still be wonderful - because I grew it myself!!

This is not in my garden yet because it is actually a science lesson of Jacob's (learning about seeds and what they need to grow, etc.). We took 4 dried beans (red beans) and soaked them for a while then 'planted' them in mason jars squished up against the side of the jar with a wet paper towel and napkin to hold them in place. That was nearly 2 weeks ago and this is the only survivor, but it's a hearty one! It will go in the ground in the next few days!

This is a full view of the garden. The left row is all tomatoes. Starting from the back: Roma, Cherry, Early Girl x 2. The very front Early Girl bit the dust (or so I thought) and then I noticed about a week ago there is new growth coming up from the root.... The next row is 2 jalapeno's in the back and 2 strawberries. I'm not sure what happened to the strawberries, maybe they're just waiting to come back next year. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. The third row is a green bell pepper and cilantro, the other spots were never filled because I couldn't figure out what else I wanted - the bean plant from the mason jar will go in one of the spots. The far right row is a variety of lettuces, in the front is Romaine and the back portion has a mesclun (spring mix).

Close up of the 2 jalapeno's

Close up of the Roma with another tomato ready for picking tomorrow!

I also have this Celebrity tomato in a pot. It was started before the garden was even an idea in my head. I think it has 2 on it so far and several more blooms!

Close up of the cherry. Just a quick estimate in looking at it this evening and I think it has about 15-20 tomatoes growing on it already. It's a cherry, so they grow in clusters of 4-6! The first of those will be ready for harvesting in about 2 weeks! I can't wait!

Here's the Early Girl that didn't nearly die! No fruit yet, just a few blooms!

This is mostly Romaine lettuce with a few misc. others mixed in that got scattered over when I was originally sowing the seed.

Fun weekend!

Wow! It's Monday again!

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend that I must tell you about!

Michael took the day off on Friday and we had a family day spent in Denver. We went to the Aquarium (tickets purchased at a discount on base!), had a picnic lunch in the park and went to the Denver Museum of Science in Nature (free for military families!!!!). Then we had dinner at CiCi's pizza, I know, not the healthiest place to eat but it's rare because we don't have a CiCi's in Colorado Springs.

Saturday was very busy with Jacob's t-ball pics at 7:30, his first t-ball game at 8:00 and then a birthday party for one of our friends (who is only 2 weeks younger than Eli) complete with water slide and kiddie pool!! The boys had a blast!

Sunday was spent relaxing after church. I made a quick trip to Walgreens and Dollar Tree in search of new water guns (all of ours were broken). Other than that, we didn't go anywhere. Michael's request for Father's Day was to watch the PGA golf in the afternoon and he was wonderful to record it on the DVR and watch it delayed so he could spend some time outside with the kids spraying them with the water hose!!

Snow and Eli update

This is our winter wonderland!!

This was taken while driving on a dirt road up in the mountains after a fresh snow! Beautiful.

This photo was taken at MIDNIGHT and look how happy he is..... He had a cold and couldn't sleep because he was coughing terribly and when we brought him downstairs, he actually wanted to play.

What a cutie! This is what my little man looks like right now! If you know us personally, you know the story of his neck. Looking at him now, you would probably never guess he started out with a 35 degree right tilt of his head and neck. He was born with a condition called congenital torticollis. Here's some information for you:

"Torticollis, also known as "wryneck," is a condition in which your baby's head is tilted. The chin points to one shoulder, while the head tilts toward the opposite shoulder. Treatment is necessary to prevent your baby's face and skull
from growing unevenly and to prevent limited motion of the head and neck.

"Congenital" means a condition that is present at birth. Congenital torticollis occurs at or shortly after birth

Congenital torticollis occurs when the neck muscle that runs up and toward
the back of your baby's neck (sternocleidomastoid muscle) is shortened. This
brings your baby's head down and to one side. This is known as congenital
muscular torticollis.

Experts don't know what causes the shortened neck muscle. Some experts
believe that the muscle may sometimes be stretched or torn during the baby's
birth. The tear causes bleeding and swelling, and scar tissue replaces some of
the muscle, making it shorter." Side bar: Eli was born via planned c-section so there wasn't any birth trauma and no one really knows how he developed this condition.

You can just barely notice it now. He is doing amazingly well with physical therapy. He started physical therapy at about 5.5 months of age and the program was a lot of stretching and forcing (not painfully, though) his muscles to stretch beyond what he could do on his own. We have done tons of therapy since then and there had been quite a bit of improvement until he got to a plateau about 6-7 months ago. So, in early October he started wearing a "TOT collar", here's a pic. of what it looks like:

The 2 posts sit just where his jaw connects (kind of in front of and below his right ear) and the other just to the right of center in the base of his skull. This collar makes it so that he cannot tilt his head to the right, forcing him to purposefully hold it straight. Dont' worry, it doesn't "poke" him or anything. It really just makes him aware of how he is holding his head, kind of like a reminder to him. Because he physically cannot tilt his head with it on and he gets use to that when he's wearing it, he holds his head up better without it on! The goal is for him to purposefully hold his head up. Since we know now that his muscles have been stretched and strengthened enough for him to be able to do this, now it's just a matter of training him to do it. And that's mostly what the collar is for. We're praying that this will be the last step in his physical therapy. It may take a while for him to be completely corrected, but we know that he can do it!!




This was taken at 3 months of age. See how far his head was tilted then?

On to Eli's other condition; hemi-hypertrophy:

"Hemihypertrophy, also called hemihyperplasia, is a greater-than-normal asymmetry between the right and left sides of the body. This difference can be in just one finger; just one limb; just the face; or an entire half of the body, including half the brain, half the tongue and the internal organs, or any variation in between."

Eli seems to only have the asymmetry in his legs. At this point, his left leg is somewhere between 5/8" and 3/4" longer than his right. His left leg is also quite a bit fatter than his right and he wears 1.5 size smaller shoe on his right foot.

We buy his shoes at Nordstrom because they are the only shoe retailer in the world that ells shoes in different sizes. We just got him a new pair about 3 weeks ago and he is a 6.5 on the right and an 8 on left..... We also then have to have a lift custom made for the bottom of his right shoe to even out his legs (to reduce hip discomfort and possible displasia).

He is followed by a geneticist and a pediatric orthopedic surgeon along with his regular pediatrician. Because of the research that has been done on this malformation - doctors have determined there is an increased risk of kidney tumors and kidney cancer in children with this disorder. And because this kidney cancer can develop very rapidly - progressing to stages 3 and 4 within only a few months - Eli has to have an ultrasound of all of his internal organs every three months until he is EIGHT years of age. In these ultrasounds they check the sizes of the organs to make sure they are not growing disproportionately since the previous ultrasound and to make sure there are no tumors or growths on the kidneys. We believe (along with the pediatrician and the geneticist) that he will not develop any of these complications because he doesn't exhibit any of the other symptoms that usually occur with the more severe cases and it seems that only his legs are affected. So, in reality, we do these ultrasounds to appease the medical community because no one really thinks that he will develop anything further - but I'd also rather know sooner than later if he were to develop something......

There is a possibility that his right side will catch up in growth, but there's no real way to know if it will happen until it either does or doesn't. He's not bothered by it and with the lift you can't even notice a difference so we're not too worried about it. He can run almost as fast as Jacob (and Jacob's about to be 4) at this point, so in reality, there's nothing "wrong" with him, he's just unique - who isn't?

Baking

Who writes a blog about baking? Me. Why? Oh, you'll see...

I'm not one of those moms that loves to bake just for fun. However, I do occasionally like to bake some cupcakes or brownies or cookies - you know, things for dessert. I don't usually bake from scratch, I simply break open a box, crack some eggs, measure some oil, etc. This is my kind of "homemade baking." Now, I have never had any problems in the baking arena, I just don't particularly enjoy it - too time consuming with all the measuring and waiting and stuff. This is how I felt until about a year ago.....

Fast forward a little. I now live in Colorado Springs. Do you know what the elevation in Colorado Springs is? 6,500 feet. Do you know what that means to the average, non-pastry schooled baker? ARGH. That's what it means. Anyone ever tried to bake at that altitude after living your whole life no more than 10 feet above sea level? Trash can. That's what happened to my first attempt at making some cupcakes about a year ago - not too long after we moved here. Aren't there high altitude instructions on the packages, you say! Yep. Do they always work? Nope. They tell you to decrease this and that or add flour and sometimes alter the temperature and the baking time. If you read the high altitude instructions carefully, they say "High altitude: 3,500 - 6,500 feet." I barely qualify in the "high altitude" category. Tell me, is there a "super high altitude" category. Because there are people that live above 6,500 feet. What do they do when baking or do they just not bake?

I tried to bake a nectarine cobbler - because we had a nectarine tree at our rent out and I canned the nectarines before we moved so that I could use them later. I got my grandma's peach cobble recipe (because hers is always soooo yummy) and attempted to alter it a bit to make it high-altitude-friendly. It turned out ok. Instead of taking 45 minutes at 350 to cook, it took over an hour....... I just don't get it and it was tough on the bottom but perfect on the top. Does the amount of oxygen in the air really make that much difference?

For now, I'll just stick to the one brownie mix and sugar cookie mix that I've found that actually work!

Beauty

I absolutely love living in Colorado and here are a few reasons why:

This is a view of Denver from the Denver Museum of Science & Nature.

First snow of the winter on October 21.

This is the giraffe exhibit at our zoo which just happens to overlook all of Colorado Springs. PS - Our zoo has the #1 rated giraffe breeding program in the world. There are 3 babies right now. So cute!

Jacob feeding the giraffes their special crackers, with me supervising so he doesn't drop the crackers. He's still getting use the the giraffes licking his fingers when trying to get the cracker from his hand!!!

Mountains!!

I love this reflection pic. I took up in the mountains a little west of Denver.

And, of course, the little men in my life!!