Category Archives: Autumn

Colorado Lobster

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I had the day off today and as such I decided to go outside and see the world a little bit.  Since winter is nearly here they have shut down the irrigation ditches.  The ditches on our side of town feed off of the Poudre River.

Well I was walking along and I saw a crawdad or (crayfish) in one of the pools of water that was left behind.


Can you see it?

I used to catch these guys by the bucket load when I was a kid.  We never really did anything with them except to see how many we could catch.  I know that you can eat them, but I just haven’t ever tried.  Something about the mud and the fact I used to catch them in the sewers has totally turned me off to the idea of even trying them..lol.

So anyway I decided to jump down into the ditch and catch it.  It just felt like the right thing to do.


You can tell he lost a pincher at some point as one is larger

They are pretty interesting creatures.  They are fresh water crustaceans and are indicators of a non-polluted environment.

 

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Glorious Autumn Days and Chickens

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I am not a big fan of the weather turning colder, but one thing that is absolutely stunning for about 2 weeks here in Colorado are the changing colors of the trees. Many people will head up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park solely to see the aspens turn to a bright yellow. Here in our own yard, we’ve had a pretty spectacular display in our trees as well. I managed to capture this shot of the chickens and the changing leaves of the paper birch tree without even knowing I had. I put the camera on the ground facing up and snapped. I think it turned out rather lovely.


It’s definitely one of the better pictures of the chickens, you can really see the detail


And here’s a shot of the crabapple tree in the bright sunlight

 

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What We’ve Been Up To

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Not a whole lot to talk about right now, but I thought I could at least give a little update. Britton and I continue to work and work, saving up and planning our escape. It’s also fall, so we’ve felt the transition in our bodies. And we wonder if we will get that seasonal mood change in Puerto Rico? Or maybe just ever so slightly? Hmm. Here we definitely have been getting the pull to move less, and eat more which is exactly the opposite of what we love to do in the summer. We did take part in our first 5K that was sponsored by my work. You can read about it here at  The Rad Dish. And speaking of…I continue to write health education tips and recipes for that site which has been a lot of fun.


At the 5K race

Britton has had to work some pretty crazy hours with his on-call schedule and its really burning him out. Some days he’s been putting in 15 hour days and having to wake up at 2am for some upgrade or another. And then Schnoodle wakes him up just as he’s falling asleep at 3am. Brutal schedule. I am enjoying my work and like that I can get out of the office about half the time to do my inspections. My other position coordinating the health disparities grant working with the health promotoras is going well. And we are hiring for our division director and two new health educators as well. So lots of change and movement in my office.


I recently gave a presentation to the Colorado Minority Health Commission

I’m working on another  personal project with a group of women to interview inspiring women. That should be interesting. I’m also hoping to attend a seminar series with Britton that my friend recommended. Britton, Kelly, Todd and I have also signed up for a basic yoga class at the Greeley Fun Plex. It should be worth the laugh if nothing more! 🙂

We are loving our choice to move to a property management company for our rentals. We will still need to move one more as well as our personal house when we move, but so far, it has been great. Worry-free! The first of the month comes around and we don’t fret like we used to.

We are trying to decide if we want to go down to Puerto Rico this November or January. I think Britton at least wants to go down there and fix things up a little. I’m not sure if I want to go or instead save up my energy and anticipation for the big move. The 12 hours worth of red-eye traveling there and 12 hours back just drains me. I’d much rather wait for the one-way ticket. But we’ll see. The sleepless, insomniac traveling doesn’t seem to bother Britton as much as me.

We have a few other things going on with friends and family such as the transformation of the tree stump at my mom’s house that should be pretty cool. Britton and I are also continuing with our weight loss goals through Weigh and Win (check that link to see my then and now -in August- weight loss). We’ve both lost 10 lbs so far and should be receiving our $15 incentive card any day now.

The house is currently empty (besides us) as our last medical student left at the end of August, but we usually get a new student about every other month or so. It’s a nice balance.

All in all everything is still chugging away. Keeping busy, seeing friends and family, starting and finishing new projects at work and home. Now that I’ve written it all down, I guess we have been up to quite a bit! 🙂


And King Kitty and the other animals are doing just fine! 🙂

 

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Thanksgiving Highs and Lows

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This Thanksgiving was pretty low-key. We went to my grandma’s  new house here in Greeley.


Thanksgiving 2011 at Grandma’s house

Then we went over to Britton’s family’s house for another meal. So we were highly stuffed.

While we are happy to have a four-day weekend, in some ways we are ready to get back to the normal work week for a few reasons. 1) My car broke down when I was out doing inspections on Wednesday. We had to get it towed from Fort Lupton back to Greeley. Because of the holiday they won’t even look at it until Monday. That makes me a little anxious. And 2) Britton is on-call this whole weekend, so on Monday he’ll get to turn the pager over to someone else.

Other than that, we’ve been enjoying the time off and the opportunity to think about our lives and be thankful for all we have. We’ve accomplished so much this year! It’s amazing. We are so thankful. Since the holidays are about bringing family together, it also made me remember how much I miss my dad. Holidays are hard like that. Sometimes in a weird way, I am happy I still have such strong feelings about my dad inside me though. It makes me feel like he is still here, somehow.

We’ve taken a couple of walks and even walked down inside the Greeley ditch (since it is empty this time of year) to stay out of the crazy wind. It’s like finding a new world to explore down there. Old ditched (literally) rusted bicycles, tree branches and crawdads line the bottom. We avoided Black Friday like the Black Plague and stayed inside and made turkey sandwiches, tea and brownies. We played Wii Frisbee golf, bowling, and the airplane game on Wii Sports Resort.

This week we also got our medical student who moved into the basement bedroom, but she is with her family this holiday weekend, so we have the house to ourselves. We also got our vacation time approved and are planning on going back to Rincon toward the end of January! We are already making a list of all the things we want to do when we are there!

Anyhow, that’s what we’ve been up to lately -the highs and the lows. Happy Thanksgiving!

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