Colorado is rather bipolar when it comes to weather. Yesterday, for instance, it was sunny and 73 degrees. Today, my work closed due to blizzard conditions with a high below freezing in April! Or put more simply in pictures of our Greeley backyard with the chickens:
Yesterday
Chickens scratching, taking dirt baths, tulips growing, yard greening, Kitty hanging out.
Today:
Avoiding the snow standing on one leg, feeling “cooped up”, snowy windblown eggs, peeking out the door of the coop.
Sunday was a very snowy day with about 8 inches of the cold white stuff falling. We had made plans with our friend Sean to go to Fort Collins to see the Museum of Discovery there. We weren’t sure if they would be open or not, but when we called and they said they were and Sean said he would drive in his 4×4 truck we said we were up for the adventure! And it was a bit of an adventure…
We actually got a flat tire on the way in! Thankfully we were all the way to Fort Collins and were stopped at a gas station because he noticed the tire pressure slowly draining away. So I went in the store and got a hot tea and Britton and Sean changed the tire out in the snow.
Then we arrived at the museum and had a lot of the fun. The main station we spent the most time at was the music one. It was fun playing with all their hands on exhibits and learning a little bit about different musical instruments and the science behind music.
Britton and the upright bass
Me and Sean at one of the music exhibits
They also had some nature science exhibits with an emphasis on the flora and fauna that is or was native to this area. Including this bison!
Just feeding the (taxidermied) buffalo
Britton playing in the beaver house
It’s been a long time since we’ve gone to a museum but this one was fun and interactive. There were a lot of little kids around, but since we didn’t have any to watch ourselves, we got to act like them instead! 🙂
Afterward we went to our favorite restaurant in Fort Collins and I had the most delicious Harvest Squash Ravioli and we topped the night off by splitting some tiramisu. The roads were icy as we drove home, but we made it back just fine even with the new tire.
Overall it was a great Sunday snow day adventure!
I was driving into work today while day dreaming about the house in Rincon. I was thinking about what to do with the wood house and specifically about what to do about the interior walls.
The wall cavity between the outer siding and the inner panels/drywall seems to make a great place for bees, rats and bats to live. This is a problem, because while I don’t have anything against any of those things in general, I don’t want them to live with me.
We know we are going to paint the inside of the house white to brighten it up. The inside has never been painted and is all a natural wood color so it tends to be pretty dark. I thought…”well who the hell needs drywall? Or wood paneling?”. Here in Colorado we need that space to insulate us from the outside which gets pretty darn cold. The only purpose it really serves in our Rincon house is to cover up the studs and apparently make nice nests for pests.
It is fairly hard to locate pictures of what I have in mind but I did find a few. 
Here is the idea
Basically remove the existing panels and drywall, clean everything out and paint. Done. It also provides shelf space.
Now, I am not sure we would do this in every room, but we don’t have to. Some of the wood paneling can just be painted white and some can removed and the empty cavity painted.
Another example grabbed from Google images.
I took a picture of Kitty and me today to show Britton just what he was missing -a cold morning that didn’t come out of the negative degrees until nearly noon. He then sent me the below shot of him on the beach on an 80 degree winter day in Rincon. Quite the difference. I know where I want to be (and more than likely will be) this time next year! 🙂
Brrr January in Greeley, Colorado -Kitty and I are trying to stay warm in the world of white
Ahh…January in colorful Rincon, Puerto Rico