Embrace the darkness

Daniel's Birthday Weekend

This year, we surprised Daniel with a weekend at a cabin on Lake Granby, just outside Rocky Mountain National Park. The first night we saw the Supermoon blood moon. It looked HUGE!

The second night I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside to see a partial eclipse. Crazy.

Everyone got to do some of their favorite things. Fishing was high on the boys' list. Check out the huge fish Jack caught the first day--right off the dock in a net! It must have been beginner's luck because the boys didn't catch anything else the rest of the weekend.

We paddled, read, and relaxed in the hot tub.

A cute boy decided to brave the icy water.

For his birthday cake, Daniel asked for eclairs. I had to get all fancy and make a croquembouche--which is basically a pyramid tower of cream puffs glued together with caramel and wound with decorative spun sugar. It is traditionally served at French weddings.

Here's a very unflattering picture of me sweating bullets. I made the cream puffs, pastry cream, and a chocolate ganache dipping sauce at home, and I piped them at the cabin. The caramel should have taken 15 minutes to make. An hour later, it was still crystallizing every five minutes. You can see the thick layer of crystallization in the pot in this photo. I forgot that I always have problems making caramel in Denver (at 5,000 feet). The cabin sits at 8,000 feet. Daniel broke the rule book and kept adding water which seemed to stop the crystallization but it took over an hour to make. I was pretty worked up but Owen, my loyal sous chef, stayed by my side, and Daniel had to help assemble his own birthday cake.

It was delicious but the caramel was so hard it kept getting stuck in our teeth. We were laughing hysterically. This video gives a sense of the party ambiance. My apologies for the operatic attempts.

It's rare to get to canoe on a lake in Colorado. Our morning canoe ride was such a treat. It doesn't hurt that Lake Granby backs up onto Rocky Mountain National Park so most of the shoreline is national forest.

We paddled across the lake to a small island.

My dudes. I love them desperately.

Birthday breakfast for the (very loved) birthday boy. We adore you, Daniel!

Among the Aspens

There is nothing like the Rocky Mountains in the autumn. Rather than the reds and oranges of an East Coast fall, here the colors are concentrated and distilled. Blue sky. Yellow leaves. White bark. Dark green evergreens. Glory.

We camped at Kenosha Pass this year. Usually we drive almost five hours out to Paonia to pick apples and then wander home over all the golden mountain passes--McClure, Kebler, Cottonwood. This time we decided to stay closer to home. Here at Kenosha Pass along the Colorado Trail, camping at 10,000 feet, we were still under 1.5 hours from home.

football leaf jump

 Our neighbor Baby Lily wasn't sure what she thought of all this big-boy craziness.

Oh, my goodness, she's a cutie-pie!

raking leaves

Today this little monster wanted to make some money. Daddy suggested raking leaves. Not a bad job, huh? It was a glorious day. The sky was a brilliant clear blue and the air felt chilly and crisp with that peat-moss smell of fall in the air. It's also been very windy, which means leaves are swirling down as fast as we can rake them up. 

Check out these two videos (you'll need to be on the website to view them). This boy is such a ham.

Owen is generally unmotivated by money, but he does enjoy a good leaf jump.

apple-picking weekend

Way back in September (which feels like a lifetime ago given all the craziness we've had going on the past few weeks), we headed west for our annual apple-picking, autumn-color fall weekend in Paonia. We usually go over Daniel's birthday weekend (the 28th) but ended up going a week early since Daniel's mum was coming into town the day after Daniel's birthday. We hit it too early and didn't see all that much fall color, but we had fun picking apples at our favorite little family-run orchard, Camelot Orchard, making and drinking cider, and just hanging out by one of our favorite creeks.

Waking up to the view at our campground, Erickson Springs, along Anthracite Creek. 

 Tinges of yellow, but not quite fall yet.

 

 Yum, fresh-pressed cider!

Enjoying the view.

Whipping up some grub.

  Daniel went off for one of his hikes and found this crazy huge mushroom! 

  We got stuck behind a swarm of sheep. The kids loved it!

A few more weeks and this will be a blaze of yellow-gold!