Halloween goldens

Trick-or-treat? For Halloween, I give you both. The tricks are courtesy of Dakota & Lilly. (Watch carefully for the one where they hover on their sides. Amazing!) The treat is my first blog video:

Picture this ... finally

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged that I was disappointed when a few images I'd snapped vanished into oblivion. Well, I thankfully was able to retrieve them from my photo memory card. This is one, of several of my co-workers and me on my last day in the features department at the paper. We went to Sabor to celebrate the occasion. The other is the photo of Kaden & me in the following post. Yay for photo recovery!


Back row, from left: Bonnie, Karen, Lori L., Joe and Denise
Front row, from left: Suzanne, me and Annie

Exercising my bragging rights

One of the best things about my new little nephew is that my role as aunt gives me unlimited bragging rights. Here's a picture I snapped Monday night when Brian & I joined Jen, Ryan and Kaden at Mom's to have dinner with my Uncle Joey & Aunt Terry, who were in town from Missouri for a visit to meet the newest addition to our family. Here Kaden is resting peacefully in his daddy's arms.

And here's a photo from a couple of weeks ago. Kaden & I are snuggling under the flannel baby quilt I made and gave Jen for her baby shower. (Bonus: The fabric I used on the quilt's backing has glow-in-the-dark messages that say "Star light, star bright.")

Now that's scary ...

Halloween is Friday. Still looking for a costume idea? Here's one, courtesy of a viral e-mail my co-worker Dan sent me:

Drinking it up

Maybe it's because it's approaching Halloween. Maybe it's because I'm enjoying my break away from more serious literature that actually puts my English degree to good use. But I can't get enough of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. I didn't go to my book club's October meeting, but our read was the first book in the series, which I read on vacation. I've finished book No. 2 and am going to start on book No. 3 tonight.

The teen vampire romance novels are nothing genius. They aren't classic children's literature like works by Lois Lowry, a favorite author of mine. (I'd especially recommend her book "Gossamer.") The series thus far, especially considering that they're best-sellers, have far too many grammatical errors. When I was finishing "New Moon" last night, for example, I actually found an instance of "neither ... or" instead of "neither ... nor." It was like nails on a chalkboard. But the reads are quick, fun and compelling. Plus I kind of like reading about vampires, werewolves and battles of good and evil in October. Consider it my little treat that really does the trick.

Cheers to beers

Our last stop on our Colorado trip last week was Fort Collins, where we stayed in the beautiful historic Armstrong Hotel. And the perk of the unique hotel was that we were able to check out the complimentary -- and extremely cool -- red New Belgium bicycles. We rode several miles around town on a tour of the breweries. Appropriately, our first stop was the New Belgium Brewery, where we sample the sweet nectar (my favorite was Old Cherry), took a behind-the-scenes tour and slid down the indoor twisty slide. Yep. It was a completely sophisticated day:

















After that, we checked out the Fort Collins Brewery, home to Major Tom's Pomegranate Wheat. There, I liked the smokey Z Lager and Retro Red.


Next up: Odell Brewing Co., where I most liked the Extra Special Red, a single-batch beer that I hadn't even heard of before.


We ended the day with dinner at CooperSmiths, a favorite local brewpub. I toasted the end of the vacation with their Brother Adam's Raspberry Mead. Ahhhh. I love vacation.

Colorado critters

We kept our eyes peeled for wildlife (the horses we rode not included) during our trip. Here are a few animals we spotted:

I had to work to get these three species to all pose similarly for the camera, heads turned over right shoulders. It's all the rage in fashion photos right now, so I thought I'd see if it would work for me in the great outdoors:


Elk were everywhere. We saw them on roadways, highways, a golf course, someone's front lawn and especially in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was unreal to hear their shrill bugles. I saw one nursing and another tearing apart a residential tree with its rack.

Trail mix

I've been enjoying reminiscing about my Colorado trip this week. We spent two of the days on the hiking trail. On day No. 1, we hiked a round-trip six miles up to a mountain lake, Mills Lake (pictured above). We had a picnic lunch and went fishing ... but didn't catch any fish. It was worth the hike, though:


We ended the day on a much more leisurely (and level!) nature trail. Per my vacation tradition, I took a photo of a seat with a view. I love to imagine myself sitting in these beautiful places later:


On our second day of hiking, we made a four-mile round-trip to the Calypso Cascades. Embarking on our journey, we realized that we may have company. This warning sign was pretty freaky. Fortunately, all the mountain lions kept their distance. Check out the last tip on this sign, and notice how the mountain lion image looks like a cops' "wanted" pencil sketch:





We were not deterred, and thank goodness. It was another gorgeous hike:

Woah, baby!

Brian & I spent most of our vacation last week in beautiful Estes Park, Colo., where we had a posh cabin that featured the luxurious amenities of a private balcony hot tub overlooking Fall River, a big bathroom with a heated floor, kitchenette, grill and more.

We explored the cute downtown area and spent time hanging out at the cabin. But one of our first adventures was horseback riding in the mountains, an amazing experience.

I rode a four-year-old horse named Arrow, and Brian rode a 12-year-old horse named Reba. It was just us and the guide for three hours, and he let us run the horses quite a bit. Amazing.






The view the entire time was breathtaking:


We spotted elk and went off-trail to get a closer look. Notice the young spike-buck to the left and the two older bulls fighting with their antlers in the center:


And, by the time we left Sombrero Ranch, Brian had made two great friends: