Hello to my friends and family, many of whom have noticed it has been a while since this blog was updated. What a month.

pictures-
1. Jori in the gondola
2. Bridal Veil Falls
3. poolside bonding
4. Uncle Kevin and Aunt Sandi working the ropes
5. Your blogger, in the middle of the mess
6. B. and his father-in-law, fixing the mess your blogger made
7. the sick baby
8. the healthy baby, your blogger, and Ruby keeping them both in line
9. A four and a half minute video of Ruby in action


We went to Cedaredge one of those weekends. We needed to pick up our snowmobiles from Wendell's garage, so we can trade the trailer they sit on. I do not think I have written about the third snowmobile Bobby bought this summer. Yes, I know. This one is a new Arctic Cat M8. It was determined that a better powder sled was needed. The 900 was sold to Jay, so he will have a toy when he comes up here this winter to enjoy himself. And we still have "my" machine, the ZR600. But with three sleds needing to be towed, the boys decided they needed a new trailer, but until the old trailer could be inspected for a trade-in, they could not move ahead with the purchase.

Jeff and Polly Friesen from Ulysses were there while we were there, so the boys, Wendell, Bobby and Jeff played nine holes while the girls took Jori, Jeff and Polly's little girl, to the park. (there were later reports of a driver being thrown farther than the ball after several unfruitful swings and a final swing that connected with the ball, but sent it about fifty feet, but we can't imagine those reports to be true... the boys we know would never lose their tempers over such a trivial thing as a fifty- foot drive on the ninth hole.) We met back at the Cedaredge Howard Johnson, where Jeff and Polly had a room, at noon, then packed up and headed for Telluride. We spent the afternoon riding the gondola, checking out Mountain Village, then got back into Bobby's truck and very carefully made our way to the base of Bridal Veil falls, where we climbed over the wet rocks and stood in the mist until we were soaked and freezing. We had dinner at Applebees (where I had to endure much mocking for the veggie diet) and ice cream afterwards (where I had to endure much mocking for my non-dairy sorbet).

We drove home by way of Buena Vista, dropped off the snowmobiles for seasonal maintenance, had the dealer look at the trailer, then drove to Scott Nichols' place, three miles out of town. He just bought a new place, a darling house and four-place stable, spring and beaver ponds on an absolutely idyllic three acres in a sun-washed valley, hugged by shade trees. Bobby and I actually kinda fell in love with Buena Vista. Maybe we will move there after we are done in Summit County. We really have no plans to ever move out of Colorado, but we are not so sure we need to spend the rest of our lives in Big Corporate Ski Resort Country.

We went to Quincy's with Scott for dinner. Quincy's has one thing on the menu- one food item, that is. A steak dinner. Salad, steak, potato, bread. And it's good, and it's cheap. Under seven dollars cheap. So we all had steaks. The healthiest people are veggies who cheat, I am told. Anyway, it was late when we left Buena Vista. We think the road over Freemont pass, past the Climax Molybdenum mine, through Leadville to Buena Vista is one of the prettiest drives in our area, but after dark, we took it slow because the deer love it too.

When I got home, I checked my email and saw a notification about the last Diva's ride of the season, which I had missed while I was gone. Completely spaced it. But there was one more, since our Keystone ride got canceled due to inclement weather the week before, it was postponed until after the last scheduled ride. On Sunday afternoon, I took my bike to Keystone, collected my free ticket, and joined the ladies on the chairlift. We rode 11-7, a beautiful trail at the top of Dercum mountain at eleven thousand, seven hundred feet. Deer, Ptarmigan, they all cooperated and posed for us. Then we had a great ride on the way down, and at the bottom, there were the extra tickets for those who did not show up. I got to use one of them for another trip. One would not think downhilling would be so much work, or require such concentration, but it does. Especially on a cross-country bike, as opposed to a downhill bike. I have to pull over a lot to let the real downhillers past.

That was Sunday. I worked hard the rest of the week getting ready to go to Kansas. I ran around working ahead, so Marci would not have to do them. We were coasting on little sleep by the time we loaded up the trailer with tools and left the county for an undetermined length of time. We arrived at Camp Christy, site of the Koehn Kampout, on Friday night, in time for hamburgers (where I had to endure much mocking for the veggie diet), and spent the night at Jerrold and Kari's. Saturday, my parents and Jerrold's manned the climbing wall for some extremely excited kids, big and little, as they made ascent after ascent, and made trip after trip down the zipline. We had kids in the pool, we had kids on bikes, we had kids in the mess hall basement playing dress-up. We had towheaded kids everywhere. And crying- a constant caucophany of muffled or not so muffled wailing. And an occasional scream. One little girl has achieved fame based on the fact that during dinner Saturday, something was unsuitable and the ensuing scream caused an entire room, about a hundred people, to duck for cover. It's ok, parents. We have laughed about it. There is something to be said for healthy lungs.

And Clint, you did it again. You fed us well. There may be many sins this family prides themselves on abstaining from, but gluttony was not one of them this weekend. It was just to much good food. B. has been talking since last kampout about the food, and now he has another two years to wait until his next decent meal, he says. His wife should take offense at that... Oh, and you may not have been aware, but there was an ongoing conversation about past campouts, how you have had to be the sandbox monitor for so many years, that now that your boys are so big, we all miss the sandbox tableau.

On monday, the kampout ended and the Other half of our trip began. Monday afternoon found us scratching our heads, standing in the kitchen of our house in Marienthal, wondering what it would take to sell the poor, sad little place. We began fixing. Our plan was to fix everything we could in one day, but we ended up staying until Friday. It seems as though fixing houses is all we do these days. We tore out the ceilings, tore out the carpets, tore out the kitchen cabinets, tore out the lighting, tore out the plumbing, tore out the sheetrock in the bathroom and some of the kitchen walls. Then we went to Home depot and bought replacement materials for replacing all the above mentioned items. Then we went home and began installing them, as well as painting every square inch of the interior. On Friday, we called it enough for the time being. My parents, especially my dad, may have been as exhausted we were. Dad could hardly stay away. We have him to thank for finding the plumbing to the house, buried several feet below the foundation of the house.

And in the middle of it all, my mom became mother to two orphan kittens, not yet weaned and abandoned on the Heartland Mill yard. One of them was quite ready to go ahead and live, ravenous and ready for his bottle, but the other one was extremely congested, had fluid in her lungs, and could hardly breathe, let alone eat. My mom made a trip to the vet and came home with kitten formula, pedialyte, and electolytes and a syringe. For two days straight, she injected fluids under the skin of a kitten no bigger than a large mouse, sucked snot out of it's nose with a syringe, spread vick's vapo-rub on it's chest. Pottied them and cleaned them up. Got up early and stayed up late to give them their bottles. Force fed them their antibiotics. And by today, she says, the sick one is eating. Ruby is taking credit. She assumes full cowdog posture, nips them ever so gently when she thinks they may be getting out of line. She stares at their box so intently she may even be a bit cross-eyed.



We stopped at Uncle Jerry and Aunt Linda's on the way home. They had had a stressful morning, and she felt bad that she only had time to prepare a taco salad for lunch. It was actually a wonderful meal. Jerry's seat cushion in his fancy chair had chosen that morning to spring a leak, but he sat on that hard seat for four hours just to talk to us. We felt bad about that. Uncle Jerry, I hope your behind recovers. There's nothing like sitting on hard metal for four hours to make your whole world look a little bleaker.

On the way out of town, we stopped at the cemetery to visit Bobby's mom. We are so rarely through Sharon Springs. As we left the cemetery and headed down the road, we talked about how little he remembers her, and for him, the real tragedy was not losing her, it was that he never got to know her. I often wonder what it would be like to have a mother in law. But more than my not having a mother-in-law, little B. needed his mom. Life is beyond unfair sometimes. How different would his life have been with a mom? Maybe we would not have met because he would not have been such a nomad. Or maybe he would have had such high expectations of domestication from a woman that he would have never even considered me as wife material.

Speaking of tragedy, last year at this time we were saying goodbye to Marlene and Clarissa. Clark, Caleb, and Mandy could use all the prayers we have to spare.