Color Sunday

The Husby played this last Sunday and the Sunday before at a small ski resort in the mountains, on top of the Mesa. Unfortunately I wasn't able to enjoy the mountain air with him last week at the Fall Fest, but we were able to make it up this Sunday, also known as Color Sunday. It's a super popular day for people to drive up to the Mesa and enjoy all the pretty colors this fall weather has for us! Most of my family was able to come too and it turned out to be a wonderful day. We ate some amazing food after standing in the long waiting lines, enjoyed the sun, events, music, and of course views!

The little dude was SUPER into dancing a good portion of the time and all his dance moves were extremely good! I really don't know where he learns most of them! I only caught a few second blurb of him though before he got distracted again. I think he was trying to swing and snap in this short clip.

Marble

This last Saturday the husby actually had the entire day off so we ceased the moment and took an all day trip to Marble, Colorado. I had been there before a few years ago, but it was the husby's first time. We stopped many times along the beautiful drive to give the little dude a break and got to play at more than one park that day. We stopped in at the Marble Museum to use the restrooms and ended up getting a free tour and learned a ton of cool things about the quarry mine, it's history, and how they work it today. Everett LOVED touching and playing with the smooth marble. We hiked up a beautiful road towards the quarry mine for a good hour before we exhausted ourselves out and headed back home. 

Marble is where the famous Crystal Mill is, which I discovered is the most photographed building in Colorado. I, of course, unfortunately, didn't get a picture of it, but I bet if you googled you'd recognize it!

Janky, cool, old merry-go-round

The Best Slow Cooker Applesauce

I've been wanting to make my own applesauce for quite a while and I finally got a chance when one of the last farmers markets here was selling apples for a great price. I found a few recipes and decided to mold a few together to make an easy AND healthy version. While cooking this batch the smell though the house was absolutely amazing, just that alone was worth making this!
Here's what I did:
1. Gather ingredients

• About 15 to 20 apples
• 1 Lemon
• 3 or 4 cinnamon sticks
• 1 TBL spoon honey(optional)

 2. Peel and dice your apples. It really doesn't matter what kind of apples you use, you can even use a mixture!

3. Zest your lemon. Squeeze between a TBL spoon to 1/8 cup lemon juice. Combine Apples, cinnamon sticks, zests, and juice into your slow cooker and turn to low. If you only have about three pounds it will take only about four hours. If your apples aren't very sweet, you can add some honey. I didn't think mine were sweet, so I added about a TBL spoon of honey before cooking and the sweetness was perfect.

 4. Once your apples have cooked long enough, all you have to do is take a fork and stir it up really well. Remove any inedible things such as cinnamon sticks or large zests.
Eating it while it's still warm is even better than after you refrigerate it. You'll NEVER want to buy it from the store AGAIN! It's that good. You can easily jar it to preserve some for later, but most of ours didn't end up lasting though the day!

Enjoy! xo -Liz

Autumn Corn Fields

I've been in a huge autumn mood lately and so after discussing where to do a photo shoot with Brenna, we landed on a corn field. Though it just got me in more of a mood to start picking pumpkins and getting lost in corn mazes.

My little snack master

Footnote: I've been posting a lot more lately than I have been and I intend continuing to do so. So be sure to click on my Home page if you want to make sure you caught everything! xo -Liz

Wine & Cheese

I planned on sharing a playlist just like last year, but since the playlist site changed their rules, since then, I can only give you the link to it instead of posting it here. We had our second annual Wine & Cheese party and it ended up turning out to be such a good time. It was so nice to be able to connect with a bunch of friends while we ate amazing cheeses and tried some unique wines. We stayed up and chatted late into the night, not to our neighbors liking I'm sure, but at least it only happens once a year! I already can't wait until the next one. I feel like we need to have things like this more often.

Little Owl

This last weekend we celebrated my nieces 2nd Birthday. It was owl themed and turned out so great. I'm not super surprised though. LaRae(my SIL) always goes above an beyond when it comes to making parties feel special. I was, however, surprised that it turned out so great with her being pregnant. I would have totally been forgetting some major things if I was in her shoes! It will definitely be one to remember!

Back Words

Hello! Its been a while, I know. I've been purposely avoiding posting on here because I don't want to do anything half heartedly here. It's plainly been way too busy the last two weeks to give whole heartedly to anything. A lot has been going on and changing, I could probably spend an hour trying to write out everything thats been happening. I really can't see myself completely quit writing on here though, so not to worry there, but like I've said before I really just do it for myself. I love the few of you out there that take the time to stop by though. I couldn't do it without you!
So, Instead of telling you what's already happened the past while, I'll tell you what's currently going on.
 I'm in love with all the clouds below the mountains lately. Today has been the best. I love fall weather here and it makes me even more in love with Colorado. I'm so lucky to be able to see mountains in the background everywhere I go. I've also been making lots of soups and tea, for the same reason. Don't you just love fall? It's so fresh and clean, it makes me want to start things over and do some fall cleaning, kinda like spring, but fall is much better, in my opinion ;)
It's been raining a lot here and I'm currently preparing to make apple sauce from scratch with a few pounds of cheap apples I got from one of the last farmers market here. I'm really excited to try it out and hopefully have enough to jar.
I'm loving how much Everett is growing. It makes me a little sad that he's not my tiny baby anymore, but being able to connect with him more and watch him grow is better than anything.
I'll be back to share a few things that have been happening and I hope you're enjoying some amazing fall weather your way too! xo -Liz

fans, trips, colds, & magazines

Everett and Shyla spending so much time perfecting their fan voices

The Husby's gone to Salt Lake this entire week(yay! halfway there) for training. It's been pretty nice here. I've been hanging out with my parents and sissy a lot, and haven't had to worry as much about meals and house work. David had a cold before he left and it hit Everett hard the day after he had to leave. I've been trying to keep on top of mine since I still hadn't had any symptoms, but knew it was coming. Today has been the worst for me, but it's still not bad enough to even call a cold. Everett seems to be getting over it quickly, which is really great since he HATES sitting down to rest a cold off. What natural things do you do for cold remedies?
Other than that, I spent almost an hour talking to a guy on Monday who was raising money by selling magazines, which turned out to be a scam, so I spent the rest of the day fixing all that. Have any of you guys had that happen? I researched about it and found so much crazy stuff that these magazine sellers do. How some of them are even linked to kidnapping, rape, and burglary. I had such a bad day that day and didn't understand how such a seemingly nice person was scamming people. And even how the businesses they're working for are still legally in businesses. There are lots of crazy theories out there about them, but I'm not sure they are actually going that far with it. The guy I was talking to was even friendly enough, insisting on me taking a bracelet he had made after we were talking about it. Have any of you been affected by one of these magazine sales people? I'd really love to hear

4 More...

This is a continuation from my last post on random thoughts. This just might become a habit...!

 3. This morning, Everett's little cousin, Shyla, came over to play while my brother and SIL closed on their house this morning! It's super exciting that they finally have a house to call their own. They've been seriously looking to buy ever since about the time David and I have been so it's been a long time coming, but I guess things always have their perfect timing.

 4. Kind of a more serious matter, but I've been talking to an old friend recently over the phone. It's pretty crazy to see where all your old friends ended up and what kind of life they have now. This particular friend was in a foster home for a while when he was about five and his entire sad story really has put a nail in my heart. It really makes me think about maybe someday adopting a kid. If I could help out a kid with as much talent, character, and potential as my friend has always had and try to give him/her a better life than they have that would be pretty amazing. If they had a better chance to get up steadily on both feet and support from parents before they went out into the world, unlike what my friend had, I wonder how different their life would be. I also have been seeing two different families that recently adopted and it seems pretty amazing that they were able to take a little person into their house and adopt them and raise them as their own family. We defiantly aren't in the best situation to adopt, so it's not SERIOUS, it's just a thought thats been in my head recently. What are your thoughts on the subject? I'd love to hear.

 5. North West Sates are practically my favorite place on this planet. I've traveled there a couple times and still haven't seen all the things I've wanted yet. My Brother, Tim, and his wife just moved to Washington a few days ago (he was transferred there since he's in the Army). One of my friends just moved near Redding, CA to start music school. And another friend worked at a summer camp at Woodward West, CA and is currently on his way to settle down in Portland, OR. Not only that, but we have a few family members currently living in the Portland/Washington area. With how much I love it around there and all these loved ones moving out that way gives me such a yearning to make a trip out there to visit everyone and continue exploring out there. It's kinda a bad time of year to decide this now, unless I left NOW, and our lives are a little busy to take enough time off, let alone be able to afford it, but hey, a girl can dream…

 6. Last night, A few friends along with the husby were shooting a music video for Caged Friendship. I went down  to watch all the great acting and crazy imaginations they have and ended up helping them out. I got to follow behind the camera man the whole time playing their music from an i pad so they would now when their queues were. I don't feel like I did a great job because it was so fast paced, but it was still a lot of fun to help them out and be a part of it. I can't wait to see the completed video it's going to be so great! And I'll be sure to share it on here when it's finished!

 Hope you guys are having a great Friday night! xo -Liz

2ish Random Thoughts

1. It's been really heavy on my mind lately what we're going to eventually do with Everett for Pre-K. Weather we'll a) put him through a normal, free, public Pre-K. b) Put him in a private one. Or c) homeschool him. I really enjoy being there for him all the time even though it might be nice to have a little more time to get a job myself. I see a lot of benefits in schooling at home, but I also want him to have a little more of the actual school experience in his life. I'v been looking at some Pre-K books and bought a few for me to read on the whole homeschooling subject just to get my feet wet. I think it could be really fun to be his teacher, I'm just not sure if it would be too much of a commitment. I want to do what's best for him, of course, I'm just not sure what that is. If we want to put him in a paying, private school, some of them have waiting lists, so I feel a little pressured to decide now what we'll be doing. If any of you have strong opinions on the subject, I'd love to hear!

2. My friend started a discussion board on some serious Biblical and Christian topics. A lot of people have joined, and it's usually pretty active. I try to keep up on most of the topics, but sometimes if I haven't read it for a while it gets to be a little long for me to go back and read ALL of it. Everything that I've kept up on though has been super interesting and I love it! I love how subjects can get down to the nitty gritty. There is, of course, some heated arguments because of peoples differing opinions on the Bible or God etc. That's kinda what keeps it so interesting though. I almost wish there was an app that would notify me every time someone wrote something! I've been putting my two cents in here and there and it's nice that most people try to keep it from not getting personal and keep it more geared towards the subject at hand instead. I know it's super rare that I write anything like that on this blog, but I'm really not a throw it in your face person. This blog is a little too public for me to be throwing all my deep, personal opinions out there. Oh, I have definitely, definitely thought a lot before about posting on some subjects like that, but knowing that a lot of people can get offended easily by someone else's opinions has always made me decide against it. That's why I love this little semi-private discussion board and how down and dirty that we can get into some of the subjects. Seeing so many people, young and old, being involved and diving down deeper into the Bible to find some answers makes it pretty amazing to me. It's almost like a big Bible study unlike any I've seen before. Luckily, it's all written down so there are no fists flying, but it sorta makes me realize how important it is to have a small group of people like this to discuss important things with. And with there being so many diverse people joining, it makes it even better to hear so many different sides.

I have much more random thoughts I was planning on sharing, but seeing as I ended up writing a lot more than intended I'll just end it here and be back later with the rest! xo -Liz

Deceptive Friday

 On Friday evening, my Dad and I went out to take his Ural Motorcycle on a test drive. It had been a really long time for me, being on a motorcycle, even though this was still pretty different, but I still got to remember somewhat of how it feels to drive a motorcycle again. As we drove, the sun was shining brightly just before setting and dark, grey, clouds floated straight over head. The weather was simply perfect and once we began to get out of the city a little more, all I could see was open road and mountains. The air smelt perfect and I had a permanent smile on my face. I'm not sure what it's always been, but I can't keep from smiling when I get to go fast in something. Maybe it's inherited.
As the evening went on, Everett and I decided to start a little marshmallow roasting fire in back of my parents. We had a short little s'mores date, just the two of us, and it was perfect and sugar filled. A few of our friends and family came over later to sit around the fire and eventually my oldest brother and SIL who are traveling though. We stayed up way too late, ate way too much sugar, and saw my amazing family.

I really couldn't have asked for a better evening to tell you the truth. My favorite ones are so spontaneous like that. I didn't understand why I got such an amazing one either. I gave Everett a warm bath to wash all the marshmallow stickies, coal, and dirt from his hands and face and I read him his favorite book before putting him to bed.
As I walked down stairs and turned on the kitchen light, I noticed some vintage (never been used) pots from my great Grandpa sitting over by our sliding back door. I turned my head as I followed a trail of broken glass all the way across my kitchen to two kitchen shelves fallen and splintered off the wall and ALL my precious dished scattered everywhere. I could list all the amazing things that were shattered into a million pieces, but I won't bore you with that. The dishes I had, I knew were priceless, and the emotions I felt seeing all the little pieces across the floor was unexplainable. I know it might sound silly that I would be so emotional about a few dishes, but I am attached to my dishes. It took me so, so long to collect the small amount I have, and I wondered how much more vintage dish estate sale hunting I'd have to do before I could somewhat replace what had been broken. They meant so much to me that I felt like part of my heart shattered with some of those dishes and was swept up into the trash with them. My sister came over that night, mostly for encouragement, she knew how I felt and helped me clean up the disaster. It meant a lot to me and I'm so glad she understood what I was feeling. I stayed up until almost 2 a.m. that night trying to glue some things, but mostly in vein.

After all the frustration and tears, though, the more I think about it, it kinda taught me a lesson. I put a lot of time and effort into some of my hobbies especially hunting for rare vintage things for cheap. It's a big part of my heart, but after all the emotions, I stepped back and knew that even though it's a part of me, it's just not enough to compare to what I still have. A small part of me broke, but it just makes the majority even better. So, I'm feeling thankful. More thankful now for what I have than what I had before. Sometimes life has to teach you some things in ways you hate.