Meeting the Neighbors

A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.

Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

I'm making up for lost posting time. Today inspired me. This morning, Peanut Butter Wolf met her newest neighbors, Samantha and Jake, two recently adopted puppies. Samantha is smaller and younger and Jake, 1.5 months younger than Peanut Butter, is a big boy. Sam is a Lab mix and Jake is some kind of fluffy Husky-type mix as can be seen in all the fuzz and ice balls stuck to his coat.

I held little Sam, whose paws were cold, while Peanut Butter and Jake rough-housed.

Samantha

Jake and Peanut Butter

Grey November Snow

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

~J.B. Priestley

Here, snow doesn't stick around long. The snow that we found this morning is almost gone. I love this kind of snowfall - a thin blanket that lets you see whatever is underneath. After Steve, Peanut Butter, and I finished a morning walk in the open space nearby, I grabbed my camera and headed out again. Hope you find it as pretty as I did and as fun as Peanut Butter did!

View from the backyard


Heading into the open space.




Tracks that Peanut Butter left behind.


A fort made by neighborhood children in the cottonwood grove.

Path through the cottonwood grove.

Squirrel tracks on the path.

The squirrel!

Early Thanksgiving with Dad

What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?

~John Greenleaf Whittier

Dad visited the weekend before Thanksgiving over a five day period. We had an early Thanksgiving featuring Tofurky (a delicious wheat gluten "turkey", instead of the real bird) along with the usual suspects: stuffing, mash potatoes, gravy (vegetarian, and taaasty), green beans with toasted slivered almonds, and pumpkin pie.

Some tasty highlights from his trip include:

• Brunch at The Huckleberry, a restaurant and tea room here in Louisville that describes their fare as "funky country".
  
• Lunch at Oskar Blues, a Cajun-style restaurant and brewery in Lyons. As a former fisherman and daughter of a fisherman, we agreed that the crab cakes were awesome.
• Dinner at Noodles and Company, a Boulder-based American/Asian/Mediterranean family-friendly noodle/soup/salad restaurant that has raised the fast food bar - easily taken for granted by people with easy access, but a cool treat.
• Dinner at Casa Alegre, a Mexican restaurant in Louisville that has awesome margaritas and chips and salsa.
• Dinner at Pupusa in North Boulder, a tiny, humble, tasty Salvadoran restaurant where you MUST eat pupusas. (There are other menu items, but pupusas are the specialty, here.)
  
• Homemade Pannkaka, from a family recipe. Want the recipe?
  

Pannkaka (Finnish Coffee Cake)

6 eggs
1/2 to 3/4 c. sugar
2 c. milk
1 c. flour
dash of salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cube (yes, cube!) butter or margarine

Preheat oven to 400F. Melt butter in 9" X 13" pan. Beat eggs and sugar until thick in piles. Stir in flour; salt to season. Then stir in milk and vanilla. Blend in melted butter or margarine. Pour in 9" X 13" pan and Bake 20 minutes.



In addition to eating, we brought Dad around the area to the numerous historic mining town downtowns - Niwot, Nederland, Lyons, Idaho Springs, Frisco, Estes Park, and Boulder - Ute and Arapaho tribal lands thousands of years before the first miner struck pay dirt.

Enjoy some pictures from Dad's visit.


Pumpkin pie

Dad taking in the Red Rocks Amphitheater, a popular concert venue located in the foothills of Denver.

You can see downtown Denver in the background, if you click on the image to enlarge it.

Dad in front of a statue of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) worker. Red Rocks became the natural amphitheater that it is thanks, in large part, to Mother Nature and the labor of CCC workers during the New Deal. This economic development effort not only created jobs for workers, but also added amenity to America's natural resources. On his visit, Dad saw three natural amphitheaters built by the CCC including this one, one on Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder, and one in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Steve and Peanut Butter Wolf approaching one of the many pods of workout junkies that use Red Rocks as an outdoor gym.

Leaving the Visitor Center parking lot at Red Rocks

Dad near kayaks on Dillon Reservoir in Frisco, CO

Peanut Butter Wolf on the boat launch on Dillon Reservoir

Antique store in Idaho Springs. This antique store featured multi-thousand dollar antique stoves rebuilt by "Skipper", a white-haired chin strap-bearded man who wears a fishing cap.




Dad holding Peanut Butter Wolf in Nederland.

Post Grad School Fun with Art

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

~Pablo Picasso

I just finished my first 6-week session with an art instructor here in Louisville. This is monumentous for me, because I promised myself that I would take more fun classes - for me art classes - once I completed grad school. I picked this photo to paint because it seemed like a good, simple study of shape and shading. My art instructor is amazing, explicit in her instructions, and instructs students as if their goal is to create professional quality work. She's awesome!

Fun with Puppy

When a doting person gets down on all fours and plays with the dog's rubber mouse, it only confuses the puppy and gives him a sense of insecurity. He gets the impression that the world is unstable and wonders whether he is supposed to walk on his hind legs and smoke cigars.

-Corey Ford

I promise that eventually the content of this blog will expand beyond PB, but Steve and I are having lots of fun with her and want to share our joy.

Puppy's first snow. Steve woke me up bright and early this morning so I could witness PB's first encounter with snow. She was a bit perplexed, but nothing too crazy happened.

Last weekend Steve and I brought PB to Petsmart to pick out her own toy. (If you haven't had a dog, you might think that toys are frivolous objects for pampered pooches, but in reality a toy can be the one thing that stands between a puppy and utter decimation of your abode.) PB likes squeaky toys and picked out this massive, oversized double squeakered chewing gum look alike: Dubble Bubble.

After the Trip to Petsmart, PB joined us on a short hike near Eldorado Springs, just south of Boulder. Those are the Flat Irons in the background.