Out West

 We traveled to Colorado about a week ago to spend a few days with Travis. Helped him with some projects around his condo, repairing various things and helping him make plans for some enhancements. We also found time to play, including 18 holes of golf at a nine-hole course called Mountain Vista, that has great views of the mountains in the distance. That's the Anheiser-Bush brewing facility across the road in the background. Golf, mountains, and beer!

Temperatures were quite warm while we were there, but the humidity and breeze made being outside really nice. I think we could have easily enjoyed playing 27 holes, if time had permitted.

I'd always wanted to visit the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins. Their most famous beer is called Fat Tire, which you may well know, but they have lots of others and some seasonal brews as well. Their tours were all filled up, so we didn't get to do that, but you can sample the products and view lots of their operation through windows into the work areas. We might have acquired a couple of new T-shirts too.

Later, we all used our hotel's swimming pool before dinner. Here is Travis about to cannonball his mom.

Terrific Father's Day Weekend

This past weekend, we traveled to the Chicago area for a couple of different reasons. On Saturday, there was a lovely graveside interment service for Kathie's mother, followed by a luncheon for everyone attending. I took this picture of Kathie and Gail after the service. I know their mother would have been very proud of her two girls and their kind words of remembrance.

On Sunday, I was treated to a memorable Father's Day with Betsy and her family. After a breakfast outing, we all decided to walk to the city pool to enjoy the water and fun on such a warm day. Here are the three delightful grandchildren with whom I spent the day.

Frederick was eager for some swimming!

Henry and Clara showed Nana the big pool.

Pete chose not to go for the slow immersion approach to getting used to the water.

Henry had a fun little toy that he could toss into the pool and then recover by searching for it on the bottom with these goggles.

Dad helped Clara with some floating and paddling exercises. Or maybe he was just tickling her.

Betsy brought Frederick out for a dip too.

I don't know who this lumpy old guy is. Even though he claims not to be all that into swimming, he sure had fun with all the activities available at the pool and with the grandkids.

One of the features of this pool complex is a water slide. Henry and his mom are preparing here to descend using a two-person inner tube.

And here they are at the end of their run.

After some coercion, Henry got his grandfather to agree to try it with him. He said he had a much faster ride with the extra weight I brought to the experience.

Meanwhile, Clara tried out her own water slide in another area of the pool as well as other water toys.

Henry got ahead of us during the walk back home, and we found this awaiting us at the front door.

Later we enjoyed a cookout with Pete's folks. Frederick likes hanging out with his mom while she works in the kitchen.

Henry and Clara really got into a computer game that Nana brought along.

I enjoyed watching Frederick chew on this frozen washcloth, something his mom gives him to help with his teething. Soon he was throwing it on the floor, and as many times as I picked it up and put it back on his tray, he would throw it down again. This was clearly a "train Grandpa to do funny tricks" exercise. Maybe Betsy will post a movie of that. It became quite funny.

This is an old photo, but I throw it in to mention that on Monday I repaired a door on the wee house that I built for the kids a year ago. While I was doing that, Henry and Clara came up with a number of accessories for the house that we had to add as well, including a mailbox, a bulletin board, hanging a picture, and planning for some curtains (which I understand they worked on after we left).

All five of my kids took the time to call me and wish me well. One of the nicest Father's Days I can remember!

Three Stories for the Price of One

Story 1: Late in the day on my birthday, we experienced strong winds at the lake. I watched from the screened-in porch as trees whipped back and forth from vertical to 45º. Finally, two old Popples snapped simultaneously and fell toward but missed the garage. These were trees that we worried might fall and hit the house sometime, so this was actually a somewhat welcome outcome. In addition, the top of an old Popple on the lake side of the cabin snapped and fell into the woods. Also, two trees fell across the driveway. One of them hit our old friend Gus right on the head and then knocked off his left hand. He was rotting away anyway, and we had thought we might need to replace him sometime this year. When we do that, we'll have an appropriate ceremony. In the meantime, he's hanging onto that sign. When we bid him farewell, I'll post a story about all of his adventures, which are many. We spent a couple days with the chainsaw and a fire cleaning up the property.

Story 2: Our five wonderful, thoughtful children gave us a generous gift certificate to the Winter Greenhouse and Nursery as a remembrance of Kathie's mom. Today, we had the greenhouse plant the two trees we picked out as a memorial. But let me digress first to show you the one tree I picked for myself. I had wanted for quite some time to add a tamarack (larch) tree to the property. So I picked one out and had them bring it to plant at the same time. Here it is, planted near the better of the two bears I have tried to carve with my chainsaw. Tamaracks lose their needles every fall and regrow them every spring. They look like a conifer but are actually deciduous.

The two memorial trees are both flowering varieties. This one is a Whitney Crabapple that will have white blossoms and will produce usable fruit for making jellies or other goodies.

The second is a Purple Prince Crab with pink blossoms but no usable fruit. We think both of these will really dress up our property, and we are very grateful to all of you kids for making this wonderful contribution to the memory of Kathie's mom. Especially in the spring, memories of her will bloom along with the trees.

Story 3: I recently purchased a tiny 2.5 HP Suzuki outboard motor for use with our canoes. Last year, I had purchased a mount for same, then thinking that we might use our old electric trolling motor. However, this efficient, small gas motor is much better for us. Today, we took it out for its first hour of break-in. During the break-in period, we can't operate it at full speed, and now that we've used it, I think this is just as well. When idling, it moves the canoe at about the same speed as if we were paddling. When operating at half speed, it moves the canoe right along. I'm almost afraid to open it up to its full speed. We went up into the river a good ways and toured the perimeter of our bay. What a sweet way to travel. I know, I could still be paddling, and I'll do this some too, but this will give us some nice opportunities to fish the upper reaches of the river, where we know people catch some very nice walleye and other fish.