Happy Napping Pupper Doo

One for the Record Books

Are you ready for this? Are you sure? You're seated? well braced? 

Alright, well here it comes: 

I cooked dinner on Tuesday night!

Yes, it's true. I followed a recipe (in place of the instructions on the side of a "cup of noodles" that I typically fall back on when Eric tells me to make dinner) and created an edible meal that neither poisoned nor crippled Eric and me.

What was this meal? Well it was cashew chicken lettuce wraps. A knock off of a very yummy PF Chang's appetizer. It was so good in fact Eric didn't have to fix it or pull out the fire extinguisher. All in all I'm counting it as a win. Although, not such a great win that I'll be asked to partake in this type of thing again in the too near future. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here I mean it's not like I had the wherewithal to make a side dish! 

Good Ol' BBQ

Very pleased with his 12# beef brisket that he smoked perfectly on his new smoker. Once this sat in the oven for 2 hours to finish it melted in your mouth like butter :)

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary. . .

My how your garden grows. . .  OK so no silver bells or cockle shells in our garden, but my is it growing! We'll have more zucchini than I'll know what to do with so thankfully mom sent out a bunch of recipes so I can diversify my baked and canned goods and avoid sending Eric to zucchini ingesters anonymous. 

  

The cauliflower is huge, but won't sprout a head until it cools off consistently and temps are between 60-70 degrees during the day. Based on that nugget of knowledge we'll feature our garden cauliflower in a Thanksgiving dish I'm sure. Stay tuned.

The cabbage is also doing pretty well, it too needs cooler weather for the heads to forms so yay! for sauerkraut as Christmas presents!

Our jalapeno and banana peppers never disappoint. Those grow just about anywhere and some have already made their way into dishes and on top of grill pizzas.

And lastly we have our tomatoes. Our Roma tomatoes that should be thriving in their full sun. Not a single darn tomato has popped yet. We're hoping they're going to surprise us and all come at once so we'll be able to make a nice big batch of pasta sauce. Although, seeing as Murphy lives with us I doubt that will be our luck instead we'll end up with 8 big plants and no tomatoes.

Camping in Leadville

We decided to stop working on the yard and the house this weekend and go camping with Matt and Joe & Laura. We opted to camp on Half Moon Road near Leadville. Here's a map- it's a little sketchy since it's such a wide zoom, but look in the top quarter towards the right and you'll see half moon. 

Our camp site was fantastic since it was right on the creek so all the dogs were happy they got to swim and get smelly. It was nice to fall asleep to the sounds of the creek running. Being up at almost 10,000  feet was a nice break from the 90+ temps we'd been having in Denver. I actually needed a sweatshirt!

Excited and ready to go camping {and swimming!}

I'm still excited, I swear. . .

If there's a distillery we must stop. Leadville has a distillery. it is called Two Guns.

Scenic drive up the road to the campsite.

This was the stream that was right next to our camp site.

Exercising great restraint to not drag mom into the lake to chase after dad on his kayak.

:)

The moon was so bright!

After camping we decided to take a drive over Independence Pass. I'd never been there and it's really cool. On the way we saw Mount Massive ( a 14'er)

And Mt. Elbert another 14'er

We're here!

And it's gorgeous

My guys

These lovely scenic views and smiles were followed by 3.5 hours of lovely I-70 traffic to get back to Denver. Gotta love it!