Labor Day

So we were obviously home for Labor Day. The pictures below are from the trip, primarily our time spent out in Milan with our friends for Milan Melon Festival. We've missed this the last 4 years and it's a big tradition with our friends, so it was great to be back home for that and to be part of the insanity. I'm sure you're wondering why in the world we would care about Melon Fest, but it's near and dear to us since Melon Man is a good friend of ours! If you don't understand the pictures or history, please don't ask because no amount of explaining will make any sense of this. Just know we always have a good time!

Prepping the float

Edison High School Band

Tubas! (Eric used to play so I always get pictures)

The float in the parade

Indy at his first parade!! He did great minus the parts where the fire trucks went through and the drummers marched by

Melon Man!

The Brewers

The Beers

The judges. . .Eric's Kolsch won!

Bailey & Indy chilling out hoping food gets dropped

Indy and his friends Cessna & Jack at the winery (Indy is at the top)

Stimpy is coming home!

Stimpy at home getting cleaned.

Bierstadt Hike

Wow, it's been awhile since we've updated this- sorry! At least we just recently saw most of you so you know what's going on.

The last Saturday in August a few of us- Eric, Me, Heather, Scott, Joe & Matt- decided to hike a 14'er. A 14'er is a 14,000 foot mountain peak. Hiking these is very common and it's on that list of things you must do if you live in Colorado. 

Bierstadt starts around 11,000 feet and goes up to a summit of just over 14,000. The hike was intense- lots of up and towards the last few hundred feet to the summit it became a scramble on loose rock. I was not loving that part because I could definitely see myself catching bad footing and sliding down a rock slide. Joe and Scott kept telling me that I could do it and I had to get to the top. (They were both in on it! Joe hiked wine up to the top so we could toast after I said yes!) I was tired and made that known to Eric, but even he was being patient. Slightly odd, but I truly thought nothing of it. I was more worried about rock burn on my face if I missed footing. 

Taking a breather about an hour before he popped the question!

Looking across to the ten mile range

The rocky climb to the top I was not loving

All of us finally got to the summit and sat down. Being on rock that wasn't moving was great! We started to take pictures and Eric sat down next to me so Heather could get a picture of us. Eric randomly mentions after the picture about how beautiful of a place this would be for a proposal. Me thinking, wow you're weird, I look to Heather for reinforcement. As I turned my head to tell Eric he was crazy, the sparkle of a shiny engagement ring resting on his pinky finger caught my eye. I looked at him and he then asked me to marry him! I screamed, grabbed the ring and lunged at him to give him a huge hug. The scream did however, scare some other hikers at the top of the mountain and they thought something was wrong. Scott clarified for them that it was a proposal and they all clapped for us. I was in complete shock but so thrilled. The hike was still grueling and the way down really killed me, but it was totally worth it!

The summit- clearly it was a popular trail!

The "official" summit according to USGS

The picture we took right before Eric pulled out the ring and proposed!

The ring on my very swollen finger

Tubing on Clear Creek

So we thought we'd cool off with some friends and go tubing on the Clear Creek River in Golden. This was a great idea, but our end product/process wasn't as successful as we'd hoped. 

First off, I only have one picture because after I took the one below my phone died and I didn't have a car charger with me. 

Then we got to Clear Creek and it was jam packed. Where we had to put the tubes in was not as close as we'd hoped. The guys- Eric and Cody- went up to the tunnel put the tubes in and about 35 minutes later Trista and I finally saw them. The river wasn't racing, which was good, but 35 minutes?! 
The tubes we bought had too big of an opening so Eric and Cody were getting bruised and bumped because 75% of their bodies were exposed to river rocks. Trista and I never even went down because we were certain we would have been sucked out of the inner tubes because of the opening size. 

It was a slight cluster, but Indy got to swim in the river and fight the current. A great video opportunity had my phone been charged. 

Indy trying to figure out what is taking up his back seat

Crazy for Cherries!

After spending a day meeting with a landscape architect, Eric came home with 8 pounds of fresh sour cherries! We weren't entirely sure what to do with all of them at first, but we figured it out- cherry lattice top pie, cherry turnovers and cherry wheat beer. Yep, fruit beer. We'll let you know how that goes!

I loved making pie with fresh cherries- it's so tasty! The only downside to 8 pounds of fresh cherries is having to pit 8 pounds of fresh cherries. I kid you not we did this is shifts because it took so long. 

The turnovers were quite messy and involved so I didn't get pictures of those, but trust me they were yummy.

Let the pitting begin. . .

Finally finished

It was so pretty I almost didn't want to cut into it

Cherry Wheat Beer

Eric's New Job

Eric recently took on a new position at Mountain High and is now doing their landscape sales! He's been meeting with clients for the past two weeks, creating bids and doing designs.

So far things are going really well and both Eric and the company seem happy with the change!

Sweetwater Lake Hike

A couple weekends ago Eric took Indy camping for the first time at Sweetwater Lake out near Vail/Eagle. Indy hiked 2 miles, swam, cooled himself off in a giant puddle of mud, ate camp food and slept in a tent. 

Eric, Indy and Matt had a good time, the views were great and they all came back exhausted.

Lounging in a mud puddle

Campsite

Garden Growth

OK, yet again we owe you an apology for going to weeks without updates. Sorry!

I thought I'd share some pictures of how the herbs and veggies are doing. Unfortunately, due to our monsoon season our tomatoes and strawberries got too much water and are not growing or doing very well. 


The herbs, squash and jalapenos seem to be surviving the overabundance of moisture.