happy halloween!

from ez, the alien

wednesdays rule!

i love wednesdays.
they are so productive.
productive, but yet, i never get as much done as i want to.

today ez and i went for a small hike, and then, jsut because it was SO nice i attempted to ride my bike. this lasted for 40 min, which was really 10 min too long because i thought my knee was going to explode. i still have to wear my compression hose (that goes from my foot to my butt), but that would be ridiculous-looking while riding my bike, so i took them off. by the end of the ride i had patellar-floppage.

what is patellar-floppage?
it is when you have so much swelling on your knee that when you make any kind of movement everything shakes. it's like having a double chin/spare tire on your leg and it is quite uncomfortable.
plus it makes you feel gross.

so i got a bike ride in.
and then got a pedi/mani, because i havn't got one for 2 months.
i have clear polish on my fingernails.
this is the first time that has happened in 13 years.
"so short, so short" the lady says
i didn't want to tell her i still, at 26 5/6 years old, chew them out of nervous habit.

next i vacuumed out my car, washed it, and ez got a bath too.
i love it when he smells like coconut!

then ez and i stole all the neighbor's patio furniture.
you may wonder how i did this with a bum knee.....
but i can do anything with a wheelbarrow!(ok, so the neighbors are moving and sold us their set and are out of town but said i could come get it whenever. for $150 its awesome!)

lastly, the cookie nook has started up again and we're baking tonight.
this is the time of year that you walk thru the baking isle in the store, even if you don't need anything, and buy 5 of whatever is on sale cause you're gonna need it sometime.
the end. go check out the nook.
we're back up and running!

coffee cups

dallas wondered where all his coffee cups went

i dont' use coffee cups.
i'm like my grandma holste.
your coffee has to be HOT (or COLD, in my case)
but, it cannot be inbetween.

coffee cups go lukewarm too quickly.
dallas likes them, and he has quite the collection.......

COLLECTING IN HIS JEEP!
bad dallas.

1) today was my boss' birthday. he wanted a german chocolate cake, so he got it.....gluten free style. i must say.... very tasty.


if you do the gf thing.... the best flour is in a little green box. no xanthum gum needed.

2) i set up the little blue room in our house for tv. it's a small room and we have a small tv. it works. ezra seems to think this is now his room.

3) as much as i hate to rub it in, ksu really did a outstanding job killing ku on tv. later in the game when a ku dude running the ball slipped w/out anyone touching him, the announcer said, "looks like he slipped on the logo. those beaks are slippery little suckers."

and that right there pretty much sums up the game

mmmmm.....rolls

for the past 4 years i have been scarred.
around 4 years ago i tried making a recipe requiring yeast and it failed.

i couldn't believe it.
i failed, at a baking thing?
impossible.
i've stuck to quick breads and cookies ever since

until last night.... when, in my non-bike-riding boredom decided it was time to make cinnamon rolls. it was cold, and dark, and dallas needed some comfort food.
unfortunately, cinnamon rolls require yeast.

with patience, THEY TURNED OUT!
it was a miracle! i did it!
i have broke into a whole new world of baking!
i have limitless options!

today, i don't know what i was thinking. i did, after all, make homemade cinnamon rolls from scratch, with frosting that seeped into every single crack.

i thought i should be treated like a princess.....
shouldn't i get to go get myself something special?
wouldn't i be praised for my valiant efforts for the rest of the weekend?
wouldn't i get "wife of the year" award?

life goes on,
even after you make homemade cinnamon rolls
onto the next yeast requiring recipe

ez thinks he is this small

but in reality he's a bit larger

longest week of my life

sorry we are so uneventful around here.

but when your leg looks like this:
(bruising extends down to front of tibia and around the back of the leg)

all you do is this:

our house is full of encouraging words,
examples include:

"why are you so grumpy?"
(well, my leg HURTS!)

"wow, it looks like you spilled a bottle of ink on your leg"

"your leg is ugly"

nothing like a bit of encouragement to hurry the healing.
it's taken me all week to get to
1) 90 degrees of bending
2) not as noticeable limp
3) able to sort of sleep again
4) wear pants w/out noticeable swelling (ie wide leg dress pants no longer get stuck around my thigh)

onward to the longest weekend of my life

36 hrs later

i have successfully beat mario brothers world 4 on wii
(i know, real high ambitions over here)
made a double batch of cookies,
snuggled w/ william
and had my oil changed

not exactly the weekend we had in mind, but it could be worse.
i did hit my head (as proved by this bruise on the back of my head) and havn't felt the best

for the most part, my swelling has significantly gone down and the blue bruising has came in. walking is still extremely painful and there is some burning sharp pain inside, which worries me a bit.

good thing i work in ortho. we'll find out tomorrow!

i knew things were going too well.
our house has been injury/surgery free since august 14.
we went over an entire month!
we went 6 weeks!
(speaking of which, ez has a f/u appt that needs scheduled.)

in order to break our streak,
me, in one of my not-so-brilliant moments wrecked my bike
on a JRA (just riding along) gig before tomorrow's race.

now i have a grapefruit attached to my knee that is turning blue.
awesome.
no: hiking, biking, racing, standing on my feet for more than 10 seconds, walking faster that 0.2 mph) or basically anything fun for a long time.
yes, we're looking for my knee in this pic. oh yes, it is on the OTHER SIDE of the scab. everything scab left is awesome swelling
i'm so special, in a bad way.
nuts
this is gonna be a LOOOOONG weekend

birthday party

we went to a giant "let's celebrate everyone's september birthdays" party last night.

i took homemade german chocolate cake

when we were getting ready to go home there was a little bit left. the hostess insisted that dallas take it but much to my surprise he blurts out,
"its ok, she can just make me another one."

hmmm really, dallas?
we'll just have to see about that

somehow i always manage to ruin dallas' birthday.

last night:
dallas: where are you? (wondering around house, comes downstairs)
dallas: are you in bed?
andi: yes
dallas: why?
andi: i'm very tired and don't want to do anything else
dallas: it's only 8:45

poor guy. talk about party pooper wife!
to top things off, he loves tiramisu and i thought that would be a substitution for his usual german chocolate cake. i would consider myself a fairly decent baker, but as you may remember, i somehow always trash d's birthday cake.

2008
yesterday(yeah yeah, i know, it looks GROSS)

and then he says.... is this vanilla pudding pie?
andi: no, i'ts supposed to be tiramisu, but they didn't have the lady things
dallas: you mean lady fingers?
andi: yes, those. i don't even know what those are
dallas: well, it looks like vanilla pudding pie. (takes a "piece" out....) WOW! look! it regrows itself (as it's slowly morphing into the pan shape again)

another birthday fail

happy birthday dallas!

my honey still has it31 years and still kickin

la plata peak

last night around 10 pm d and i looked at each other and decided, for lack of better things to do on sunday we should get up at 4:00 again and hike another 14er. its amazing how fast the leaves change... since friday some of the green have turned yellow, and some of the yellow have fallen off.

sadly, la plata is the last 14er on chaffee cty 390. off this one road you can do: missouri, belford, oxford, huron and la plata. we went farther on the road and it was more beautiful than i expected it to be.

la plata killed us.
we decided beforehand to
1) have an almost anaerobic pace
2) take no breaks.
i am exhausted. we had a record pace.... and this weekend we did 11 miles and 7,000 ft of elevation change (= steep uphills). 1/2 way up i was breathing so hard my abs hurt. today we did the entire hike up and down in 4 hrs, 20 min--- which included enough time for us to goof off for a long time (and peel and eat a tangerine) at the top

dallas and i really dig each other
i know what you're thinking---you want this as a christmas card pic on your fridge. don't worry, i've already contemplated it.
at the top
ninja

beautiful

until we meet again chaffee cty 390......

huron

due to a recent family tragedy it was such a breath of fresh air (literally) to have hiked huron this morning. i sometimes forget how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place with a giant playground in the backyard.
can you believe that these pics aren't photoshopped?
i'm pretty sure i didnt spell photoshopped right.
and even the picture above isn't photoshopped.
it's really just THAT beautiful

since ez has to be a debbie-downer this year and can't do much, we're pretty much house bound and if we want to hike we have to leave day of and get back the same day. otherwise we'd just load him in and give him a place in the tent.looking out from the top. north apostle (13'er) on right

huron is a good hike if:
a) you havn't hiked for a while and need a warm up
b) you have a 4wheel drive vehicle to cut 4 mi of jeep road off the hike
c) you're in a time crunch
d) want an excuse to drive down chaffee county 390
(it is currently 1st place in my book of co roads)
e) want an excuse to drive thru leadville & hit their coffee shop
f) possibly eat at the eddy line in buenie on the way home
the aspens are GORGEOUS right now. actually over kenosha pass the leaves are already falling off... which is really too bad, but they are other places so you just really need to drive and find them(this is not kenosha pass. this is chaffee county 390, the best road in the world i mentioned earlier)

the little pill

no, we're not talking about viagra,
or birth control,
or someone being a "little pill"
or anything that any human is going to engulf
(here the story goes)

this past weekend ezra decided to freak us out by limping horribly around the house with a gimpy leg so (long story short) we ended up going to the vet, getting sedated, xrays....... the entire 9 yards. right before leaving i remembered that there was a small kitty cat i had been meaning to ask about.

"dr taylor, william is growing dreadlocks and he won't let us cut them out. do you have any sedative type medicine that would make this easier?"
(i can't believe i had the nerve to ask for this. she probably thinks we are nuts)

"how much does he weigh?"
"15-16 lbs"

"ok, give him 1/4 a pill and in one hour he should be sedated. if he's still wired you can give him another 1/4"

thus THE PILLand as ez i walked away i hear her laughing,
"william has dreadlocks....."

last month i paid my student loans completely off...
or so i thought

i signed in yesterday just to see:
remaining account balance: $0.00
(do you know how good that would feel to see that!?)

much to my surprise i still owe $0.16
so i tried to pay it online
but you can't put an amount in for <$1.00 but you can't put $1.00 in because it is more than the acct balance so instead i had to use a $0.44 stamp to send my check for $0.16 and be freed of my loans sallie mae is rediculous

we saw this sign in a restaurant yesterday on our way home and couldn't help laughing
in case you can't see very well, it says:
NOW SERVING
"ASIAN"
THAI FOOD

any ideas what the quotations are for?

aaaahhhh
our weekend consisted of:

1) ez doing something to his leg which requires him to limp around the house

2) william found a new box that fits his fat body
3) we got up at 3:30 this morning to go hike a 14er for our anniv. we tried going up the east, much less traveled side of huron to find absolutely no trail.

the commander went over it's trickiest bouldering yet and i had to be the spotter (jeeping----something i have SWORE i would never be a part of.) i did a fabulous job. everything was great until we got home and there was transmission fluid dripping down inside the jeep by the glove box. (skid plate on bottom is unscratched)
can anyone explain this?

so in reality we drove 5 hrs to hike around 4 mi on a jeep trail to get these views.
(the aspens are beautiful!)
guess we'll try the west side next weekend.

dallas took this picture yesterday.
he wants everyone to know that some wal mart
in wyoming is missing its entire inventory
(of course you should never take pictures while driving, but we'll let it slide just this once)

(as many of you know i have anniversary problems)
i really thought that our anniversary was yesterday
but according to facebook it's not till thurs
so i guess it is then.... because of course, it's not official unless on fb
that means it's the 9th, but i could swear it's the 6th because the 9th just doesn't sound right

guess we'll just celebrate both days