Finn

 B’s dog Finn, a senior rescue, is staying with us for awhile (he and B’s cat don’t get along!). 

He was so traumatized… being abandoned at a gas station, then several weeks in the shelter where he was neutered and had to have most of his teeth removed due to them being so rotten (many had already fallen out!). He was terribly scared when we brought him home from B’s, wouldn’t leave the crate, or eat, and was quick to bite if he felt threatened. 

He’s doing so much better now though…  Here he is after his first bath 

And trying to get up a tree he’d just chased a squirrel into…

He’s a really good dog… B was lucky to find him. He’ll be a good addition to our little family “pack”.

Christmas Lights

 One of our set-in-granite Christmas traditions is driving around, drinking hot chocolate, looking at Christmas lights. 

We have a few favorites that we visit each year, like this one in E’s old neighborhood that has light synced to music and a sign that tells you what FM station to tune your radio to. This year, just after we pulled up, an antique fire engine, all decked out in lights, pulled in front of us. M had to get closer to see, of course, and ended up knowing both “Santa” who was sitting in the back, and the driver, an old friend of E and J’s. I love living in a smaller community where we so often run into people we know. So different from Denver…

And a few more of our favorites, including one decorated almost entirely with Christmas dogs! (Rhianna loves this one!)

Isn’t this a pretty street?

The countdown is on… only a couple more weeks til Christmas!  😱

Rainbow

 We had a lovely snow this morning early…

It was supposed to be terribly windy, but instead we had a light, beautiful snow. 

It was a rainbow to me, recognized and deeply appreciated.

🎄 Tree’s up 🎄

 

The Christmas season has begun!

 Our first big Christmas event is “Shop til You Drop” day. This started as a necessity, when one year I hadn’t even thought about Christmas until Dec 1st! Now it’s a tradition… the kids and I spend a few hours shopping and having lunch out. It’s kind of a big event and most years it’s the only time we go into a mall. 

The past couple of years we’ve kept to outdoor malls.  Last year we just window shopped in an outdoor shopping area,  this year we still shopped at an outdoor mall, but did actually go into stores to shop. 😱

Thanksgiving

 We had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday yesterday… E and her crew were out of town, and we missed seeing them a lot, but B, K and J were here and we had a wonderful, relaxing day. 

I forgot to take any pictures, of course, but B took a few pictures of M with her new rescue dog and I especially love this one. 

Now it’s on to the big Christmas push.

 I have to say I’m not looking forward to all the Christmas “extras”, (shopping, cooking, more shopping, more cooking, oops forgot something… which means still more shopping), but I am looking forward to the joy, memory making, and happiness of the season. 

Mother Cabrini Shrine

After making a few trips up to Lookout Mountain over the past year or so, snd becoming familiar with the area…R decided she wanted to climb the steps up to the huge statue of Jesus at Mother Cabrini Shrine. We’d visited the shrine before but never made the trip up to the top… I knew M wouldn’t even try because of his anxiety around steps, and I didn’t feel right leaving him behind. 

Yesterday though I decided we’d just give it a try. M was unusually agreeable to going and I reassured him over and over that he didn’t have to climb the steps… he could wait in the car, climb part way and wait for us on one of the benches along the route, etc. Incredibly he didn’t argue, or insist we go somewhere else, so up we went. 

M did end up waiting below while R and I climbed to the top (300+ steps) and he did fine… The trip up was definitely worth it.. the view was SO beautiful, and it was peaceful, serene, at the top. It felt like a holy place. 

We stayed long enough to say a prayer for the family of a dear friend of ours who passed away last week then made the trip down. 

I’m pretty sure we’ll do this again.. After seeing the stairs and the photos I took from the top, M has decided he might like to try going at least part way up next time, and R definitely wants to go again. 

It was a lovely way to spend the day… 

Nighttime stroll

 The kids and I decided to take a walk after dinner..

It was already full dark when we left the house and the moon was amazing… big and full on the horizon. 

We found Jupiter and Saturn in the southern sky, and looked for… but didn’t see… the Milky Way. 

I tried to get a picture of the moon, it was so beautiful…

…but didn’t have much luck. 

M did have fun with the flashlight, making scary faces at us. R and I didn’t want to bring the light, surprisingly, it seems easier to see without it…just letting our eyes adjust… but M was nervous about being out in the dark. We ran into nothing scary however, except one poor deer who thought she’d found a lovely private spot to bed down for the night but ended up frightening M to pieces (and frightening her to pieces at the same time!) when he mistook her for a mountain lion. 😂

Sunset

 I never get tired of watching the sunset….

Jack-O-Lantern fun

 We didn’t see E and family on Halloween… but we stopped by for a visit today and a couple of the grandkids showed off their pumpkins. 

Yes, he really carved it out enough to fit on his head! 

And little T was so proud of her pumpkin. I just love the expression on her face…

Pumpkin party

 I love this picture…

…M and R and our little book club group at a pumpkin carving/decorating party we had this afternoon. 

It was cold, and windy, and we ended up having our party in a barn, and I almost cancelled several times after getting frustrated trying to work around the weather and everyone’s schedules. I’m so glad I didn’t cancel though… look at those faces.  They all had such a good time…

Castlewood Cave Trail hike

 Yesterday was a beautiful warm fall day so we headed to Castlewood (of course 😉) to try and find a trail I’d seen on the trail map, but hadn’t noticed at the park. 

We ended up driving right past the trail head I was looking for without seeing it, so decided to follow a trail we’d taken before. It was an easy trail for the most part, with only a few stairs and drop offs (which make M anxious).

The fall colors are fading but still beautiful, and I kept stopping to take pictures of leaves… they were just gorgeous and shimmered in the light breeze that was blowing.

M found what looks like a fossil in this rock, can you see it?

 The trail took us in a nice little loop back to the car, but it didn’t really feel like much of a hike. 

But as we were driving back down the park road I saw the trail head I’d been looking for originally. So I parked again and we headed up the Cave Trail. (See the dark cave opening peaking out just a little above the center of the picture? That was our goal…)

The trail heads up to the cliffs on the west side of the park and is steep and involves lots of steps and climbing over rocks. It was too scary for M almost from the beginning so he waited at a picnic table just off the trail while R and I went on.

We didn’t make it all the way up to the cave (I didn’t want to leave M alone for too long), but it was a very fun, challenging hike. We climbed up and over rocks and even through rocks when the trail passed through a tunnel made by one HUGE rock leaning up against the cliff. 

I’d like to come back sometime, without Piper (who is 13 after all… it was challenging for her too!) and maybe with an extra adult for M, who can either wait with him at the picnic table,  or give him the support of two adults, instead of just me, going up the trail. 

Sunrise

 The sky is so beautiful this time of year…

Sunset

 I had to drive down to Castle Rock yesterday evening just at dusk…

…the sunset was breathtaking!

 

I was almost late for my appointment (despite leaving early) because I kept pulling over to take pictures. 

I do love living here… 

Castlewood Hike

 Today was a beautiful fall day, with nothing on the calendar, so we decided to spend some time hiking at Castlewood. We hiked a new trail for us today, the East Canyon Trail. It heads east (surprise!), under the “bridge to nowhere”* into a preservation area where dogs are not allowed, visitors are instructed to stay strictly on the trail, and it’s closed completely from November through April (to give the wildlife a “vacation” from humans). 

It was beautiful, as Castlewood always is, and the trail was different than others we’ve hiked there… going through several different types of environments as we hiked. We walked across huge sheets of rock,  wound through forested areas, and hiked across a large expanse of prairie. The canyon walls are dotted with caves and overhangs that provided shelter to the Paleo, and later, Ute Native Americans. Fortunately there were trail markers all along the route…without those markers we never would have found our way around the loop and back. The entire loop is somewhere between 4 and 5 miles and the kids did really well. It’s probably our longest hike so far, and they both managed without any trouble. 

I took a ton of photos, here are a few…

Trail markers…

Some of the cairns seemed to defy gravity…

And a few were huge!

M’s hand coming through a hollow tree…

R cooling her feet in Cherry Creek…

And a few more just because they are so pretty.   

* Here’s the story of the “The Bridge to Nowhere”: 

By the 1930s, the new Colorado Highway 83 (Parker Road) had been paved from Denver to Franktown. Just south of Franktown was the road builders’ biggest obstacle: the 232-foot-wide Wildcat Canyon. (The canyon was renamed Castlewood Canyon in the 1920s). A graceful, arched bridge was designed and built to span the canyon – one of only six such bridges in Colorado at the time. It seemed clear sailing for the road to be completed to Colorado Springs. But plans changed. State engineers were told to abandon further work on the road. The pavement of Highway 83 came to an abrupt end at the north end of the sparkling new bridge, leading to the nickname, “The Bridge to Nowhere”.