Getting festive

Last night I decided it was finally acceptable to set up Christmas decorations! Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. I love the weather (snow and all) the holiday music, and skiing season!

I put up the tree and hung the stockings and even Ridley is enjoying it all as she has been sleeping under the tree all evening.

Unfortunately I woke up feeling about 95 years older this morning with aches, pains and a gross cold. I got a substitute for the first time and spent my day being a bum. I was craving chicken noodle soup but didn't have any in the can, only fixings, so I made my own chicken noodle soup! I made the veggie broth in the picture below and then took out the random veggies and added chicken, noodles and odd and ends. Something else I love during this season; soup on a cold, snowy day!

Turkey Day or Burrrrrrkey day!

On Thanksgiving Day I went for a hike down it Rough Canyon up on the Monument. It was a balmy 20something degrees, in the sun.

Snow in the desert

An old kiln on the Old Kiln trail.

And finishing up the day with some woodcutting, thats alot more work than it looks like, I swear!

Turkey Sunday

Today Will and I celebrated our own Thanksgiving together! Just like the real Turkey day, football and laziness were abundant.

My first time cooking a Thanksgiving meal... turned out pretty good. Which is good since I made way too much and we'll be eating it all week.

Ridley loves her turkey.

And now there's a snow storm moving into the western slope and I am very thankful we have all that new firewood to stay warm inside and a short week ahead of us!!

Wood you light my fire

We finally broke down and ordered a chord of wood to be delivered for the low low price of $50. It turns out it's cheap for a reason...

Time to start chopping! Good news is, we will have plenty of wood to keep a fire all winter long and fulfill my pyro tendencies. And Will has a new workout regimen.

Oh Snow You Didnt!

Our first snow in town. We got about 1/2-1" of big puffy snow this morning, all of which was gone by about lunchtime when the sun came out. My kind of snow.

School isn't cancelled?!?!?! Where are we?...

Ridley avoiding the weather in a Piggly Wiggly grocery bag (or sack if you're a weirdo).

Fall Time

Sorry for not posting recently... but here's a quick wrap up on what we've been up to the past few weekends! With the leaves changing colors, we went for a hike up on the Grand Mesa three weeks ago.

The next weekend my parents were in town and we tried to do the same thing, but with much colder and dreary weather. And in hunting season (not very safe). So we only did a small portion of the hike. But we drove over the top of the mesa which was a first and got to see a good bit of snow!

This is the same trail from the pictures above, just a week later... Brrrrr!

And our friends Danielle and Shane stopped by on their way out West! They're moving to Hawaii and were making their way to LA to have their car shipped over. It was good to see them and best of luck to them on their move. Can't wait to visit!!

Last weekend Morgan and Drew came to visit from UGA! Saturday we drove over the Mesa again... but stopped along the way at some new spots we hadn't seen.

Skipping ice and snow balls on the frozen lake

Check out how deep the snow was

Hiking Crags Crest trail

That same day we drove to the Colorado National Monument and checked that out.

On Sunday we drove the 2 hours to Moab to Arches National Park!

And to wrap up the weekend, we built a fire (you know how I love my fires...) in our fire pit and passed out candy to the wee ones.

Now we are watching some football and enjoying a quiet weekend. Go cocks!