I am not sure what this is all about...creepy creatures in the general vicinity of our grill, but I am thinking it is mighty good timing on my part...the George Foreman Grill, that is. Jacob and Brynne mustered the courage to look at him up close and personal,
but I prefer the online viewing.
Gregg seems to think he is...dead. I guess the "scraper-offer" will know that for sure at some point in the future. And I am oh so thankful that
Brynne picked shrimp stir fry for her birthday dinner!

Ta-Daaaaaa! Our birthday girl!
She was feeling more positive about afternoon photo approval
then morning photo approval.

"You Are Special Today."
Not you. Well yes, you and Lacey too, but your sister!
Happy 17th Birthday, Brynneeeeee!
Brynne kicked off her day with her favorite
lemon filled donut, a "have a Starbucks on me"
text from her dad and
Hallmark greetings from out of state family.
She has picked shrimp stir fry for dinner and then on Saturday night we will hit The Cheesecake Factory with Brynne, Lacey and a couple of friends. Lacey was at camp on her birthday so it has been a low key birthday year. But next year...18 and 16 - wooweeee!

The first day of school has come and gone. Brynne is now a Jr., and Lacey a soph. Jacob came to his new school as a 5th grader. Certainly the greatest changes are for Jacob. No uniforms. The opportunity to walk to school. Which he did all by himself. Sort of. I drove him to the end of the neighborhood where I had to watch him get to his class solo. He claimed it was "social suicide" to have his mom walk him to the teacher. Sob. The report at the end of the day was overall positive, but not anything over the top in the enthusiasm dept. Gregg summed it up well by saying that school is school.

Both girls are happy with their schedules. They have some tough classes. Brynne has her first AP class. She also has stepped off the Oral Interp team in exchange for a leadership class. She is rolling around the idea of auditioning for either the school play or musical, depending on the selection and the homework situation. Lacey has a heavy math/science load and is officially back in the water. She is looking forward to both her morning practice
with the high school team and the
afternoon practice with the club team.

An Eagle no more...Jacob is totally, officially 100% Tiger!
We have registered and attended Meet the Teacher - four to be exact.
We said hello to the principal, made a quick swing by the spirit table and shopped for school supplies. (The girls have been instrumental in that task, Lacey in particular. The list is ridiculously long and detailed, but we are determined to hunt it all down!) Add a little bit of non-uniform clothes shopping, a couple more days of early to bed, early to rise and we should be be good to go by Monday!!

We had some game time and it included a version of Frisbee golf I was not familiar with...gone are the Frisbees and instead you hurl a brisket! Yucko! Brynne was a good sport and for a girl who isn't wild about beef she mixed it up pretty well!

This past weekend has been all about teenagers! I went to OK with some other adult chaperons for a Students Standing Strong retreat. The kids were fabulous and the objectives were met! We are excited about this new year and anticipate great things.

Mountain Pine Beetle.
The photo does not even begin to truly represent the destruction. These pesky little critters have eaten their way through 1000's and 1000's of trees. After they have dined their way through the forests the trees turn yellow and then bright red. They present a huge fire hazard, a tremendous expense...about $800 per tree for mandatory removal...and drastically alter the look of the mountains. Everyone has an opinion about these little guys...natural cycle of the forests or unacceptable plight that must be tended to no matter the cost. Regardless of your position on the matter you must concede it sure looks different up there. The town of Breckenridge estimates that 80-90% of the mature trees that the beetles have a taste for will be destroyed by their wild eating binge.

Digglers. These are the contraptions you rent at Copper Mountain. They are part scooter, part bike. The idea is you ride the ski lift up and diggler down. This sounds like great fun if you have no fear of a total loss of control. Needless to say I am the only wimp in my family and I opted out. Last year I made the painful mistake of walking directly under the lift all the way down the mountain. OUCHIE! This year I took the green "Easy Road" and traversed down the mountain. This got me to the bottom about an hour after my family...so much later that Gregg made a return trip up to find me. I would have loved to have been a team player on the one hand, but I greatly enjoyed my pink iPod while soaking in the great outdoors.

We have a couple of favorite hikes in CO. We have done this one for, I am guessing, each of the 9 years we have been in Breck. We have a friend, Joe, who is up there for summer. He has a terrific mining cabin that has been in his family for a long time. After a brief chat with Joe the Mattson family was on our way up the mountain. We were headed to the top with our picnic lunch. Unfortunately, we were not that far into it when it started to rain...then harder and soon a steady stream of folks started coming down the mountain. We took refuge under a tree and what was initially going to be snack time while we waited out the rain turned into lunch time in a downpour. The pictures don't do it justice, but trust me when I say it was raining!! And getting cold. Regrettably we opted to turn around and head back down. Joe was more then accepting of a wet, cold family at his door. He welcomed us in with a warm fire, a mug of hot tea and conversation until we were ready to trudge back to the car.

The bummer of it all was the outside temps were in the low 50's by this time. My camera was cold and trying to take a photo in the toasty cabin presented a challenge. You can barely see Jacob taking a turn, with Joe's guidance, putting another log in the stove. And just for grins, you will see that although my hair was not looking swell I was not drenched either...thanks to my handy dandy pink umbrella. I went from being the city slicker
to the person of envy the more it rained!

We were happy to have Randie (Gregg's sister) and Gil join us for 24 hours in Breckenridge. It is always nice to catch up, share a meal and rent a movie!

Sunday morning worship. We have gone a couple of different routes in CO over the years and this is where we have landed the last couple. This is a friendly church between Breck and Frisco that worships outdoors in the summer. The setting is glorious and the people are sincere.

"How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!"
Isaiah 52:7

If this is a memory or a tradition, it remains to be seen, but after our day at Glenwood Springs we kept on going to Aspen. This is about 150 miles from our home away from home, but we were in search of ribs. Finger licking good ribs...with onion rings and the works! Oprah's recommendation was right on the money.

This is not a buffalo. Clearly. But I don't have a buffalo photo and my husband has declared this humiliating story blogworthy. Almost as if to dare me to put it on. Of course, I am the one who is humiliated and my disclaimer is that it was early in the morning for pete's sake!! So after a relatively short night we were heading home. Did I mention we were all road warriors this year? Nobody flew. We all drove up and we all drove home. We did it!!
I am so proud of us...but I digress...
So we are driving and I am tired. I am diligently looking for leaping deer or whatever may get in the way of our Texas bound SUV. We are taking curves and the landscape is flying by us at incredible speed...and I see this fella. I say to Gregg, who is pretty much my only choice in the early morning conversation department...geez that is one big dude. To which he replies...who? Me...that guy...the big bull with the head of hair. I promise I knew it was not a bull with a Ringo, Paul, John etc. bowl cut. I just couldn't spit out BUFFALO! He thought it was a riot! Buffalo! It is a buffalo! It is not a bull with hair, it is a buffalo. Remember the Little Golden Book from your childhood...the one you read to your children...The Monster at the End of the book? The one that says on the last page in the smallest of letters, "Oh ... I am so embarrassed?" I need to borrow that quote from little old Grover...and there! I am on the record...the city girl will now confidently declare BUFFALO! Or maybe I should just get that ol' boarding pass...

So now that we have gotten that out of the way I can tell you about the birds. I am not a bird person. I don't like them at all. This stems back to a number of middle school incidents with feathered friends...let's just leave it at that. However, I cannot explain what comes over me, but when in Colorado it is almost like I am not myself. I like birds. Kind of. From a distance. I bought a bag of wild bird feed and faithfully restocked the feeder each morning, with some help from the kids. I so enjoyed sitting on the deck watching the assortment of colorful wild bird stopping by for a beak full. The hummingbirds are amazing to watch. The flit to nearly every flower in record time. They are fascinating to watch, again from a distance, every now and then they will practically dive bomb your head and I don't care for that, but they are amazing little creatures as they go about their work.

There were a few amusements at Glenwood Springs. There was a rollercoater type of thing..Elizabeth did it. There was a swing thing that rocked out over the valley...Elizabeth did that...2x. There was this mechanical bull. Elizabeth did not do it. She thought about it. Gregg valiantly tried to get her to do it. He said it would show my family I had threw caution to the wind - OK, that is not exactly what he said, but truthfully since I could not quite bring myself to such reckless abandon...and I promise...I really did think about it...I took photos of Jacob having a blast before he was thrown onto the cushy mats.

Our time in Breck is full of traditions and then some new additions, some additions become tradition and others become fond memories. A&W is a tradition.
It goes way back to the time the girls were really young.
I have lots of photos of the kids slurping their frosty mug of delight.
It ain't half bad with diet root beer either...

The Mattson Family is back from our annual vacation in Colorado. Breckenridge specifically. We have used the same home, Moose Meadows, as home base for the past 7 years. We have two additional years in Breck under our belt and then prior to that it was various Colorado cities. We just love it. Normally we leave Texas and the extreme summer temps behind. This year we were well aware of the fact that we departed to seasonally cool temps by Texas standards. How lovely for the mercury to wait until the exact day of our return to hit 100 degrees. Jeez.

This is the only family photo taken. I note that Brynne and Lacey are almost as tall as me...not quite ready to give up as tall. Gregg noted that the gray is just plain there. This photo was taken mid-tour in Glenwood Springs. We were touring a couple of caves.