The Colorado Adventure

Last night we went to Golden for the ‘Olde Golden Candlelight Christmas.’ We actually did the candlelight walk part of it this year. Let me tell you, it was cold too. The kids were bundled in snowsuits and boots, hats and gloves to ward off the 10 degree temp.

We got the last 2 candles and started walking down the hill.

Sometimes groups of people would break out in a carol, we didn’t sound half bad! At one point I turned around and there were a thousand candles floating down the hill, it was an awesome sight. Click here to see a snap of it. Once we got to the bridge we waited for the people at the podium to start the countdown. 10-9-8 (yeah, everyone there could count backwards!) 7-6-5-4-3- (now Hannah joins in) 2-1 and …..click. The lights on the wreath and vistor center, bridge and trees all lit up at once.

We made our way through the crowd and went to see the mime puppet show, it’s so cute. A few years ago the guy who does it had the kids put their donations right next to the puppets and then the puppets would fight over the bills. This year he had a donation box on the cart. So, while the puppets danced and cha-cha-ed, money went in the box. Hannah was just cracking up at the antics of the dancing puppets and the swinging rabbit. She thought it was hilarious.

After getting some cider and cookies and some free toys, we headed down to the river. It was iced over in spots and had some snow pack on top all lending to the festive cheer.

We didn’t do the museum and chestnuts this year (we didn’t want this tradition to be too repetitive.) But the highlight of the evening was strolling down the street with hundreds of other people. Our candles glowing, illuminating the faces of people who were softly singing, “O, come let us adore, Him, Christ the King.” Since Advent starts this Sunday, the candles were even more significant for us. We start our countdown to the birth of the Christ child with the glow of the candle. Shining to light our path as He has, for He is the Light of the world.

I made cabbage soup today and some peasant bread. It’s kind of like an Italian dipping bread, nice and crusty and dense. Here are the recipes.

Peasant bread

2 C water lukewarm
1 pkg dry yeast
1 T sugar
2 t salt
4 C flour
2 T cornmeal
Melted butter

Combine water, yeast, sugar and salt and mix until dissolved. Stir in flour until blended. Place mixture without kneading in a greased bowl. Cover and let rise for 45 minutes. Grease a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Divide dough in two parts shaping into oblong loaves (or round) on sheet. Let rise for 45 minutes. Brush loaves with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, then at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.
This is a coarse bread and dense, great with dipping oils.

Spicy cabbage soup

1 lb stew meat
1 pkg garlic peppercorn marinade
1 head cabbage
½ onion
Handful carrots
3 small potatoes
Vegetable soup stock (2 of the dried ones)

Brown meat in olive oil and add ½ packet of seasoning mix. Simmer meat on low for 3 hours stirring occasionally (and adding a bit of water when it gets dry.) Cut up cabbage, potatoes and onion. Add to the pot along with carrots. Add vegetable broth tabs and water to cover the vegetables. Bring to boil and then reduce to med-low stirring until done (about 1 hour.) If you want to make it really spicy add the other half of the marinade mix to the water before it’s done.

After we did school I put Hannah down for a nap and helped Bethany with her lap book. It’s early explorers complete with an astrolabe and burned maps.

We went a little crazy with some of the maps and they were too burned up, so I had to print out more.


These will be rolled up and put on the front cover in loops of ribbon. On the inside cover you have the astrolabe and what Prince Henry instituted to help early sailors.

Info. about Henry on the right. Then the middle opens up to show bios and storied of Dias, Columbus, De Gama, Cabral, Cabot, Magellan, etc.

On the back right will be the stories in a pocket for each explorer. It’s coming along, but it’s a lot of work. I like the reinforcing fact, she has to trace the path of each explorer on the map and has the stories to read about them. We might end up doing a book after every unit. Joel started taking notes on a Greek technology. The guy he picked invented the siphon, water clock (re-invented that), water organ and air pump. He’s called the father of pneumatics, pretty cool Grace wrote her story about whales. She’s hopped off on a bunny trail about whales after watching the movie at the Imax. She has a whale figure, whale book and whale suitcase.

Tomorrow we go to Golden for the candle-light walk, always a treat.

Hannah and Sampson were trading kisses.

Joel wrote 2 essays they’re up under his page. He did 2 maths and a science and literature. Bethany did art, spelling, literature and history. Grace did a lot of math and Bethany read her language arts story to her. Hannah colored in her Dora book and threw blocks and balls all over the floor.

I got all my Jesses tree symbols printed out. This year I will follow the mantra ‘don’t re-invent the wheel’. That means I’m going to put the pictures on cardstock and save them for next year. I meant to do that last year, but I can’t find them now. I have all the readings for Advent and the tree, so I’m good to go. Our basement is halfway decorated for Christmas. I have lights and snowflakes up and some garland. I need more lights and some more garland though. Maybe we can go to the dollar store tonight.

I let James have the van so I wouldn’t be tempted to go running around this afternoon. We really needed to get caught up on school and clean up (I know I just cleaned up, but with 6 people in the house and 5 people in here all day long, it gets messy.) Tomorrow more school and maybe we’ll take a field trip somewhere in the afternoon.

Ahh, sweet sleep of the ‘been driving for 16 hours.’

Hannah woke up early and soon everyone was up eating breakfast and watching TV. James had today off (smart of him) and I told the kids they were off school. I did laundry and cleaned up the cat room (which wasn’t too bad.) The girls went to worship dance in the afternoon and I was so tired I fell asleep on the floor in the church. I took a nap at home and then it was time to take Joel to CAP. I’m glad we got back early so they didn’t have to miss their activities today. I stayed home and finished laundry and cleaned up. We all went to bed early, well pretty early anyway.

Sunday morning we packed up, said our goodbyes and headed out. Good thing we left early, we had some tummy troubles of the other kind and had to stop 3 times before we were out of Houston. Finally at 9:30am we were on the road and driving towards 287. We stopped in Childress at a Wal-mart and found……………a Field’s pecan pie. Now, we don’t have those here and you have to ship them from the OK store to get them in Denver, so yeah we bought one. We should have bought two, but we thought one was good enough.

The problem with Texas is you can drive forever and still be in it, we made it into Oklahoma at 7 or 8pm I can’t remember. I just know it’s a long stinkin’ drive to get out of Texas. Oklahoma was short then we were in Colorado. We passed Springfield and I saw that when we were at picture canyon I could have taken 287 back to Denver instead of turning around. Here in CO the road started to zig and zag, you really had to watch the signs to make sure you were still on 287. Finally at 1:30am we pulled into the driveway. We shaved off 2 hours and about 150 miles. It probably would’ve been a little faster if not for all the bathroom stops we made.

Today we visited my Grandma and Grandpa in the hospital. Oma (to the kids) is in the hospital again for a UTI infection. She’s been in and out the whole year. She thought she might be getting out today, but the doc said maybe Monday. We had a really good visit, but they need to move her to a bigger room or I need quieter kids! We had to shut the door to keep the noise level down. The kids were excited, Grace sang her song and Joel did some magic tricks. He’s gotten really good at up close slight of hand.



Hannah was being a toot; I don’t think she liked the hospital room (so Grandma you need to be at home when we come in Jan.) I finally gave them the photo scrapbook I made. I had been meaning to send it forever. It’s too small for all the photos I put in it, but it turned out nice anyway.

Grandpa took us to lunch while the nurse worked on Grandma. I asked him what he had for Thanksgiving supper (that’s when they brought her in.) He said they had turkey and all the trimmings for free in the cafeteria. My Grandpa looks really mean in this picture Grace took, but he’s really a pillar of faith and a sweet guy.

He seemed in good spirits and not tired. He has to drive an hour (I think) each way to get to the hospital. After I saw the room I knew why he didn’t spend the night, it’s too small and they only have that stupid reclining chair to sleep in. So, he was leaving a little early today because of the rain. We went back and said our goodbyes, just until Jan and that’s not far off.

Then I took the kids to Tropioca downtown for some tapioca ball drinks. I grabbed a banh mi thit ngong sandwich to eat over there.

We love Vietnamese food. The drinks were strawberry, chocolate and mocha chino, all with tapioca balls on the bottom. They’re black/brown and the size of a marble. They kind of soak up the flavor of the drink.



Last year Hannah loved them so much I just got her a cup of balls, but this year she didn’t like them. She could see them coming up the straw and spit them out when they got in her mouth. She really wanted a little teddy bear from there, but it was wearing a shirt that said ‘got balls?’ True they mean tapioca balls, but still.


I drove down the street to go to the Vietnamese market and get some dessert, but they had closed it. I guess when the Pho shop closed the yuppies in the neighborhood didn’t like the old smelly market next door. So now both are gone and it’s a yuppie café restaurant. As long as they leave my sandwich/drink shop alone, I’m fine.

I took the kids back to my moms where Joel attempted to teach my mom how to juggle. Leaving them to juggle and watch TV I picked up James and we went to Pappasitos. We spent way too much money there, but dang those fajitas were good. We decided we’d leave early Sunday and take our short route back so we’d have Monday to rest up.

I wanted to spend today with my Grandma and Grandpa and then shoot over to see my dad, but we had to put the van in for servicing. Fortunately we have a friend who knows a guy and viola! The van was fixed (new belt, idle arm and pulley) in 30 minutes the day after Thanksgiving for a great price. James dropped the car off and I dropped him at work (this was a working vacation.)

I decided that we should just see my dad as the time had gotten away from me. I took the kids over to his house and they played with their cousin while we talked.

I was watching the clock because we were having dinner with a friend and his family (the guy James contracts for.) Bethany showed her lap book to my dad and step-mom and Joel juggled for them. Grace didn’t want to sing her song for them, so they missed out on that. Soon it was time to leave.


We went to Logan’s roadhouse for dinner (kind of like Texas roadhouse) and I watched Hannah with a sharp eye. She did put a peanut in her mouth, but I caught her and she spit it out. We ate and talked about school, what we’re doing and what they’re doing. I told my friend about a K12 program that just started in TX, so she’ll look into that. I was so ready to get home and sleep after dinner. The kids wanted to stay up a bit, but James and I hit the hay.

the site is being tinkered with, that’s why the typos are showing up.

Well, we got into Houston at 8:30 am after leaving Denver on Wed. at 1:30 pm. Man that’s a long drive. We have a return route in mind that will be shorter. Here’s sunset in Kansas.

James only let me drive for 1 ½ hours as I was on throw up patrol with Hannah all night. I think it was the milk in the noodles we had for dinner the night before. Yes, I know she’s allergic to milk and it seems to be getting worse. First it was just a rash or throwing up with a lot of milk, now it’s a rash and throwing up with a small amount of milk. Back to rice milk.

Anyway the kids were ready to roll since they were asleep all night. We unloaded at my Mom’s and sat down to rest. We decided to have a late dinner at 3pm, which gave us time to rest and James time to see Grandma Carberry.

Out of the blue my brother showed up just in time for dinner (from Austin.) I think my step-dad was feigning surprise (I think he’s the one who called Kevin and told him we’d be down so he’d better come by!)

Dinner was turkey and 2 kinds of dressing, ham, squash casserole, yams, biscuits, potatoes and 4 desserts. We tried to make a dent in the food, but there was plenty left over for supper and lunch the next day and dinner the next.

We had a good visit with Grandma and I showed my mom video of the girl’s GS ceremony and dances.



Hannah had on her spoiled shirt (but she calls it the ‘happy birthday to you’ shirt because the ‘i’ looks like a candle) so she was acting pretty spoiled. But even spoiled people need to sleep.

It was nice and cool outside so an open window gave us all the a/c we needed after having the stove on. James and I went to sleep and left Joel, Bethany and Grace watching TV with my mom. That was a good night’s sleep.

A Thanksgiving Blessing

Blessed in the morning,
And blessed at night.
Covered with grace,
And warmed by God’s light.

Thankful are we,
For friends, family and home.
For the staples of life,
No matter where we may roam.

But, today we also remember those
Who don’t have these gifts.
And we pray for them,
And hope their hearts lift.

Thankful in much -
Thankful in little -
Thankful in good times and bad.
Thankful for life -
Thankful for love -
Thankful for memories we’ve had.

Happy Thanksgiving. We’re off to Houston today and back on Monday. Save some snow for us, okay? Out my window today looks like this: