Crested Butte & Taylor Park Pics

Well, we are nearing the end of our time in this beautiful part of the country. It's been so nice and cool and I've enjoyed every single stinkin minute of it! I really wish we didn't have to come back to hot and humid Texas right now... really. Wish I was one of the fortunate ones that could just come and stay here all summer long. Oh well... life is what it is! Luckily, while we will start making our way back to Texas tomorrow, I still have another week of vacation so all is well!!

Here are some pictures of the last couple of days. Thursday we went into Crested Butte and wandered around. Pretty little town.

Yesterday, we went back to the area Travis took us too and had a great time! I caught and released 5 brookies and Dad caught more than that and kept 5. John didn't have quite as much luck as we did yesterday but we think he is at a disadvantage as the fish can see him coming a lot easier! :-) We had a lovely picnic lunch along the river and it was nice and cool. Gotta love it!

Here are the composites of the pictures I took yesterday! Enjoy!

We are going to have a big ole fish fry tonight!! YAY!

Later!

Fishing... Fishing and more fishing....

We've been fishing! That's what we've been doing.

Our first day was at Spring Creek and while it was beautiful there, we were not successful in catching any fish. However, we did have a lovely trout dinner from some of the fish the boys caught earlier at Quarter Circle Circle Ranch. Yummy stuff!!

Pictures from Spring Creek:

Yesterday, we had our fishing day with Travis. He's the owner of High Mountain Drifter Guide Service. My parents and Perry have been using his guide service for the last couple of years and he's a really nice, cute and good guide!

We wanted to do a walk/fish trip vs a float trip because we wanted to keep some of the fish for eating. Floating around here on either the Taylor or Gunnison Rivers is fun, but is catch & release only so no keeping and eating! So.. Travis took us WAY WAY far up in Taylor Park and probably more north out of Taylor Park really. We think we finally stopped at about 10,500 elevation where there were some absolutely beautiful creeks and beaver ponds and the fishing was excellent.

We all caught a ton of fish. Many were really small and we put them back, but we ended up keeping 19 of them, mostly brookies and one cutthroat. I caught the largest of all!

There was a lot of walking, climbing, maneuvering around holes and creeks, walking through dense areas of willow and who knows what else. I kept having to remind myself there are no poisonous snakes this high up in Colorado because you really couldn't see a lot of what you were walking on or through. Just kept praying there would be no bear just pop up his head while I'm out there. :-)

We are a bit on the tired side today from yesterday's adventure, so we are going to wander our way into Crested Butte to do a little shopping. Later!

Here are some pics from yesterday:

Day 1 - Harmel's here we come!

This was our (well, my!) first full day in Colorado and let me say, it was quite nice. I can't recall if I mentioned what we did last night (Sunday), but we went to Garlic Mike's for dinner which was really good! Italian (if you couldn't guess) and sitting right on the Gunnison River. Was nice!

This morning, we lazily got up, had some breakfast at the great Holiday Inn Express breakfast bar and packed up. Even gave some lessons on Facebook to my dad AND helped him to set up an account. He's a cool facebooking 72 year now! LOL

Once packed, we hit Gene Taylor's Fly shop to get my fishing license, then the grocery store for provisions, and then made our way to Harmels. We got here about 1 pm and our cabin was ready! This is quite a nice place - not luxurious - but nice. Our cabin is facing the Taylor river, you can hear the river sitting on the porch. It was a bit on the hot side again today at about 87 degrees or so. That's pretty hot up here and remember, there is no AC, so we sat outside in the shade under the porch. By about 4:30, we got our fishing gear on and took the few steps to the Taylor River in front of us. Dad hung out with me to give me some lessons and I had one strike. Nothing else, but I did get some good practicing and I sure did look good! So did John.

Dinner tonight was care of the very popular Harmel's BBQ - steak/crab night cookout. Lots of other folks in a nice clearing with a accordion musician and polka music. Was a fun time! John ate TONS of crab. His portion, mine and Dad's since we only had steak. Picture below of the damage!

After dinner... Dad wanted to learn more about Facebook, so we had a few more lessons and even a funny conversation with my sister, Stacey!

Pictures - most are on my Flickr website HERE and a few below!

Ok - we're getting ready to hit the creeks again today.. fish beware!!

"Stinky Boys" Trip - a few pics

This is apparently the "mountain" they climbed down to get to the creek where they fished one day!


THIS, my friends, is why I don't go on the Stinky Boys Trip!


These are the fish the Great Fishermen caught!


Our cabin at Harmels


This is right in front of our cabin practically!


Great pic of my Dad!


Yea.. that's my man!


Look at me!!


The fishing couple!


Captured these faces last night! Crazy boys.


John's Pile O Crab last night!!


Dancing last night!

Check out the rest of the pics in Flickr! Click HERE!!

Travel Day to Gunnison!

After a long day of washing clothes, packing, packing and packing, paying bills and doing Band stuff, I went to bed around midnight. Alarm went off at 4 am!! Yea... that's early and 4 hours is really not enough sleep. Up and ready.. off to the airport by 4:30 ish for my 6:15 am flight out of the Big Airport (IAH). Little Embraer plane (really not a fan of small planes) and 2 hours later, I'm in Denver where I'm writing this at the moment.

Waiting for my next flight on an even smaller airplane over to Gunnison. Oh - how I love little planes. Praying for a calm flight with little turbulence.

Just for the record, the temps here in Denver are pretty much the same as in Houston.... forecasted to be 98 - 100 degrees today. Yuck!! Gunnison - luckily, is not quite so hot at about 86 today and getting a bit cooler the rest of the week, with Almont (where we'll be) another 4/5 degrees cooler then that. Thank goodness... hate it when I'm trying to escape heat and just transfer myself from one hot place to another!! Our cabin in Almont doesn't have A/C (I didn't realize this btw) which is not a problem during most of the day and evening when the lows are in the 40's with highs around 80. We'll probably be outside most of the days, so probably not an issue.

Excited to see my husband and dad in just a bit and catch up with the survivalists and see if they managed to catch any fish.

Later!

VACATION 2010!!!

Finally... vacation has begun! Colorado here we come. Will keep the blog updated with pictures and info along the way.

John and Dad left earlier this week to go to Quarter Circle Circle Ranch for some ultra rustic man time fishing and cooking over coals.

I am joining them early Sunday via airplane for more fun at Harmel's Ranch Resort in Almont, CO.

The kids are not able to join us this time. We're going to miss them on this trip.

Packing... packing.. packing... :-)

More to come!

MA

Wisdom Teeth & Growth Hormone

Hi all -

Well the little chipmunk has survived the wisdom teeth surgery as did her parents. Although - barely! Just kidding. She did great. Round the clock ice and pain pills for about 48 hours but she's feeling better and more like a human again as of yesterday - 2 days out. Still resembles a chipmunk somewhat though and can't eat anything that isn't mushy yet, but she's getting there. Lots of salt water rinsing, etc going on. All is well and we're on our to passing this mini milestone of life now for her.

Stephen hit a milestone of his own on Tuesday night in the midst of the wisdom teeth recovery. He received his first injection of growth hormone! YAY!! He did VERY well and remarked "That's it?" after the first injection. Whew!! It's a tiny little needle like insulin needles and is given in the fat and not in the muscles. We have to rotate the injection each day to one of 8 different spots on his body. Some he can reach and will eventually be able to do himself, the others are probably more difficult for him to do and will need one of us to help with.

Just a refresher but we've been moving down this path for the last couple of years as his growth has slowed and slowed and slowed, becoming almost non existent. Just for the record, he is 13 years old, 4 foot 8 inches and 79 pounds currently. He's been about that same height/weight for the last maybe 3 years, growing no more than about 3.3 cm/year at this point. Blood work was done and his IGF-1 factor is 120 and a boy in puberty should be around 600. Other tests were involved like bone age scans and growth hormone stimulation testing, all of which shows he's very delayed. The reason... probably a combination of the side effects from the medication he takes plus just a general low production of growth hormone which could be genetic.

We are now trying to get the insurance company to pay for the treatment which, at his current dosage, will cost somewhere in the $50,000 range per year. Likely, that number will be more like $75K or $100K as the dosages are increased for him. Yes... it's a ridiculously expensive medication. If insurance ultimately denies all the appeals, we will have to make some pretty significant life changes to ensure he gets the treatment he needs as this is something effecting his entire life at this point AND we have a short window while he is still in puberty.

Prayers would be especially helpful for all of us... Stephen... the rest of us..... and prayers for the insurance company to do the right thing.

Everyone have a great day! We're off yet to another doctor this morning - Dr. O'Neill - for Rachel's shoulders. One of them is still giving her some problems.

MA

June 14 - Time to Get Back at It!

I had the pleasure of spending another June weekend with some great ladies at a Scrapbooking Retreat. Marybeth, Laurie, Dallas, Beth, Jana, Bridget. All wonderful ladies. We had a great time being creative, eating well, drinking wine and laughing a lot.

Again this year, I felt like I took my entire scrapbook room of stuff with me and I actually didn't take it all this time! Unfortunately, after I carried all that stuff from the car to the house, I did not have any creative motivation hit me this weekend. My brain has been working overtime on various stresses in my life and just kept distracting my brain during this weekend. It's tiring! I'm trying to work through a variety of stressful situations in my life - mostly work related and family medical related. Just couldn't settle my brain enough to organize pictures and make great (or even half way decent) scrapbook pages. So.. I accomplished one page. :-) YEP! ONE page! Good, huh.

Ok, well before you (or I!) go thinking I'm just a total failure, I switched over to my digital project I've been working on for, oh, awhile now. I'm putting together a book of 2009 pictures and journaling from our lives last year. We did a lot... I took a lot of pictures... and I wrote a lot on my blog capturing it. Imagine that! I accomplished EXACTLY what I had set out to do when I started this blog in September 2008. I had jotted down so many things that I have simply forgotten now that it's just truly amazing. I am so glad I did because it was SO FUN going back and reading them. And that's just from the past year!! LOL

Then.... it brought up the fact that I haven't been good at blogging this year at all. Not at all. There have been many distractions, that's for sure. However, there were many last year too. I think I just lost the focus on why I was doing this for awhile. I can tell you, my little weekend away and working on my 2009 project, brought it back to WHY I did this and helped to refocus me to do it more often. 2010 - will be probably a bit lite, but hey, it's better to start now then not capture anything in 2010.

Brings me to today's information - little miss Rachel is having all her wisdom teeth taken out today - in about an hour. Scares me to death. Why? Psychoanalyzing myself.... (not wise, probably) It's because I have a deep down core fear of dentistry. I can handle all sorts of other pains, aches, surgeries, births. But tell me someone has to do something to my teeth and I am scared to death. My fears.. not hers. Don't think she's worried about this in the least. I'm trying really hard not to project my fears on to her so hopefully, it stays that way. (And she doesn't read my blog until afterwards!). I'm sure everything will turn out just fine as well.

I'll update later today probably with how things went and if I'm lucky, a picture or two!