Nov 6: Biking from Wheat Ridge to Golden

I had told Isaac we'd come back here soon with Dada and our bikes, and we did - the very next day. It was another brilliant fall day in Colorado - temperatures hovering between cool and warm, bright leaves against a perfect blue sky - so we wanted to get out and enjoy it.

We packed up our bikes and trailer and drove to Prospect Park, where we started our ride. It was so beautiful.


The bike path followed its namesake Clear Creek, and the views were vast, mesa meeting plain.


The trail started out pretty flat, but then we began to climb as we neared Golden...


Every time I thought I was done with a big hill, another one loomed immediately...And Adam, who was far ahead of me, was the one pulling two boys in a trailer. At least I didn't have to get off and walk...


But the views were so beautiful, and the exercise felt so good, and anyway, I was determined to get to Golden for lunch.


And we did. We finally made it, and we followed another path through a neighborhood, past a little park, over a bridge, and onto the main street of the historic, picture-perfect western town.


After a stop to check our directions, that is...








We were all starving by lunchtime, and we found a grill-pub type of restaurant (Colorado style, featuring burgers and burritos) in an old building with quite a bit of history to it. While I read about how Golden was Colorado's first capital and we were sitting in the old government building, Jonah devoured his lunch and half of mine.




His bowl empty, Isaac began to get that glazed-eye look.


But Jonah was still going...


And that was not a drink - it was full of shredded cheese.


On the way home, the light turned golden and the landscape turned even more beautiful. After a couple of hills at the beginning, we flew down the rest of the way, with the wind in our hair and that easy fluency of cornering and feeling core muscles kicking in while navigating the little changes of direction, blissfully, without needing to do much work.






At home, I snapped one last picture of our neighbors' brilliant orange tree that only too soon will be covered with snow.

Nov 5: Prospect Park

Prospect Park is only about 15 minutes west of here, but it's a beautiful escape from the city, with views of foothills and snowy peaks, a clear stream cutting through the plain, big sprawling cottonwoods reaching to the sky. It has a little bit of everything that I love about Colorado. I'd never been until this beautiful fall afternoon, when we met friends there one morning to play.

Kari's boys are just weeks apart from ours, and Jonah had just started saying his buddy Adler's name - "Ad-wuh! Ad-wuh!" - so he was very excited to play with his friend. And the big boys always have fun together too.

All headed directly to the water, as well as the interesting sticks and rocks they spotted along the way.

By Kari:




Jonah headed directly INTO the water, just the way Isaac used to do. It was a cool day, but I did take off his boots and socks when I saw how this was going.

By Kari:


Much like the last time we played by a creek in chilly weather (Yellow Mountain), Jonah was soon pretty wet. But giggling the whole time.




Quintessential Colorado. I just love this landscape.


Adler had just started walking, while Jonah was still leading me everywhere by the hand.


The big boys found the biggest sticks they could and carried them around the park.


There was even a playground, and even Jonah loved climbing the stairs and sailing down the slide. I went down with him the first time, but after that it was clear that he was fine going down alone, as long as someone caught him at the bottom.


We finally made it across the bridge to the Clear Creek bike path. There were bikers and walkers everywhere, and I was dying to take it all the way to Golden. I told Isaac we'd come back with Dada soon.

By Kari:

Nov 4: Growing Pumpkins

I've always wanted to grow pumpkins. I love their rich flavor and the way they blend so beautifully with brown sugar and fall spices, but I also think they're such a gorgeous vegetable. This year, for the first time, I planted pumpkins. Just a row of 3, with 3 seeds in each hole to make sure we'd get something.

And then I waited. And waited. I watered them, but the water seemed to form a film on that clay soil and then rolled right off into the weeds. So I mixed in some compost, gently, and watered them more. Weeks passed, and still nothing.

I had given up hope on growing pumpkins, when we had almost a week of rain in June. One day, I looked in our little pumpkin patch and saw 3 patches of tiny green shoots, sitting alone in that barren clay soil. I knew those were my pumpkins. By the end of the rain, 8 of my 9 seeds had germinated and most had grown a foot already.

Those vines grew and grew, until they started to edge up on our 6-foot fence and they spilled over their mesh garden fence and all through the grass. By late summer, there were green orbs hidden throughout the wildly-growing foliage. The green skin turned to beautiful, mottled orange-green, and I had my pumpkins.

Meanwhile, there were mysterious plants growing rapidly in our main garden. We didn't know what they were, but they looked like something edible, so we didn't pull them with the other weeds. The leaves were big and deep green and sort of heart-shaped, even though we hadn't watered them, and they grew like vines, with tendrils wrapping around fence and other garden plants. And they were prickly. We watched as papery yellow-white flowers formed, and we wondered what food we might get by fall. I noticed that the gourd I was growing in a pot shared all these traits - the tendrils, prickles, and almost heart-shaped leaves; the rapid growth - and we narrowed the possibilities to something in the squash family. Soon, tiny orbs started to appear on our mystery plant. The answer: about 3 different kinds of squash, sprouted from seeds left in our compost pile through the winter - spaghetti squash, medium-sized pumpkins, and several vines heavy with miniature orange pumpkins. What a gift from mother nature, and how ironic that our best crop this year was the one we didn't plant.

Here is much of our pumpkin harvest, both long-awaited and accidental. I was very proud.

Nov 1: Family Photoshoot in our favorite park

We had the longest, most colorful fall here that I've seen in Colorado. It started with bursts of color in the mountains when we spent an early September weekend near Buena Vista, and it peaked in Denver right around Halloween, just in time for our first ever family photo shoot.



I wanted fall leaves and beautiful straw-colored grasses as our backdrop, so we walked to our favorite park and got to play for an hour while talented pro Andrea Flanagan took our pictures. She had endless energy and ideas, and she even had Isaac laughing and looking at the camera - no small feat.










We played on the hill, then moved to the patio next to the pedestrian bridge.








We found my straw-colored fall grasses.














The park sits along the Platte River, between our neighborhood and downtown.


There's a great field for soccer, kites, dogs...it's usually full of people on weekends and at lunchtime.










I love these photos of the boys so much.






















This shot was totally spontaneous. Isaac laid back in the grass, and Jonah leaned back and snuggled against him.








We had so much fun. After our hour was over, Andrea left but we stayed to play while the sun set and the light turned to gold and then faded away. The boys were so cute, we took our own pictures too. These are just cell phone shots, but some are kind of fun.