My thoughts.......No pictures

I am having trouble posting any pictures. We have service through an ATT aircard. It is the best service we have ever had, but it is mediocre at best! Today, I just could not get any picture to post.

What has been going on with the Brooks?
Sarah, Greg, and Liam came last weekend. Liam is growing so much. He says several words, is running everywhere, and tries to mock many actions that he sees. They are so fun at this age. The main thing with Liam is PawPa. Randy is all he worries about. He wants to follow Randy, he wants to sit with Randy, he wants to eat with Randy, and PawPa is his most used word.

Daniel's 21st birthday was Sunday. He did spend some time with us...long enough to have ice cream cake. I can not believe my baby is 21.

Jacob(our oldest) came Monday afternoon. He was able to stay until Tuesday evening. He never gets to stay long, but we enjoy him when he does come. We spent half of the day Tuesday visiting my parents and my sister.

My sister is the queen of eBay and Randy is the king. I dabble in it some, never spending more than $20 or so. Randy has bought two cars and a camper via eBay. The latest car this week. The only thing is that the car was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I brought Daniel to Houston yesterday morning to catch a 10:15 A.M. flight. Sarah only lives 20 or so minutes from the airport, so I spent the day with her, getting back home last night around 8. Daniel is on the road now somewhere between Tallahassee and here.

5. Tomorrow, I am going to get a haircut. I need a few things to start the school year, so I will do a little shopping. It seems that when I go shopping with a purpose I never find anything.

Tomorrow is the end of the month...the day I have self proclaimed as the end of summer for me.
I will go up to my classroom Saturday and finally get everything put into place. The students come the 18th of August. I am in a new classroom, moving from third grade to fifth. It is smaller than the one I had last year and the students are bigger!

August means that September is next............I am ready for some football! GEAUX TIGERS!!!

Gotta Love a Bargain!

I love a rainy day. I love rainbows. I love peanut butter and chocolate, I love traveling, I love a good book, and watching an old movie. I also love a bargain! Last Thursday, I went to Hobby Lobby. I had not been there in months. I went just to look around, but once I got there I discovered that all their 4th of July things were 90% off. Yes, 90% off. I mean, that is practically free. I decided right then and there that the theme for my new classroom would be patriotic. I mean, you can't go wrong with America. Besides, I will teach American History.

I got all the stuff you see on the couch for about 23 dollars. There are bulletin board boarders, glitter, baking cups, a picnic set for 25, and lots of wooden decorations. I also got packs of red and blue sparkly jingle bells that can be used for decorations or used to make decorations. Yes, we can even have a patriotic Christmas!

I did not pay more than a dollar and a half for any one item. Most items were below 50 cents. Finding all the goodies made my day. I never seem to make it to Hobby Lobby when things are this cheap for holiday items. I did get some neat fall items one time for 80% off.

I will use most of the things in my classroom...and so it goes. My new classroom is smaller than the one I was in last year so I brought home some things and threw some things away. Now, I am bringing the new things up to this smaller classroom. So it goes in the life of a teacher. You haul things around in your car, you bring things home, you take things to the classroom....

Fun, Friends, and Food

The cooks!
The guests!
More guests!
The food!

This weekend we were so privileged and honored to have the Dulls in our home for the weekend. On Sunday, we also had Timani and Savanah Tonga. We had a wonderful time visiting, eating, laughing, visiting, eating, laughing, visiting, eating, laughing...............







Friday, I fixed a new dessert...fruit salsa. I chopped apples, kiwi, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, added a spoon of white and brown sugar, plus some fig preserves. I cut flour tortillas into triangles with a pizza wheel, sprayed them with butter spray, sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on them, and baked them until crisp. We dipped the tortillas in the fruit. It was quite good! Perhaps a more healthy alternative to the chocolate cake I fixed later in the weekend.

Watermelon Time

We brought a watermelon with us to Colorado. The stream by our camping spot was icy cold. Randy rigged us up a way to chill the melon. I called it a "cajun refrigerator".

We did not want it to float away, so Randy weighed it down with a couple of rocks.
Randy retrieving the watermelon after it had soaked a little while.
Here I am enjoying that icy fruit. It was gooooood!!!

It is always good to bring a part of home with you on any trip. Thanks Daddy!

Train Ride

The whole point for riding the train on July 4th was to see the fireworks and to ride the train back to Durango in the fullmoon light. I have to say it was the best fireworks show I have ever seen. Of course the backdrop was spectacular with the mountains, but some of the displays were the largest I have ever seen. That includes Disney World!
After having lunch and messing around Silverton awhile, we went to the tent they had set up for our train. There, they had a wonderful bluegrass band. The band was very good and extremely young. We also were served a BBQ supper in the tent. It was delicious!
Look at the license plate closely....and you thought he was dead....He lives in Silverton, Colorado!
I was so proud of Randy. I had bought us matching 4th of July shirts from Old Navy(thank you 2 for one sale)to wear on that day. That morning I forgot, and had on something else. Randy remembered to wear his, and when I looked up and saw him with his on I was reminded to get mine on. I never knew my husband had such a fine fashion sense.
There are lots of abandoned mine buildings and equipment along the tracks and the highway as you go up to Silveton. They are reminders of a time when this area was in its "heyday." The highway is called the Million Dollar Highway in reference to how much was mined and carried over the road.
The train would have to let off steam from time to time. If you are lucky you will see a rainbow in the steam. It was a little overcast at the time the picture was taken, so we did not get to see one. The young man with the dark hair whose side of the head you see was very interesting. He is originally from Chicago. His parents brought him to ride the train when he was 5. He has loved the train since, wanting to spend every vacation there. He moved to Durango to go to college there to be closer to the train. He works for the train in the summer. This is his 4th ride since the tracks opened in early May. Did I say he was interesting? I meant obsessed!
We rode the train on July 4th. What a treat that some folks sang patriotic songs in each car on the way up to Silverton. It was a great atmosphere on the train that day and in Silverton and Durango. Leaving out of Durango, people waved, cars blew their horns, and people shouted happy birthday America. One girl in Durango had USA painted on her tummy and "flashed" us as we went by. As the train arrived in Silverton, we were "mooned" by 4 college age boys. Although I did not particularly enjoy the mooning, I did enjoy the comment I heard a little girl tell her mother. She said," those boys moonshined us."


Once again, I forgot that the pictures load backwards. I was trying to show our day on the train from Durango to Silverton. I suppose I was taking Stephen Covey's advice, and starting with the end in mind!

More of Colorado

This quote was at one of the overlooks that we stopped at. I love what it says!
We walked several evenings down this road. The road dipped and turned into more beautiful sights.
Can you imagine waking up to this every morning? It was 35 degrees that morning.
The living side of our establishment.
This is how our "camper" looked from the other side.

What a wonderful trip Randy and I had....one of the best ever! Was it crazy to sleep in a horse trailer? Maybe. Was it crazy to ride a motorcycle through mountain passes of elevations above 10,000 feet? Perhaps. It might have even been crazy to pull that whole contraption 1200 miles to the mountains, but I feel rested, rejuvenated, and more relaxed than I have in a long time.

If you have never ridden the train from Durango to Silverton, Colorado, you are missing something wonderful.

I turned around on the back of the bike and took this picture...AWESOME!

Nice looking fence, nice looking country, nice looking man!

A sweet couple took our picture in exchange for taking theirs.

So much of Colorado looks like a painting or postcard.

Telluride, Colorado..beautiful town..Tom Cruise has a home there.I didn't see him, Katie, or Suri!

Here is just a sampling of our trip to Colorado. We had an great time. We got back last night around midnight. I will not try to post the whole trip at one time. I will describe when and what we did in the next few posts.

We left Tuesday, June 30 at around 6 a.m. We spent the first night in Tucumcari, New Mexico. We arrived at our camp site the next day in the early evening. Our camp site was located a few miles above Silverton, Co. We spent the until dark getting things set up. I will post pictures of our "camper" in later blogs. On Thursday, July 2, we rode the bike up to Ridgeway and over to Telluride and Rico. These towns are part of the San Juan Skyway Loop. The scenery is so beautiful. We got into a rain shower between Ouray and our camp. It was a hairy ride through those passes. I got my mind off of the ride by videoing it. I will try to post that later.

Friday, we made the whole loop, over 200 miles. We were gone all day. It was very hot at the bottom around Cortez. While in a Walmart bathroom, I took off a layer of pants, and rolled up the outer ones as shorts. I had to roll them down and put a layer back on when we got back into the mountains.

Saturday, the 4th, we rode the narrow gauge railroad train up to Silverton. That meant we rode the bike 50 miles down to Durango, rode the train up to Silverton, and then rode the bike back up to Durango. A special train was ran that day in order to see the fireworks that night. It did not leave Silverton until 10:30 or so that night. We did not get back into Durango until after 2 a.m. We had reserved a room in Durango so we would not have to ride the bike back up to the camp so late. That meant we got to take showers!!! After 3 days of camping and a train ride in an open gondola car of a coal powered train, we were definitely ready for showers!

Sunday, we slept in a little late because of getting to bed so late. We rode the bike back up to Silverton where we had lunch at the Brown Bear Cafe. The cafe is a local establishment that had a great atmosphere...tin ceilings, wooden floors, and a huge iron heater that I could only imagine feels so good to back up to in the winter. We spent Sunday evening just hanging out around the camp. There was a mountain stream running right by our camp and I could sit there for hours.

Monday, we rode back down to Durango and went white water rafting. It was a half a day rafting trip. There were only a couple of spots that were sort of rough, the rest of the time we mearly bumped along the river. There were a couple of children on our raft, so you know it was not too scary. They giggled when we hit rocks.

Tuesday, we packed up and did not leave until close to noon. We traveled across the bottom of Colorado, a small portion of New Mexico, and ended up spending the night in Amarillo, Tx. Wednesday, we arrived home about midnight. Randy and I really enjoyed the whole trip, and right now I can not think of a favorite part. I liked it all!

In the next post I will have pictures of the horse trailer camper and our surroundings. Although our bed felt great last night, a part of me missed the mountain stream outside and the coziness of the horse trailer camper.