An Ode to Winter Park, CO, by Autumn Colley

They see me rollin...

they hatin...

We're in Colorado (arrived Tuesday) and for some reason, every time I see our rental, I think of that white and nerdy song by Weird Al. I can't imagine why:


That's Mike and Autumn in front of the Celestial Seasonings Tea Shop. He has something like 96 gallon-sized black tea bags in those bags there. Sometime you should ask Mike about how he makes his sweet tea. :)

I don't have a ton of photos right now because yesterday Mike and I snowboarded and today Andi and I snowboarded so I haven't had much of a chance to get any. We've had a blast! This was only my second time, I just went once last year. I've made a lot of progress--but my tailbone hurts! We have some more snowboarding ahead of us, though, so it should be even better. Anyway, I do have a couple of photos for you all.

We took Autumn to the doctor Monday because she had a little cold and I wanted to make sure she was fine for the Tuesday plane trip. She definitely had a cold but nothing more so we were cleared for takeoff. Here she is dancing in front of the office.


We're staying with Brian and Andi who have two kids. Nate is just over 10 weeks old and Sophia will be 2 in August. I read Sophia and Autumn a book Tuesday night after we arrived. Aren't they cute?


And this is totally random. This morning I got Autumn ready for the day before Andi and I headed out for our snow day. I was eating a banana and Miss Autumn just walked up, snatched my banana and started chowing down.


I should have some more photos over the weekend! I hope you guys are having as good a week as we are! And now I am sooooo going to bed...

Craftiness

My friend Penny has just taken up knitting and I think she must have had some latent knitting genius or something. These are the very first hats she has ever made. How cool is this? Haha...please excuse the post-workout look. Her husband and I train together in kali and he delivered them to me before class...I HAD to get a pic to Penny as soon as I could so...


Since we're talking about crafts, I think I've mentioned here that I've been sewing. I think the last thing I posted was Autumn's Christmas dress. Most recently, I made some fabric covered cork boards to go in my living room office space. I wanted something wall art-y so I used some gorgeous Echino fabric and cork tiles from Hobby Lobby.


And these are from Christmas because I didn't want to spoil surprises but I made aprons for a few of my friends. This was for Andi. I tend to think of people in "colors" if that makes any sense. Sometimes it's personality and sometimes it's just a color they like a lot or something random like that. Andi is orange and turquoise which is why I chose this combo:


Michelle isn't a color to me so much as a style so she got a damask since I always think of her as wearing cool and classy things. Plus her kitchen is red and black which totally sold me on this Michael Miller fabric. I made Lindsay a similar apron minus the bottom ruffle but forgot to take a picture.


This one was for Christine. She looks really good in a particular shade of pink so I think of her whenever I see it. I think this is my favorite one.


There's another apron that I didn't take a picture of and I'm working on another one now for Penny (realllly late birthday gift, lol). I also want to make Autumn a summer dress. It'll probably be one of the claire dresses (probably petal knot) by Sandi Henderson. I made Autumn's Christmas dress from the Claire pattern. I have some little things on my list, too. So many projects and so little time!!

Oh, yeah, here's one last christmas project. Headbands! These are almost all for babies although I did make a matching set for my friend Angela's two girls.


Here's Autumn wearing one and eating M&M's.

Breakfast Faces with Autumn

It dawned on me this morning that Autumn's breakfast might be a little odd. :) She normally has oatmeal and yogurt. And milk. That part is pretty normal.


No, it's really her post-breakfast breakfast that is a little odd. See that little bowl? That's tea.


Most mornings I have tea and granola for breakfast. And for the longest time, Autumn has had granola, too, but she usually insists on me dipping her piece in my tea. Which is fine but it got a little old having her insistently poking her granola in the air when the level of tea moisture wasn't to her liking.


So, I started putting a little bit of cooled tea in a small bowl for her and she dips her own granola. And everyone's happy!

In like a lion, for real...

Just a few more snow pics...it ended up snowing overnight so that Sunday morning was all kinds of awesome. The last of the snow in our backyard just melted today!! How crazy is that? Apparently, this snowfall was the most since 1968! Here's what the back yard looked like around midnight or so.


At about 5am, I got word that church was canceled so we had a relaxed morning with a yummy pancake breakfast. Something funny...Autumn loves bacon. Especially turkey bacon. :)


After breakfast, we hit the snow early so we could beat the neighborhood kids outside. The golf course was really beautiful and white. Poor Autumn wasn't sure what to make of it all. It took her a few tries but she finally tromped through the snow (gingerly) like a little trooper, though!


At first I thought Mike had set Autumn down on her knees but noooo...


It was suuuper windy. We took a lot of video but most of it is a little tough to listen to because of the wind howling through the speaker. :/ I may try to compile some of it, though, because Autumn's snow trudge is pretty funny. She also didn't quite know what to think about the whole snow angels thing. Haha.


I'm shameless. I'll use my not-quite-two-year-old as a windbreak. o.O But she'll get a break from shielding her mama from the snow. It's going to be 70 degrees all weekend and I am sooooooo incredibly excited!

Snow!

Today we had a nice surprise! We got quite possibly the best snow we've had in at least 2 winters. I never believe the weather people so it was really cool to look out the window and see this:

From February 2009

I really loved the look of the white blooms against the white snow...especially when viewed from the INSIDE. Where it is WARM. Haha. Not Mike though. He had taken Autumn out earlier but just couldn't resist and went out to play alone. Note the smashed snowballs on the window. Donnie and Liz came over not long after the snow really started falling. We watched Mike frolic outside for a little while.


And the snowballs kept getting bigger.


And BIGGER.


So we finally decided to go and play outside with Mike before he did something really weird. haha. I don't like being wet. Or cold. So...


By the way, like those mittens? My mom made them for Autumn and they are sooooo cute. Oh, and what happened to that big snowball Mike made?


Hahahahaha...not really. We videotaped him rolling it down the hill but it wasn't nearly as cool as we thought it would be so I won't bore you with that. But to give you an idea of how big the snowball actually was...


This is before the snowballs started flying. You see Autumn's face? That's a baby wondering why the heck we left a warm, comfy house to go outside and get wet stuff everywhere.


But she seemed to enjoy herself once Mike started pelting us with snowballs. He's really very good at that. I blame my too-big gloves for my poor aim. :P Autumn hung out by the cars and just giggled.


Ah, once we went inside, we got one more happy surprise--a snuggly Molly!


And, we had just come in from SNOW and I had aikido this morning. And hat hair. DON'T JUDGE. hahaha.

Okkkaaaayyy...

This morning Autumn got reallllly quiet for a few minutes so, of course, I went looking for her. When I came around the sofa, I saw this:


She was just...sitting there. I had time to find the camera and come back and sit in front of her for a bit watching her just sit, legs crossed, with a flashlight, perfectly still.


And then POOF! She was back...


Hahahaha...in all of her mismatched, dress up glory.