Summer! Red Rocks, New baby, Mushrooms

Summer 2022 at home was wonderful.

I'm a great grandmother!  Danyelle had a baby girl, Maisy, in July.  I can't wait to see her in person.  Of course she's adorable in pictures and in video visits.  Scott will be a great grandfather in December and we're only 65!  ha ha ha.

We made the most of our July and August at home.  Our new front door is finally installed and the plants that make up our new front landscaping are noticeably larger!  All is good.

Artwork in Niwot

This is the summer that She Fly launched their ladies' pants with an under the crotch zipper!  Now we don't have to pull our pants down to pee in the woods.  This is fabulous!!!  Love the pants. 

A Sunday coffee at Nanci's after our run

Went to Red Rocks on a beautiful night with Jordan (Scott's son) and saw the Queen cover band called Killer Queen.  I got us 5th row seats (a fluke I'm grateful for!) and it was so enjoyable.  

These months included regular kayaking, hiking to get in shape for our trip to Kenya and Uganda, Sunday runs with the Dirty Girlz, biking as much as possible, home improvement, visiting friends including my former sister-in-law Lynn in Boulder, and as much mushroom hunting and learning as possible.

We've totally gotten into learning about our local mushrooms and are happy to say we found about 8 edible species that we sampled.  We found many that were not edible but were pretty!  Thank goodness for our two mushroom expert sources who helped us identify all our finds.  We are VERY careful and don't want to get sick or die.

I've found these Sheepshead mushrooms in Illinois since hunting them with my parents as a kid. We love them. I went back to Illinois in October to visit Vicki and family and to look for these and we found so many! Jackpot!   We also found a giant puffball which was delicious.  So fun to share mushrooming with my sister Vicki and with Scott.  And to see her kids, grandkids, cousins Suze and Lee Ann.

It's been so HOT this summer!  High 90's for many days in a row.  The west is having major drought but some parts having flooding rivers.  Yellowstone got a huge rain and much of the park was damaged and closed.  Extreme weather has become part of our lives and still people argue that humans have nothing to do with climate change.  We do our part to try to avoid plastics, we compost and recycle, etc but it sometimes seems like it's futile.  But we continue to do our little part.