Seven Sorta Quickish Takes

1. Today is Art Class Day!  One of my favorite days of the week, Friday is the day I get to go over to the children's school with my super-helper Cathy and play with the kids for a while.  William comes along  with us to sit in on the kindergarten class where he thoroughly disrupts everything has a ball, and Dan comes in later in the afternoon and teaches computer class.  It's an almost all-day affair that usually ends with a family rosary in front of the Blessed Sacrament -- and then a really crummy Friday night dinner because Mom's too pooped to cook.

2.  But...  Today is also Date-Night-In at our house. -- so I'm expecting to be treated by Dan.  We just recently resurrected this old tradition, and it's about time.  You'd think that with Dan working from home I'd have him all to myself, maybe even see more of him than I want to.... but this is soooo not the case!  Oh, my word!  Picture a woman in labor having any interest in spending quality time with anyone, even (maybe most especially) the father of her child.  That's Dan right now: he's giving birth to a bouncing baby solar company, and when we see him, he's so distracted, I don't think he's seeing us.  Bless his little computer-screen-shaped heart.

But, what is Date-Night-In all about, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you.   As the title suggests, we stay home, but we put on a movie for the children and set them up with some kind of dinner -- or let them make something (like grilled cheese and tomato soup or something else really easy), then we sneak off and have a picnic in our room and watch a different movie there.  With the door shut (most of the time) and no interruption (sort of).  Dan and I take turns choosing movies and dreaming up a special Friday night meatless dinners, going to great lengths to outdo one another. 

A couple Fridays ago, Dan brought home jumbo shrimp and cocktail sauce and made black and tans (Guinness topping Fat Tire that time, I think).  We watched Legend.  (Great movie, but lots of jump scenes!  There was cocktail sauce everywhere by the end of the film...)   Then the next time around I made a dippy dinner; I served a couple different kinds of special crackers and made spinach dip, crab dip, and  baked Brie topped with pesto -- plus I got a sampler pack from Breckenridge Brewery. And we watched the old classic, Rebecca.  Dan had never seen it before and actually stayed awake to the very end.  (Will miracles never cease?)

Tomorrow night it's Dan's turn, though, so there's no telling what's in store...  But I won't have to cook it, so it's all good! (I'll let you know.)

3. You've heard all the news coverage about the poor miners trapped for two months in that mine in Chile?  What an amazing tale of courage and perserverence!  We'd been following the story with interest since, for some unknown reason, our daughter, Cathy, is fascinated by anything having to do with mines. And, what a drama unfolding!  How often do these things happen with even a chance of a good outcome, you know?  After all the waiting and drumroll, we were all thrilled to hear that an American miner had finally broken through to the trapped men,  but, imagine our surprise to learn that the drilling company is my brother, Steve's, company, and that he is personal friends with Jeff Hart, the man whose drill broke through!  Like, Wow!  Is that cool or what?  As if anyone doubted it, it sounds like our Coloradan, Mr. Hart, is a great guy.  What a small world.  (Pretty darn small if obscure little us has a third degree of separation from a world famous hero!)

4. I think I've said it before -- it's a very interesting countryside we live in, here in western Colorado.  There are areas you travel over that look like moonscape: vast barren valleys, ringed by dry adobe mesas and pitted with deep, winding aroyos.  The huge, flat-topped Grand Mesa looms over the valley to the north, and the soaring San Juans' jagged peaks already dusted with snow rise to the heavens on the south end of the valley.  In between there's rich, irrigated farmland, dotted by the craziest little Dr. Seuss hills with little towns and hamlets tucked in beside the Uncompahgre River.  Then, there's the rising of the land to the west, which we'd never really explored before, the Uncompahgre Plateau.  It's a vast wilderness of aspen and evergreen forests, a hunter's paradise, that stretches almost to the border of Utah, where it disappears into the sagebrush and adobe dry land again. We got to take a drive through it Wednesday afternoon and didn't have a map, but, by the grace of God, and a basic knowlege of the compass, we wound our way through the dirt backrodes, making a gigantic circle that eventually pulled us up practically in our own back yard.  And in the vastness of the wilderness out there and the honeycomb of roads hidden in the trees, that's no small thing to thank God for.   If I didn't think my husband would doubt my faith in his tracking sense, I'd say it was a miracle.  

And a lovely drive.  Here are a couple shots of it (but not very good ones as my picture-taking muse seems to be on vacation with my writing muse...):

Oneof the roads we traveled down through the Uncompahgre forests.



Another shot, looking south from a hilltop toward an arm of the San Juans.

5.  Saturday -- or sometime next week -- Paul and Nicole will be finding out Paul's MOS (Mililtary Occupational Specialty) after TBS (The Basic School).  This determines where he and Nicole and the baby (who is due mid December) will be going for the next round of training, and will ultimately figure in determining his first duty assignment.  We're all praying that he'll get his first choice -- Logistics, and that he will train at Camp Lejeune (near all my mother's relatives), then will be assigned somewhere in California, where they'll be an easy-ish drive for us to come visit and a hop, skip, and jump from Dan's parents.  
What are the odds we'll get everything we hoping for?  Not great, I suppose.  But, we're praying, anyway, and putting it in God's hands.  That way, whatever bingo balls come up will be His choice and we'll know they're the best choice.

Please, if you have a minute, could you pray with us for God's will for this new little family?

God bless all our men and women in uniform and keep them safe in body and soul.

6.  Dan got to have lunch this past Monday at the Beverly Hills Hotel with some business associates from Spain. (snort) Isn't that something?  I had tomato sandwiches with Cathy and William at the kitchen counter on Monday, while listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio.  I thought the company here was pretty stellar, though, and we made the tomato with basil and mozzarella on flatbread, so lunch was delectable.  About his lunch in Beverly Hills, Dan will only say, "It was whelming."

7.  Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, though.... I just read something that said he was a tenth cousin of President Obama's.  As is Sarah Palin!  Speaking of a small world.  This geneological factoid doesn't say much, though, really, except that our country is most definitely a melting pot.  Ideologically, it doesn't prove or disprove anything, either.  I probably have more in common with my landlord, the cowboy, than I do with some of my first cousins.  And, I expect none of the parties included in this research cared more than to just laugh at the relationship.  It is to laugh.

 I'm afraid I don't know of any blood relatives of importance other than some vague historical figures (which I might have to post on just to have a record of them), and a supposed direct link to Miles Standish (I think he's the guy...) that could give us an "in" to the Daughters of the American Revolution, should we ever want it.  But, after hearing about Limbaugh and Obama, I've started to wonder what else we might find if we dug deep enough...  Anyone out there have a distinguished or otherwise famous relative that you know of?

7 1/2  I'd post some more  pictures throughout this post, except I told Dan an hour ago I'd be right along... (It's getting on 11 p.m. here now) And y-a-w-n!  I'm tie-yud! So I guess I'd be smart to git-along.   See y'all soon.