Into the deep....

On a trip to Steamboat, we went snowshoeing/skiing into the woods with my family and very good friends.

Our intent was to find a Christmas tree, to cull a charlie brown tree and nuture a stand of pines. It was a beautiful sunny day but cold in the shade of the forest. Olivia and Sophia (my god daughter) took turns being cold and Togiak's furry paws and legs were covered in snow. My sister's dog, Togiak is Hazie's idol and a highly qualified snow dog.

We brought along some turkey sandwiches and hot chocolate, a perfect winter picnic.

Hazey's First Snow!

This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland and it is still coming down. We were excited to see what Hazey thought of snow, since she is definitely not a fan of wet grass and loves to hang out in front of the heater in the kitchen.

here are some photos from this morning and then when I came home for lunch!

Hi All, We just finished our six weeks of puppy school. Hazie did really well and has progressed with her basic skills! she can now sit, stay, wait at the bowl, look, walk on a leash without sniffing every two steps, and laydown! we are working on coming when called and not being distracted when outside when we call her. We had a great instructor (Marni) who is very positive, if you live in Boulder, we would highly recommend the training classes at the Boulder Humane Society. The video is during their 15 minutes of play time at the end of their last class. (the video is not 15 minutes long!). She is the one who gets rolled halfway into the video and then is running all over the place until she finds Ruger the German Shephard. Enjoy!





Each puppy got to pick a toy for completing the class and Hazie picked a ball that has barely left her sight or mouth since she got it (including twice when going out to pee, it has stayed in her mouth)

Dina Flintstone!

Ryan and I were Fred and Wilma flintstones (photos to come) but here are some photos of Hazie in the past two weeks!

A Tasty Celebration of Two Years!

The eve of Obama's election marked two full years that we have been together! We decided to go out and celebrate at a newer restaurant in the area, Colterra, we would suggest this restaurant to anyone. It was such a great food experience that Ryan took the time to write a review on a reservation website, opentable.com. Those that work there, work there because we think they can be food nerds and everyone will share in it and appreciate it. You can order a small plate or a big plate to taste more items on the menu (which are seasonal and local) as well as order 1/2 glasses of wine to be able to experience food and wine pairing and how that brings out the best in both! We'd recommend it to anyone, especially their duck plates! (They even had a rose, which is going off the menu because it is not the time of year for it, but they had it! They also had rillettes (a specialty of the region of France we visited this year...mmmmmm good!)

We got decked up and dressed up and enjoyed an evening out!

28 lbs and growing

Hazey is a-growin'. Every tuesday we go to puppy school at the shelter. When we arrive there is a scale we can use to weigh her, it's become a game for the two of us, who will guess her weight the closest. She's up to 28.2 lbs as of this past tuesday. Based on vet predictions she will be about 50-60 lbs when she is full grown.

Here are some photos from the last two weeks.




Hazey still has her wrinkles, which we are stoked about and hope she keeps them, but everytime we try to capture them she moves, so this is as close to it as we could get!



She loves to hang on Ryan's leg and take a nap




Every morning she runs to the window to watch whoever leaves the house first in the morning. As we turn the corner away from the house, she strains her neck to get the last moment in, hence let us say, it's tough going to work in the morning



Her cubby hole she made for herself on our room

Meet Hazie!

Now that we finished the fence, we got a dog! We didn't post our news right away (we've had her for three weeks) because we wanted to finish getting our trip photos up, since that is why we started the blog. We got her at the Boulder Humane Society. She had two siblings in her liter and they were found stray in kansas. Who knows what she really is, heinz 57, but we suspect that she is black mouth cur (old yeller), boxer and/or mastiff, and perhaps some shephard and lab.
She's a great pup and is a total love bug. She's not super food motivated but she will do nearly anything for love, let the training begin!


the short version...





the long version...
Here are photos from the last three weeks!

Last Day: Zurich

From Gstaad we took the Golden Pass Panorama (train) from Gstaad to Zurich, where we would depart back home the next day. Eight years prior, while passing through Zurich, Ryan discovered a now favorite restaurant, serving swiss fondue. The meal left such a mark on his taste buds, that we sought the restaurant out, literally by nose, and a treat it was! We wandered through the old town, taking photos of the evening light, enjoyed our dinner and headed back to our hotel (which is a story in and of itself, but that is for the next time we are all at the dinner table together!)

Enjoy!

Week 2: Glacier 3000

While in Gstaad, Michel recommended heading up to what is known as Glacier 3000, about a 40 minute bus ride from Gstaad to the base. We had no idea what was in store for us, but let us say that if you are ever in Gstaad, you must go to Glacier 3000 (Col du Pillon) and see for yourself!

Enjoy the adventure, it was a blast!

Week 2: Gstaad

We were excited to visit the Swiss Alps on our trip and headed to the village of Gstaad in the Berner Oberland region of Switzerland (nearly dead center in the Swiss Alps). We had a wonderful three days in the mountains, with the chance to wander around town and hike around as you will see later on a glacier. The town was stereotypical swiss, beautiful buildings and homes, with flowers hanging from every window. We didn't get pictures of it, but a volleyball tournament, the equivalent of the AVP was going on in town, which was neat to see all the festivities surrounding the tournament. We enjoyed some good chocolate, Ryan his coffee, and beautiful scenery.

Enjoy the photos.

Week 2: Switzerland

On Monday of our second week in Europe, we headed from Hyeres to Geneva. A five hour road trip later we showed up in Crans pres-Celigny, Switzerland (just north of Geneva). We will back up and share here that Ryan, while a sophomore in high school, had the opportunity to move with his family and live in a town right on the french-swiss border (Divonne les Bains) and attend school in Switzerland for one year. Ryan kept in good contact with a number of friends, one of them Mekhela, who we were able to visit and stay with during our five day sejour in Switzerland. We had the opportunity while in and around Geneva to visit Divonne France, Nyon Switzerland (for those water lovers, this pool rivals Franny's home pool in Irvine), and Crans pres-Celigny Switzerland.

A dream of making cheese...

Will have to wait a lot longer, the farm I wanted to volunteer at to learn to make goat cheese here in Boulder, is closing. Not totally, but the farm that was open to visitors and accepted volunteers during kidding season, is no longer at the end of the summer. We took a trip up to the farm to enjoy it one more time. Enjoy the photos, especially the kid goats, and the lady goats eyeing/chasing after Ryan and Gary!

Millau: An Engineer's Dream

Ryan, when we knew we were going to France, investigated where the Millau bridge was in relation to where we would be traveling. Much to his excitement, the bridge would be on our way down to the south of france! If you could see the photos of this engineering feat being built you would understand how AMAZING this bridge is. A huge gorge that used to require a two hour detour down the valley and back up to continue along the main autoroute from Paris to Montpellier is now a 10 minute drive across! It is a beautiful bridge, and we would recommend anyone who is driving through France to stop and enjoy it. We somehow missed the exit to visit the town below the bridge to see what it looked like from below, so the pictures are only from the exit nearby.

Enjoy!

DAY 6: Orchid Hunting!

My mom, true to her passion, discovered before leaving that there would be orchids in the region. So through a few emails she meet Madame Glaudon, a fellow french orchidist. After some beautiful, off the beaten path, winding road, we showed up to this little area where Madame Glaudon was waiting to take us "hunting for les orchidees sauvages!"

Enjoy the photos!


My mom wrote an article for her orchid society (Newport Harbor Orchid Society: NHOS (No, this is not a plug!). But the article describes the day exactly!

Here is a link to a newsletter (Adobe Acrobat PDF format)

Hyeres and Switzerland soon to come.....

Picture uploading is being interrupted by fence building! We've used some new tools on this project, the auger which beats digging 28 inch holes, the concrete mixer, which beats mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow! We will try to post the rest of our pictures over the long weekend from hyeres and switzerland... The good news about our interruption is that it soon comes with ......a dog!!!......more on that to come later!

Et Voila!!!

So, the night after our tour of the vineyards and castle, we went home, enjoyed a wonderful home cooked dinner with our goodies from the marche in monpazier and the epicerie in town.

Ryan, two days ago, had seen a flyer (at the kayak booth) for a night festival at the gardens of Chateau Marqueyssac. Imagine instead of running through corn mazes in the fall, getting to wander through candlelit paths of beautiful manicured gardens. The pictures do not do the evening and setting justice, so i have posted a link to the chateau because this is where Ryan proposed!!!!!!

Just to give a feel for the evening, which no one knew what to expect of the festival, including Ryan, we arrived to a beautiful sunset, a stunning castle, and amazing gardens, and lines candle lit paths in the garden. There are 6 miles of trail that sit up high on a cliff above the Dordogne river. Not knowing what the festival had in store, we wandered up some paths and stumbled upon a full moon, the family's petite chapel, twinkle lights in the trees, sculptures, waterfalls and two bands, all leading up to the big question!


here is the website (be sure to watch the first page, it takes you through a day at the gardens)
http://www.marqueyssac.com/


Here are the photos from the night


Also click on the video to enjoy the music in the gardens.


Guitarists (first band we stumbled upon)



Here is the jazz band (we didn't have any idea these bands were going to be there, so when we heard music along the path, it was such a wonderful surprise)

DAY 5: Medieval times, wine, and castles!

Here are some photos from our tour of the medieval town of Monpazier (one of the southern most towns in the Perigord), a tour of the winery Vin de Domme, and the chateau, Castelnaud! what a wonderful day........to only get even better.

Enjoy the photos!

Horsetooth Reservoir 2.4 mile swim!

We interrupt our presentation of photos from our trip this summer to share photos from this mornings events. Earlier today a group of us swam a 4K race up in Fort Collins, Colorado at the Horsetooth Reservoir. Last year I learned about this race and proposed to a couple of friends to give it a go this summer. Trisha, a good friend all the way back from Irvine High and UCSB was able to plan a trip (which included a surprise engagement from her boyfriend the day before the race!) around this race. Also, was a friend from Boulder, Teresa. So beginning at the end of spring, we hopped in the pool and began our training!

It was a great race, beginning at 7am, the water temperature was 73 degrees, the water was so clear (especially compared to the boulder rez).


Here are some photos from the event! Click on the slideshow to see it in bigger format

DAY 4: Modern on this trip was the 17th century

The medieval times felt contemporary, 17th century felt extremely modern, but thankfully western toilets were a-plenty (except for the kings toilet in Castelnaud!)

Our next day brought us to a life's dream of Ryans. When my mom invited us along on this trip, Ryan and I were talking about what we might get to visit, and he said "on my life's list of things to see and do is to visit the caves of Lascaux".

In mentioning this to my mom, it turns out the cave was but a 20 minute drive from our village. it couldn't get better! But oh it could.

If you know anything about Lascaux, you can no longer go into the real caves (which is an interesting story, but that we will save for the dinner table), and so they have built an exact replica of these prehistoric caves. Which is amazing, but still not the real thing.

Turns out my mom had something up her sleeve. She had learned about the last cave open to the public that has drawings from prehistoric man. Font de Gaume. WOW is all we can say. Below is the link to the website and a picture (from the web) we copied in to give an idea of what we saw. It is immensely controlled as the drawings (of buffalo, mammoths, horses..) found in many surrounding caves have been ruined because of graffiti, humidity, CO2. small groups of 8 are allowed in with an archaeologist for 45 minutes, no cameras, no touching the walls, it was incredible, we were looking at and learning about interpretations of what happened thousands of years ago.

Afterwards Meg took us to Les Eyzies where we enjoyed a delightful lunch, an afternoon at the musee de prehistoire, another troglodytic cave, and a quick jaunt up to lascaux II.

Enjoy and be sure to check out the website.

http://www.hominides.com/html/lieux/grotte-font-de-gaume.htm

Where in the World is Carmen San Diego???

Some have asked where in France was the region we visited, so we thought we'd provide a map of france and send you on a wild goose chase and test your knowledge of french geography. Ready.

Here are your clues.
We were north of the Pyrenees.
We were two hours east of Bordeaux
We were just (10 minutes) west of Sarlat Le Caneda (this is the easiest clue! just teasing)
We were three hours east of the Atlantic
and six hours northwest of the closest Mediterranean beach.

Where were we?

The region is known as Le Perigord Noir (pronounced perry-gore noir). Noir for black, because the region has so much granite and truffles. There are five regions of the perigord, noir, blanc, rouge, vert and pourpre, each have there specialities, ours being prehistory, castles, and foie gras. We'd all recommend visiting sometime!

Next day, Kayaking & Troglodytic Caves!

The next day found us meandering down the Dordogne river in canoes and kayaks. How can you say no to an advertisement that says kayak by beautiful french villages and castles....not us.

I will reveal that the idea for the location that Ryan proposed came from this day....
just keeping the suspense!

DAY 2: The village of Beynac

Day two had us visiting the village of Beynac. The region is dotted with castles and this was our first visit. This was actually France's national independence day, and so we had the village nearly to ourselves.

Highlights from the day (which does not yet include a proposal for those of you curious what place it happened)

A parking ticket, ughh, but the positive outcome was the opportunity to use our french in a way we never imagined, let me tell you though they definitely don't teach you how to weasel your way out of a ticket in high school french class.

Later that day Ryan and I went swimming in the river and to our surprise what looked like a calm, lazy river was actually water that was flowin' fast. It was like swimming in the flume at the olympic center, going against world record pace. We unfortunately don't have any video of it, but we literally swam in place, they were 20 sec to a minute mad dashes that landed us in the same place we started, there were a lot of good laughs to be had, from us and those on shore!

That night was our village's bastille day celebration. I think my mom's camera might have photos from the festivities, but imagine tasty regional food, duck, salad, cheese, mousse au chocolat, all the polka music you could imagine (let me tell you my mom (Nancy) is a mean polka dance and a great polka teacher, we polka'd together! and fireworks. It was a great evening that gave us a chance to experience local traditions and practice our french!

Enjoy the photos!

DAY 1: Domme

For our first venture we had a strong request for the city of Domme for a birthday celebration. We spent the day walking criss cross paths on this mesa perched village, with tiny streets a windmill and beautiful views. A stunning introduction to the region and we hope you enjoy the photos.

come back often as we will continue to post pictures and narrations of each village, vintner and cave we visited!

St. Cyprien en Perigord-Home Base!

Here is where we called home for the first half of our trip. The village allowed us to starfish day trips to the many villages and offerings of the region (le perigord noir). Enjoy the photos!

(a few things that happened in the village that are not apparent, but worth sharing are as we arrived there was a nighttime torch light parade/theatre taking place in and around our place. A dance party (the fireman's ball) the night before Bastille Day (Meg's birthday), nothing like some good french 80's music to get the vacation going! This tradition is national in france and is hosted by the firefighters of the village. The next day was Bastille day (france's national holiday) and we attended the town's festivities, dinner, wine, dancing (live band!) and fireworks! It was neat to be a part of a community.



Click to view in a larger format and totally serious comments!

Franny said Yes!!

We just returned from two weeks in France and Switzerland where Ryan proposed! The trip was fantastic and we have many photos to share, which we will post here, check back often!