vail hiking & biking

Since moving to Colorado, Vail has kind-of become our second home.  Matt's parents graciously let us use their condo anytime, so we find ourselves up there quite often.  We absolutely love it and some of our favorite summer hiking trails are in the Vail valley.  Matt's parents were in town                                for our most recent trip.

{the gore range}

{gore creek}

We went for a lovely hike on Gore Creek Trail.  The wildflowers are at the peak of their season in late July and early August, so they were amazing while we were there.  Matt's dad taught me the names of almost all of the flowers we came across.  This isn't even all of them!

{mariposa lily}

{red clover}

{monk's hood}

{cow parsnip}

{hare bells}

{chiming bells}

{mountain geranium}

{carrying large sticks}

We also biked up Vail Pass while we were in town...

And we always love hanging out in Vail Village!

And here are a couple more photos I snapped of the Gore Range on our way out of town.  

I love to take pictures from this spot.  You can see how drastically the scenery can change in just a couple months by viewing this post from June (and scrolling down to the photo of the Gore Range)!

view

In the summertime, we eat dinner fairly frequently on our front porch.  

We were surprised to look up and see a beautiful double rainbow this evening.  

It joined us for the whole meal.  :)

to the lake!

Matt's family has a cabin on a lake outside Amarillo and it's one of our favorite places to escape to.   And  Jake thinks it's heaven.  We were there a couple weeks ago and had such a fun, relaxing time.

We swam, read, relaxed, went canoeing, boating & hiking.

We also got to spend some great time with Matt's grandmother.  I loved listening to her tell stories of raising her kids on this lake in the summers when they were growing up.  She is the sweetest lady and it was a blessing to get to spend time with her.

And we found this awesome towel.  I really wanted to bring it home.

We played hard.  And then we watched Seinfeld episodes until we fell asleep.  it was the perfect trip!

the pioneer lady

I'm at work on a Saturday.  It's a new thing my clinic is trying out.  But I've only seen two patients.  I should be organizing my office but I'm not.  I've been perusing the web all morning. 

I also received a text from my friend, Bobbie, (Hi Bobbie!) who reminded me that it was on her blog that I first learned about the Pioneer Woman.  And the Pioneer Woman's "pork butt" which I blogged about in the previous post.

I used to think the Pioneer Woman was some kind of corny, country version of martha stewart ...  but I'm smarter now.  and I'm officially obsessed.  Her recipes are amazing.  Her photography blog is super informative. (even though I never win her photography contests.) And I think she's one of the funniest people on the planet.  I just finished reading her book:

{source}

Hilarious. every time I opened it up I was laughing out loud. You should read it. 

She recently had a photo contest for the best phone photos.  The winner got a $350 gift card to the apple store.  I thought this photo should have won. 

it didn't even make the top 100.  obviously, the competition was fierce.  ;)

okay, better go take care of people now.