After Mom, Dad, Phoebe, and I went to the zoo, we still had plenty of time left in the visit. We went to the Wow! Children’s Museum and the playground. Dave, Dad, and I went golfing with a couple of friends, and Mom and I went shopping and out for salad. (I got two cute dresses and Phoebe scored a few great shirts.) We also spent some time at home, where Phoebe was able to play in her pool.

A little froggy in the frog pool!

Grandma Hazelton taught Phoebe how to use a watering can.

That's a dead plant from last year they're watering.

Here’s a video of a summer dip in the pool.

Cute (wet) kiddo relaxing on the stairs.

Riding a horse at the playground near church.

Phoebe helped by putting her shoes on Dave.

On July 15, Grandpa and Grandma Hazelton and Phoebe and I went to the zoo. We had a great time! Phoebe stayed awake the whole day and got some quality time with all of us. Plus, there was some excitement! While we were eating lunch, a man in an official uniform walked by, carrying a tranquilizer gun. Then a bunch of zoo officials came and herded everyone on that side of the zoo to the other side, past the elephants. We were ready to go over there anyway, so we didn’t mind going along with the group. It turned out that a cassowary (a big bird like an emu) had escaped! We read in the paper the next day that they were able to corral it with a fence and get it back into a safe location.

Zoo morning, hanging out in the kitchen.

Going in and out on the deck (along with the flies).

Ugh! I cannot get this door open!

First snack of the day...Cheerios near the rhinocerous.

Phoebe found a puddle just the size of her feet!

Phoebe and Grandma relaxing.

One of the elephants gets a bath.

I love primates! Look at this great orangutan.

The crowds flee the escaped cassowary.

A tiger sits on a fence.

Giraffes.

Phoebe and Grandpa look at something together.

Phoebe really likes building her lighthouse these days. She's not too particular when it comes to ordering the parts.

This week Jess made a new blog rule in order to cull some of the dead wood from our list of links. The rule is pretty simple; no post for a year and you’re gone. Our blog isn’t quite that dated, but it is high time for an update (Editor’s note: I started this blog post over a week ago, and I’m just now trying to finish it. The pictures are also fairly unrelated!). Back over the July 4th weekend, we tried to go camping up in the mountains, but we didn’t plan far enough ahead and ended up having to hope for an available walk-up campsite. Our friend Elijah was planning to camp with us, and since Jess really didn’t want to drive for hours only to have to turn back, we limited our search to a few sites along the Peak-to-Peak highway. We left a bit early on Friday in order to improve our odds, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

Phoebe was already up when Jess picked her up early on the 29th of June, but you can see all of the other kiddos napping away on their cots at daycare.

On the way out of Nederland, Phoebe got sick. It was the first time I can remember her throwing up in a long time, and we couldn’t tell if it was the twisty highway, hot weather, bad food, or the onset of a bout of the flu. We stopped along the highway to clean her up and gave her a chance to get some fresh air before hopping back into the car and driving the rest of the way to Kelly Dahl. Sadly, there were no available campsites. On the way back to Ned, we decided to try out the sites along West Magnolia Road. We’d never camped there before, so we had no idea if they typically filled up or not. While they don’t take reservations, our observation was that the majority of the “campers” were actually living at the dispersed campsites. After what seemed like an hour of driving around the bad roads that make up the camping area (and reconnecting with Jess, who at one point

Despite her awesome swimsuit, Phoebe would only splash the water in Henry's whale pool.

walked off in a different direction to check out a couple of sites) Phoebe again got sick to her stomach. I pulled her out of her car seat and got her cleaned up, and we walked around together for a bit. At that point, I made the decision that we shouldn’t go camping with a poor sick kiddo anyway, so it was all that much easier to head back into Ned for some dinner and a beer at the local brewpub.

Back in Ned we walked through a couple of stores before heading over to the restaurant. It was still pretty early, and some of us needed to work up an appetite. The little antiques and furniture shop had an exhibit of “Colorado Nudes” that we checked out. They were a series of oil paintings on canvas by a local artist, and the prices were quite reasonable. The art wasn’t too bad either. Eventually we went over to the restaurant and were fortunate enough to get a nice table on the patio that was fully shaded by the building. I didn’t want to have to put a bunch of sunscreen on Phoebe, so this worked out perfectly. While waiting for our food (pulled pork for Jess, beef brisket for me, and the soup du jour for Elijah) we chased after Phoebe as she ran all over the deck.

Here's our attempt to recreate Phoebe's at-daycare naptime experience.

After dinner we headed back into Boulder and dropped off Elijah at his place on our way home. Elijah and I made plans to meet up Tuesday morning (I had an extra day off for the holiday) at Amante in North Boulder for some coffee while watching Le Tour. The plan was to ride up to Jamestown afterward for a little exercise. When the morning came around, we were both having some tire trouble, so I ended up getting a ride to the coffee shop from Jess (lame) and Elijah had to catch the bus. It was fun to watch a bit of the race (especially in bike-obsessed Boulder) and fun to have an extra day off from work in which to hang out. It was a bit of a hilly stage with a wee uphill finish that did see a few attacks by the climbers, but the biggest surprise was seeing big Thor Hushovd hang with the skinny lads up the hills of Bretagne to keep his maillot jaune. After the stage ended we fixed a couple of flats (front tire for me and rear for Elijah) and headed off to Jamestown.

Phoebe has been loving all the rain. Here she is out on the deck soaking it all in.

We (Jess, Phoebe, Elijah, and I) had all  made a similar attempt a couple of days earlier that started with me pulling Phoebe in the Chariot. I was riding the mountain bike in part because I didn’t feel like fixing the flat tire on my road bike, but also because I thought I’d need the extra low gears to pull the Chariot all the way up the hill. We started out going way too fast. Jess was killing it down highway 36, and I was doing everything I could to keep up with her. Sadly, Phoebe wasn’t helping a bit! After we made the turn at Lefthand Canyon, I demanded we stop for a second so that I could throw up.

Phoebe and Lion are all ready for a ride.

I ended up keeping my coffee and biscotti down, but Jess took over the Chariot-pulling duties to give me a break. Assuming she would be the slowest, Jess took off while I sat down in the grass for a couple of minutes to recover. I never really did recover, but after a couple of minutes, we started off again. Before we made it to Old Stage Road, Elijah came down with a flat tire. He got a loaner tube from a generous cyclist, but we couldn’t get my pump to seal around the valve stem and therefore couldn’t get any air into the tube. I made a final attempt at pumping up the tire by scavenging the fresh rubber insert from the Schrader side, but ended up shearing off the top of the Presta valve, rendering the tube utterly useless. With no way to fix Elijah’s tire, we aborted over Old Stage with Jess pulling Phoebe, me gutting out the climb on the mountain bike, and Elijah walking. Jess was amazing pulling the kiddo up the short but steep hill, and we were quickly back at Amante. I left the girls to get some lunch and drove back to pick up Elijah. It wasn’t the best way to abort a ride (broken tube), but it was a good length for the kiddo.

Phoebe now thoroughly loves swinging and riding the slides at all of the playgrounds around Boulder.

Based on the earlier ride, I wasn’t too confident about reaching Jamestown. I had the road bike, which is of course an improvement, but I’m clearly in awful shape. Despite my terrible condition, it turned out to be a decent ride. I was clearly holding Elijah back, so with a mile or two to go, he dropped a can of whoop on me and left me in the dust. We reached Jamestown where I enjoyed a lunch of Coke and French fries (Elijah had a Big Bopper ice cream sandwich after complaining that he couldn’t stomach any more sugar). We chatted a bit and headed back down the hill. I mostly coasted down the hill in order to give Elijah a break (he couldn’t get his bike to shift into the big chainring), and he again dusted me once we made it back to the flats of highway 36. Back in Boulder, we sat outside Amante for a few minutes before riding over to meet Jess at work. Just as we were leaving, it started to rain heavily, and of course, it stopped just as we reached the underground parking at Lynne Rienner.

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to update the Gribblog with any regularity. So, of course, you’re getting several posts in a short time; sorry ’bout that. At any rate, we’ve now been on two camping trips this season, and the Marauders are yet to win a game. On the softball front, we’ve now lost 5 games (including the 2 that we replayed after they were postponed due to inclement weather). That’s right, it’s been so rainy in Boulder that the field was like a rice paddy. The 2nd week’s game (following two straight rain-outs) still featured some pockets of mud scattered around the foul ball line. Sadly, we’ve lost two of our games to the mercy rule.

Last weekend we packed up the car on Friday night so that we could get an early start Saturday morning. We were heading toward the Angel of Shavano campground just outside of Poncha Springs, which doesn’t take reservations, so Jess was more than a little apprehensive. We’ve camped there several times; it really is a hidden gem of a campground, and it rarely fills up, but it was Memorial Day weekend. Regardless, the campground was about 1/2 full when we arrived Saturday afternoon, and we were even able to get one of the relatively wooded sites along the creek; it was lovely.

Phoebe and Daddy eat dinner together on Saturday night.

We had mini pizzas cooked in the fire.

Luckily we were all able to avoid any bouts of illness this time around–I’d thoroughly cleaned the water jug with soap and bleach just in case. After we got everything setup in camp, Phoebe and Jess took a nice nap. Jess actually tried to sit in the camp chair and read for a few minutes, but ultimately surrendered to sleep. It was nice and cool in the tent due to both the altitude and relative shade of the campsite. While they napped, I pulled down the bikes and got everything ready for a ride. I was thinking we could continue up the dirt road to the North Fork Reservoir, but I discovered that I had left the adapter needed to pull the chariot on Jess’s “road” bike. This is one of the downsides to having so many bikes. So I took a short ride up part of the Colorado Trail (heading West) while they continued to nap.

Walking from the car to the campsite.

Looking over Mommy's bike.

After everyone was awake, we piled back into the car and headed down to Salida. There’s a great bike shop in town, and I was hoping they carried Chariot parts. As luck would have it, they did, so we picked up a second adapter bracket and pumped the locals for some baby-trailer-friendly ride ideas. They were nice enough to print us out a map and even hooked up Jess with a free pair of Christmas-themed bike socks from the clearance basket.

To keep a long story short (relatively) we slept pretty well both nights, although the first night I did wake up at around midnight to find Phoebe crawling all over me! Our plan for Sunday morning was to ride up to an old mining town above Salida, but Jess smartly vetoed that plan in favor of riding north out of Buena Vista along the east side of the Arkansas River. It was a pretty good dirt road that passed a few rock climbing sites and some primitive BLM campgrounds. It even featured several short tunnels blasted into the hillside for trains running to and from Leadville. It was steadily uphill the whole way out, and we were ready to cruise back downhill after our lunch stop, but a wicked head wind came up just in time to thwart those plans. It felt like it was uphill both ways, but we managed to make it back to Buena Vista anyway.

Eating sandwiches halfway through our bike ride.

Coming through the train tunnels.

A nice grassy field.

We would have liked to get some more riding in on Monday, but because of the way we had to pack the car, it was too inconvenient to get the chariot out once all the camping gear was in. So we headed back to Lafayette. It was nice to get back early in the afternoon—it gave me time enough to cut the grass (woo-hoo) and get everything unpacked and put away.

Phoebe loves to read her books!

Phoebe recently started “reading” her books out loud. We were highly amused to discover what she must think we sound like!

Last month, our friends the Johnsons came back to Boulder for a visit. They moved to Minnesota last year so that Todd could take a job as a physics professor at Saint John’s University. We were all delighted to have them back! They stayed the first half of the week with the Brinkmans and then came to our house on Friday night. We got a couple of pizzas and Phoebe and Henry played until bedtime. Then the grownups got to play the train game! We hadn’t played a board game in a while, so that was really fun. I lost badly, as usual.

On Saturday morning, we went for our usual trip to Cannon Mine and Santiagos for breakfast burritos and coffee.

Henry and Katie.

Todd and Henry.

Phoebe would only wear her paper bag "hat" for a few seconds.

Our plan for the morning was to meet the Brinkmans at Community Ditch for a hike. We were all on time (the Johnsons have always had a positive effect on the Gribbles’ timeliness) and headed out, John and Henry walking, Phoebe and Thomas in backpacks.

A pretty good snapshot of hiking with various small children.

It was a windy day, and it got windier the farther we went. We turned around when the boys were showing signs of fatigue, although John was (very emphatically) not ready to head back to the car.

A group shot of the Johnsons, Brinkmans, and Gribbles.

After the hike we went to Larkburger for lunch and then we split up because Dave, Phoebe, and I were going to Henry Nikolaidis’s 2nd birthday party. It was a Life Aquatic themed party, so there was a super cool submarine in the backyard! It’s always good to see the ex–Rowman & Littlefield friends and babies.

We all live...

On Sunday we went to church and then played at home in the afternoon. We had pickle chicken (a crock pot Thursday favorite) for dinner and played Trivial Pursuit, which Dave won after coming from behind.

Phoebe's first ever peanut butter and jelly sandwich!

Phoebe and Mommy in the backyard.

On Monday we had to go back to work, but it was a YABS night and Thomas’s birthday, so the Brinkmans hosted. It was great to have everyone together again (minus the Bronskis, whom we missed a lot). There were party hats and cupcakes: pretty great for a handsome one-year-old!

This party hat will come off in seconds. It's temporarily cute, though!

John, Rob, Henry, and the cupcakes.

Big John, Phoebe, Greg, Thomas, Little John, Rob, Emily.

Thomas (escaping), John, Henry, and Phoebe.

John, Phoebe, and Lion.