Reluctant to say Happy Birthday...

This is Dr. Y, one of the most adventurous, loving, generous, intelligent, warm, joyful, vivacious people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. And, I have to admit, I am ashamed to leave it at that because I fear I have done a great disservice by leaving the vast majority of this incredible being unnoted.

Our friendship started a little more than 4 years ago when I began nursing school. On May 2nd he rounded the corner at full speed, with blistering enthusiasm to head into his 90th year. I love this man so much. The enormous influence he has had on my life is not something I could describe in its totality because it reaches far beyond my words and into my heart.

This Sunday we are celebrating this enormous milestone in Dr. Y's life, but as you probably know, I will be leaving for Germany for a year on May 31st. As much as I wish it wasn't true, Dr. Y is human and in the last few months his mortality has been knocking at the door to remind us it has to end sometime. I am afraid.

Am I allowed to say that? ...
Because I want him to live forever.

I want him to keep teaching me the incredible lessons he's learned, to share the hundreds of stories and perspectives hes gained in his lifetime, to show me how much love he has for life.

I need a magic genie...I have a request.

To bad "the secret" wont work in this case. The universe cannot provide this.

Instead, I let go. I let the cycle move on. And On Sunday, I will say, "Happy Birthday" with my words, "goodbye" with my eyes, and "I will always love and think of you" with my heart.

-M

Headed for the highway....

Girls weekend up north with Mom, M2 and Kendra :) We are going antiquing, out to dinner, planting tomato bushes, watching chic flix and doing whatever we girls want to do!

Have a great weekend and enjoy the weather!

-M

Aren't these beautiful?

These pears are my mother-in-law's. I love them because they are so organic looking and they remind me of how I am looking foward to growing my own fresh ripe pears one day. I hope to have a home with enough space to grow a fruit orchard. My parents used to have a pear tree, a sour cherry tree, rhubarb plants, and a raspberry bush. There never seemed to be enough raspberries on that bush. I used to love to go outside in the afternoon and when no one was looking, huddle down behind the bush and pick all the lush ripe red ones! Unfortunately, mom and dad have since removed the pear tree and raspberry bush. Bummer. While I am reminicing about my love for fresh homegrown fruits, I just remembered that my oma used to grow these beautiful little berries in her back yard and make jam out of them for a delicious breakfast treat! Apparently they were banned when I was a little girl and she had to stop growing them. I never knew why they disappeared until just recently when she told me that!

I have to say, my all time favorite season is fall, when the italian prune plums come to the market. They are so beautiful and taste so delicious when they are cooked in a pan with just a little bit of cinnamon and sugar! Mmmm. They are my oma's favorite too. :)

If you like something a little more fancy, a fabulous way to prepare them is to make a short-bread sort of dough and quarter them on top. Bake, and when its fresh from the oven, sprinkle it with sugar. Pflaumenkuchen :)

Doing only what I'm supposed to...

I am in such a spring mood. I want to plant my own herbs and grow a vegetable garden, go to the farmers market to get fresh fruits, pick flowers and put them in vases everywhere, go for walks every morning and ride my bike at the park. Its funny because this is the first year I feel like putting my hands in the dirt. I have never had a fascination with growing flowers like my mom and Oma do. Don't misunderstand me, I have always loved them, and after being in Colorado I realized just how much I really can't live without the lush gardens I have grown up with, but I have just never desired to create them myself. And now, its like they're calling my name. I need to plant!!! And I don't have a home of my own to do it in. I am a nomad right now. :) Oh, I am so hoping that our little house in Germany will have a flowerbox or two! In the meantime, Daniel bought me flowers on my return home from Florida. :) Aren't they beautiful?

This morning I made these lovely baguettes from Mireille Guiliano's book French Women Don't Get Fat. As is typical of me and cooking, I didn't follow the recipe. I used two cups of whole wheat flour and two cups of white. It is delicious!




Baguettes

These 18-24-inch wands of French bread are as much a symbol of France as the Eiffel Tower. And while French women don’t often have need to bake them today, when they are for sale on almost every commercial block of every town and city, there’s no substitute for the intoxicating aromas of freshly baked bread at home. Good baguettes should be crusty, moist and slightly chewy and, of course, flavorful. And they are amazingly easy to make.

INGREDIENTS


4-5 cups flour
1 teaspoon dry yeast
2 cups warm water
2 teaspooons kosher salt

Serving: Makes 4 baguettes; Serving = 1 oz piece

INSTRUCTIONS

In a small bowl dissolve yeast in ½ cup warm water using a fork. Set aside for 10 minutes.Combine flour and salt. Add yeast mixture, stir in remaining 1½ cup water. Mix until sticky enough to knead. Knead for 6-10 minutes; dough should be sticky and smooth. Put in a bowl, cover with a damp tea cloth, and let rise at room temperature until doubled in volume. Punch down and divide into 4 pieces. Roll each into a ball and shape into a baguette. Transfer to slightly greased baking sheet (I use a special baguette-shaped baking pan) and let rise until nearly doubled). Brush with mixture of one beaten egg and one TB water. Score. Pour two cups of hot water in a pan and place in preheated 450° F oven. Bake the baguettes for 15 minutes then lower temperature to 400° F and bake for 10 minutes until golden brown. Remove and cool on a rack before slicing.

An Abert's Squirrel

We saw this squirrel in our campground yesterday and thought it was some freak accident between a rabbit and a squirrel but it turns out that its actually "normal"! Clint says they are called Abert's Squirrels ....and people hunt them here. check it out!

Hi Mom,

This is for you. We only have a few moments before we head out to dinner here in Boulder with Adriane. We are going to a restaurant called Sunflower that serves local, organic vegetarian cuisine. Check out the website.

MTN Biking Training Course

This is so sweet that this is loaded! So here is a park in Fort Collins that trains you for extreme mountain biking. I was already out of comission on the first thing I tried. Anyway, here is Daniel's spectacular performance.

Another Rainy Day

Today we headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park to check out what kind of hiking trails they had. When we pulled up to get our park sticker the gentleman at the booth told us most trails were still coverd in 50 inches of snow. But we found one that wasnt. On our way up we saw a huge heard of elk, a few new kinds of birds, and some hampster/gopher like things we called "Humphrey(s)." Humphrey burrows multiple tunnels underground - all connected of course - and he scurries around the prairielands popping in and out of different holes. Of course, anything resembling a squirrel and Daniel is all over it, so we'd already had a great day and it was only 9:00!

This guy's actually very vivid blue and black and quite a pest. He was sitting on the elks neck pecking away. But the elk didnt seem to mind.

So, when we did start hiking, we couldnt just stay on the trails. First i'll preface these next pictures and story I am going to tell with how we have been listening to my sisters "The Secret" book on tape series. We decided to test the "law of attraction" by stating out loud that, "we want to see the bones of an animal killed by a mountain lion." So we went hiking up this mountain, and along the way we came across a few ribs, and a huge antler and a few other pieces. Then...we hit jackpot! We basically found what was obviously the boneyard of a mountain lion (or some other large animal eating machine) which was poised overtop a large hole looking like a possible kitty-den created by large boulders. The pictures dont really tell the truth very well, but there were two spines with attached pelvis', femurs still attached to lower legbones, plenty of ribs, an antler, etc. We thought it was sweet.

Antler found on our way up the mountain/foothill?

Our trail...from the viewpoint of the lions den (we think).

Just before we found the bones we stopped to rest on a rocky cliff. This was the view looking downward.

And...our boneyard.

the femur (or something) with joint cartilage disc still intact. Sweet. Course i picked it up silly!!! This is the same girl who dissected the duck in Andrea's neighbors yard when we were little. :)

One pelvis,

two pelvis...

No mountain lions though. You'll all be happy to know we are fully intact and healthy. Tonight we are staying in Boulder and enjoying a regular bed for the first night in 7 days. Happy Easter to you all!

Love,

Marlayna & Daniel

more from the last blog....

After a few hours there (Shambalah Mountain Center), and a scrumptious meal of brown rice, beans, kale and salad, we left for Estes Park. When we arrived it was rather cloudy and rainy but it quickly opened up to reveal some beautiful snow capped mountain peaks, a bavarian style downtown, a pretty rainbow and the historical, and picturesque Stanley Hotel.
The Stanley Hotel was a neat stop because it was more than just the inspiration for Stephen King's story "THE SHINING". It was built by F.O. Stanley, famous for the Stanley Steamer (which is not a vacuum - as I had thought when I remembered the advertisement, "tough on dirt, gentle on carpet." That's me for ya.) Stanley settled in Estes Park in 1903 when he believed he was sick and near death. He decided to purchase the gem of 160 acres the Stanley Hotel sits on today and build what you see here. The main building took 2 years to build and was built with timber from the nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. F.O. Stanley died in 1940 (a bit later than he'd originally planned) so he got to see the town blossom as he helped develope a sewer, power and water company, as well as Estes Park's first bank. Apparently room 217 is the best place to be because Theodore Roosevelt (1915), Stephen King (1973), Jim Carrey (filming Dumb & Dumber), and the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown Titanic Survivor all stayed there. We thought it was sweet.


So of the 300 days a year of sunshine Colorado boasts, i am pretty sure we have seen at least 7 of the rainy/cloudy days. And, would you believe we still think its fabulous?

We're On The Road Again...

Daniel took this picture to show everyone back home just how many bikes people ride around here (Fort Collins). This is a small portion of the bikes in this community. As he put it,"people ride horses like we ride bikes, and people ride bikes like we drive cars." Actually, quite an accurate statement so far.

So we finished up in Fort Collins by touring the Poudre canyon which was beautiful. Huge walls of rock jutting straight up from the earth to touch the sky, the poudre river meandering over boulders and between the rocky walls, coyotes playing in the grassy meadows, and bighorn sheep trimming what little grasses grew on the cliffs.

After traveling through the canyon for about an hour we took this tiny little dirt road all the way up to a place called the Shambalah Mountain Center. Can I just tell you guys that even back there we saw a truck that was stopped next to a bunch of four wheelers that read across the back windows, "MONA VIE: Drink It, Feel It, Share It." How did someone think of these people all the way back there!? I was quite impressed to say the least. Anyway, Shambalah Mountain Center is a Buddhist retreat on 600 acres, boasting what is called The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya. A project that took 14 years to build and is the largest and most elaborate example of Buddhist architecture in North America. It was amazingly interesting to see what and why this monument was built. What it represents cannot even begin to be described in this measly blog, so peak at their website. It's fascinating.