mountains – Page 2 – Life as Lauren

It’s Monday, it’s August and it feels like the freshest of starts! I’m welcoming August with open arms, because after all the celebrations of July, this feels like the month to slow down and be more mindful about what we really want to fit in during this last full month of summer.

Before July ended, it gave us one last jam-packed weekend and though I never felt like I was in one place for long enough, I kind of liked seeing so much of Colorado — from Boulder, to the mountains, and back to Denver again — in such a short amount of time. I adore this beautiful state of mine.

We ditched work early on Friday and headed to The Med for my mom’s birthday dinner. My love-hate relationship with Boulder is a complicated one, but my relationship with The Med is all love. Sangria for Mom and I, plus a smattering of tapas for the whole table. I think my favorites were the shrimp and bacon-wrapped dates.

After dinner, we strolled the Pearl Street Mall, indulged our inner child at Into the Wind (it’s a toy-store, for those of you who didn’t spend most your childhood in Boulder) and caught sight of this lovely evening sky. Later in the night, the most incredible cloud manifested and I saw no less than five pictures of it on the internet.

We had a two and a half hour drive into the mountains on Saturday morning, but first things first: BREAKFAST BURRITOS! No joke, I rode my bike to our favorite little place, filled my basket with burritos, then rode back home. Joey thought this was the funniest thing ever, but it seemed legit to me. Also, Adam called this “the best breakfast burrito he’s ever had” and I felt like my life goals were accomplished.

Joey’s family has a cabin in Hartsel, Colorado and I didn’t even know that was a place but I was excited nonetheless. Here’s the thing about cabins in the mountains… they are PERFECT! It was so dead quiet up there, in a way that appealed to my introvertedness so hard. I love that it feels so right to just relax, sit in silence, read a book, sip a beer, take a nap. Which is what everyone did! Oh, plus Frisbee golf and a 2,000-piece puzzle that we came nowhere near finishing.

We celebrated July birthdays — I know, I know, I’m as ready to put my birthday to rest as you all probably are — and I introduced my family-in-law to the Whole Foods Chantilly cake. I think it was a life-changing experience for everyone 🙂 Also, the most incredible sunset views! Ugh, I just can’t even get over the beauty that is Colorado. The drive home was mostly about listening to Third Eye Blind, Music from The O.C. and… Click Five. Don’t ask…

Sunday morning, I half-heartedly joined Joey for a run (he’s training for the RnR half) then ditched out to pick us up iced coffee. Later that afternoon, I joined my mom and niece for a “girls’ day!” We took her back-to-school clothes shopping and it was like re-living my childhood all over again. Meaning, my mom did that thing where she’d leave the dressing room to exchange sizes, then return with five new things ♥♥♥ We also took her school supply shopping and I kinda wanted to buy some for myself. Anyway, above is Belle’s favorite outfit from our shopping trip. She COULD HARDLY WAIT to get back to my parents’ to put it on. Too cute!

Back at home, I was greeted by these backyard string lights that Joey started hanging while I was gone. I proceeded to fall in love with them and obsessively take pictures at different points of darkness. We’ve got one more strand to hang, but I’m SO EXCITED about how they look. Also, please note our flourishing garden boxes in that first picture. Our back yard is my favorite right now!

We made these Seared Cod with Potato and Chorizo Hobo Packs (is that PC??) for dinner and though I was insanely excited to try the recipe and we spent $7 and way too much time locating that chorizo, they didn’t turn out the best. As in the potato skins were a little crispy and the chorizo was straight char. I know, because I put a piece in my mouth then had to get up and spit it out in our yard… The cod also completely fell apart but all was not lost because the Pumpkin-Seed Lime Butter we put on top was DELICIOUS!

So long, July and HELLO, August!

For the past 5 years, Joey has been pushing me to take a trip to his family’s cabin in the mountains. And for the past 5 years, I have adamantly said no. We’d had this push/pull dynamic going on for so long, that it became completely automatic for me. I stopped thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to go to the cabin, and just said no. In all honesty, I couldn’t even remember why I’d been saying no for so long, so I stopped and said yes. Now that our weekend at the cabin has come and gone, I’m even more confused about why I’d never wanted to go before.

It was all so perfect (save for a minor hiccup while trying to find the cabin — MapQuest is not to be trusted in places without good satellite service) and I wouldn’t have changed a single thing. We made pancakes for breakfast, read on the deck in the sunshine and fresh mountain air for hours on end, built a puzzle, took multiple guilt-free naps, drank beer, walked the trails and built fires to keep warm at the end of the day when the clouds, rain and wind rolled in with a vengeance. We took a quick trip into the tiny town at the bottom of the mountain and treated ourselves to Blue Bunny ice cream and some of us (cough Joey) got crushed in a game of Uno.

In other words, I was wrong, Joey was right. I loved it and I would go back in a heartbeat.