Seven months

Prepare for lots of pictures in this post. Nora is getting funnier and cuter every day, and tomorrow she will be seven months old.

Nora has two bottom teeth that you can see when she gives you this cheesy grin.

She's pretty much delighted with life most of the time.

Nora sits up on her own really well now! Singing songs is still one of her favorite things.

We just love her wrinkled up nose and chubby cheeks. (Not to mention those thighs.)

OK, on to some other photos from the past month.

Hiking at Vedauwoo

Admiring rock formations with Dad

Falling asleep on the trail

Exploring the piano with Mom

How soon should we start lessons?

Sitting up like a big girl!

Cheesy grin in the high chair! Nora really likes sitting up at the table with us. She just started sitting in this chair and it has made OUR meal times much easier.

Nora is growing lots of hair on top. Not so much around the sides and back.

We finally discovered a food she likes -- carrots!

Yum!

Nora loves to splash in the bathtub, so we went to the pool to see if she'd enjoy that. Not too much. She didn't cry, but almost the whole time we were in the water, she hummed in a nervous way.

All ready for school in skinny jeans and a shirt that says, "Auntie Says I'm Super Cute." Thanks, Aunt Sarah!

Vegan baking???

We recently learned that the wee one is allergic to milk and eggs, so I've cut those things out of my diet. I'm pretty fond of baking and eating delicious things, so I'm looking for things that I can enjoy without triggering Nora's allergies.

So far we've tried vegan baked doughnuts, which were pretty great (though they tasted more like sweet rolls than doughnuts) Recipe: http://www.namelymarly.com/2010/06/happy-donut-day-have-you-had-a-vegan-donut/

Next we tried vegan chocolate chip cookies, which did not turn out great. They tasted OK, but were flat and the texture was off. After refrigerating the dough, the next pans full of cookies were better, but I'm still looking for a different cookie recipe. Let me know if you have recommendations.

And last night we had zucchini pancakes, which were really delicious. Recipe: http://vegweb.com/recipes/zucchini-pancakes

Miscellaneous summer stuff

Part 3 of Summer 2011 Coverage

Early in the summer, Mike and I went to Boulder, Colorado for the day. It's a beautiful place, with the University of Colorado campus, downtown shopping, an amazing independent bookstore, and a great farmer's market. Here are a few pictures:

Tulips downtown

Flowers at the farmer's market

Mike at the Dushanbe Teahouse, where we ate lunch

On a different note altogether, one of my library classrooms got new laptops (yay!) and white boards. I'm very pleased and excited to teach there this fall:

For the first time since moving to Laramie, Mike and I were in town for Independence Day. Laramie has a huge celebration called "Freedom has a Birthday." Here's a picture of the main musical stage:

Freedom has a Birthday was really fun -- there were four stages in Washington Park. Also, free ice cream from the Freemasons and lemonade from the Democrats. (I heard the Republicans were giving away watermelon, but didn't run into their booth.)

Mike's mom visited us this summer, and we had a great time introducing her to Laramie. We went up to Vedauwoo for a walk around and to the Snowy Mountains. It was mid-July, but the Snowies still had tons of snow that shut down our attempts to go on a hike! On our way down from the Snowies we stopped for pizza at the Bear Tree Tavern and noticed this sign for the restrooms. It made us giggle.

Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series of books, visited Laramie for a lecture and a reading. I went with my friend Kennedy and met the author. I'm reading the series now, and it's pretty entertaining. Her books include time travel, romance, and historical fiction, set (at first) in the Scottish Highlands.

Me, Kennedy, and Diana Gabaldon

Finally, a few food highlights from the summer. Mike and I have a share in Community Supported Agriculture, and every week we receive a box of vegetables and fruits from a farm in northern Colorado.

Here's a zucchini quiche, right before I popped it into the oven. It was delicious!

Pad thai, made with lots of the vegetables from our CSA share

This raspberry freezer jam does not represent produce from our CSA, but is actually made from Mink Creek raspberries given to us by my mom. It was my first-ever time making jam, and it's totally delicious.

Autumn

My parents visited last weekend, and we had such a good time. One of our activities was a trip to the Shambhala Mountain Center in Northern Colorado. It's a Buddhist retreat -- in Colorado. Quite unexpected.

Here's the Buddha statue inside the Great Stupa
Mom with a cast of the Buddha's head
Ceiling of the Great Stupa
Mom and Dad in the hills of Colorado. (Dad's making some kind of weird face.)

Earlier this fall I went to Baltimore for the Association of Research Libraries Assessment Conference. It was a really awesome conference, with librarians from the U.S., U.K, and Australia sharing assessment ideas and results. Baltimore is a pretty nice city. Besides attending the conference I got to go to an art museum, visit Edgar Allen Poe’s grave, eat a lot of fresh seafood, spend some time at the beautiful Inner Harbor, and have dinner with a good friend from library school who lives in Baltimore. Here are some photos:

Inner Harbor

Peabody Institute
At the Walters Art Museum
Faidley's Crab Cake -- BEST CRAB CAKE EVER
Downtown Baltimore -- I love visiting urban places, but I also love coming home to Laramie.

We've enjoyed produce all summer and fall from Grant Family Farms in Northern Colorado. We bought a share from the farm and they deliver to Laramie once a week. Here's one of the more beautiful things I've made with the local vegetables:

Leek quiche with tomatoes

The Return Trip

Part of the fun on our trip to Yellowstone was traveling through parts of Wyoming we hadn't seen yet. We covered big swaths of the state since we live in the southeast corner of Wyoming and Yellowstone is in the northwest corner.

On leaving the park, we went through Cody, Wyoming. We stopped at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and looked at art and artifacts there. Here are a few sculptures we saw:

Buffalo Bill Cody himself

Sacajewea

Crazy Horse

After spending some time in Cody, we hit the road again and stopped in Meeteetse, Wyoming. Meeteetse, a town of about three hundred people, has one of the best chocolate shops you're likely to find anywhere. The shop is owned and operated a cowboy-chocolatier named Tim Kellogg. Check out the Meeteetse Chocolatier's website for a promo video that show's Tim's skills in the rodeo arena and in the chocolate shop.

We spent that night in Thermopolis, Wyoming, home of one of the world's largest mineral hot springs. We stayed at a really great hotel. The building is historic, and the amenities were great, including a mineral springs hot tub. If you're ever passing through Thermopolis, we highly recommend the Best Western!

Packing

Packing has begun and we're stacking boxes in the spare bedroom. Simone feels the need to climb as high as she can to get a good view of all family activities.

Mike and I took a break from packing yesterday to go to the farmer's market. We got some beautiful strawberries, a nice salad mix, some yummy kettle corn, and this tomato.

The tomato vendors grow big, beautiful, perfect tomatoes, but this one came from the red bin of half-priced "ugly or small" tomatoes. I think it looks a bit like a heart and it was deeee-licious.

Another Trip to Chicago (The Last for a While?)

Last weekend we had a super-fun, super-quick trip to Chicago. It may be our last visit to the Windy City in a while, since we're hoping (planning) to move back to the West this summer. (More on that later, once I actually have a job. Don't want to jinx it by saying too much too soon. But I have a few interviews in the next few weeks.)

We ate dinner at one of our all-time-favorite Chicago restaurants, Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinders. Problem is, it's everyone else's favorite, too, and we waited an hour and twenty minutes for a table. But it was worth the wait. After dinner, we went to The Second City for a hilarious show, America: All Better! We spent some lovely quality time at the Art Institute. One of the best parts was an exhibit of portraits by Yousuf Karsh. He photographed everyone, from Elizabeth II to Walt Disney to Audrey Hepburn, and the exhibit was really fantastic.

We went to the Chicago Public Library main branch for the first time and it's a lovely place. The picture above is an atrium on the 9th floor. They also had an interesting Lincoln exhibit.

This was one of my favorite "library" quotes on the walls of the Chicago Public Library. "The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man." T.S. Eliot.

One more picture from the library -- a future librarian!

The main reason for our trip to Chicago was to see This American Life, live at the Chicago Theatre. It was amazing! We got to see it again in a local theatre on Thursday night, and it was maybe even more amazing in the movie theatre because we were seeing Ira Glass's face up close and huge on the big screen instead from 2 balconies back. We're huge, giant fans of TAL. You should listen to it if it's available on your local NPR station. My favorite story from the live show was Dan Savage's story about faith, loss of faith, and his mother's death.

Below are just a couple of random photos from our walk around Chicago. First, some cabbages growing in a flower pot and second, a giant "American Gothic" statue with the two iconic people as world travelers.