July 5, 2009

July 5, 2009

I’m writing this all on Wednesday because I haven’t had time to do it. Aspen is such a fun place, I just couldn’t take the time to write. I don’t want to leave out anything important, though, so I thought it best to get these things in before forgetting.

On this morning, we took a beautiful ride—albeit it, nausea-producing—to a monastery about a half-hour outside of town. We’d visited the monastery itself a couple of years ago when we were here with Candace. The stables provide their “fund-a-monk” program. I don’t think the monks would call it that, but that’s what the horse trainers call it. The stable has a statue of the Virgin Mary on it, as you can see from one of the pictures. I’m very disappointed in most of the pictures we’ve taken. They’re the result of an inept photographer and a slow-responding camera.

Ella really took to the horses. We called her the “horse whisperer” because she seemed to feel comfortable right away and started talking to her horse immediately. Poor Betsy had been miserably sick on the ride over to the stables. I think we should have given her more time to recover before putting her on a horse. Next time we’ll know better. She went on the ride but didn’t really enjoy it. Rich and David went on the ride with the girls and the trainer. Kristen and I stayed back with Leuck and Kristen led him around on his horse.

All the kids seem to have inherited that Siegwald motion sickness. Kristen suffered with it, too. She gives them ginger gum and puts special bracelets on their wrists, but nothing seems to really help very much.

The girls had a great trainer with them on their ride who really helped Betsy out a lot. Her name was Mariah. She gave the girls some pretty necklaces when they finished their ride.

When the ride was over, we piled into the car again and headed to Basalt, a small town near Aspen. David and I had been there before. It’s really a cute little town—not too much to it, really—less than there was when we were last there. It looks like the economy might have been responsible for closing down some businesses there. However, the restaurant we went to with Candace and Holt was still standing and it was a great spot. We sat outside on a deck with the river running by us just a few feet away.

After lunch we returned to Aspen and chilled out for a while. Then David and I went in one direction and The Williams Family in another. Kristen, Inc., went to Nobu, a good sushi restaurant in town. The kids ate edamame, raw yellowtail snapper and black cod with miso. They finished off the meal with mochi ice cream. They ate it all with chopsticks. David and I went to the Aspen Chapel where an actor from the Tennessee Players was playing the role of Albert Schweitzer in a one character play. When Candace and I were kids around 10 or 11 years old, we read The Biography of Albert Schweitzer and were really impressed by him. When I saw the play advertised in the Aspen News, I just had to go. I hadn’t known that there was an organization formed to promote his philosophy of Reverence for Life, sustainability and peace. The Aspen Chapel is a non-denominational chapel that invites all kinds of speakers and artists to visit and share what they have to offer with the community. Aspen, in general, has many interesting visitors. I was glad I got to see the play.