Yesterday, before my mother takes off on her little road trip, we took a drive into the Indian Peaks wilderness, a spectacular area northwest of Denver that we have, somehow in all these years, still not explored completely.

 I love this picture because this is such a typical and familiar image of my mother, leaning on a fence with a camera in her hands, and horses somewhere nearby.

 Horses that came to say hello.

 I love the smell of a horse's breath, like warm grass. 

The yellow schoolhouse is a startling contrast in that empty valley.

 Trainspotting.

 Daddyspotting.

 Mum and I came around a corner to be suprised by these two jokers...aha!

 Mike took this picture - isn't it sweet? Somehow captures all the joy we were taking in around us.

 Q picked a wild daisy for me.

 Always the explorer.

 So beautiful, every inch.

 Waving to the train as it heads for the tunnel that goes through the mountain. The conductor blew his whistle for Q.

 Hard to post right now, since I am caught between work, Q's recovery process, and my mum's biannual visit from New York, but suffice to say that Q's recovery has been sporadic. While she returned to the land-of-the-living a great deal more quickly than most, her tendency to overdo it (coupled with her chronic inability to just "rest") has definitely made for some rough patches on the road to complete recovery. When her systems fail, they fail hard and fast, but she rallies again just as quickly. 

Here she is in a wan moment, making a giraffe puzzle that a friend sent her. Brilliant puzzle btw, and she was able to put it together "all by" based on the instruction sheet.

 Very proud of her giraffe, a couple of wonky legs notwithstanding!

 So although the bulk of the recovery has gone far more quickly than any of us expected, we are still dealing with the "aftershocks", and she definitely has had (and still is having) her really difficult moments. She still occasionally feels weak, wobby, nauseous, achy, or in various forms of pain...poor kid!

 Fortunately, on day six after surgery, her beloved LaoLao showed up to help her through the rest of the recovery. And oh, how she loves her LaoLao. It has been no end of comfort to her to have LaoLao here through her difficult moments.

This was a down-time, and we have also had up-times. We have had wades in cool mountains streams, and long bike rides in the early autumn sun. We have had picnics and movies and board games and icecream, and plenty of laughs. It hasn't been all good, but it hasn't been all bad. We look forward to less stressful times...but then, so does the rest of the world at this point in time. All in all, we have it pretty good, and we are thankful for that. We have eachother.