Gobble Gobble Snow

We spent Thanksgiving in Denver this year.  We had a nice time but it sure was quiet and we missed all of you.  Our delicious homemade dinner:  juicy turkey, mushroom and chestnut dressing, Brussels sprouts, cranberry apple orange relish, and GRAVY.  Just a bowl of gravy would make a fine Thanksgiving dinner for me.

Over the weekend it snowed again!  At some point it may lose it's novelty, but I still get obnoxiously excited every time I see snow.  You can't see it in the picture but I was actually making a snow and dog poop angel.   Didn't realize it was like that until I got up.  Oh well, it was fun anyway.

Shawn and I walked in the snow all afternoon looking at houses and having a good time.  After a pit stop for nachos we walked through a Christmas tree lot.  So pretty how they all have real snow on them!

Y'all know how I love a little squirrel, especially since right now we don't have a yard for them to tear up.  Check out this cutie eating berries.

Snow!

          Look!  Snow!!  This was at 7am this morning.

          ....and at noon.  Oh well, maybe next time.

My mama will be so proud...

Cuz I hemmed my pants myself!  That's right, I broke out the 'ol Singer and took care of this little problem.  What's the big deal, you ask?  Well, if you think having clothes that fit like they should is no big deal then you aren't a short-legged girl with some junk in her trunk.  My mama was nice enough to school me on some basic skillz and set me up with a sewing machine way back in '89.  Until recently, I had sort of forgotten that I kinda knew how to sew.  Thank goodness Al Gore invented the internet, where I found a neat tutorial on how to hem jeans without looking like a fool.  Had I not already known some sewing stuff, it wouldn't have made any sense at all.  Thanks, Mom!

                                              Before

                                              After

Rocky Mountain National Park

A few weekends ago we took a little road trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park to check it out.  It's a spectacular park with beautiful views and lots of wildlife.  It's also home to Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuously paved road in the world.  We only saw a little piece of the park the day we went.  We plan to go back in the spring and hike into the woods a little to see some of the falls and streams.   The park is only about an hour from Denver and is a great day trip.  We'll take you there after we take you to Red Rocks.  Don't worry, we'll pick up some bottled O2 for you!

This picture was taken from the highest point on Trail Ridge Road at 12,183 feet.  You can't really see it, but we were IN the clouds.

Forest Canyon scenic overlook a little lower down at about 11,000 feet.

 
Next we stopped at Many Parks Curve. That's Shawn heading toward the aspen trees around the bend.

The view from Many Parks Curve.  The little yellow patch in the middle of the picture is a stand of aspens.  Hard to tell in the picture but they are BRIGHT yellow.  Can you see the brown trees mixed in with the green ones?  Colorado has a really bad bark beetle problem that's wiping out the pines.  Some people are saying that the mountains will have NO TREES within the next 10 years because of the bark beetles.  Dats sad. 

Try to ignore the funny-looking lady with the weird hair...just enjoy the trees and mountains.

Nice, huh?

Hmmm...scat.  All you scatologists out there know this belongs to...

...these ladies.  And these ladies belong to...

...this big fella.  The elk bucks travel with harems of lady elk and they are extremely protective of their ladies.  This guy was giving me the "you gettin a little too close to my girls" stink eye.  We happened to visit the park during elk bugling season.  That's when you can hear the elk buck calling out to the ladies, encouraging them to come join his harem or something like that.  We could hear them all over the park.  I thought they sounded kinda like whales.

Bear Lake with a lovely stand of aspens

We certainly came across some photogenic critters, check out this dude posing on a rock.  He looks like a chipmunk but he's actually a yellow-mantled squirrel and so cute!

Here's Shawn in front of some more aspens at Bear Lake.  He's almost as cute as that squirrel!

Hello!

So, have y'all heard about yearbook yourself?  After uploading a pic of your mug you can make yourself cry laughing at all the goofy yearbook pictures with your own face (or someone else's).  It's pretty doggone funny.  Anyway...

Colorado, unlike the pictures above, is a truly beautiful state and is turning out to be a really nice place to live.  The drive out here from Virginia took 2 1/2 days and wasn't boring at all.  After a couple weeks in an extended-stay hotel we moved into our teeny tiny apartment.  We don't intend to stay here for very long but this joint certainly has it's advantages.  The location is great.  Everything we need is within a few blocks and Shawn has an easy commute to work.  I've only bought 1 tank of gas since we moved in on Aug 1.  Crazy!  While we look around for more permanent housing, we're enjoying the view from the itty-bitty balcony of our apartment.  This picture is facing east, can you see the rainbow?  The building we live in looks just like the brick one in the lower right of the picture.

This picture is the view facing west. If you squint you can just barely make out the Rockies above the middle building.  See 'em?  No?  We'll have better mountain pictures soon.

And here is the Colorado State Capital building.  There's a step about halfway up the front that's exactly 1 mile above sea level.  I tried to get a picture of it but the cops said no.

A little horse on a big red chair in front of the Colorado Museum of Modern Art.  Not sure what it's supposed to mean but it's cute, yes?

Oh, here's the Big Blue Bear at the convention center.  The bus with the funny roof belongs to a local tour company. It's an old school bus tricked out to look like a log cabin.  Funny!

I took this one during the Democratic National Convention.  This is what we saw everywhere.  Security was supatight!

Chris Matthews from NBC during the DNC.  He had a stage set up downtown for taping his show during the whole week of the convention.  He seemed to be pretty cool about signing autographs and talking to folks on the street.  You can't see them in this picture, but most all of his assistants/producers/makeup/coffee mug carriers were all really young, pretty, busty women in tight shirts.  Kinda funny.

We went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater to see a taping of A Prairie Home Companion for NPR.  The guy on the big screen is the man who does all the sound effects.  He was the best part of the show, aside from the view.  Red Rocks is just west of the city and is a truly remarkable place.  I don't have the vocabulary to describe it properly so we'll be sure to take you there when you come to visit.

Garrison Keillor and Susy Boggus during the show.  I do enjoy A Prairie Home Companion on NPR but I have to tell you, those producers must do a lot of editing.  The show we saw was nothing like what you hear on the radio.  Garrison is a total perv, y'all.  I was shocked, SHOCKED!  Not to destroy your image of him as Mr Homespun or anything but that dude is a dirty bird....and he's nearly as unattractive as Larry King.  What's creepier than a dirty joke coming from an ugly man nose breathing into a microphone? *shudder* Gah!  We had a fun time at the show, though.  Like I said, Red Rocks is a beautiful place.  Y'all are gonna like it.

Up next, a few pictures from our trip to Amsterdam and Aspen trees...stay tuned!