Been a Long Time!

My goodness! It has been an extremely long time since I have had a new post! Things have been mad around here with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and 2 deer seasons. I'll slowly be trying to get everyone back up to speed.

We went back to Kansas for our three Thanksgivings. All of my family was there except Matt who stayed and had his own Thanksgiving in New York (he came back for Christmas). It was a very nice, quiet Thanksgiving, not much going on. As we do every year we went and got Christmas trees, five to be exact. My parents, Grandma H., JD and Soni, Jerry and Shelby, and ours.


This was our first year to have the room for a real Christmas tree, and I didn't want just a little Christmas tree (since we have vaulted ceilings). So, we ended up hauling back to Colorado a "9+" ft Christmas tree. It was gorgeous and I truly enjoyed having a real tree again!


Shortly after we got back from Thanksgiving Joel and Jerry left once more for Kansas' deer season. They camped out in Jerry's new spike tent and used Joel's new cylinder stove for heating and cooking. Both of them have birthdays in December so Shelby and I cordinated their gifts so that eventually we can each buy the other piece and have our own tent sets. Sounds goofy I know but it's worked out nicely.



Joel got a nice ten-point buck. I'm so glad my husband has a sense of humor. Yes those are deer on his pants.


I had a wide variety of things to do while Joel was gone, including some work, but I wanted to take some time to do something I wanted to do so I took a road trip. I headed off back to Kansas. I'll save that trip for the next update. Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas!

Jennifer

Getting Settled

Well, we feel like we are really getting settled in here. We actually started decorating a few weeks ago! It always takes me forever to get our houses decorated. I don't know why I'm so slow at it, but it has been started. I think that secretly I hope that if I put it off long enough one of those freaky decorators from tv will appear in my living room to do it for me. As you can see Joel's deer finally has a nice home (I think that is Joel's favorite part of the whole house).



This last Saturday Joel and I went to another Air Force Academy football game. It was a blast and we had great seats. They played BYU and unfortunately they lost. The two games we went to this year were definitely their toughest games and even though they lost it was a really fun game.

This time we sat next to the entire section of cadets. It was beyond loud for entire game! They start the game by having the cadets march onto the field with the flags. I think that it's only the underclassmen but I'm not totally sure. After the national anthem they storm off the field and run into the section that is reserved for them.




The fly over included three very low F-15 and then there were seven people who parachuted onto the field with different flags and banners.





This is one of my favorite parts of the games. When they want the crowd to get loud they show parts of the big battle scene from "Brave Heart". The crowd really goes wild!



Oh, and guess what! We've had three more snows since my last post.

Snow!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay everybody, I know it has been a really long time since I have updated my blog but I'm finally getting around to it. Work has been really busy and it is starting to settle into a steady pace.

The weather has been fanstastic here! It changes a lot! It starts out cold, and then usually warms up to cool to fairly warm. We have definitely had our cold snaps though! As a matter of fact we have actually had two snows already. The first snow was on October 13th and was just a dusting a couple of times but the ground was too warm for it to stick around.

The second time was on October 21st. We got 5 inches over night and then we got more snow on and off throughout the next day. When the sun came out it started to melt but it stuck around in the shadows for about 3 days. Our lowest tempurature since we've lived here was about 10 degrees.

As you can see that we defintely still had fall colors when the snow came:






In our front room we have three very large windows, this was our view while it was snowing more later that day:


I love the weather here and I'm pretty excited to see some of the real mountain snows here! I'm sure by the time Spring actually comes I'll be ready for a warm up.

Football!

I love Fall for many reasons! I love the cool crisp weather, the changing leaves, and football - especially college football. I don't care for professional football for many reasons that I won't get into. Anyway, a couple weeks ago Joel, Jerry, Shelby, and I went to the Air Force vs Navy game at the Air Force Academy. It was a blast even though Air Force lost. There are two trophies that they compete for. One is the Commander in Chief trophy for the winner of the football game and the other one is for the 7 intramural sports they play before the game. Air Force swept all 7 of those and so they at least got one of the trophies.


We had some very interesting and entertaining people around us. About 5 rows down from us was a gang of middle aged people. They had one leader (note the picture)who would jump up during all breaks in the game and lead them in a very heart-felt cheer. They were awesome!

Sitting in the row in front of us were 4 guys who played football for Air Force. I don't think I have tell you that they took the loss to their rival quite hard. One of the guys had even came all the way from Washington for the game.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the game was the fly over before the game started. Of course since it was an Air Force game the fly over simply has to be great. They were going to have some people parachute onto the football field but it was too windy. However, they did have a Stealth bomber (B-2) and two of our brand-new fighters (the F-22). These are some impressive machines! I didn't get great pictures because I was busy watching. Later!

The Great Accomplishment!

Alright everyone work has just been crazy busy so I haven't updated in forever, but I'm going to try to catch up! Before I got started on all the somewhat interesting things we've been doing I wanted to let you know about our Great Accomplishment of the year...Last weekend Joel and I drove back to El Dorado for the weekend. It takes 8 hrs and 6 minutes and is 537 miles from our house and we drove it without stopping, not even once!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fall in the Rockies

Last Sunday after church Joel and I took a drive up to Cripple Creek to see the changing aspen trees. Cripple Creek sits at 9,500 ft (about 1,000 ft above us). There are more aspens there than in most other places because way "back in the day" the people who settled the area to mine cut down the pine trees for lumber.

This weekend the colors are supposed to be even better, but we probably won't make it up there again. The bright yellows and oranges were beautiful against the dark green of the pine trees.

I've always loved seeing Fall in Kansas and the Ozarks so I was pleasantly surprised to see so much color. I know it's still not the same, but here's a handful of my favorite photos.

Marshalls, Meet Your Foe!

So a few days ago Joel and I were removing some debris from a house, including a very large dog house. In order to break the dog house apart we tipped it over. As we did we were swarmed with yellow jackets which decided to follow us all the way to the front of the house and finally our truck - Where I was stung twice (the wrist and over my left kidney). Let me tell you, that is nothing like a bee sting. Joel somehow got away with no stings.



These mini-creatures had built their home right under the dog house into the ground. I had no idea that these things would build under items such as that dog house. When we got home I did a little research to make sure of what these angry stinging things were and discovered that yellow jackets and other such creatures are very common here in Colorado. That extension office webpage seemed to scream at me, "Meet your new foe!" I guess we'll know next time to be careful when removing large items from long abandoned houses.

Here's a guy that had a lot of fun getting rid of an underground yellow jacket nest! I wish I could have done this to that nest.

It just goes to show that no matter where you live there is always something to deal with and that no place is perfect.