Seriously?

I love my car. It's a 2006 Honda CRV and it is the perfect car for drives to mountains, cross country road trips and handling in Denver's random snowstorms. It has not been involved in any accidents (sorry Windstar) and it's brakes have never randomly failed on me (Ahem,I'm talking to you 1996 CRV). It has never hurt a soul.

A few Monday's ago I came out in a snowstorm to go to work. My beautiful car was sitting nicely in the street where we had left it the night before. The scene was something like this:


When I approached my car to dust off the snow and get inside as quickly as possible, I couldn't help but notice that the passenger's sideview mirror was sitting on the hood.


Now, being the sweetheart that I am, I imagined that someone got a little too close to our car on Sunday night and swiped off the mirror. Sure, it would be a less than ideal situation, but one that I could understand. I decided I didn't feel comfortable driving in that much snow without a sideview mirror and went back inside to wait out the storm.

I cam down about an hour later and actually started brushing the snow off of the car. There was finally a little visibility. That's when I began to notice that there were cuts and dents on the driver's side of the car. This is the side on the curb- no on the street. It couldn't have been caused by a sideswipe. It started to become clear that someone had actually attacked my innocent CRV!



I had never been in a situation like this before (I mean, really, who has?) but I did the right thing and called 911. A Denver police office was there in less than five minutes and after talking on the phone for a few minutes informed me that the unheard of had in fact happened: they already had the guy who did this in jail. WOW. That was a shock. Usually you hear about these middle of the night attacks on cars without any suspects. Apparently the guy who attacked our car was kicked out of a bar. His reaction? He hit our car with a wrought iron chair. They had to chase him a few blocks away and pepper spray him down after he hit that sideview mirror across three lanes of traffic. The damage ended up costing $3,700! Luckily, our insurance covered it. We are working now on getting the deductible back.

We have learned our lesson. No parking in front of bars! I hope the attacker learned his lesson, too: no more drinking on sundays.

VISITORS!

So we didn't have a whole lot of visitors when we lived in PA, but since we have moved to CO visitors have been flocking to pass out on our undersized papason cushion in our little apartment. I'd like to think all of these fabulous visitors just love us so much - but I think the Rocky Mountains might have something to do with the surge in guests.

We already posted about Brendan's visit in January- but we have had subsequent visits from Chris (Sean's brother), Carol (Sarah's mom) and Keith (Sarah's brother) all spaced out through the last few months. FUN!

First was Chris in Feb. Sean was able to take a big chunk of time off of work and head to the mountains for some snowboarding with Chris. Even more fun- we headed up to Breckenridge with a couple of Chris' buddies from college who we have become good friends with since we moved to Colorado.


Brothers!



The Guys


The Ladies

Carol cmame to visit the week of her birthday in March. We had a blast! We went to the new exhibit at the Denver Art Museum featuring concert posters from San Francisco in 1965-1971. We went on opening day and it was packed- it was a very hands on and informative presentation.



We also checked out a few of the regular exhibits at the museum. We checked out some delicious plase to eat- but we definitely had more success and more fun cooking at home. I also took her by my office so that she could meet the staff and see first hand some of the work that we do.

Keith came to visit last week and he got a full Denver experience! The 16th street mall, Opening Day for the Rockies (against the Phillies!), Rocky Mountain National Park and Red Rocks were all highlights of the week. Now, he and Sean didn't get tickets to Opening Day like they had planned and tried to do, but it was still an EVENT in Denver. Every bar in the city was packed- I think it helped that many people had off for Good Friday because the game was in the middle of the afternoon. Phillies lost that game but came back to win the series. The highlight for Sean and I was the hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. from Glacier Gorge Trailhead we hiked 5 miles checking out Nymph Lake, Bear Lake, Dream Lake and Alberta Falls. All of these were covered in snow, though, and not super spectacular to look at. I can't wait to go in the summer to see how beautiful these lakes can be when you actually see them! Still, hiking in snow is beautiful. Keith was a trooper and dealt with the snow the whole time no complaints.






After our hike we returned to a delicious Easer dinner thanks to HoneyBaked Ham and Mom and Dad! A fabulous surprise in the mail, the HH Easter Dinner with all the fixings was able to feed the three of us as well as a handful of our friends. It made being away from our families on a special holiday just a little bit easier. On Sunday we went to a sunrise Easter Service at Red Rocks. It wasn't a beautiful day, but the service was fabulous nonetheless. This was the 62nd Easter service done at Red Rocks!









We have one more confirmed visitor for June...but we hope you will come have some of this fun with us!

Long Time No Post

Why hello there once dedicated readers who have likely given up on the prospect of me ever posting again! It has been a fabulous 2+ months here in Denver and I am excited to finally fill you in on all of our busy-ness.

So in our January post I talked about our first Snowshoeing trip to Brainard Lake. Since then we have gone three more times- including two overnights! I have definitely taken to the snowshoeing and camping more than I did to snowboarding (though I am still happy to keep trying to learn the snowboard thing!) I think it is just easier..and a bit more peaceful.

The first trip was with a few friends to the Bear Lake area in Indian Peaks Wilderness. We hiked for two or three hours and it was snowing the whole time- pretty fun! The next trip, which we took the last weekend in February was in the James Peak Wilderness off of the East Portal Trailhead. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot- we got the last spot! It was pretty crowded- with quite a few backcountry skiers- but no one else stayed the night.

We (or, more accurately, Sean)built our first snow cave! It was roomy and warm and pretty awesome. It was built pretty quickly, and just off of the trail.








It was so much fun! The first picture is of Sean using the probe to measure the snow in order to make sure that we had enough space to build a solid snow cave. Sean melted snow and boiled the water to pour into bottles for us to throw in the sleeping bags. It made for a much more pleasant experience! We also just used the Mountain House dehydrated meals so were able to just throw a couple of cups of water into the bag of food and have a great meal in nine minutes. We love this method because it involves no dirty dishes- just a bag we can throw away.

For the last weekend in March we went to Rocky Mountain National Park and hiked up to Ouzel (pronounced ooze-le) Falls on the Wild Basin Trail. We filled out a backcountry permit and hiked. The first two miles were on a road that is actually open in the summer- it is frustrating to hike along a road! It feelsl ike it is taking that much longer to get to the wilderness. Even though we were hiking just two days after a blizzard hit Denver we didn't need our snow shoes for the first 3+ miles of the hike. The best part was that when we got to the fork in the trail where the trail splits into two with the second spoke going to backcountry camp sites. We had to forge the trail the entire way to an adequate camp site- it was obvious no one had camped back there in a long, long time.

Once we decided on a spot to set up our new four-season tent (yippeee hooray!!!) we stomped out a sleeping space (Not flat enough as our backs found out the hard way later that evening)and set up the tent. It is much bigger then our 3-season and it has two vestibuels (so Sean can be setting up the stove in the front vestibule while I load clothes/sleeping bags in through the back vestibule etc.) this one change made a huge difference in both getting camp set up quickly and breaking camp quickly.








In these shots you can see our new tent (and Sean in the vestibule), our backcountry camping permit and a sign that reads "All stock except for llamas permitted"

So it was nice to get out to the woods even during the winter- but it did make me very anxious for the colors that come out during Colorado's springs and summers...once this snow melts there will be many more trip reports!