Sunday

On Sunday morning we went to Castlewood Canyon with Chad, Kevin and Elizabeth. We arrived around 9am and hiked around for about 4 hours. We started on the Rim Trail, sidetracked ourselves with some bouldering and ended up hiking down into the canyon. It was really hot so finding a waterfall to cool us down was perfect. Castlewood Canyon is a small state park and we were smart getting there early, it was super crowded as we were leaving. We had the entire afternoon left and decided to have a picnic back in Denver. Surprise, Surprise a thunderstorm came rolling in and pushed our picnic back inside. The pictures at the bottom show the Denver sky- during a tornado warning and then a half an hour later.

BUSY SPRING

Spring is here- and apparently in Colorado, that means thunderstorms! You probably already know that I LOVE thunderstorms- and watching them through our big windows is a lot of fun...but even I am almost sick of these things by now. We have had seven straight days of intense afternoon showers- and many more during the month of May. I can't wait for some sunshine! Still, it's given Sean some good photogpraphy practice





We ran into lightning (of course) during our second summit attempt of Mt. Harvard. We spent the entire winter getting used to snow shoes and snow climbs so that we could battle Mt. Harvard and win. Of course we showed up and found almost no snow (and this is a week ealrier than we tried to climb last year...crazy) but we did find a lot of rain and a viscious thunderstorm. Still a pretty weekend!







We finally decided after 9 months of living 3 blocks from the capitol that it might be time to take a walk around...





AND! We had a party! There were a whole bunch of June birthdays with friends of ours, and my dear friend Lydia was in town on my birthday, which happens to be just a few days before hers. To celebrate we had a pool party/ bbq- and it was a total blast! It was great for me because it fell on my actual birthday- definitely the most fun celebration I have had in a long time. Lydia and I went to Red Rocks for a concert the day before- the first concert for both of us at that venue.






FINALLY-we've just been learning how to make delicious and inexpensive trail food. We made our first batch of fruit leathers this week - and they were scrumptious!




And our spring kickball league finished, but the summer one has just started. We play in the Sunken Gardens- and our team is undefeated! Even if there's only been one game...



So that's the last few weeks...can't wait until Summer gets here!

SURPRISE!

In early May I flew to DC to surprise the family- Two Baptisms on mother’s day and Matty’s 4th birthday just could not be missed! I am so glad that I went and was able to see my family after so many months away. It was the first time we had all gotten together since Crick and Kate’s wedding in 2007…and Sean was the only one missing L At least we will all be together in North Carolina next month!

Not only did I get to meet the two newest additions to the family, but I also got some time with my dear friend Lucy and saw Crick and Kate’s new house for the first time.

It is harder than I thought it would be to live so far away from everyone. I ti s especially difficult with the nieces and nephews- becasue the adults remain mostly the same, but the kids are completely different people after just a few months but this quick weekend trip was the perfect remedy!



Me and Lucy at Danny and Kristie's house. They know how to throw a party -or three...


The Danny and Kristie Helfrich Family

Kaitlyn is going to be six in less than two weeks and is finishing up Kindergarten.


Matty turned 4 over the weekend and showed off some amazing basketball skills with his new hoop.


Carrie will be two this July and you can already tell she's got a really adventerous spirit


Tommy, just born in January was one of the stars of the weekend. He shared his Baptism day with cousin Zoë.


Tim, Beth and Zoë



Zoë was just under seven months old here...not crawling yet by this picture but was crawling not even a week later!



It was fun to celebrate Mother's Day with all of the kids together!

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!