Oh...Hello Govena'

That is British for Governor.

Tonight I was invited to the Governor's Mansion for a reception. The receiption was held for the keynote speaker at tomorrow's Rotary event, State of the State. The mansion was beautiful! I was thrilled that I was invited to go. I am really enjoying being involved in Rotary...a bit too involved this week maybe. I went to our meeting this morning, the reception tonight, tomorrow is the luncheon and tomorrow night is our Charter night party, which I chaired. I'm so glad that I still feel good and can pretty much keep up, although I know I'll be really exhausted come this weekend.

**Disclaimer - I did not meet the Governor.

On another note - how freaky is this bear??

Irony

Lelaina: Can you define "irony"?


Troy Dyer: It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning
 
 
I LOVE Reality Bites....love it - it's definetly in my top 5. If you haven't seen it rush out and get it. It could just be my reminising about the 90's - but if you have fond memories of that era I think you will like it too.
 
I was thinking of irony because of something funny that happened in class on Tuesday. Maybe it's one of those things that is only funny to me. Let me give a little back story - since moving out here I have heard quite a few times "I'm granola" "We're crunchy" "I'm a total hippie" All of these attributes should be apparent without having to advertise. If you are these things then they will be obvious by the way you live. And I've seen plenty of hippies between here and NM. So when I hear these things I usually roll my eyes.
So on Tuesday there was a girl sitting next to me in class and I heard the guy in back of her asking her if she was drinking another hippie drink and she replied that yes, it was, because you know she's a hippie. She said this in all seriousness. As she was holding her Louis Viton (sp?) purse.
Can you define irony?
Wait - can you define judgemental?

Visit with my parents

My folks came up last week - it was wonderful!!! They had been in Phoenix with Amy then drove up through Moab to come stay with us for a few days. We had a great time! Of course I tried to over compensate and drove us to a lake that turned out to be REALLY far away....super cold and windy - we were probably at 13,000 ft. I felt bad for that - all Tony and my dad wanted to do was fish but we spent way to long in the car. But the drive back was beautiful and we stopped and played in the South Platte for a while.
Here's a couple of pics:

Girls Night Out

Stephanie Klein had a reading tonight in Denver, so Sarah and I made a girls night of it by going to dinner then going to the reading. I haven't had a girls night out in....while, I can't remember when. It was wonderful. I had such a good time! And the reading was really good too. The first speaker was Mindy Schneider, and I really enjoyed hearing her talk. Sarah and I might suggest that this book be our next book club read (our last was Moose). We told this to Mindy and she offered that we call her during our meeting so she can talk with us about the book!! AWESOME! I was kind of nervous to meet Stephanie, simply because I have been a voyeur of her life for so long. She was very down to earth. I'm not really sure what I expected, but she was nice and seemed really sincere. I'm sure I seemed like a sweaty dork...but oh well, I still had a good time! Hopefully I didn't embarrass Sarah!
Tonight was wonderful, and I'm so thankful to Sarah for going with me, I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did.

visitors from a far away state - postdate

standing in line for the bus to Coors


on the booze tour


Craig said it was the altitude....hmmmm

(Craig - thanks for the not so friendly reminder that I needed to update the hottest blog on the net with your visit - this is for you.)
In June we got our first visitors, after that the computer broke, and I didn't update the blog to include our fun!
Craig and Cherie had to come out on business, but they flew out early to see us!! It was so good to see friends.
We went on the Coors Brewery tour, awesome. We went to eat at a funky resturant downtown and then the next night they got to experience all that is holy, Little Anitas. We also hit up Six Flags...not as much fun as I rememebered. I also don't remember getting motion sickness as easily. I thought I was going to barf all over Craig on one of the swing rides. After 4 hours we all needed a nap.
It was so nice to see familiar faces. And it meant alot to get to see friends. I can't wait for you guys to come out again!

Running at Red Rocks

The first time we went to Red Rocks it was on a Sunday morning. It is so beautiful there. And we were surprised to see so many people working out! Running the stairs, all kinds of excercise. So we made a promise to ourselves to go back and do it too. And today we did. It was wonderful! Running zigzags across all the benchs from the bottom to the top is a 5K. We probably ran about half then did some other workouts, but it was definetly one of the funnest workouts I have ever had. Being out in nature, surrounded by such beauty, you forget you are working out (besides the insane swamp ass). One of the coolest parts was there was some guy playing that Ricola horn (no idea what the real name is). It just added to the entire astetics. I think we are going to try and go back there as much as possible. It's a bit of a drive, but totally worth it. It definetly beats the gym ANY day.

Side note, we went to Red Rocks on the 4th of July to see Collective Soul, Live, and Blue's Travelers. The first two were great....ahhh, the 90's were such a great time. So many memories!! We only stayed for about 40 minutes of Blue's Travlers though, they came on late, and by that time the cloud of MJ smoke (coming surprising from the 40+ crowd) surrounding us had gotten to me. Still, it was such an awesome venue! Look at the website to see the pics. For some reason I can't find the ones we took in June.

Storms a brewin'

I'm sitting out on our balcony watching the most beautiful storm brewing. The clouds are changing by the seconds, rolling towards us. Every once in a while you can see the lightning and hear the thunder.
I had forgotten how much I loved a good thunderstorm. In New Mexico they were always amazing. And you could see the storms so far away, in a whole other town. Sometimes all you could see what the lightning. It is so romantic.
One of our first nights in Colorado we got to see a great storm off in the distance. The roll of thunder took me back to all those storms of my childhood. I remember the feel of electricity in the air. It was always so exciting, especially after a warm summer day.
I could sit here and watch this all night. Unfortunately Kirby had breathing problems last night, so no one in Casa de Richards slept well, and the closer it gets to 9pm, the heavier my eyelids get.
Here's some pics of what I'm looking at right now.



Kirby the asthmatic wonder dog

A day of Hiking

So this morning we decided to go on a little hike. We went to El Dorado Canyon, outside of Boulder. We both thought the hike was 3.5 miles.....no, it was 7, it was 3.5 one way!! We were kind of unprepared as far as water goes, and I am so out of shape!! I wasn't sure if I was going to make it at some points. But it was still great. Being up there was just beautiful. The creek is really flowing now, as the snow is rapidy melting. There were a lot of people rock climbing too, we could see someone really high up on one of the cliffs, and driving up to the park, there were quite a few people climbing as well. It gave us both the itch to get back into climbing/bouldering.

Feels like Home

This is what our apartment looked like for the first weekend we were here. Very comfy!


And this is what it looked like after the movers left.....




So needless to say, we've been busy. And I think we are finally done! Many many trips to Goodwill and still renting a storage unit, and our apt. now looks decent. It was good for us to be forced to go through what we had and really decide what was important.

Yesterday we went up to Estes Park. We just walked around and got something to eat. It was really crowded, but it has tons of cool little shops. We are hoping to go up there for our anniversary in November and stay at The Stanley. It's the hotel from The Shining. Yeahhhh!!!

We are really happy to be here. It is just beautiful, and I can't wait for people to start visiting us!! (hint hint hint)

We are home.....

We made it and are so happy to be here. Everything is great with the apt., and the movers are scheduled to be here Monday with all our stuff. And I know we are going to have to get rid of even more, the 1 bdrm is just too small. The apt. does stink really bad like curry, although today it is not as potent as yesterday, but I don't think Tony or I are going to be eating Indian food anytime soon. I'll take some pics and put them up so you know what the apt. looks like!

A day away!!

Here's a pic of Tony and our nephew Connor and Daniel.

We are in Kearney, NE tonight, tomorrow we will be in Denver. We can get our keys and move in tomorrow, and our drive there shouldn't be too bad.
Everything has been going good, although we did have one passenger drop out. Amy got really sick in Indiana and had to fly home out of Chicago. I'm sad that she hasn't been with us, but I wouldn't want to be sick away from home either. And at least I got to be with her for a few days.

Rocky Mountain High

view from look out at A-basin
Tony and Justin


Yesterday was kind of a cruddy weather day. It snowed most of the day (none of it stuck) and it was windy and cold. Later in the day it got nicer so we went up to Boulder to walk around the Pearl Street Mall and eat dinner. It was such a nice evening. The people walking around were just like you would expect, eclectic - no one really looked the same (except that most men had facial hair), everyone dressed differently, originally, it was refreshing. Everyone looked really casual.

Almost everyone we've encountered here, from the McDonald's workers to the car rental guy have been super nice too. Everyone gives you a smile and tells you to have a good day.

Today we woke up early and drove up to Silverthorne to meet up with Justin. He lives in Avon, so we met half way. We drove up to A-basin for the view. AMAZING! The runs are still open and are going to be running until late June, early July!! That's crazy! But there were tons of people up there. The wind chill was in the teens, so we couldn't stay out of the car for too long, but it was beautiful. Then Tony and I decided on the way back to take the back road to Estes Park...too bad we didn't know that 2 hours in the road was still closed until June! Oh well, at least the drive was scenic!

Tonight we went and got some amazing Mexican food....New Mexico mexican food, or as close as you can get. Best part? The sophapillas came with the meal! I love that!!

So tomorrow we fly home. Time to start really going through and tossing stuff. Our apt. is only 700 sq. ft., so we need to go through a lot.