You know you're not in Texas when.....

. . . . you're putting the heating on in the house in September!! :-) The weather has really started cooling down here in Denver. Most of this week has been in the low 70's, which means a lot of the day is in the 60's. The lows at night are in the 40's and in the morning I've been putting the heating on for an hour to take the chill off the house, which is at about 65 when I wake up!! 

 Looks like Texas is having about mid 80's weather right now, which I bet after that long hot summer feels pretty cool to our friends there! I don't miss the heat at all, and I don't really miss the fact that I would normally still be in flip flops and capris/tshirt at this time of year. To me, September should be pretty cool and it should definitely be feeling cold come October (my birthday month). For the past 8 years though, it's probably still been in the high 70's or low 80's for my birthday, mid October! 

I'm excited about this year, I already feel like Fall is here, and of course it is. First day of Fall was last Saturday. 

 

I took this picture yesterday, of the oak tree that is in our back yard. You can see it from our living room window and as you sit on the deck outside. I would imagine in the next few days the whole tree will look red. This week we've had some rain and heavy thunderstorms, but this morning is bright and sunny again, and dry :-)  The picture below was taken yesterday afternoon after the rain. This is the view from our 'other' deck!

Another couple of pictures I took last week but haven't shared yet are these. . . . 

 Not very clear, but you can make out that they are deer! About 6 of them were grazing outside our deck early one evening. I never tire of seeing deer. I took a little video of them too, hopefully you can click on it below and watch it. It's about a minute long, so you may only want to watch the first few seconds!!

Today, is Boo's birthday!!! He's 7 years old. I haven't taken a picture of him in a while, so here's a picture of him with Kristen taken back in August, her first day of homeschool. 

and here is little Bindi baby looking all grown up! Boo still does not like her and won't even tolerate her being near him, unless there's food around. Then she can get right in his face and he doesn't care, just keeps on eating!! As soon as the food is gone though, he growls and walks off!!

Hope you all have a great weekend. See you on Monday ;-)

How was your weekend?

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, I know we did :-)  

 Friday found us sitting out on the deck watching the sunset, again :-) And we didn't have to sit on camping chairs - we have our patio furniture now!  

Jason was working on Saturday from home so I tried to unpack a few boxes but I need him to help me with bookshelves and office furniture stuff before I can get a lot of the boxes of books unpacked, and I am constantly having to watch where Bindi is because she still isn't fully potty trained!!

Sunday was the best day - we went out shopping, Kristen wanted to check in Justice for some new clothes (but didn't end up buying any!!). We went to Southlands Mall in Aurora. It's not an indoor mall, but a pretty street full of shops. During the winter they freeze the center of it where the fountains are and make an outdoor ice rink!! 

We shopped around a little (I actually bought two tops in New York & Co) then we stopped for lunch. We went to McCabe's, an Irish pub and restaurant. We actually ate here when we came to visit back in May. The first time I had fish and chips there, but this time I had the prime rib sunday lunch AND a mimosa :) I couldn't pass up their $3 Sunday cocktails. They had Bloody Mary's too, but I don't really like those. Jason had a screwdriver!

 

Cheers 'me dears'. . . . here's wishing you all a great week :-)

Friday already!!

Urghhh, looks like blogger has changed over my layout! I was using the old blogger page cos I didn't like the new one, but I knew they would be changing it over eventually whether you liked it or not. Guess I'll have to just get used to this new screen for posting!

I can't believe it's Friday already and I only posted once on Monday. This week has really gone fast. I just wanted to do a quick update to let you all know the furniture is all here :-) FINALLY! Some of you asked what was in the first pod that arrived last Friday, well it was garage stuff (as I expected it might be, Christmas decor etc) but it also had some house boxes in for the kitchen and other rooms, so I got to unload some kitchen stuff. I didn't unpack other stuff because things were for shelves or dressers and I didn't have those yet to put the stuff away in. 

This was just some of the first pod we were unloading on Friday. All 3 garages are now completely full of boxes and garage stuff, and I can't imagine how long it's going to take us to get it all sorted. There are a lot of boxes down in the basement too that came off the last pod with the furniture! But I don't care, we're in now and we'll just have to take it one day at a time. I have very little time now during the day to do anything because I'm doing school with Kristen. I'm hoping once we can get the office desks a bit more organized she can sit and do a lesson or two on her own while I unpack, and even later when the unpacking is done, I would like to do housework while she does some school. Otherwise I'll have it all to do at the weekends!!

OK, we're about to start school with a Class Connect (that is a live online chat with the teacher and other students. It's a math class this morning, then another class connect at 10am for the homeroom. It's really good how all of this is set up. And we are both still really enjoying it. Have a great weekend all, I'll be back next week, and hopefully will show some pictures of the 'mess' inside the house ;-)

 

Oktoberfest!!

Hello again, I'm getting pretty good at this regular posting, don't ya think? We've had a great weekend and I just wanted to share it with you. Have I mentioned our neighborhood is awesome? ;-)  I've already been to book club and 'wine around the ranch' night (with Jason and Kristen), and yesterday we went along to the neighborhood 'Oktoberfest'. 

 

This was a free event, sponsored by local businesses (who are also some of the neighbors) Free food, free beer and wine, free live band entertainment!! And it was a great turn out. What was even better was that when we arrived we already new a few people there, from the previous weeks activities.  There was Jennifer and Justin who we'd gone to visit last weekend so Kristen could meet their kids, and there were a few girls from book club, not to mention many couples we chatted to again from 'wine around the ranch'.   Of course I had to take photos. . . . . 

 Jason and Jennifer

 Me and Jennifer

Jason with Diane from Book Club

 

Kristen with a wolf balloon the balloon artist made for her, and you can just say see her right cheek has a dragon painted on it, from the face painting booth!

 

 

The band!

And I have to share with you another beautiful sunset after we got home.

Whooo hooo It's Friday!!!

I'm more excited about this Friday than I have been about any other Friday in a very long time. THIS Friday our furniture should be arriving - well at least some of it. Back in TX we packed 4 pods with all of our furniture and belongings. One of those pods is finally scheduled to arrive today, and tomorrow another one will be delivered. Next week the other two will arrive.  I don't know why I'm getting so excited because I'm guessing the odds are the first pod will be the one full of all the garage stuff, and not our beds and sofa!!  I guess we'll just have to wait and see ;-)

Jason shared the photos from his phone with me, so I'll add a few here today. Once the furniture arrives you'll be seeing a lot more of the inside of the house ;-)  First though, a picture of the 3 deer that frequent our driveway in the evenings :-) They don't run away when we open the front door and stand on the porch, but you can see they are very aware that we are there. I am just mesmerized every time I see them, I love deer!

 Ready to set off on our hike. We're standing under our street sign. 

 

The view from the corner of our street. 

 

Jason took this photo of the back of our house from the road as we started walking.

 

On our way back we cut across the field behind our house and Jason snapped these photos.

We have decks on both sides of the back of the house, the one to the left of the house (you can only see a small bit of it) wraps all the way around to the front porch.

Hopefully soon we will be getting the back yard fenced in, but it won't include this 'waste' land that we are standing on. Well, another heavy picture laden post. I hope you don't mind me sharing. We just love our new house and the neighborhood we're in. Sure do miss the folks back in TX though.

Hiking Around the Hood

Wow, Thursday already! We are supposed to get some of our furniture delivered tomorrow - finally! I can't wait. Yesterday it rained all day, so I'm hoping it's not a day like that. I'll have to check the forecast. 

We're trying to get in to a routine here, now that Jason has started his government job. His commute to work is about 50 minutes and traffic can get pretty busy after a certain time, so we've tried to get up at 5am this week. Yesterday we didn't hear the alarm on his watch but we  managed to get up at 6am, so still an early morning. Today I have been up at 5am with Jason. He gets ready straight away, I come downstairs, put the coffee on and of course that means Bindi wakes up (she's still in the utility room at night because she isn't fully potty trained). She is a little minx at times (except when she's sleeping) so I've just had to put her back in her room as she is just in to everything here in the office!!

Anyway, I have more photos to share with you :-) Last Sunday we went for our first hike around the neighborhood. It is filled with hiking and biking trails. We bought hiking boots on Saturday (Kristen didn't get any, but she got some yesterday from Timberland) and set off for a 'little' walk, to break them in. It was really sunny and very warm, but there was a great breeze too - a cool one!! Still, we only managed about 45 minutes. Jason could have done longer, but we couldn't find the sunscreen when we came out so I was conscious of the fact that we were unprotected and I didn't want to be out in the sun too long. 

 

Of course, being in the outdoors, Kristen wanted to dress like a wolf! Jason took some pictures of me and Kristen on his phone, but I can't get access to them! So I only have pictures of the two of them on the hike.

Well, because I don't have the other photos from the hike, I'll share with you some I took on Wednesday, as Kristen and I walked around the neighborhood. 

 

I didn't take pictures of the walk, but here is what I did take. I've noticed the trees are starting to turn color! These bushes are actually called 'scrub oak' here. I think they are kind of like the cedar trees/shrubs we had in TX, but these lose their leaves (the cedar doesn't). 

 The fence belongs to our neighbors. I took this from the side of our driveway. Colors on the hill are showing up too. It's strange because everything to the right of us still looks green.

My tomboy, ;-) sitting on the wall at the side of our house. 

We picked pine cones that had dropped from our tree!!

You can see the tree here, (we have two tall pine trees, the other you can see in the upper right corner) and this is the back of our house. Another view below.

 

These pretty wild poppies are in the yard too, but only these two! We did see more when we were out walking. 

I think that's lots of photos for today. It's 6.30am now, and still rather dark outside. I'll be getting Kristen up at 7am and starting school at 8. But the great thing is, it doesn't matter if we start late ;-) I am loving home school. Perhaps I'll talk about that more next time. 

Our First Field Trip.

Hi everyone, bet you didn't expect to see me back so soon!! Jason is working at his new job with the government starting today (the reason we came to Denver). For the past few weeks he's done a mix of working in the office (for his previous employer) and working on the computer at home.  When he's at home, I can't really get on the computer much and have to sit next to Kristen while she's doing school lessons. Now, I have a computer because Jason's in the office Mon -Fri, and I can catch up with things while Kristen is working. Right now she's finishing off an art project. When she's finished, I'll sit with her again to do English and History lessons. 

So, I wanted to show off some more photos from this past week.... last Thursday, as I mentioned, we went on our first field trip with K12. It was at a state park called Castlewood Canyon  Here are a few pictures I took:

 

That's Kristen to the right of the little boy in the blue hat! The kids had a great time. They were re-enacting a trip the settlers might have made back in the late 1800's when they were moving west and buying cheap land to settle on. The tour was in the form of a game and the kids had to make decisions on what was best for the 'family'. The tour guide was really good with them all. the hike was about 2 hours because we kept stopping and talking about the situations that might have arose, and what the settlers would have done etc.  We want to go back there with Jason, perhaps this weekend and do another hike and then have a picnic afterwards :-) 

Also last week (as I mentioned in the previous post too) I went to my very first Book Club :-) I called someone on Monday, who hosted the previous month, got her number from the neighborhood newsletter and it just so happened the meeting was that Wednesday. The lady I called even came and picked me up and introduced me to everyone. It was wonderful. The host serves dinner or appertizers and has wine..... I was in heaven, lol ;-) Of course I hadn't read the book but that was ok, it was nice chatting to them all before the 'meeting' started, then I just listened as they discussed the book. I've no doubt I'll be at most months meetings like I was with my bookclub in Texas. This month we are reading 'Death comes for the Archbishop', a classic apparently (of which I have never heard!!). I can't wait for the next meeting. 

And another social night we had (cos Jason came along later with Kristen) was 'Wine Around the Ranch. I'll talk more about that next time as this is getting rather long. oh, and I have pictures to share of our first 'hike' around the neighborhood, breaking in our new hiking boots!!

We're finally in!!

Helloo there, time for another update :-) I've been trying to add this post for days now, I just never seem to be able to get on here. Either Jason is still working on it and Kristen is playing on hers after we've done school, or if Jason gets off, I sit with him out on the deck and watch the sunset.

Anyway, we are finally in our new home and although we don't have any furniture as yet, we do have the computers that we brought with us (actually we just brought one and we bought a new one so Kristen could do her school work on it, while Jason worked from home too!). So I'm hoping to try and blog a little more now, and evern MORE once we get our other computers and I get my own back.

We closed on the house last Monday, and as soon as we had the keys we drove over here. We had nothing but the clothes in our suitcases, and the computers, and the puppies :-) After an hour or so of just soaking it all in (the views are just gorgeous), we left the puppies in the house (Bindi in the utility room, cos she's not potty trained, and Boo still doesn't like her!) and we went off to walmart. We bought airbeds, camping chairs, some pans, paper plates and plastic cultery, AND a tv!!! We've been living like this since then, and loving it. We'll love it even more once all of our furniture can be delivered. We just found out yesterday that that won't be until next Friday!!!! Urghhh, I don't think I can wait that long, but I have no choice!

I showed a few pictures of the views from our deck a couple of posts ago. Tonight I want to share some of the gorgeous sunsets we've been getting. Jason and I like to try and sit out there most evenings and just watch the sun go down. A glass of wine (and a beer) make it all the more relaxing :-)

I took these tonight. 

The last one is not as clear but it's a photo of the 'Sleeping Indian' Mountain. It's kinda hard to see in this picture, but the mountain in the middle of the picture is known as that because it looks like an Indian lying down (his head is at the left, feet sticking up at the right).  We googled the 'sleeping Indian' for more info but it turns out it's actually called Devil's Head Mountain!! There's a bigger picture on Wikipedia HERE.

I have some other things to chat about, that we've done this week, Kristen and I went to our first field trip with K12, AND I went out to my first book club meeting!!!! I will post more about those next time ;-)