I "heart" Colorado

No new pics today, but I just wanted to post about how awesome Colorado is and how awesome our neighbors are. Today I did not have to go to work, but I really, really, wanted to get to the grocery store, and also my friend and I had planned to do some baking together at her house before all this happened. Her neighborhood got plowed (but only because all her neighbors got together and paid someone to do it!) so I knew if I could only get out of our parking lot it would be clear sailing. Plus I do have to work tomorrow so I thought better to test the conditions today so I know what I'm up against tomorrow.

I was watching out the window all morning to see if people were having any luck getting out of the lot...not really. People kept getting stuck, so I kept waiting for the plow to come. Nothing. I checked again and there were several people down there all shoveling so I thought I'd go see if they were actually going to try to leave or what. They were trying to get out to go grocery shopping, too, and one girl trying to get to work. Everyone was so nice and super helpful. Since Jay had already shoveled my car out yesterday, all I had to do was get backed out and then drive down the parking lot to the main street. This super nice girl who has lived in the snow forever offered to do it for me - how awesome! She actually did get stuck a couple times and luckily there were many people around to help with a push. She drove all the way down the parking lot for me and basically gave me a little lesson and demonstration on driving in the snow. Awesome!!!

So, as I reflect on today and yesterday and all the people and camaraderie, I am just thinking how blessed we are to live where we do and how awesome it is. This would NEVER EVER happen in southern California, especially Orange County (neither the snow nor the awesome people!) Things like this really bring a neighborhood together and I just pray that wherever we end up buying a house will have awesome neighbors, too. I'm sure mostly what people are hearing in the news is all the bad stories, but I have a completely different perspective on the whole thing. Plus, talk about being forced to slow down around the holidays and think about what Christmas really means. People couldn't go shopping at the malls (or anywhere) and most people were forced to take the day off of work. Get rid of the commercialism and stress and take some time off and get to know your neighbors. Give me a snow day anyway!

(By the way, when I got back today I parked in the lot next door, which is also the same condos, because somehow they were lucky enough to get plowed - or maybe they just payed someone!)

OK, I lied, I found a pic that we haven't posted yet. I took this yesterday when the sun came out. Our condo is the one on the top. That is our balcony that Ella likes to hang out on when it's not covered in snow.

The Aftermath...

Well, the rest of the day was a lot mellower than yesterday. The storm wrapped up around noon, and shortly after we started spotting neighbors outside shoveling to get their cars dug out for tomorrow. We don't have a shovel yet, so I decided to head down and see if I could score one to dig Jenna out. The lady I helped get her car unstuck yesterday lives downstairs, and I borrowed hers for a while. A plow is supposed to clear a path in our parking lot, but they seem to be pretty in demand today, as the storm just ended. Hopefully they'll come by in the middle of the night like they have in the past.

You really get to know your neighbors during stuff like this. It reminds me a lot of the neighborhood atmosphere after the Northridge Earthquake... Everyone comes outside and helps each other out. We met four or five neighbors just being out there and digging through the snow. One neighbor brought out hot chocolate for everyone, although it was kind of warm out (notice I ditched the sweatshirt pretty quick). It took longer than I thought to just get the area behind jenna's car dug out (creating a driveway for three cars) - probably about three hours when all was said and done. But, what else was I going to do anyway?

Jenna took Ella for a walk (in her blizzard coat), and we confirmed that she absolutely loves the snow, as does every other dog. There were a bunch of other romping dogs out there during the "shovel party".

So, we survived one of the worst storms in Denver history, and got to meet some neighbors in the process... We're thinking of changing our christmas lists to add: Snow Shovel, Snow Shoes, Cross Country Skis, and, possibly, a Snowmobile?

Snow totals as of 2:00pm were 31.0" in Aurora, and 24.0" in Denver. That supposedly puts us in the top three storms of all time! They haven't released the "official results" yet, but a lot of people who have lived here for decades say they've never seen it like this before.

...and yet we STILL like it here...

Here's some pics of the day:





... by the way, don't expect 2 blogs a day ever again (except of course, maybe when the baby is born) this was just an exceptional day, I don't want to raise expectatios too much..

The Blizzard of 2006, and a Snomobile Adventure!

Wow, what a day yesterday!

We woke up in the morning, looked outside and saw a fairly typical amount of snowfall. We'd heard 4-5 inches were expected, and it looked pretty benign, so Jenna went to work down the street at Old Navy, and I headed downtown via light rail. In the car on the way to the station, I was surprised to hear phrases like "the worst Blizzard since 2003"... but I continued on. The pic below was the scene when I left work around noon, right after a postal worker ran past me in SHORTS!



I got to work on time, and just about everyone was there, but the snow was coming down harder. We got an announcement around 10am that the front desk was closing at noon, and everyone should head home when they feel they need to. So I left around 12:30, and got on the train south. Our train had all kinds of mechanical issues with the doors and supposedly the track switcher was getting jammed up with the snow, so my usual 30 min trainride took over an hour.

After getting to the light rail station near our place, I decided not to try to drive, after watching cars slide around and talking to Jenna about her drive home and all the people stuck in our parking lot. So I chose to take the bus that runs near our apartment. I found the right stop, and huddled inside the bus shelter with about 10 other people waiting to go east. We were in there a while, and started doing stuff like packing snow up against the bottom of the shelter to keep the wind out. We waited about a half an hour (some had been there for 45 minutes before that), and their bus came, but not mine. I waited for another hour, with a short break to hop into my car for a quick warm-up, and the bus still hadn't come, and the other buses were getting stuck in the quickly accumulating snow. So, I decided to walk the 1-1/2 to 2 miles home, rather than spend the night in the parking structure.

I walked for a while, and quickly realized the snow was tough to walk in, but not impossible. I got past the freeway offramp, where I saw cars fishtailing everywhere, and continued down Parker road (major arterial) slowly. Pretty soon, I heard a loud engine noise, and turned around to see a guy in a SNOWMOBILE pulling up next to me. He said "Hey, do you want a ride?", and I gratefully accepted, having no other alternative. I hopped on, and he hit the gas.. It felt like we were flying down the road, we were probably going no more than 40 mph, but with all the stuck cars and trucks, and the blizzardy conditions, it felt like light speed! I originally just kind of cautiously held on to the guy's sides, but when we started going fast I clung pretty tight, thinking I was going to fall off at any moment! It was pretty hairy weaving in and out of traffic and going over bumps and whatnot, but we made it pretty quickly to my destination, the big intersection near our apartment.

I hopped off and thanked the guy for the ride, and immediately saw a car stuck in the snow. I asked the guy if he needed a push, and he said, no, there wasn't anywhere to go, and he'd just seen two other rear-wheel drive cars get stuck trying to get into the parking lot he was heading for (the same strip mall lot I was planning to park in if I drove), so he was just going to leave it in the median and wait for his friend to get there.

So I trudged through the snow taking a shortcut to get through to our complex. I got to our parking lot, and found another neighbor stuck in the snow, trying to park somewhere. So after changing into some snow clothes, I spent the next hour with some other neighbors getting her unstuck and situated.

Finally we spent most of the night sitting by the fire and watching all the news about stranded motorists and people stuck at the airport... what a crazy day.

Today is a "snow day", so we both have the day off, and we're just hanging out looking at all the white stuff piled up everywhere... over 2' officially last I heard, but Jenna's car is basically covered as you can see in the pic below from this morning (all you can see is the two windshield wipers sticking up!)

Ella hated going outside last night (it was a lot windier and more miserable out), but this morning she was loving it! In the pic below she's standing in a tire track from a Forerunner that somehow made it out of the parking lot this morning...


White Christmas indeed!

Christmas Parties and Old Snow Days

Jay's work had thier Christmas party on Sat night. It was really nice - we had gourmet sit down dinner in the Denver Art Museum which was pretty cool. I wish we would have gotten a picture of us actually there (we forgot the camera. But Jay did take a pic with his phone, so if he blogs separately maybe he'll post it...but it's nothing worth shouting about. You can barely see the museum behind us.) Anyways, this pic is us at home when we got back, because I didn't get all dressed up for nothing!

And Jay took a couple pictures of downtown when it snowed a couple weeks ago, and since we haven't posted them yet, might as well do it now. Enjoy...

Thanksgiving Escapades + Christmas Decorationg

Jay and I flew back to CA for Thanksgiving to see the families and have some wonderful food. Jay's mom made a big feast on Thanksgiving day that the whole family was invited to, including my parents. As we flew in on Thursday morning, it was quite a long day but the meal was the perfect ending! Friday was a little celebration for John's (Jay's Dad) 60th birthday. I believe his actual birthday is today, but we celebrated while we were there. Part of our celebrations included walking up to the stable where John has his horse and I got to take the kids around on rides (pictured here w/my youngest niece, Kaity). Then on Sat we went up to my parent's house and had another fabulous feast. You just can't get enough Thanksgiving dinner so I had asked my mom to make something for us on Saturday, too. Sunday we drove down to "the OC" to visit Rock Harbor church and see some friends and also to pick up our winter clothes which we left packed in boxes in the garage. Who knew that we wouldn't have sold the house by now and had all our stuff moved out already... So we got some essentials, like coats and sweaters! It was just in time, too, as when we got back Monday the temperatures dropped into the single digits. Still not cold enough to make us want to move back to CA though!

Now we are home and I've started my new seasonal job at Old Navy to make some extra money. So far it's going well - nothing like some retail work to put you into the holiday spirit! Nice segway into holidays, don't you think? So yesterday Jay and I decorated the little Christmas tree that Mike and Rachel let us borrow (with decorations and all!) I did buy the big white balls you see on the tree, since I found them at Goodwill for $1.50. They may be a tad out of place on the small tree...the tiny balls and ornaments that Rachel let me borrow fit the tree much better. Oh well, I'm a sucker for decorations. So we decorated and listened to Christmas music and then afterwards watched my all-time favorite Christmas movie, Elf, while eating home-made cookies that my parents baked and mailed to us! They were soooo good and added just the perfect touch of homey holiday cheer. The only thing missing was eggnog, which we did have the other day but we drank it all already and I forgot to buy more. Jay took this picture with the lights on the balcony railing outside and you can also see the trees lit up in the back which are trees that the condo assosiation decorates for Christmas. Everything is really decorated up around town, these Coloradans really get into thier Christmas decorating!



And last but certainly not least is the latest picture of my growing profile. I go to the doctor this Thursday for my next check up and another ultrasound to check the progress of the baby. We were actually really blessed when we went up to Palmdale over Thanksgiving because my mom's friend is a nurse practicioner in an OBGYN office and she did an ultrasound for free so my parents could see the baby! That was really, really nice of her. Anyways, at my appointment they will do all kinds of official measurements and everything, and we could find out the sex if we wanted to...but we'd rather keep guessing (and keep you all guessing, too!!!)

My Birthday Celebrations

For my 28th birthday my awesome husband took me out to some of the best Indian food I think I've ever eaten! It was a little restaurant downtown with just the perfect "charm" and fabulous food. We haven't eaten Indian food since we've been here and boy have I been craving it! Then, after dinner we went to the Mile High Grand Prix of equestrian show-jumping. I was very bummed that even though I remembered to bring the camera, it was basically out of batteries! It's ok though because the lighting was so poor that the pictures we did get didn't really come out anyways. I'm posting the one decent picture of the whole layout of the course and you can even see some blurs of horses in there if you look hard enough!

I also wanted to post another update of the "Jenna belly profile". I am going to try and post updates once a month - my reminder will be my doctor's visits. So the 2nd visit to the dr was last week and everything is coming along just dandily (I have no idea if that's a word...). I think you will all be able to see that surely I am actually pregnant from this picture. It's looking really, really obvious to me now. Which is funny because as I told the dr, I hardly even feel pregnant now, but you can really see it! I guess that is the joy of the 2nd trimester - feeling good and starting to show.

Double Trouble

This Halloween we had a "mandatory" dress-up day at work. A last minute idea led to the costume below:



Daniel Libeskind is the architect of the new Denver Art Museum, which just opened this month. I happen to have noticed a while back that he's probably the only famous architect I could pull off in a costume. Given that the museum just opened, I decided if I'm ever going to dress up as him for Halloween it would have to be this year. Since I work in an architecture office, everyone knows what the guy looks like. I don't think it would have worked anywhere else... Anyway, i got a prize for "best use of 15 minutes of fame" - a $15 gift card with a $6 costume (blazer from the thrift store and grey hair spray - exaggerated glasses were homemade)

Plus I kept giving unsolicited advice all day to the designer who's working on the Justice Center... telling him to make it "pointier" (the art museum is quite pointy en paarts). Funnier was the fact that the designer was also wearing all black that day, and another guy from our office dressed up as him... wearing all black...

more snow, knitting, and super friends...

just a hodge-podge of random notes...

It snowed again yesterday, but instead of being a light dusting overnight, it was pretty much snowing all day and we ended up with close to a foot of powder. Luckily Thursdays are a normal day off for me, so I didn't have to drive anywhere, but Jay decided to go into work and it took him about an hour just to get to the train station! It will be really nice when the new one opens in a month that is practically right down the street.

Ella absolutely hated going outside while the snow was actually falling, and it took all my patience to stand out there with her in the cold to wait for her to go to the bathroom. Once it did stop snowing in the afternoon, she had a blast romping around in the snow that completely covered her legs! Unfortunately I did not get a picture of that. But here's one thru our window while it was cold and snowy (that is our driveway/parking lot)


So, what does one do at home all day while it's cold and snowy outside? Why, knit a baby blanket of course! (Actually, I began this new project about a week ago and have been steadily working away. But the snowy day gave me lots of time to really make some progress). I found this super cute yellow and white yarn with a patern on the label for a baby blanket. The yarn is supposed to be self-striping, so it does the work of making the stripes for you. But don't be fooled, this is not what I'd call an "easy" project (contrary to the label indicatior). There is a border going around the entire blanket and it involves counting stitches and knitting and purling. I'm pretty impressed with myself for actually attempting to follow a patern (though I did have to call my friend Erin to get some help with abbreviations). I have actually screwed it up several times already, sometimes just letting it slide and trying to work it out, and a couple times actually un-knitting my work and backtracking and doing it again the right way. So here's a picture of the work in progress...


And finally for the best part...the friends. Jay already mentioned in the last post about how blessed we've been with friends. The people we are renting this condo from let us borrow some of thier furniture, our friends the Heldts let us borrow a TV and antenna (so we don't even have to pay for cable and we get about 10 stations!), a new friend from my church women's group gave us a laundry basket full of kitchen stuff, and now the latest, my friend from high school just sent me a bunch of maternity clothes! It's awesome, there are 3 pairs of jeans and a pair of pants that fit now, plus 3 more pairs of jeans that will fit when i get more of a belly! Plus a ton of shirts which will also fit when I have a belly. So thank you to everyone!!! Jay and I feel so blessed and even though circumstances are not what we were planning, we know that it's all in God's hands - He shows us every day that He takes care of us according to His plan!

Move #2!

We're all moved into our condo in Aurora. Despite being a lot smaller than our house, it feels like a mansion compared to that extended stay hotel room. We've got an actual kitchen, a seperate bedroom and living room, a fireplace, a little deck, and a view of the mountains... much better...

We moved just in time, because it snowed a few days later for the first time this year (after being in the upper 70s the day we moved in). Ella was not happy about the cold white stuff at first, but has come to love romping in and chewing on snow. And as I suspected, her particular coloring pattern gives her the perfect camoflauge in a light snow. Can you find the dog in the picture below?


The couple we are renting the condo from was generous enough to let us borrow a bunch of their furniture - a bed, a dining table and chairs, a computer desk, and a dresser, along with some plates and cups and whatnot. Jenna had also mentioned at her Thursday night group at church that if anyone had any extra kitchen stuff we'd love to borrow it. That weekend at church a girl took us out to her car and gave us a big basket full of brand new kitchen utensils, plates, cups, silverware, dish towels, etc... that was a huge surprise and incredibly nice.

So between that and a few trips to the thrift store, some garage sales, and walmart, we've pretty much got a fully furnished place with all the fixings. We're borrowing Mike & Rachel's extra TV and antenna, and I just picked up a surprisingly nice Crate & Barrel couch today at the thrift store for $20... which was cool because we had given up on finding a decent couch for cheap and I was heading down there to pick up an ugly floral print couch we'd seen for $25. We're still washing the cushion covers (just for good measure since its a used couch) so no pictures of the place yet. I'll take some sometime this week (maybe).

The place we're in is in a pretty convenient location. Its across from another park with another pond, only this one has ducks instead of geese. Ella is just as excited about the ducks as her prior goose encounter, as you can see in the picture below. Its also about a 5-minute drive from the new light rail station that opens in a few weeks, and a few blocks from a dog park, and the Cherry Creek Reservoir.


So we should be fairly comfortable for a while waiting for our house to sell (other than the general lack of money and the rising credit card bill)

The Justice League (er, Center)

As mentioned in a previous post, my firm is involved in the new Denver Justice Center, specifically the new courthouse in downtown Denver, right next to the US Mint. It is a really high-profile project, and will be a major fixture downtown. Steven Holl won an international competition with us to design the courthouse, in an effort to bring "world class" architecture to denver (he was named world's greatest architect by Time magazine in 2001 according to an article I read).

Well, things somehow went awry between Holl and the city, and while I can't say exactly what happened (partly because I really don't know much since I wasn't involved in any of the politics, and partly because its semi-confidential), Steven Holl has left the project, and we now have a mandate to redesign the entire thing from scratch, under budget, with their newly rigid design preferences, still creating a "world class" building, and we have about 8 weeks to do it. The image above is Holl's design, which will be scrapped.

It could be a huge breakout project for us, but still we're all pretty bummed that there isn't going to be a Steven Holl project in Denver. He got along really well with everyone at the office, and I don't think there was really a design issue with him like the press seems to be implying. Contrary to the fears expressed in some of the articles, though, I happen to know we have a really great design in the works (don't worry, I'm not in charge).

Here's links to various articles about it:

Rocky Mountain News 1
Rocky Mountain News 2
Rocky Mountain News 3

Denver Post 1
Denver Post 2
Denver Post 3

If you're really interested, you can watch a video of him presenting his design here

good news, I think

Well, since we aren't moving to a purchased house, and after carefully weighing the pros and cons of buying something cheap just to live in for the time being, we've decided to rent a condo and wait on any purchasing until we can afford what we really want. The good part is that at least we're getting out of this tiny hotel room. The other good part is that we are renting a condo from friends of friends who are aware of our situation and they are willing to do a 3 month lease w/month to month after that. And the 3rd good part is that they even have some furniture they are letting us borrow! So now I don't feel totally trapped, especially with the holidays coming up. Oh, and the 4th good part is that there is an actual, real kitchen, so I can even make holiday feasts if I so desire! (Hopefully with kitchen supplies and dinnerware supplied dirt cheap by local garage sales or Goodwill). The 5th good part - only one flight of stairs and a fireplace to boot! I could just go on and on...but really the best part of all is that we're moving this saturday!!!! Of course we could still use a bit of prayer that our house sells soon and that we don't go broke in the mean time (the new place will end up costing a bit more than we pay now as we'll have to pay utilities on top of rent). Sorry no pics yet, but once we're in and get some internet hooked up we'll post again with some pics so you all don't feel too disapointed in viewing our pictureless post.

No Dice

Well, our prospective house is no longer a prospect... Our house still hasn't sold, the news is still bad in OC, and the builder wants to close on the new one in less than a month, which means we're out.

I still can't figure out what's going on in OC. Not much in the world has actually changed since March, but somehow housing is worth 10% less than 6 months ago? And STILL no one has decided it might be a good time to buy a house? What are they waiting for? Ours is listed at 20% less than 5 months ago, and still almost no lookers... that's a lot of money, and its still an awesome house. It don't make no sense! But apparently whining about it hasn't helped.

On the theme of whining, we're getting really, really tired of hotel/apartment living. The place we're living in has started wearing away at our sanity bit by bit, like chinese water torture. Here's a fun list of annoyances that has led us to our respective breaking points:

• Its on the 3rd floor, so we're walking up and down steps multiple times every day to come and go, and to take Ella out for walks (the funny thing is, she tries to exit on the second floor every time - she still hasn't figured out how stairs work)

• The fitted sheet over the mattress somehow doesn't stay put, so every morning I wake up with bare hotel mattress in my face.

• The "kitchenette" (pictured in a previous post) is so absurdly tiny, you can't wash the dishes without banging your head or smacking your elbows on the wall 6 inches from the sink.

• There's no couch, so we watch TV in bed, which is completely uncomfortable and gives us backaches

• The fan in the bathroom sounds like a jet-engine

• Our neighbor feels the need to slam his door as loud as possible every time he enters or leaves, and yaks on the phone with a booming arab accent every night around bedtime (the walls are too thin would be another gripe). No joke, he just slammed the door as I was typing.
  

• The gas barbeques don't work at all

• There's a huge dog across the way that has an enormous bark. And there's also a bird in the same room. Every time the dog barks - which is totally jarring if the window's open - its followed by a bird call (or more like a squeal).
  

• They're doing construction on the three rooms across the hall from us, so there's construction workers, tools, cigarettes, yelling, sawing, banging, etc., all day long that Jenna has to listen to the days she's here alone.

So... we're starting to consider finding an actual apartment somewhere around here to rent, since it looks like we're in it for longer than we ever could have imagined... The thought has also occured to us, since you can buy a 1 bedroom condo here for $50-80K, that we might just buy one and keep it later as an income property, since the monthly payment would be much less than the rents we're seeing... but we'll see. That might be a genius idea, or totally stupid, we still need to research it.

All that to say, we're not exactly in the best of spirits. We are looking forward to seeing our friends Steve and Jill from Maryland this weekend and checking out the new art museum that opens on Saturday (and beating Mike Heldt at fantasy football)

My thoughts on this Pregnancy thing...

Since I've been feeling a lot better lately, and looking at a monitor no longer makes me quite as nauseous, I decided I would share my thoughts about our pregnancy. I've also been reading a pregnancy journal on one of those baby websites, and they are blogging every week, so I thought the least I could do is maybe once a month or so!

First off, I am really super excited. This kinda comes as a surprise to even me, as I'm not the oogely-googely baby type, and really don't have that much interest in kids in general. But good ol' mom was right - I DO feel differently now that it's my own! I'm sure the pregnancy hormones really rev up that maternal instinct. And, seeing the ultrasound was simply amazing - there it was, a real live little person moving around inside me! That was definitely the coolest moment of pregnancy so far.

One of the challenging parts right now is not having health insurance. Jay's work has the customary 90 day waiting period, so we won't be insured until Nov 1st. So, for the first dr visit, we just paid cash, and then we were able to schedule the next visit after Nov 1st. We have temporary, emergency-only insurance, which of course does not cover pregnancy. And even if it did, the deductible is so high it would not be worth it to actually use it! The only thing that is a bit scary about it is what if we/I/the baby needs something before Nov 1st...though I'm sure it will be fine, and I know this is just another one of those "tests" God throws our way to make sure we are fully reliant on Him and not our own little helpless selves, as much as we want to be the ones in control!

Other things Jay and I have been doing/experiencing since becoming pregnant - Getting bombarded with free magazines and pamhlets and advertisements from all sorts of baby and parenting sources; Getting free formula and diaper cream samples and passifiers from the OB/GYN office and the maternity store where I bravely entered to buy a "belly band" (a contraption designed so a newly pregnant girl can wear her normal pants unbuttoned when she is just feeling a bit fat and bloated, but not big enough for maternity wear); Starting a list of possible boy and girl names; Thinking about baby furniture and decorating a baby room which we will hopefully have soon; and, Trying to figure out how we're going to cope with (and be good parental figures to) a tiny newborn, a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, a grade schooler, a jr-higher, and a high-schooler! God help us!!!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are the pics of the 2 home pregnancy tests I took (Jay didn't believe the first one), and also a profile of me with a barely pregnant, just starting to pooch out stomach (oh, and ignore the date on the pic, we hadn't set the date thingie on the camera yet - who knew it didn't just come programed with the correct date?!):

Ella's Adventure

Today it was gorgeous out, the sky was crystal clear and the mountains were freshly capped with snow.


It was in the upper 60s, so we decided to take Ella on a walk to the local park we found recently. There's a pond in the park with signs that say "please don't feed the geese". I've never seen geese in it until today. Neither had Ella. Here's a pic of her gazing longingly at the geese that were parading around in front of her:


Shortly after this picture was taken, she decided she couldn't take it anymore and dove into the pond! Ella hates water, she normally avoids puddles and runs from the rain, but in this case apparently the drive to destroy the birds taunting her overrode that natural tendency.

She had her leash on (and choke chain), so midair she was spun around and was out of the water about as quick as she was in it... but it was hilarious. That water couldn't have been warm, either, its been in the low 40s every night for the past few days. The funny thing was, she didn't give up there. As we walked around the pond, she never took her eyes off the geese. I let her get close to the edge again, and she kept crouching down like she was stalking them, ready to pounce. She tried diving in a second time, but I yanked her back midair and she landed back on the ground. Needless to say the geese weren't too thrilled... here's one batting its wings


So we've decided if we ever want to train her to swim, all we need is a fake duck or something and she'll go right in!

Also, there was a field with a ton of prairie dogs right next to the park (which surprisingly Ella had no interest in). Here's a picture of one of them poking his head out and nervously chirping to warn the others that I was intruding on their territory.


So Ella will definitely be having some good dreams tonight. Lots of critters to dream about killing.

Jenna Has a Bellyache

and it looks like this!

(coming to a bassinet near you, April 20th)

Jay's Creativity

so Jay found a new use for Ella's crate - a breakfast (or dinner) in bed tray...so ingenious... the top of the crate comes off the base, and then it has a hole on one end so you can actually put it over your lap.

Dollar Movies!

Since we're on a tight budget with the double house payments and all, we've been looking for things to do that get us out of the apartment but without spending a lot of dough.

I decided to look for a dollar theater, but quickly realized that they're hard to find. They're not necessarily called "Cheap Charlie's Dollar Movies" or anything like that. So I did some searching on the web, and came across a website called www.boxofficemojo.com that has a list of every movie theater in every state, along with ticket prices (click on "showtimes", then click "theater index" on the top bar). I found a theater right near our area that was $1.50!



The theater wasn't exactly top notch (as you'd expect at a dollar theater). It was a little run down, the audio wasn't exactly THX, and the place was messier than most theaters, but it wasn't too bad.

We went to go see Nacho Libre, but it turned out they didn't have it that weekend for some reason (it is a dollar theater), so for $2 (it was a matinee) we saw the movie 'Click' with Adam Sandler and Cristopher Walken. It was actually a decent movie - kind of like a modern 'Its a Wonderful Life' only a little different. Its about an architect (oddly enough) who is a workaholic and always chooses work over his family. He gets ahold of a "universal remote that controls the universe" from Christopher Walken, and discovers he can fast forward through the mundane stuff in life and get right to the good parts. Its a good deal at first, but then it goes bad. Its one of those "life's a journey, not a destination" movies. I'd definitely recommend it for rental (or dollar theater).

If you're wondering, I also found a dollar theater in Irvine, appropriately called "Starplex Cinemas - Woodbridge Dollar Movies 5" for you Orange County types (which you may already have known about).

City of the future

There's a lot of building going on here in Denver. I've seen or heard from 3 different famous architects in the last couple of weeks - Steven Holl, who's design architect for the Denver Justice Center Courthouse (which I will probably be working on in some capacity because my firm is the local architect) has been wandering around in our office, Robert AM Stern is design architect for the "Cosmopolitan Club" (downtown assisted living facility) which I've been working on off and on, and tonight I went and saw Daniel Libeskind (designer of the Denver Art Museum expansion and the World Trade Center master plan) unveil his design of the civic center park in the middle of downtown (picture below, article here)




Its really rare to see so many high profile projects going on simultaneously, with both public and private money. Even cooler is that I get to be somehow involved in some of it. The fact that these big shot out-of-state types are swarming all over tells me the word is getting out about Denver. The civic center park looks to be a very cool place to go when you all come out here (although since its just in the "vision" stage, it will be years before its complete). Libeskind echoed some of the same sentiment that attracted me here, about the pride that Denverites have in their city, and the bright future the area has. I keep thinking its such a awesome time to get to be a small part of building this city at this point in its history.

Its funny that when we decided to move out here, I was just hoping I could find a reasonable job working on halfway decent projects. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I'd love to actually move here. Just gotta sell the house!

Our Weekend

Just a recap of our weekend, for no particular reason....

We signed a bunch of paperwork on Saturday morning to officially put our hold on the house, with first right of refusal. We've probably got about 6 weeks to get the OC house sold before the Parker house closes. We've got an extremely reasonable price going, having dropped almost $100K from the original asking price, so we're hoping it goes soon. We're getting more and more attached to the Parker house, so we'd definitely prefer that this would work out than not, but if not I'm sure there's a reason for it.

We showed it to the Heldts, and they gave it a thumbs up, so we figure that counts for something.

We took Ella for a walk along Cherry Creek Trail (different than the Cherry Creek Reservoir, where Jenna went a while back). The trail follows the creek for miles, and seems like a great place to ride your bike. We'll have to get a couple of bikes once the finances are in order. We didn't see a lot of wildlife (we were hoping to spot some deer or antelope or something), but we were nearly eaten by this ferocious snake
Okay, so that photo is enlarged. It was actually about a foot long, and completely harmless. Here's another picture with Ella in it for scale. She was completely oblivious (not the most observant dog)


(yes, if you were wondering, that is Ella's poo in the bag... you've got to take it with you - they're really big on that in the C.O., which is good, because I don't like to step in poo any more than the next guy)

We visited the Heldts and checked out their halfway installed landscape (coming along quite nicely, but I'm sure they'll post about that), and found a convenient back road between their place and our prospective house in Parker that takes around 20 minutes. I also checked out Jenna's new stable. We think its in this stretch of forest called the "black forest", because it pretty abruptly changes from wide open prairies to dense evergreen forest. Its pretty cool, and not too far from our prospective house (although it feels like your in the wilderness).

I think that's about all...

First week at the new barn

Well, here I am in the middle of my first week at the new job - Platinum Farms. I have today off, so I worked Mon, Tues and Wed, and I'll work tomorrow. So far it's totally my ideal job - 4 days a week, about 6-7 hrs a day, and all with horses! Who could ask for more?! The most exciting part so far was yesterday, one of the horses ripped a gash in his face and had to get stitches. No one saw him do it, so we're not sure exactly what happened, but horses do have a tendency to hurt themselves on invisible things...I wish I had my camera to take a pic so I'd have a good picture to go with my story. Tomorrow I'll take it along and get a picture of the stitches. It would have been cool to have before and after pics, though.

Tomorrow I also get my first lesson with the trainer, Rochelle. I've seen her give other people lessons and I like her style, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Other than that I'm just trying to remember everyone's names - the people and the horses! It's double the work of starting a regular job where you just have to remember people's names. It's pretty funny though because I can remember a horse's name after hearing it just once, yet it takes several times before I remember the peoples' names! If I was still in school, I'd like to do some sort of research on that fact. I wonder what makes the difference...

$5 buys you a lot in Colorado

Friday afternoon we went back to a new neighborhood we had previously visited with our realtor, to go check on a spec house we liked (spec houses are new houses that the builder goes ahead and starts building, with the options preselected in the assumption that someone will buy them). We found out it had sold, but decided to check out what else the builder had. We found a house that we both dug, with pretty much everything we were looking for. The lot is awesome, with a huge park in front and a small patch of designated open space behind, which rolls off downhill into a great view across Parker to the mountains and the city. Plus its got most of what we were looking for as far as floorplan and bedrooms. The yard is huge, which we actually are a little worried about due to the high price of water in Denver, but it would be great for Ella. We asked about putting a hold on it, and they told us it usually requires around $1500 - $2000 earnest money deposit, but they were having a special right now for 5.

"$500?" We both said... thinking "that's a good deal!"...

"No, 5 dollars" she replied.

So we put a hold on the house. Its scheduled to be completed 30-60 days (by the looks of it, its more like 60 days +), which buys us that amount of time to sell our house. If it doesn't work out, we're down 5 bucks.

We're trying not to get too attached to the house, but now that we've invested such a large sum of money in it, we feel like its ours. There's plenty of little things we'd like to change if we could (me being in the business I'm in), but as a whole its definitely our favorite that we've seen (except for the houses that were too expensive for us), and we've seen a lot of houses. Incredible deal compared to orange county. Here's a pic

and a pic of the view from the backyard (zoomed, but that's the back fence).

and the park across the street (the house is right where the boxy green scion is parked in the upper right portion)



Now have some kind of investment (even if its only $5) in a home in Parker, we were thrilled to happen upon a new church in Parker, that we went to this morning. We got a really good vibe about it, even though its still pretty small and growing. We've been to something like 8 different churches since we've been here, (we haven't been as daring as the Santagatas) and we are feeling like this is probably going to be our home church. They are definitely in need of some help, being a growing church, so hopefully we'll figure out where we can best be of use and plug in there.


So the last, and biggest, piece of the puzzle left is the sale of our house back in the OC. All prayers are greatly appreciated on that one, as the market seems really slow, while its starting to pick up again here in Colorado (which is why the $5 hold is a great deal). We will be very, very, very, very excited when that day comes.

So we're seriously hoping this is it, and it will be smooth sailing from here. We can't wait to have a kitchen and a refrigerator, we owe Mike and Rachel some meals... as well as anyone else that wants to come visit. If all works out the Hoskinson bed & breakfast will be open for business by ski season.

Zoo Day

Today I went to the Denver zoo with Rachel, Aubrey, and her parents who were in town visiting. I have put together a small slideshow with some of the better pics. I think the white wolf pic is my favorite. You can also visit my photobucket page for all the pics, if you're interested:

click here

That should take you to the album where you can click on the pics individually or click on "slideshow".

Nature and stuff

Since this is my last week off before starting work, I decided to take advantage of the free day. I took Ella to Cherry Creek State Park and walked around some trails, and saw this lovely pond with ducks swimming in it. I thought our camera had a pretty good zoom, but apparently it's not quite as good as I thought as the duck still looks pretty tiny in my pic! (See him there, he's that spec in the middle of the picture. You can actually see his wake pretty well.)

Also, last night, when I took Ella downstairs and outside to use the grass, I spotted this HUGE praying mantis hangin' out on the stair rail...way cool!

I got a job!

On Saturday I met with the trainer from Platinum Farms, and she offered me a paying job! Since about a week and a half ago when the dressage barn wanted me to work for free I have been a little discouraged, but Jay reminded me that I still had the meeting with Rochelle from Platinum Farms coming up. So, Saturday I met with her and everything is working out beautifully. I start next Monday, which is another week of being home alone, but at least I have a paying job and it's a job I will love, again. I can't believe how blessed Jay and I are in all of this.

In other news, we are in the process of trying to get out of our contract with the realtor back in CA. We still have another month left on it, and we know the house is just going to sit there. Our realtor has to "check with her boss" about letting us off, so hopefully they will so we can get going with a bigger company, which will hopefully be more aggressive and have more resources.

Living Small

I've been working on this huge senior/assisted living "club" in downtown. There's a mix of units, from 3 bedroom "independent living" to these studios for alzheimer's patients. We're trying to fit all the different needs into the available space in the building (urban projects are actually pretty fun because its really challenging), and still provide enough manuevering room in the public areas for an abnormal amount of wheelchairs and disabled seniors to make their way around. Anyway, I was thinking these "memory care" units seemed really small at around 300 sf. I decided to measure our apartment for a comparison, and how much room do we have here?

292 sf.

I'm not complaining, its just kind of funny. Our kitchen still cracks me up. Its like a badge of honor to say how small of a living space you've managed to adapt to. As long as its temporary of course...

miscelaneous stuff

Here is the view from one of my drives to a barn out here. It was a long dirt road and now I wish I would've taken a pic of the road! Anyways, update on the work situation: the dressage barn wanted me to work for free, so I had to respectfully decline. I am still meeting with another trainer this Sat, so hopefully that goes better.

Jay's work had a company picnic on Sat afternoon and I met the wife of one of his coworkers, who has her own graphic design company and basically offered me a job, so I think I'm gonna go that route. I think she needs part time help, so I may still be able to find some work at a barn part time also, which would be perfect.

Sat morning the Heldts invited us to breakfast at "Le Peep" which is excellent breakfast grub. Then we hiked "the Rock", which is the castle-looking rock which the town of Castle Rock is named after. It was a good introductory hike for those of us still trying to get aclimatized (is that a word?) to the altitude up here. Sorry for the random placement of the photos, Blogger doesn't want to cooperate today.