Bald Mountain and Lily Lake

We took a short hike up "Bald Mountain" outside of Boulder.  It gave us some great views towards the west and the continental divide.

 

As you can see, there aren't too many trees on the top of Bald Mountain.  Oh....now I get it.

 

It was such a beautiful day we drove north, straight into Rocky Mountain National Park.

 

Even though the Denver area doesn't have much snow, there's plenty up in the park.  This is a view of Lily Lake at sunset.

Christmas in Denver

Christmas is right around the corner and the Denver Botanical Gardens pull out all the stops with their Christmas display.  The entire gardens are covered in tiny lights.  Clark W. Griswold would be proud.

Ready or Not... Here He Comes!

13 weeks

 There is a baby boy Feringa on the way.

20 weeks

 He was not cooperative for the super cute pictures. It looks like we have a little alien on the way. (So much for parents thinking their kids are cuter than everyone else's.)

If you can't tell, these are his feet... the only other picture we got was of his thinger but we didn't figure you wanted to look at that.

20 weeks along and the bump is barely starting. He just likes to sit on my bladder...

Boulder

It has been such an abnormally warm fall/winter that we are still hiking around without the thought of snow. We thought we would need to buy boots... not so sure we are going to need them this year!

An afternoon hike with Seth, Vickie, and the dog... EVERYBODY in Colorado has at least one dog!

Although, this dog is fairly photogenic....

The Poudre Canyon

A few days ago our travels took us up the Poudre Canyon in northern Colorado.

 

Much like the rest of the country, Colorado has been mired in a lengthy drought.  Here, it has led to some significant fires.  You can see a large burn area that we hiked through in the foreground of this picture.

 

Colorado is still beautiful and the temperatures have been so warm.  Many days have been well above 60 degrees out here.  No snow yet!

 

We think everyone out here would love some snow.  We're told this river has never been so low.  As many of you know, we don't mind warm weather all that much.

Boulder Hiking

As we're always looking for a new hike, it seemed like Boulder, CO was the perfect spot.  Our friend Seth and his dog Rocky decided to join us for a hike to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain.

 

You can't stop Trish from hiking to the top of a mountain.

 

This hike provided us great views of Rocky Mountain National Park and it's highest peak, Long's Peak.  It stands at just over 14,000 feet.

It certainly is nice to have a photographer along on the hike with us (thanks Seth).

 

Rocky Mountain National Park

Now that we're down to our typical three day work week, we were able to get out for a hike in the national park today. (turns out there isn't a lot of free time when you work five days a week!)

 We hiked to a place called Gem Lake.  It should have been called Gem Pond, or better yet....Gem Puddle.  It was only about 0.2 acres, which hardly qualifies as a lake.

....Still, it was such a beautiful sunny day, we didn't care where we hiked to.

 

This is what outhouses look like on the edge of a cliff.  I suppose the top half of the structure has already fallen down the hill.

 

Traveling is still fun.  Enjoying beautiful creation with each other is the best part.

First Week Down

We're traveling in Colorado with a company called Banner Health.  At Banner you must complete almost two weeks of new employee orientation before they let you start your job.  We're done with the orientation and just completed the first week of real work.  We celebrated by going to Cracker Barrel this morning.  So exciting!

Romney/Ryan 2012

We normally don't like to spread political propaganda on our blog, but while we were in Colorado Springs today, so was Mitt Romney.

Tickets were free, so we figured "why not?"

In 2007, my friend Brad and I found out that Mitt Romney was going to be in East Grand Rapids for a campaign stop while he was running in the republican primary.  There were about 100 people there that time, he didn't even need a microphone.  This time.....it was a bit different.  Try 5,000 people inside an airplane hangar.  In 2007 we got to shake his hand.... more than once!  Today we got picked to sit in the bleachers, no hand shake.

He also didn't arrive in this last time I saw him.

Garden of the gods

While visiting Colorado Springs today, we were able to visit the "Garden of the gods."

You might think, "these pictures look familiar."

We thought it "looked familiar" too.  We thought it looked just like Sedona, AZ.  Only, it was smaller.

Last Minute Move

We decided last week that we were going to move to the Denver area. So.... we did, and here we are.

 

One good thing about the company that we are currently working for is good housing. There are no cockroaches or homeless men living with us right now. That is a good thing. (Yes, that is Kurt unloading the dishwasher... he must want something...!)

Here's the view from our apartment... I thought the Rocky Mountains would be a lot more rocky than this. That John Denver is full of crap!

 

Kurt has an addiction.

 

If you crane your neck around the corner of our balcony, this is our view.

City Slickers

It was raining, cold and Jim and Kathy were in town for the weekend.  They had never been to a pumpkin patch before, so Trish and I decided to take them.

Megan and Katie had a great time experiencing the country, if only for a couple of hours.

 

Jim just couldn't leave the good ones sitting there.  He didn't know it, but he loves punkin' pickin'.

 

Everybody stayed warm and dry, well sort of.

More Surfing (a little colder this time)

The surf was up on Lake Michigan on Monday and the temperatures were down.  It was time to get suited up!

It would not have been safe to be on the pier!

We always seem to get pictures of me falling down.  That would mean that at one point I was standing up.

Some Nice Fall Weather

With some beautiful fall weather always comes some golf.  I took my personal photographer along (Trisha).

Sometimes the weather was better than the golf, but at least we were outside.

Time to find some pumpkins.

Kurt- "Hey Joel, do you think we should carve these things up with all Green Bay Packers logos? Or should we add some Milwaukee Brewers logos too?"

Joel- "Maybe we should carve some with the Detroit Lions emblem.....nah, we'll stick with the Packers."

That's a perfect Peter-sized pumpkin.

One of the last nice days of the year, and we got to spend it outside....nice.