Snow days on Spring Break... how sad.

I have to say: I love living in Colorado.

It snowed like crazy on Thursday (I think we got 11 inches in my neck of the woods). It completely slowed down everything in the Denver area. Schools were canceled and traffic was NUTS.

This was the view out our patio window around mid-day.

But this is not why I like living in Colorado. In fact, I hate the cold and snow a lot. And I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a snow day this week since I was already on Spring Break.

The cats liked the snow.

What makes me SO happy about Colorado is that Friday morning, the sun came out and (with the help of the plow trucks) melted away the snow. I drove to my dentist appointment around 10:30 on nearly dry roads. By late afternoon, the roads were completely clear.

View out my window this morning (Saturday).

After the storm moved out of Colorado and moved into Kansas, it turned into ice. My friends and family have been without power for hours, and have dealt with broken trees and craziness. And while I'm very sorry that they've had to deal with all that, I'm very happy that I haven't. Colorado winters really are better than Kansas winters... in my opinion.

In other news, I got my hair cut and dyed this week. This was me before:

Ugly hair, weird expression.

This is me now:

So... yay.

Can Spring Break be two weeks long this year?

Spring Break is really fantastic. And I have to say, when you work with kids, you often need a little break to re-energized yourself. So that's what I'm doing this week! Because I'm on Spring Break!

This Spring Break is especially wonderful because it began after two very long twelve-hour days. It was parent/teacher conferences, but since I'm not a teacher, I didn't have to confer with anyone. Instead we cleaned and reorganized our room. It was kinda messy:


For our dinner on Thursday, we were provided with raw meat. Yay!

The place we got our dinner from didn't cook their meat before they put it in their lasagna. Obviously, it didn't cook at all because every lasagna recipe I've ever seen calls for you to cook your meat before you put it in the lasagna. It was pretty disgusting to find the above in my food, after I'd already eaten more than half of it.

But no one got sick, and we got free pizza from the restaurant the next day. So, life goes on.

It certainly helped me get more ready to get out of school and start Spring Break!

It began nicely, on Saturday morning, with our first hike of the season. Matt and I went to Mount Falcon for a short and easy hike. Everything is still a little brown and dead, but it was pretty, nonetheless.

If you look carefully on the top of the hill, you can see the shelter we hiked to.

On Saturday night, we went mini-golfing with Mel. Yay, Spring is finally here! Though it was still a little chilly.


Matt won, of course. He's too good at everything.


Sunday morning we had a big family brunch because my aunt and uncle were in town. Unfortunately, my aunt was very sick, so it was a pretty subdued day. But it was nice to visit with everyone, and breakfast was delicious. Plus, it was pretty funny that my parents, the chefs, wore matching aprons.


It would be more fun if they were an exciting color or had matching designs... but oh, well.

I love yard games, like croquet and bocce ball. You can see this season's first croquet game from a few weeks ago here. After brunch on Sunday, we had our first bocce ball game!



So, it's been a pretty a good start to Spring Break. Monday, I worked on an application for a summer job all day, and did a little house cleaning. Today included a doctor's appointment (I'll start physical therapy for my back again...) and lunch downtown with Matt.

So Spring Break is good. And I still have the rest of the week to enjoy.

And by the way, the croquet quote from my previous post is from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the book.

Happy Happy Birthday...s...

I like birthdays! Especially my own, but mine is not for another couple of months. So I'll just have to enjoy the special days' of others. Which is fun, too.

Last Wednesday was Matt's birthday. I made him a delicious meal of creamy chicken enchiladas, with delicious beans as a side, margaritas to drink, and yummy chocolate chip cookies as desert.

But I don't have any pictures, so you'll have to imagine it.

For one of my best friend's birthday this weekend, I threw a little get-together. It was a lot of fun. And I do have pictures of this one, so you can rest your imaginations for a while.

I made a pretty good spread of food. Not quite as elaborate as some stuff I've done (Jess's baby shower was pretty awesome), but I was pretty proud of what I threw together.


It was a Mexican Fiesta theme, with Mexican tortilla roll-ups, 7 layer bean dip, cheesy beef dip (not pictured), and fruit salsa with cinnamon-sugar tortilla chips. Plus chips and salsa, but I didn't make my own, so it doesn't really count. And I made small non-dairy versions of the roll-ups and the bean dip. So, we had a pretty good amount of food.

My favorite was the fruit salsa. It takes forever to cut up all the fruit (thanks for doing that part, Mel!) and bake the chips, but it is totally worth it.


So we ate lots of food...


Including cake (made by the birthday girl herself, which seems kinda wrong. But I think she had fun with it, so it's ok).

The orange candle doesn't have a wick. How sad.

Don't spit on my cupcake, Mel!

And we played games. Apples to Apples is awesome.


I think it was a good time. Hopefully Melissa did, too!

And by the way, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

"Do you play croquet with the Queen today?"

This last weekend was a good one. It was one of those weekends that made me dread going back to work on Monday.

It started with a fun trip to the Denver Art Museum on Saturday. The first Saturday of every month is a free day, which is really fantastic. Everyone in Denver should take advantage of it. So, for $5 in parking Matt and I went to the Art Museum.

Unfortunately, my camera's battery died right as we got there, so I had to use my phone's camera to take pictures. It's not the best camera, especially for art. But oh, well.

There was a really cool exhibit called Fox Games. My pictures were so bad, that I won't even include them. But go here if you want to see something cool.

My favorite piece is probably Linda by John De Andrea. It's so realistic that my pictures will never do it justice. I was sure she was going to open her eyes at any second.


The Hayagriva Mandala was also very cool. It was made of sand by Buddhist monks. A better image of the design and some cool info can be found here.


And finally (though there were so many cool pieces I could keep posting all night), there was an interesting piece of a palace facade from Pakistan. It was carved out of wood, and it was so intricate.


It was a good day. And now I feel so cultured.

In front of a big broom sculpture outside the museum.

Matt's birthday is this week (tomorrow, in fact), so we had a little gathering with my family on Sunday to celebrate.

I got Matt an AWESOME card that played music. He was thrilled. Really... he wasn't faking it in that picture... at all...

Anyway, some tickets to a Colorado Rapids game came with it, so I think he liked that.

And I made him a delicious cheesecake.


After desert, we enjoyed the beautiful weather by playing croquet at a local "park" area. Though I think Matt enjoyed throwing the mallets around more than playing the game itself.


It was fun.

Salem turned into a sun god for this pic.

So it was a great weekend of art and croquet.

And bonus points if you can tell me what book my title quote came from. Actually, it's pretty easy, so negative points if you can't tell me where it came from.

It's really happening!

Well we had our inspection, which went awesome. And we had our appraisal which is enough to get us our loan. So, we can't really back out now. We're buying a house!!

And I have more pictures.

The living room.

Another view of the kitchen.

From the dining room.

The basement.

Yay!! We wont move in for another month or so. Then I'll have fun pictures of the house without strangers' furniture in it. Yay!!

I guess we're buying a house!

So, the homeowners didn't accept our offer. But they countered just a little bit higher, and we're ok with that. That means we're now under contract!


So now we have inspections and appraisals to worry about. If all goes well, we'll have a new house!