Old Friends, Good Times

Last weekend we had some good friends from home, Tim and Megan, in town for a whirlwind weekend visit.  They landed on Thursday night and were off again Sunday morning so it was a quick trip but we managed to make the most of it.  We started the weekend off in Denver--it had been awhile since we've gone out in Denver--and then drove up to Ft. Collins Friday for an afternoon of beer tasting at the breweries. Matt has been to Ft. Collins before but this was my first time so I was pretty excited.  I'm not the most adventurous when it comes to beer, in fact I generally stick to Bud Light, but I've branched out some since moving out here and I'm willing to at least try all kinds.

Tasting at Odell Brewery, one of Matt's favorites.

Quite the spread at New Belgium Brewery.

We only visited three breweries and there were plenty more to try, but we had to cut the afternoon short in order to make it to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison for the Michael Franti concert that night.  If you recall, Matt and I saw a concert there in May in less than desirable conditions.  This time thankfully the weather was much better and I was able to really enjoy the experience.

Even up at the top, it's still a great experience.

Took a few tries but we got a decent group picture.

Saturday we drove up Pikes Peak and spent some time at Garden of the Gods.  I can honestly say I don't think I will ever get sick of the mountains or the gorgeous views we have out here.  It's so nice to have visitors come out and be able to share all of it with them...I loved Megan's excitement about the mountains because it reminded me of my first couple trips out here. :)

My favorite spot on the way up Pikes Peak.

The sky is so blue!

Just climbing around on top of a mountain.

Garden of the Gods--one of my favorite places out here.

Joseph family photo!

Best dog ever. :)

It was a fast weekend, but a great one.  We loved getting to spend time out here with some good friends and showing them what Colorado is all about: gorgeous views, mountains, and good beer. :)  Can't wait to see you guys again in just a couple weeks!!

One Year.

Yesterday marked our one year anniversary, and what a year it has been!  It's hard to believe that our first year of marriage has come and gone as it seems like just yesterday we were celebrating with our family and friends at our reception.  And yet, here we are one year later getting ready to embark on the next chapter of our life together.  I know that this next year will be one full of adventure and growth with some challenges but we'll tackle it all together, and for that I am incredibly grateful to have such a wonderful partner by my side. :)

So, in honor of our first year of marriage, I've included some of our favorite pictures from our wedding day.  All photos are copyrighted by Jodi Schlosser, our amazing photographer.

An emotional moment while getting ready.

Matt waiting for his bride...and shedding a tear.

Mr. and Mrs. at last!

One of my favorites.

Our awesome wedding party, we love you all!!

Taking pictures is hard, the boys needed a break.

Sharing some laughs during the speeches.

We were given a large knife to cut the cake with.

First dance, so much love. :)

We truly enjoyed our wedding and had a blast celebrating!

Us in a nutshell.

Heading back to enjoy the party...what a wonderful, wonderful day!

Memorial Day

Happy belated Memorial Day everyone, hope you all had a great long weekend!  While I realize that the actual holiday was Monday and today is Wednesday, we felt like we had an extra long weekend since I don't start work for the week until tonight.  We celebrated the holiday like most Americans do: beer, bbq, and friends.  Here in Old Colorado City there's an event called Territory Days that takes place every Memorial Day weekend.  For those of you in the Kirkwood area, it's basically like the Greentree Festival, but instead of being spread throughout a park it's crammed into three blocks of the main road which just happens to be a block from our house.  It's essentially a festival with live music and lots of vendors in tents selling food, jewelry, clothing, etc.  While it sounds all fine and dandy, it means that our neighborhood is overrun with people parking and walking to the festival.  Plenty of those people don't know how to park but they do make for good people watching.  Most people either hunker down for the weekend or get out of town.  We stuck it out. :)

Since we didn't plan to leave our house, we had a couple friends over some bbq at our place on Sunday.  Matt is quite the grill-master and made delicious burgers.  It was a great little get together with the couple of friends we have left in town.  Monday we joined our neighbors for the annual Memorial Day bbq/countdown to the end of Territory Days.  There was an abundance of great food and it was a nice chance to meet some more of the neighbors.  Matt was living here this time last year, but it was a first for me.  We really have been incredibly lucky to have spent our first year of marriage in such an awesome place.  This lovely home basically fell into our laps and it's just been wonderful.  I have to say, I'm going to be sad to move away from here and the great community we've become a part of.  I've lived in a number of different places and never had friendly neighbors but that certainly wasn't the case here.  Hopefully we'll have just as great an experience at the next place.  Speaking of which...

We have a new home to move into!  We spent the day yesterday apartment hunting in the area between Northern Denver and Boulder and after looking at a number of different complexes, we found one that we think will be great for us and we've got ourselves an apartment.  Moving to another house would have been ideal for us and the dog, but the cost of living up there is so much greater than it is here that a house really wasn't feasible.  Luckily, this complex is very dog friendly and near both a dog park and open spaces so Cooper will still get plenty of exercise.  It's great to have that big thing checked off the list.  Now, I just need to find a job! :)

Me and my girl Mallory.

Funnel Cake...the only reason I wanted to
venture into the crowd.

Matt manning the grill.

Hope all is well with everyone, we'll be seeing those of you in St. Louis in just under five weeks!! Xoxo! 

Long Time, No Talk...

Apologies for the lack of posting in the last month--our normally slow schedule seemed to be jam packed these last few weeks and we've been unusually busy.  So, get comfy because this is going to be a rather long post. :)

First off, I cannot believe we are approaching the end of May!!  In roughly five weeks we'll be packed up and moved out of our home here and heading back to St. Louis for some much needed time with family and friends before moving up to the Boulder area.  It truly seems like just yesterday we were moving Cooper and I into this house and now the time has come to pack up and move on to the next chapter.  That means apartment hunting up north in the Denver/Boulder area and the fun process of applying for a new job for me.  I've currently applied for four different jobs at three different hospitals so cross your fingers and send some good mojo my way!!

Now, on to what we've been up to for the last month.  My mom came out to visit the first weekend of May and we had a blast.  It was great to have her out here for a few days and catch up.  We did a lot of hiking and walking around, drove up Pikes Peak, did some shopping in Old Colorado City, and spent our nights enjoying the great weather on our front porch.  Here's a few pictures from her trip:

A gorgeous reservoir on the drive up Pikes Peak.

People actually ski down those chutes in the mountain!!

At the Summit...where it was rather cold!

We found Big Foot.

Hiking Garden of the Gods...Cooper still thinks
he's too good for the camera.

The following weekend, I had my first concert experience at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison.  Sadly, it was a cold and rainy night which didn't make for the most pleasant evening but we sucked it up, got a bit wet, and enjoyed some good music.  We're attending another concert there next month when some friends come in town and I am certain Mother Nature will be more cooperative then.  I didn't take any pictures because 1) it was raining and I didn't want to get my camera wet and 2) my hands were too cold to remove from my pockets.

Last week, our dear friend Gina came for a whirlwind visit.  Matt met Gina shortly after moving out here years ago and she and I instantly hit it off when we met.  Gina started dating Matt's roommate Johnny about the same time that Matt and I started dating.  She was one of my bridesmaids and Matt and I are both part of the bridal party for her wedding to Johnny this August.  So, Gina was in town for three days with lots of wedding planning to do (they're getting married here in the Springs but both are active duty and stationed in Hawaii).  It was wonderful to be able to help Gina with her wedding plans as it brought back great memories of planning our wedding last year but without any stress. :)  Our days were full of wedding planning but we did manage to squeeze in a round of golf before Gina left...neither Matt nor myself are golfers so we were the chauffeurs. :)

It was an unusually cold day...we had to bundle up on the golf cart.

We were hoping not to get hit by this lovely weather...thankfully
it passed over us.

I attempted to play a hole while Matt purchased beer.

Typical.

Matt getting in on the action.

This past weekend, Matt and our friend Andrew took another crack at Pikes Peak...and this time they were successful!!  Thankfully the weather was much  better and so they were able to hike up to the top and caught the Cog Railway back down.  Pretty awesome that Matt can now say he's climbed a 14'er.

Hot chocolate and delicious donuts that they have in the shop
at the Summit...sounds like a great way to cap off a hike up a mountain. :)

So, if you've made it this far, that's a rough recap of our last month.  Hope all is well with everyone back home and we're looking forward to seeing y'all soon!! Xoxo!

Spring Has Sprung!

I think it's safe to say that spring has finally arrived and is sticking around.  The weather has been absolutely gorgeous and we've been taking advantage of it every chance we get.  While I've heard it's possible to still get snow until May out here, I have a feeling we saw the last snowfall a few weeks ago.  It was definitely a mild winter but I'm not complaining at all.  As much as I love snow, I've been itching for warm weather and spring/summer for a while now.  I have to say though, spring out here is a bit different than I'm used to: it's not nearly as green out here.  I miss all the lush green yards, leafy trees, and colorful flowers.  I do love the mountains though so I suppose it's a trade-off. :)

Other than enjoying the great weather, we really haven't been up to much.  I've been counting down the weeks left at work (10 left including this week) and Matt has been enjoying his time off.  We'll be heading back to St. Louis for most of the month of July so get ready for some Matt and Ellen time family and friends in St. Louis!!  We're incredibly excited for our trip back--we haven't been there since Thanksgiving so a visit is long overdue. Cooper will be joining us too so we'll be loading up the car and making the drive back before we know it.  There's lots to accomplish before we take our extended vacation (house hunting, job hunting, and packing just to name a few) so I'm sure we'll be busy for the next 10 weeks.

On a more serious note, please take a moment out of your day to say a little prayer for our Soldiers still in harms way in Afghanistan.  We have a number of friends that recently arrived over there for another deployment.  Please just keep our Soldiers in your thoughts and prayers that they return home safe and sound next January.

Hope everyone is enjoying this lovely spring as much as we are!! :)

Pikes Peak Adventure

Hello all!  Matt here.  This past weekend my friend Andrew and I tried to hike up Pikes Peak, which would have been my first ascent of a 14er (That's what Coloradans, Coloradoites, and Coloradians call a 14,000' peak).  It's an obvious choice since it pretty much sits across the street from our house, and I've always wanted to climb it.  There are a couple different directions from which to approach it, but we chose the western slope.  There is a much better traveled, slightly longer, and more user-friendly approach from the east that starts in Manitou Springs, just 5 minutes up the road from me, but the western approach is 1) shorter, B) less traveled, D) more exciting, and 4) offers views of the Continental Divide, instead of the east-Colorado/Kansas wasteland.  Below is a topographical map of the route we were supposed to take (more on that later).  The trail up is about 6.8mi with an elevation gain of 5000'.

So, we loaded up our gear and set out to hit the trail by first light (6:30ish) so as to avoid the adverse weather prone to hit the summit in the afternoon.  We had made arrangements to catch a ride down the mountain on the Cog Railway train that ferries tourists up and down.  The catch was the train was leaving the summit at 11am so we had a bit of a time hack to make.  Consequences of missing the ride meant, most likely, that we'd be hiking back down, which sounded about as fun as getting punched in the throat.  When we arrived at the trailhead, we had a realization that did not occur to us earlier: there was still plenty of snow on the ground.  Duh!  It's the Rockies.  Oh well.  We're tough SOBs and we brought our snow spikes for this very reason, so we decided to continue with the plan.  The snow on the ground was an added challenge to the aerobic and navigational nature of the hike (ie, Soft snow is similar to sand.  Try hiking up a mountain of sand.  And trail covered by snow.  Damn.)

Trail?  What trail?

We started following some dude's tracks on what we figured was the trail.  Then the tracks split.  *Scratches head*  Well, we picked the set that went "up" and drove on.  Around the same time, Andrew and I had the same thought that we were probably not on the trail we planned to take.  We decided to follow it anyway simply for adventure's sake and see where it took us.  Ever the optimists, we hoped we would be able to intersect the trail at some point.  

Up we went.  The wind was beginning to pick up as the temp started to drop so we bundled up and continued on.  The sun was still on the east side of the mountain so shade did not help.  As we got above the timber-line, the views to the west opened up, and they were magnificent.  We could see the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Continental Divide, miles and miles away, clear as day.

  

This was about the time that the tracks we were following disappeared, X-files style.  No turn around or anything.  Quickly dismissing that mystery, we decided to get to the top of the peak we were climbing and take stock of our situation.  When we finally reached the top we were met by an amazing vista, and a truly bizarre, almost lunar-ish, landscape.    

Looking east.  Those are clouds way out there.

From there we could see the road that led to the summit.  The same road that our trail we meant to be on followed somewhat.  However, in order to get there we had to do some significant down-climbing through a boulder field.  We thought it best to get to the road and then decide whether to go further, or to call it a good adventure and let the mountain win this one.  As we climbed down, there were multiple times when either me or Andrew sunk into waist-deep snow, between boulders.  Needless to say, it was a little tense, and fun.

The boulder field.  About halfway down.  If you look real hard you can see me in the middle of the frame.

We finally reached the road, and a rather conveniently placed visitor cabin.  We spoke to a ranger who told us that the summit was getting pounded by 60mph winds and -5 temps.  She also mentioned a sobering fact that they couldn't even get up there to rescue us if need be due to the whether.  Pssshh.  Rescue who?!  Us?  Yeah well, maybe we decided not to proceed due to that little factoid, or that we knew the train wouldn't be running in those conditions, so our ride down was kaput.  Or a combination of the two.  Lucky for us, we left our egos in Andrew's truck about six miles, 1000' up, and then 4000' back down, on the other side of the mountain.  Now we were stuck with the conundrum of how to get back to either Andrew's truck, or my car in Manitou Springs.  Our best bet was to throw some thumbs on the side of the road.  Again, Lady Luck struck before we could even post up and two guys walked out of the visitor cabin who happened to be going down.  They were sympathetic to our circumstances enough to give us a ride in their Chevy Cruze rental car (Would you believe rental car companies call that a mid-size??!) back to my car.  Once back to my car we got double cheese burgers from Wendy's.  Civilization is nice, isn't it?  More pictures on Facebook. 

The arrow is roughly where we topped out and started our descent.

            

Homemade Chinese Dinner!

Matt and I just love our Chinese food.  We have a place here in town that we love, Hunan Springs, and we probably order from there every few weeks.  I always get beef with broccoli while Matt will change up his order.  Unfortunately, Chinese food isn't that great for you and we've been trying to eat healthier these days.  Plus, ordering out isn't so easy on the wallet either.  So, we decided we'd try our hand at making our own Chinese food with a couple recipes I found on Pinterest: baked sweet and sour chicken and baked crab rangoon.

Sweet and Sour Chicken:
This recipe originally came from here, and I've actually found a couple other great recipes on this blog too.  An important note: this chicken takes an hour to bake...plan accordingly (we didn't realize this and ended up having a late dinner).

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts

salt & pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

Sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar

4 tablespoons ketchup

1/2 cup vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon garlic salt

Start by preheating the oven to 325 degrees.   Rinse the chicken breasts, cut them into cubes, and season with salt and pepper.  Heat the canola oil in a large skillet.  Coat the chicken in the cornstarch then dip the coated chicken into the beaten eggs.  Cook the chicken in the skillet until browned, but not cooked through.

Once browned, transfer the chicken to a greased 9x13 baking dish.  Whisk all the ingredients together to make the sweet and sour sauce.  At this point, the original recipe calls for you to pour the sweet and sour sauce over the chicken in the pan and then bake it all together for an hour, turning the chicken every 15 minutes.  However, we found that our chicken was pretty sticky and doughy when we did it this way.  I think when we make this again we'll bake the chicken without the sauce and instead, make the sauce in a saucepan and heat it but use it on the side to dip the chicken into.  This way, the chicken will hopefully stay crispy and it allows each person to choose how much sauce they'd like.

We also decided to cut up a few peppers into large chunks and sauteed them in a large pan with a small amount of oil over medium heat.  We threw some pineapple in there too and added the mixture to our plate when the chicken was done.

Baked Crab Rangoon:

I just love crab rangoon but the fact that it's fried makes it delicious but rather unhealthy, so I was super excited when I found this recipe!

2 tablespoons light sour cream

8 oz reduced fat cream cheese, softened

1 scallion, thinly sliced

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup crab meat, drained

wonton wrappers (these can generally be found in the produce section)

Preheat the oven to 415 degrees.  In a bowl, mix together the sour cream, cream cheese, scallion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and sugar.  Once well combined, fold in the crab meat.  We used imitation crab which came in large chunks so we cut our up into much smaller pieces before folding it in.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with non-stick cooking spray.

Lay a wonton wrapper on your work surface and spoon about 2 teaspoons of the filling into the center of the wrapper.  Brush two adjacent sides of the wrapper with water (this will help seal the wrapper) and then fold the wrapper over on the diagonal.  Press around the filling to remove any air pockets and then press the sides together to seal the wrapper--if any air pockets are left, the wrapper will pop open while cooking and some filling will escape.  

After the wrapper is sealed, transfer to the baking sheet.  Once all the wrappers are completed (it should make about 20 or so), transfer the baking sheet to the oven and bake for about 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown and crispy.

We found that while the edges and bottom of our were crispy, the top remained a bit doughy.  Next time, we plan to turn the wrappers over about halfway through in hopes of getting an overall crisp.  Also, I don't recommend reheating any leftovers in the microwave as they get very doughy...better to reheat in the oven.  

Once it's all done, enjoy your delicious meal...we sure did!!