Garden of the Gods

A couple weekends ago Matt had an unexpected Friday off and we took advantage of the amazing weather and headed over to the Garden of the Gods for a nice long hike with Cooper.  One of the things we love about living here in Colorado is all the amazing outdoor places we can go to and hike and just enjoy the beautiful views and nature.  We are fortunate enough to live about 10 minutes away from a number of these places and we try to take advantage of that whenever we can.  We took the camera along with us and I thought I'd share some of the pictures I took...and since there were a number of pictures I thought it deserved it's own post.  Enjoy!

AND, some important news that I cannot believe I forgot to mention in the previous post:  Matt has an interview for CU's MBA program on December 16th!!  I'm so proud of him and I know that he is going to nail the interview...but, keep your fingers crossed and send good thoughts our way nevertheless!! :)

November Recap

It's been quite a while since I've updated this as life out here has been quite busy!!  I'll give a quick update of what we've been up to the last couple weeks.  Two weekends ago we caught our first Colorado College hockey game...they were playing Wisconsin and it was supposed to be a good game.  Obviously we were rooting for CC since they were the home team and they also are the Tigers...though their mascot logo has nothing on the Mizzou Tigers. ;) We won the game 3-2 and it was a lot of fun!

A little scuffle :)

Taking in the game...go CC!

That Saturday we did a little Christmas decoration shopping...I am SO excited to decorate our home for the holiday!  Christmas is absolutely my favorite time of year and I've been planning how to decorate since I moved in back in June.  We'll be putting lights up outside this coming weekend and then cutting down a tree and decorating inside the following weekend...and I will definitely be putting up pictures once we do!  We also went to a birthday party for once of Matt's soldier's sons.  It was pretty funny to watch him with all the kids, putting toys together and having them climb over him like a jungle gym.

Last week was my last week on orientation and training at work so starting this week I am officially on my own, a full-fledged nurse!  I'm both nervous and excited but I have confidence that I will be great on my own.  I worked Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night and then we flew back to St. Louis Wednesday to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with our family and friends.  It really was wonderful to see everyone again.  From Matt's side we had Grandpa, Mimi, Aunt Rosemary, and his brother Dan in town while most of my family already lives in the St. Louis area.  We enjoyed the annual Kirkwood-Webster Groves Turkey Day game even though Kirkwood lost rather badly.  Neither of us had been back to the high school in years and it was crazy to see all that had changed.  We headed over to my mom's side after the game and enjoyed delicious food and then then headed to my dad's side and repeated it again!  Friday afternoon we had our third dinner with Matt's side of the family.  We were able to meet up with many of our fabulous friends Friday night and catch up before heading back to Colorado Saturday evening.  It was a whirlwind trip but we loved getting the chance to see so many of our friends and family.  Unfortunately, we didn't take many pictures at all to document the weekend...still working on that. :)

The sole picture from the weekend: Turkey Day Game!!

We made it safely back home to Colorado Saturday night without too much trouble or delay and Cooper dog was incredibly excited to see us!  It really gives us an ego boost every time we come home from a trip and he is just bursting at the seams with excitement at seeing us. :)  Now, we're just going to enjoy being back in Colorado and get ready for Christmas...lots of decorating, shopping, baking, and gift wrapping to do!!

Tuckered out Cooper :)

Four Day Weekend!

We've had a great weekend here in the Joseph household.  Matt had a four day weekend due to Veteran's Day and we definitely took advantage of it!  We decided to take a last minute trip up to Boulder on Thursday.  The University of Colorado Boulder is Matt's first choice for pursuing his MBA and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to check out both the town and the university.  Thankfully, the staff in the business school was able to accommodate our short notice request and Matt was able to meet with the Director of Admissions as well as sit in on a finance class and meet some current MBA students.  The campus really is quite pretty and has a bit of a different feel than Mizzou.  Boulder itself is absolutely gorgeous and so close to the mountains!!  We met up with one of my old friends from high school who has lived in Boulder for the last six years and had lunch at The Sink, which is where most of the locals go (it's the equivalent to Columbia's Heidelberg).  I could definitely see us living in Boulder, or right outside of it, and there's even a hospital I'd love to work at.  Matt submitted his application tonight (yay!!) so keep your fingers crossed for him!!  We forgot to take pictures with our camera (oops!) so here are a couple from the web:

An aerial view of the campus

The Koelbel Building, home of the Leed's School of Business
where Matt will hopefully spend most of his time next year!

The mascot is a buffalo named Ralphie.

Friday was my 27th birthday (11/11/11!!) and it was so great to be able to celebrate with Matt for the first time in three years!  Last year he was in Iraq and the year before that he was at NTC in California.  We spent the day just relaxing and took Cooper to the dog park.  My gift from him was a pair of boots that I had been wanting and that I just love!  Matt made dinner reservations for us at The Pepper Tree, a fancy restaurant here in the Springs as well as baked me a cake (rainbow party sprinkle cake with rainbow party chip icing...my absolute favorite!!).  It was a great birthday full of well wishes from loved ones, but the best part really was just having Matt home to celebrate with. :)

My awesome new boots!!

And Matt :)

Today was another relaxing day: we spent the morning doing a little bit of shopping and running some errands and the afternoon was full of football...way to go Mizzou, beating Texas!  I thought we'd share the delicious dinner we made tonight: crispy chicken with creamy Italian sauce and pasta.  I found the recipe via Pinterest, which happens to be my new obsession.  It's basically like a virtual pinboard where you can "pin" things you find online under different categories like recipes, craft projects, style inspiration, basically anything you want!  It's a great way to find new recipes and we've been trying out a lot of them lately.  You can find tonight's recipe here.

The cooking process

The final product!

It turned out really well and was very tasty!  We used angel hair pasta because we had some at home that we wanted to finish off but next time we'll use the bowtie pasta as I think it would work better.  Also, the pasta sauce was pretty heavy so next time we'll try to tweak that so it's a bit lighter.  Other than that, we'd definitely recommend it!!

And, since this post has gotten a bit long, I'll wrap it up with a gratuitous picture of Cooper dog because he's  just that cute. :)

I had to hold a treat in front of him to get a picture and this
still was the best I could get. :)

Happy Halloween (one day late)!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween last night...we sure did!  It was Matt's first Halloween in about six years so he was quite excited for it.  Unfortunately, we didn't really have any parties to get dressed up and go to here.    Our next-door neighbor had a party Sunday afternoon which we stopped by for a bit, though no one was really dressed up much.  We carved our pumpkins a bit early (last weekend) so they were a little worse for the wear but that actually made Matt's look creepier so it worked.  We decided to dress up to hand out candy to the kids and our costumes were quite the hit!  We even dressed Cooper up (much to his dismay) as the Cardinal's rally squirrel though he had to stay in the house so as not to scare away the kids.  Since we live so close to the heart of Old Colorado City, we get lots of trick-or-treaters as the shops give out candy to kids and then they come to our neighborhood.  We purposely bought a lot of candy since our neighbors had mentioned how many kids come through but we still ran out--thank goodness our neighbor shared some with us!  Here are some pictures from the night:

Cooper the Rally Squirrel...doesn't he look so excited about his costume?  :)

My pumpkin is on the left, Matt's on the right.

Our costumes: Fred and Wilma Flintsone

Hands down the scariest costumes of the night!
The guy on the left made his costume too!!

A business card for local ghost hunters--a woman was passing them
out.  We got a kick out of it! 

At the end of the night, just a little chilly :)

Time Flies...

 It's so hard to believe that I've been living out here in Colorado for four months now (and that we've been married for close to five months!)!!  It really does seem like just yesterday Matt and I packed up the Jeep with my stuff and the dog and headed out to start our life together.  We've been pretty busy since settling into our home and life out here: lots of hiking, time at the dog park, weekend adventures, beer fests, nights out on the town...you name it!  We thought we'd give a quick recap of the summer through pictures, enjoy!

A weekend hike at Waldo Canyon

Waldo Canyon

Bear Creek dog park...a favorite spot to take Cooper...and it's got gorgeous views!

Craft Beer Festival in Manitou Springs

After finishing the Warrior Dash at Copper Mountain ski resort

Gorgeous scenery!

Matt competing in the Xterra Lory Triathlon in Fort Collins...it was intense!!

Matt with our buddy Andrew after rocking the triathlon!

Great American Beer Festival in Denver

Great American Beer Fest, cheers!!

Tackling the Incline in Manitou...it was ROUGH!
It's only a mile in distance but you gain 2100 ft in elevation!

Exhausted and not even halfway finished.

We did it!!

Out to dinner for a friend's birthday in downtown Springs

Home Sweet Home

Finding our home was not an easy process, though everything worked out in the end as we absolutely love our little house.  We started searching for houses to rent while Matt was still in Iraq--we looked at countless ads online, had friends go look at houses (neither of us were in Colorado at the time), filled out a few applications, and still came up empty handed.  I was starting to worry that we'd never find a house but then this little gem fell into our laps.

Our adorable house...complete with Cooper leaping off the porch.

When Matt returned home from Iraq in March we were able to look for houses together.  We were looking at another house a few blocks over when the realtor mentioned they had a home that wasn't yet available but the current tenants needed to move out early.  We hopped in the car, did a drive-by, and promptly returned to tell the realtor that we would LOVE to see it and hopefully rent it.  After a viewing of the house we knew it was the one for us and luckily we were able to rent it...though Matt couldn't move in until May so he had to sleep on some buddies' couch for a while. :)  It really is funny how things work out--we thought we'd never find a house we liked and ended up with one we love!  Here's some pictures of the inside:

Living Room

Our Bedroom

Kitchen

Another Kitchen View

Office

Guest Room

Cooper in his favorite spot, watching the world go by. :)