The excitement in life continued this past week. Hannah had an interview at a dog daycare  place on Friday and was hired on the spot. She started training on Monday, and continues Wednesday and Friday of this week from 7 am -2 pm. It's definitely keeping her busy. 

Charli finally started going upstairs and downstairs. It took her a week before she'd do it and now she loves being downstairs with the kids. 

Evie and I also took her to the dog park yesterday. She had such a good time, there was only one other dog there, but there was lots of space to run and a puddle because it had rained the previous day. 

Saturday my cousin came over and visited for the morning. He was in town for work and wanted to catch up. I hadn't seen him in probably 30 years, but we had a nice visit. The kids were not so pleased with the fact that Saturday was taken up by a random person who was "old" and "not really related" to them because he's a cousin once removed, but that's okay. It was good to see him.

Sunday we did church and Sunday evening there was a connection group get together which we went to. I'd say it was a small group, but it wasn't that small. It was a good time, and there was another family there who just moved back to the area in August (they lived here from 2018-2021, and then went back home to Oregon and are now back), they have kids who are 17, 15 and 11. Our kids have gotten to know the kids at youth group and Sunday gave me a chance to chat with the parents, which was nice. 

Evie has also been enjoying our roses that are currently blooming in front of our house. They are quite beautiful. 

We also learned this week, as they put up signs that we are not supposed to be walking on the golf course....that is where we were taking our evening strolls, as it's a nice wide path...but as we are respectful of the rules we have stopped. We were wondering if the signs were put up just for us, but since the signs have gone up I have seen someone else walking his dogs and some biking on the path. 

We have also seen our local neighborhood fox several times this past week. At one point Evie and I were out in the back yard with Charli and she runs to the fence, we looked and the fox was just strolling down the golf course path. When it say Charli it veered off towards us, but then saw something and started hunting it and then pounced, it was so cute! It's also crossed the street right near me when I was walking the dog and once was in our front yard when Hannah went out. 

On Friday I took a walk with my friend Kristen from Connecticut. As we were walking she told how they had actually tried to come out to Colorado in 2012-2013 time frame, instead of 2016 when they did. When I heard that I was just hit again by the goodness of God. If they had come out here earlier we probably wouldn't have known them and wouldn't have had the connection out here that we have because of them. I'm sure they were probably more reasons than just us that God kept them in Connecticut, but maybe not. God does work in incredible ways and I am so thankful for his goodness to us. 

 

Or not.....

Last Wednesday we brought a dog home. Her name is Charli and she is five years old (or that's the best guess). She's super sweet and super chill so far. Almost too chill. Are yard isn't fully fenced and we were debating how to handle this with a dog, thankfully, she doesn't try to escape and really seems to understand boundary lines. We haven't had to use anything but name recall with her to keep her in the yard. She loves walks and is slowly adjusting to our house. We'll see how she does here. She has always had other dogs to play with in the past, so I am a bit concerned about her not having another dog. She was an owner surrendered rescue, her owner died and his wife wasn't able to care for her as she needed. 

The kids all love her and we're having fun being able to do things with her like giver her soft toys and play tug of war, that we weren't able to do with the Leader Dog (guiding eye puppy in training) we fostered a few years ago. That was the big excitement of the past week.

Elsa (our cat) has been doing well with the dog. As you can see in the picture below, she just plopped down next to Charli's cage. 

Although sometimes she still needs her space and will find new places to hid. Can you find her in the linen closet?

Evie also let her outside today, we've been letting her out supervised and following her.....she doesn't seem to know which house is ours. On multiple occasions she's gone to our neighbors porch and looked at me like, "well, aren't you going to let me in?" so she's definitely not ready for adventuring on her own, she's never lived in a neighborhood with houses so close together.....anyway, Evie lost track of her while she was outside, which caused a slight panic, but she had just hidden herself in the flowers in our backyard and when I brought Charlie out, she came out of the flowers and wanted to go back inside. 

This morning we saw a cayote, it was walking the path of the golf course behind out house and then turned and came right near our backyard. It was crazy. 

Evie did a swim test for a lifeguarding course she will be taking next week. They apparently just changed it so you have to do the swim test before you can sign up for the course as to not embarrass people and make the course go more smoothly. Evie was able to pass without much of a problem, but she wasn't a big fan of swimming with a ten pound brick! After the course she should be able to get a lifeguarding job without a problem. 

Hannah has heard back from one of the jobs she applied to, they asked about her availability, she responded and they have yet to get back to her a second time. She is really hoping to get a job soon. 

Nathan has an end of summer mechanical engineering group party on Thursday at work. Everyone was instructed to bring a change of clothes, as there will be water balloons!

The boys are keeping busy with school, working out and helping out with Charli. Today we all went on a walk to the grocery store with her. It's only about a mile one way, so it was a good walk. 

We're still waiting for temperatures to cool down, but it looks like this weekend the 80s may break and give way to some more fall like temperatures. In the meantime, Nathan and I have been doing nightly walks with the dog once it's dark and the temperature starts to drop. 

Beginning to normalize.....

 I think things here are starting to normalize. I was able to get the younger three signed up for theater, they'll be doing Oliver Twist...but that doesn't start until October 1st. Evie will be doing lifeguard training with plans to get a job as a lifeguard. Hannah has been applying for jobs involving animals, which is great, but she hasn't heard back from any of them yet. Nathan experienced his first "quiet week" at work last week. They cancel all internal meetings and only do necessary ones with the customers. He said it was quiet....which isn't such a good thing when you're still fairly new and don't have a lot of work to do. But he made it through and found things to do, many of which his boss was super excited about. On Thursday afternoon we went hiking. The kids were much more excited about this hiking expedition and very much enjoyed themselves. 

This morning I finally saw some hot air balloons! 

We went to a church picnic on Sunday. Everyone enjoyed that. Hannah also went to a college Bible study Friday night that someone invited her to. It was a very different experience than what she's used to, but I think it's really good for her. 

Colorado Observations

Every state you live in is different. They all have their own way of doing things. This really surprises people who haven't lived in multiple places or traveled much, but it's so true. Colorado has almost as much state pride as Texas, which I did not know. If you are a Colorado native it's something you are proud of. Fortunately there are plenty of transplants, many of whom are never going to leave. When asked if we're from here and we say no the most common response is "You're going to love it here" or  "Welcome home!"

Driving is very different in the greater Denver area than the last few places we've been....of course two of those places were small towns, and even Fort Wayne wasn't big. People don't go the speed limit....they go under it. Coming from Indiana where EVERYONE speeds this is quite annoying. I was driving the other day, not during rush hour, and the traffic was flowing okay, but at about 5 under the posted speed. I went past two speed traps, my question why? How many people do you actually stop? 

The lifestyle here is definitely focused on outdoors, and why not? It's dry and at night or in the morning is quite nice out, unfortunately it's been summer the entire time we've been here so far, so mid day has been in the upper 80s-100. But there are lots of people walking, or hanging out in their backyards and that sort of thing. There is a flashing pedestrian crosswalk signal that you can hit while crossing a main road in our neighborhood and everyone stops immediately for it. Like stops hard if need be even though it just went on and I'm on the other side of the street and you could have went and had been fine, stops.

Another wonderful thing I discovered is that thrift stores are open past 6 pm! It's craziness!!! We went to Goodwill and it was open until 9 pm. Big city thrift stores are also way better than smaller town ones....like the last place we lived with good thrift stores was Houston....that was awhile ago. I'm king of missing Gordon's, which is a bulk/restaurant supply food store that's in the mid-west and had super cheap chick I could buy in 40 lbs boxes. There are also no Aldis here, which is sad. But we're figuring out the shopping thing. They have Kingsoopers, which is Kroger and Safeway as well. 

Hight altitude baking is a real thing. My cookies definitely needed some tweaking before they were working right. But Nathan brought some into work last week and they were a big hit. I tried to make angel food cake yesterday and the first one did not work at all. The second one was much better. There are some things, like bread that I haven't had an issue with. I made pudding yesterday as well and that was fine. We'll definitely have to try our fudge before pass production time. 

In other news, I got my third library card this past week. There are still several more not far from us, so we'll see how many I end up with in total. I started school with the younger three and made it through our first week! We had dinner at some friends' house yesterday. We know them from Connecticut and they actually live in our neighborhood. It was really nice to just be able to hang out with people and the kids had a good time as well, even though they don't really remember the kids. In general the kids are adjusting super well to life here. Someone asked yesterday how we were liking Colorado and Evie was sitting with the adults at that point and I said we were enjoying it and I even thought the kids were too and Evie agreed. The boys have really enjoyed the fact that they can roam the neighborhood and go to the pool and basketball court and all that fun stuff. Evie joined the other three at youth group and had a lot of fun as well. There are a lot of theater kids at the youth group, so that is helpful. All the kids were even talking to people at church on Sunday. 

Hannah saw a hot air balloon over our neighborhood today as she was leaving for school. Which was much later (8 am instead of 7 am), so I apparently just haven't looked at the right time...we'll probably all see one eventually. 

We're continuing to try and get things organized in the house. There still some things that need to be bought and organized, but we're continuing to make slow progress.