Half Way There!

Just an update on Chris and the Tour of Colorado. He has made it half way through. They do 3 days of riding, have one rest day, and then do 3 more days on the bike. Today is his rest day. Yesterday was one of the longest days…he had to do 92 miles. He came through like a champ. My mom called me the other day and told me that he and my dad are doing really well in comparison to the other riders. Chris was being modest and said that there were people better than him, but that he was hanging in there. Mom said that they were kicking people’s butts out there! I am so glad that he is doing well. They get started at about 7am every morning, and depending on how far they have to go, they finish up about early to mid afternoon. Because my dad is old and a wuss, he has had them staying at some decent hotels (everyone else camps out) where they have had hot tubs, and as soon as he and Chris finish up, they go sit in the hot tubs for a while. I think that Chris said that one of the places where they stayed, they had natural hot springs, and had filled the pools with the water from them (or something along those lines), so they have been doing this whole thing in style. I don’t want to tell you too much, since Chris wants to post pictures and tell you about it himself, but just wanted everyone to know that so far, he has been doing great.

While I am writing, I will give you an update on Chris’s hops too. Just after Chris posted pictures of his hops plants, and got all excited that they were actually growing, we had this huge hail storm that completely demolished our garden…including the hops! It hailed for about an hour and a half. It looked like it had lightly snowed at our house. It was crazy. The hops are still there, they just don’t look so hot. I have been watering them, and trying to give them some TLC this week while Chris is gone, but there is nothing impressive that I can take a picture of for you. I am sure they will bounce back, and hopefully later in the summer, we can post some more pictures of it, and show you how great they are doing.
Think some good thoughts for Chris as he continues on with his ride!

It's girls week!

Chris left yesterday for his major bike event of the summer. He is doing the Bicycle Tour of Colorado. It is an organized ride that covers 500 or so miles of the mountains, right around where all of the ski resorts are. Here’s the link in case you are interested in checking it out further http://www.bicycletourcolorado.com/. Chris is doing it with my dad, and my whole family is there cheering them on. It is weird because I can’t go. I have to work. My whole family is on vacation with my husband right now. My brother and his wife and my nephew Patrick flew in for it, and even my grandparents are there for the first day or so. Oh well. I just got word that they made it through the first day of riding. I haven’t heard the details yet. I told Chris that when he gets back, that he needs to write something on here and post some pictures, so hopefully in a week when he is done, you will hear all about it.

So Maggs, and Rosie and I are holding down the fort this week. It is funny, I forget how much I love Chris sometimes. Since he left, I have been wandering around here like a lost puppy dog. I miss him so much. I have been trying to take advantage of the fact that he is gone. I rented a bunch of chick movies, and I am eating all kinds of things that I love, but Chris hates. For example. I made these really yummy Portobello mushroom pizza things last night. Chris hates mushrooms, so I never get to eat it. I am going to be pigging out on them this week! I have made a couple of friends at work, and they have promised to come over and keep me company this week, so I won’t be too lonely.

I keep forgetting to post some pictures of our new house out here in Colorado, so I finally made myself do it today. We plan on doing some work on the outside of the house. We definitely want to paint it and update some of the landscaping. Our neighbors were surprised to hear that we were going to paint, since the previous owners just painted. I think they must have been colorblind when they picked out the colors though...lemon yellow…come on!!! I like yellow, but not THAT yellow…

I hope everyone has had a good weekend, and I will post more later!

We live across the street from my mom's church. We also have an AMAZING view of Pike's Peak from our front porch.

Living Room (We got new couches!)

Our Room

Kitchen

Our New House

It's Alive!!!

This is Chris hijacking Sarah's blog. Wanted to post some pictures of the hop plants we're growing in the garden. I thought that they might be dead considering they'd been in the fridge for 2 1/2 months, and didn't see any signs of life after planting 3 weeks ago. But I guess they enjoy unbearably hot weather, and have come to life. The other ones we planted (donated by our neighbors) don't seem to be doing much of anything. But I guess we just have to wait.
I'll post more pictures as they get bigger. Supposedly, hops can grow about 12 inches per day!

Cascade Hops 6-21

Cascade Hops 6-21

We're melting!

I know that it has been a while since I have last updated. Our lives have been crazy since we came to Colorado. Now that we are all moved into our house, things are calming down. I have started getting emails asking for updates, and I will try to do better!

So here’s a clever anecdote for you. Our house doesn’t have air conditioning. Most of the houses out here don’t have it because everyone claims that the summers are so mild here that you really don’t need it. WHATEVER!!! It really hasn’t been so bad up until this last week. We bought a swamp cooler a month or so ago (it is a device that works opposite of a space heater. It blows cool air.) and that has held us over, but on my goodness has it gotten hot! It isn’t like what we experienced living in Missouri, but it is bad enough that you need air conditioning! The last weekend, we spent the whole time at my parents house, since they are higher up in elevation, so it is still cool at their house. Last night, when we got back from their house and went to bed, it was absolutely miserable. I woke up every hour or so just sweating. We had fans and everything, but it wasn’t doing any good. When I got up this morning as I was gathering my things to head off to the shower, I noticed that during the night, Chris had dragged the swamp cooler into our room, and had it aimed right at him. He also had a box fan aimed right at Maggie. I was the only one without a fan aimed on me. What the heck?! I have been giving him a lot of trouble about that today! I decided that I had had it and we were going to Wal Mart to get those window unit things today. When Chris got up, I asked him if he would go do that today while I am at work, and apparently he had gotten up in the middle of the night and researched it online. He was way ahead of me. So hopefully when I get home our house will be tolerable. I have talked with some of my co-workers about it, and we must be complete wusses because everyone else thinks it was hot last night, but not that bad. We have a week ahead of us with 90 degree temps. I hope we don’t melt! Think cool thoughts for us!