New Digs for Robin and Ross

Ross, Robin (our niece) and Max in front of their new house in Denver. We are SO happy for them!

 Enjoying a great meal with the Kirkland's and friends Sam and Nick from Michigan.

The house was a "flipper" and even though it is old, the kitchen was re-done and is very modern. What a perfect place for them...great location close to work and near a big beautiful park with awesome views of the mountains.

Carsten is 6 years old!!

 We planned to take the boys camping for Carsten's Birthday but it got VERY cold so we had a sleep over in our living room instead. We roasted marshmallows in the afternoon before it got too cold. Carsten was very good at getting them golden brown.

 We skipped the chocolate (as instructed by Rena) but they were still a hit stuffed between graham crackers.

 Getting ready for bed. The boys fell asleep by 9pm and slept great....even after hearing our scary ghost stories.

The hit of the evening was putting up Halloween decorations. Here they are posing by Mr. Skeleton.

Before, After, In-Inbetween and FINISHED!!!

Here is Nathan offering his brush and balance skills.

This was the scarriest to watch...Dennis holding a ladder on the roof while Nathan gets the last touches.

 Here is the "before" shot with the old shutters off already. The original body color was light grey with white trim and dark grey (and very faded) accent.

 

And here is the finished the product!!  The new colors are a medium tan, the same color white trim and dark blue accent. It was VERY stressful and a TON of work but it turned out GREAT and we saved a boat-load of money. Also, note that in the time it took to get the paining finished, the trees started turning...fall has arrived and we got done just in time. The snow can fly any time now.

Painting Part 3

 Dennis did all this prep and it looks like we are ready go paint the front...

 ...and the south side which had very slanted ground which made for scary ladder placement.

 This is about as high as I will go...I'm very chicken of heights.

I was holding my breath and praying the whole time!!

Painting -- Part 2

 Jim Fontaine (Nathan's friend from High School who trained Dennis in window-washing) came over and helped paint the facer boards. That was a LONG way up!

 Here are all the ladders ready for the guys....

 This was the scariest to watch!!

Nice job, husband!

House Painting--Part 1

Getting ready.....

 Dennis wearing his Wild River Brewing & Pizza Company given to him many years ago by nephew Danny Thompson...it is doomed for the rag-bag now!!

 Dennis all suited up!!  Yikes, is this a Halloween costume??

Standing on his make-shift scaffolding....very scary to watch...I nearly had a heart attack!

Curt Gowdy State Park

 Three weekends ago we drove up to Cheyenne, Wyoming and checked out Curt Gowdy State Park. We had heard there was some really good mountain biking trails there and we were not disappointed! We met our new friends from Steam Boat Springs, Lewie and Linda Lewis for a day of mountain biking adventures.

 The area was quite unique with everything from desert terrain to aspens and pines and a beautiful lake. The trails were awesome and you could tell a lot of thought went into building them for mountain bikers. Here are Lewie (in front) and Dennis finising this part of the trail.

 Here we are posing at a high point above the lake. You can see more trails on the other side of the lake that we will explore next time. One thing nice is that they won't get as much snow here so we can ride here when the trails around us are closed.

Here is my beautiful bike taking a rest by some aspens. Really I do love my bike and I'm getting better and better at riding it.