Proof of parents visit

So I'm finally catching up on myself! I have had so many things to do since my parents left that uploading photos was not top of my list!

Taking my parents on a walk up the Bluffs. I told them it would take about half an hour - hahahaha - it was closer to an hour and a half after I nearly killed my mum with the heat and the altitude!

Dad trying to climb out of a "door" at the pueblo:

The world's most exciting restaurant:

My mum loved the pool and hot tub at our apartments:

The slow pokes hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park:

Mini golf Thornton-style:

Bearing in mind it was about 90*F in the day, this is what we were wearing for our outdoor movie night... I am not joking.

Thanks to my mum for taking half of these photos :)

British

My parents visited for almost 2 weeks. I started to make a list of words that I haven't heard in a loooooong time that sound funny and soooo English to me now:

lift (elevator)
tele (TV)
pudding (dessert)
flat (apartment)
mobile (cell phone)
jumper (sweater)
boot (trunk)
bonnet (hood)
smack (spank)
petrol (gas)...

Seriously, this list could have gone on and on and on... I stopped listing after one evening. It amused me for a while! There are some British words of course that I still come out with from time to time and cause a blank look on the other person's face. Mostly though my British-isms are fading fast and since I never hear these words unless I'm on the phone to someone back home, I find them so funny to hear. And oh, the accent!! Yes, I know, I hear you say it - I have an accent too... but none so strong as my parents'. It was great to have them around :)

I will post photos when my mum sends me some (was nice to have someone else taking the photos for once!)

2 words

I have 2 words for you: CASA BONITA!!

Will be back in a week with some updates. Sorry no blogging at the mo - my parents are here.

Cheyenne Frontier Days and Bison Ranch

Luke was away on the weekend... booooo! Our first nights apart since we were married. However, I think I did pretty good, since I went up to visit his uncle and aunt and got spoiled rotten for the weekend :)

Pics from the rodeo at Frontier Days:

(Look closely at the photo above and you will see the bull throwing off the rider after 7.2 secs! Sorry, I didn't have a zoom lens! The rider has to stay on for 8 secs to get points.)

Pics from the Bison Ranch in Cheyenne (We went on a lunch train and ate buffalo burgers and saw the buffalo):

Thanks Robert and Sara!!

Not Me Monday

So.. the Jehovah's witnesses.. I promised those of you on Facebook that I would tell you what I did!

Knock on my door (well, my boss's door since I was at work). I answer. There stand 2 young-ish girls and a boy who couldn't have been older than 7. Knew straight off who they were since Mormons come in pairs and are generally high school boys, so it wasn't them, plus these were holding their magazine, which i recognized. One girl did all the talking and started out apologizing that she knows I'm super busy... Really?? I mean, all I did was open the door - how did she know if I was busy or not?! I actually wasn't so I certainly DID NOT go along with that. She asks if I have seen their magazine before, which I have, we had them all the time in England. I really DIDN'T want to get them off the doorstep, honestly, but I took their magazine and said I'd go back to what I was doing (not much). Upon closing the door, IT WASN'T ME who ripped up said magazine into shreds and piled it into the recycling can... nooooo. Most definitely not.

And as an aside, I WAS NOT the one who left her bag in a restaurant on the weekend and only realised about 20 mins later.

Camping part 2: campfire and hiking

First the campfire. Luke and I didn't wanna pay 5 bucks for firewood so we did what any normal people would do: we started the fire with a dead branch and attached pine needles and then stacked on half-burned wood collected from people who had left! I say "we" but actually Luke did all the work; something about MAN MAKES FIRE!

Then once the roaring fire had got under control and died down, we roasted marshmallows on clever little roasting sticks made of an old hanger! Yummy! No s'mores though... we should have thought of that earlier... However we did have some yummy brownies :)

We went hiking at 2 different places. Saturday at Mueller State Park and Sunday at Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Mueller was fun for the old ranches and other buildings around the hike. We also saw some deer but only because we didn't notice a 'fire access only' sign, went the wrong way and spotted them right as we decided to turn back!

Cheyenne Mountain was fun because there was a lot of oak mixed in with the pines, plus we had a beautiful hike that was winding, and up and down AND we saw lots of deer including 3 fawns. Fabulous!

A great camping trip!

Camping part 1: camp and wildlife

So I'm going to write a couple of installments about our [successful!] camping trip for 2 reasons:
1) It takes ages to upload my photos and get them in here how I want them.
2) I have a little boy here who doesn't want to sleep and is thus having some 'solo play' time for a while!

Luke and I camped out at Spillway Campground at the top end of Elevenmile Canyon, about 40 mins west of Woodland Park, CO. Here is our beautiful campsite, nice and flat unlike last time! I guess I should have taken a photo of the ants though... Think we were on top of a nest!! Luckily very few came inside (we were careful!) and I had only one freak me out by crawling on my face in the night... I accompanied this with a lot of swatting and wriggling and trying to locate tissue to kill the beastie...




This was Babboon Rock, immediately behind our campground. We were advised by the camp host to climb up there, so we did!





Here was the stunning view from the top :)



At our campsite were a variety of creatures... I have already mentioned the ants. Then there were squirrels, and ground squirrels like this one:


Chipmunks; very hard to photograph since they are so shy and quick but I had made it my goal (within about half an hour of setting up camp!) to do so and later on managed to sneak up on one and secretly photograph it munching on some berries :)

Rabbits:

Other more notable wildlife (but not on our campground)... Deer:

A British Columbian wolf (identified for us by Colorado wolf and wildlife center). He must have been a little lost! And he definitely doesn't look like he's had a meal for a while:

Who would have thought?! A wolf! I mean, we were expecting we might see a black bear around (not one showed up) but a wolf? Very rare in Colorado :)

And we saw a golden eagle flying.