It's July Already? *People Notes*

I finally decided that the only way to get current and caught up on blogging was to just dump the last few weeks all into one brief recap, so here goes!

Welcome to Englewood, southeast suburb of Denver. And here are your two parking tickets. How does that happen? We drive tens of thousands of miles with no tickets, no accidents, no problems, then as soon as we arrive at our summer 'home', we are slapped with TWO tickets in front of our little house. Ridiculous. (I did appeal both, claiming 'Appalachian American' stupidity - which works when you have Tennessee license plates, and managed to get them dismissed!)

The house has charm. And electrical amusements. As in...one cannot make coffee, run the fan and have the TV on at the same time. You can make toast and coffee at the same time, but you can't grind coffee beans and make toast at the same time. You can watch TV and have the fan running, but you have to turn off the lights. And I have to water the sod in the backyard which we share with the church!

We have hiked multiple trails in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area outside of Granby. Most recently we hiked the Columbine Lake Trail (against the advice of the Arapaho National Forest volunteer who said 'you won't make it' - ha!). There is still quite a bit of snow as you get into the upper elevations, but what a beautiful area. We also went to the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre in Grand Lake and saw 'Urinetown', a funny, satirical play which pokes fun at our society, corporations, politicians and people in general. It was incredibly well acted and enjoyable. We also made a fantastic discovery - the Grand Lake Brewery! I highly recommend the Wooly Booger, Trail Ridge Red, White Cap Wheat, or the Stump Jumper (of course I tried all of them!).

Paul is enjoying his work at Swedish Hopsital - but mostly he is enjoying having a 3 day work week with 4 days off to play! When we are not up in the mountains we have been busy spending time with Christine & family, Fran, Kathy & family: BB-Q, dinners out, movies, swimming, garage sales, wedding planning, Denver zoo, etc.

Odie is getting some intensive training and we will be attending an evaluation next weekend - if we pass we will then be allowed to register as a Pet Partners Therapy team and visit hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, etc. (Erik: This is different than Odie being certified as crazy and needing pet therapy.)

Our July 4th was spent up in Georgetown - a very small, very quaint, and very old silver mining town in the mountains. It was about as old fashioned, down home and storybook-like celebration as you can imagine. The little city park, the brass band playing, real pit BB-Q, family picnics, kids on their decorated bikes, women with names like Cora Beth and Ethel Mae selling homemade desserts, flag waving, parades, ice cream...what fun! We drove back down to Denver and spent a nice evening sitting on our front porch where we could see several large fireworks displays on the horizon. Happy Birthday America!