We Moved!!! about 100 feet

Last weekend we moved to a different apartment in our same complex. We moved from apartment 6203 to apartment 3206 =). It’s a pretty cool story (in my opinion) so I thought I would share it. Sorry to some of you who have heard me bragging already, you can skip this one. We had given our notice to leave out current place and we were looking around at other places. We were paying $915 a month and wanted to find something a little bit cheaper hopefully close to $800. We really liked our complex and apartment and didn’t want to go but we thought it would be best to save a little money. When we were looking online for places Emily found a deal advertised for our complex. So after our first Saturday of looking at new places (which I hated) we went back in and asked them about it.

We were in a "deluxe" apartment. It had brown and sage paint, thicker carpet, crown molding, and a bit nicer fixtures. The deal was for the standard apartments that were more basic but still really nice, and the exact same floor plan and square footage. So they looked at their sheet of pricing and found they could get us into one for $685 a month! We signed on the spot. Same size, still really nice, just white walls, short carpet and more basic fixtures (appliances are pretty much the same). And are saving $230 a month. Plus before we were paying $35 a month for a washer and dryer (so $950 for rent a month) and we decided we are just going to buy a cheap set off of Craig’s list, so it is really $265 a month less on rent. We were pretty excited and really felt blessed. The story even gets a bit cooler though.

The apartment was in the building right next to ours and I was curious what the current occupants were like. I am allergic to cats and cigarette smoke so those were two things I was really concerned about. So we walked by the apartment a few times to try to stake it out. It is on a second floor so we could only see the porch and slightly into the living room. They had a few bikes, a car storage unit, and a kayak on the porch. They were neat and well organized which I thought was good. Also the bike had a child carrier which could be a good sign, or a bad one. We have a lot of single college age kids at our place, and we all know what they can do to apartments. But at the same time young kids can do quite a bit of damage themselves. So I was feeling good about it but still not sure.

We were walking by one evening and after we passed the apartment I heard a young voice say “Hiii.” I looked back and saw a naked little girl around 2 years old on the porch. In a matter of about 3 seconds I had the following thought process. Hum, it probably isn’t good for a grown man to spark up a conversation with a little naked kid. But, the parents are almost sure to come out if the kid is there and I can get a look at them, plus the kid is up on a balcony and Emily is just 10 feet past me. Curiosity won out, so I turned around and said “Hi”. Right after that a flustered and embarrassed mom came running out onto the porch. She grabbed the girl in a towel, said a quick “sorry” and then went quickly back into the apartment. But in the few seconds she was on the porch I realized I recognized her.

She went to church with us. They had only been in our ward a few months and though we had sat by them once at church we hadn’t realized they lived in our complex until about a week earlier and we didn’t know where in the complex they lived. So I stopped Emily and told her that I thought the person who lived there was the family from our ward. I didn’t even know her name and wasn’t positive it was her but I was about 80% sure so we decided to go check it out. So we went up and knocked on the door. I think I should have had Emily stand more in view because when she first opened the door she didn’t recognize me and I could see the “why is the guy who was just talking to my naked kid now at my door” look on her face. But I told her that I thought they went to church with us and then she saw Emily who she had talked to before and everything was cool. We talked for a bit and found out they were moving out because her husband was done with school and they were probably moving back to Utah. It was such a strange coincidence. We had a bunch of groceries so we didn’t go in but as I looked in the apartment was spotless. So a clean apartment, no pets or smoking, and a cool family we knew. I felt pretty good about everything.

One of the crazy things is that they where on a shorter 4 month lease and I think they were paying around $980 (with washer/dryer). The pricing really depends on the amount of units and which models they have open. We just got really lucky with timing. We are in our new place and things are good. The main problem we have now is that our new place is a mirror image of the old one. So that is pretty weird, but we are getting adjusted, and ready to start paying off some more debt =). That’s our cool story, hope you enjoyed it.

Crazy Weather

Starting on Sunday this week, we've had some really cool storms. On Sunday we stayed after church for a little bit talking to some people. When we were ready to go, it started hailing really, really hard. It continued to hail for 10-15 minutes and was the biggest hail I've ever seen. It came down so hard it was setting off car alarms. We were worried about it damaging our car, but it was fine. There was so much hail, it kind of looked like it had snowed...
And the hail was piled up on the ground at the end of the rain spouts...
These are the biggest hail stones I could find...
When we were finally able to go home we started hearing tornado sirens and when we got home, we saw the top (the bottom was blocked by some apartments) of a funnel cloud way off in the distance. Five tornadoes ended up touching down that afternoon. I only heard about damage from one which hit a mall, a Lowe's, and some houses. It overturned a couple of cars, blew out windows, blew in a garage, and threw tons of stuff everywhere. Here are some pictures I got off the internet...
The rest of this week has been filled with more thunderstorms and tornadoes in eastern Colorado. Mmm, I love summer thunderstorms. Yesterday afternoon we had a pretty long one and it ended with the biggest, most beautiful, vibrant rainbow we've ever seen. It was actually a double rainbow and the bottom one even had another faint rainbow under it.

(Just try to ignore the line in the middle. It's the best I could do with the panorama setting on our camera. I still need to figure out how it really works.)

Kathryn had her 9-month check-up on Tuesday and the doctor was happy with her progress. She now weighs 15lbs 5.5 oz (still only the 5th percentile, but at least she's back on the chart) and is 27 inches long. So she gained more than 4 lbs since her 6-month appointment which is great considering it took her from birth to 6 months to gain 4 lbs. Her first tooth also started coming in on Monday. So far she hasn't been too extra fussy, so that's a good sign. Here are a couple of cute pics I took of her on Sunday in her new dress...

Estes Park Trip

Last week, Kathryn and I had the chance to go up to Estes Park, CO for a few days with some friends and stay in some cabins that our friend's family had leftover time in from their family reunion. It was a lot of fun and so great to be back in the mountains. It had been way too long. We all left our hubbies at home so it was just like a big girl (and kids) party. There were 9 of us girls and 17 kids in total, so it was a little crazy but tons of fun. We spent our time just hanging out, going on some hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, and doing lots of talking and picture taking. Here are some of the beautiful things we saw...
And some other pictures...
There were tons of elk everywhere. This is about as close as we got to one...
After we had checked out of the cabins, we went on one last little hike/walk up to a waterfall. It was really pretty and there were lots of cool rocks everywhere. I love rocks and was excited to let Kathryn look at them. There was one especially large and very cool-looking chunk of gneiss there, so I sat Kathryn next to it for her to take a look and hopefully find it as cool as I did. Well, she wasn't too interested in the rock, but did find the asphalt trail pretty fascinating for a few seconds...
But that soon turned into this...

Which turned into this...
And this...
So, much to my dismay, Kat's first exposure to cool rocks didn't go as I had imagined. (Just so you know, she only sat there crying like this for about 20 seconds-just long enough to get the pics.) I'll keep trying and maybe one day she'll like rocks as much as I do :) At least she was happy sitting on the rock with me.

Memorial Day and Our Anniversary

Again, it has taken me forever to get this post up. Better late than never, huh? :) We had a fun Memorial Day weekend and 3-year anniversary, so I just wanted to post a few pictures. This Memorial Day was probably one of the least laid-back ones we've ever had, but it was definitely fun. We got up very early in the morning and rode a bus up to Boulder where I ran a 10K called the BolderBoulder with 4 friends from church (plus one of their husbands). It is the 2nd largest race in the US (5th largest in the world) and had over 50,000 runners, so it was really fun to participate in. They had live music and entertainment along the whole course and it ended in CU's football stadium. I hadn't run a race since track in 8th grade and I have never run this long of a race, so it was definitely a challenge, but well worth it. I finished in a little under 66 minutes and came in 21,864th place (yes that is a 5 digit number, but remember it's out of 50,000 people and I only really trained for 2 1/2 weeks). I was really happy with my time, though, because I went into it knowing I would be happy if I could finish it and especially if I could run the whole way (which I did).
My friend Susan really helped me out a lot in training for this and she stuck with me for pretty much the whole race (even though she could have run faster). I don't think I would have been able to do it if it weren't for her.
Drew was really sweet to come and support me even though he really deserved to sleep in :) It was so fun and nice to have him and Kathryn there.
An informal ward potluck picnic was planned for that afternoon. Unfortunately, it rained, so it got moved inside, but was still delicious and a lot of fun. We tried to be patriotic and made red, white, and blue cupcakes (check out this page on www.ourbestbites.com for the recipe). Drew did most of the work and they turned out really good.
It was a fun day, but definitely wore us out. I think I'm just now finally mostly recovered from the race. Next year I will definitely start training for it sooner than I did this year.

Our 3-year wedding anniversary was on May 26th. Drew had to go out of town that day, so we celebrated a day or two early. I gave Drew a new watch and he gave me (us, but mostly me) a new printer. It is really nice and is especially for printing pictures, but also prints regular things too. It is really sleek-looking and is a really, really good quality picture printer. I love pictures and am so excited to be able to print them so easily now. It's hard to believe that we've been married for 3 years already. We have had a lot of great experiences and have grown and changed in many ways. I am so thankful for Drew. He is a wonderful husband and father. He does so much for me and I'm so lucky to have him.