Those Crazy Coloradians

I can't beleive we've been in Colorado for a whole year now! 

It feels like just yesterday we were at BYU, but lo and behold...BAM, our year mark came up!

We've had so much happen since we moved here!

AAAAAAAAAND there are a few things that Coloradians do that are a little crazy!!!

{First: nate got a job!}

Let's go back to the beginning. 3 weeks before Eli was due, Nate gets an interview in Colorado for a job as a Chemical Engineer at Suncor Oil Refinery. So, he flew off and left his emotional, about to pop, wife at home. Little did we know that 3 days after he got home Eli was born....if he had missed the birth for the interview, I would have personally called his boss and told him that he deserved the job because of what he missed, haha, jk...kinda.

Anyway, then the next May his company paid for professional movers to pack us up and move our cars and we flew out to Denver CO. The only time I had been in Denver was the previous Christmas where we got stuck in the Airport on the way to and from Christmas, so my thoughts of Denver were'nt the best, but we had such a great job, we had to take the offer. 

Denver still proves to be crazy at most times, but not nearly as bad as being stuck in the airport twice in 2 weeks.

{we moved to our first temporary apt}

So, we moved into an apartment that was being paid for by nate's company for 10 weeks so we could find housing of our own...10 weeks of free rent...boo-yah!! So we looked and looked and researched and researched areas to live. Nate's job is close to down town and the housing around that area is less that desirable and the crime rates are sky high! So we were forced to live at least 25 mins away from his work. 

{we signed a contract in a non-smoking, but lots-of-people-smoke-apt-complex}

So we found apartments in that area, and went to one and found out it was a non-smoking apt complex...we felt great about that, since I refuse to live in an apartment that had previous smokers! Nate's mom wanted to visit her grandson and so she flew out to help us move into our new apt. The apt its self was fine, but the first thing we noticed were how all the tenants smoked. um....did they not sign the same contract as we did??? I guess the apt they show us are strategically placed so you dont see anyone smoking....sure fooled us!!!! You see, most apts have their balconies out a back door and so they are private, but the balconies here in our apt are open to the stair well, so when our neighbors smoked...and boy, did they smoke A LOT!!!! we had to walk within 2 feet of them to get up the stairway to our 3rd floor apt. 

Well, that wasnt the worst of it. 

{the marijuana man made us move}

Back in january our apartment would get filled with marijuana smoke multiple times a day. We realized that it was not coming through the windows or walls, but through our vents! Seriously, who connects people's vents?? Anyway, so after fighting it out with our apartment managers for a week or so... all the while being forced to get high while pregnant with a toddler. We finally moved apartments in the complex. (they wanted to make us pay $5000 to break our lease #ihatefineprint...so we stayed).  During that time they had put around notices that you can get evicted for smoking in your apartment. (but once we found out that it would take a minimum of 45 days to get him evicted, so we decided to move the next day...aint no one got time to be preggers with a child getting high for 45 days!)

Look it up, marijuana smoke is worse than cigarette smoke. The THC that gets you high when you smoke it is actually released in the smoke, so its like you are smoking when you just inhale the smoke! crazy!! Good news is that it was almost always in our main living area, and never in Eli's room and rarely in our room. But we did leave and stay at a friends house over the weekend because it was so bad it would burn our eyes and we would get all loopy.....

So, yes, we moved 3 times in 9 months!!! crazy, eh? I am a good packer I guess. Especially since I was 4 months pregnant with a toddler and found out late Monday night that we were moving, and got up and started packing at 9 am the next morning and the Elder's Quorum came at 7 pm that night and moved us. Then i decided I didnt want to live in a mess, so i unpacked within 3 days....phew!!

it was crazy. I don't recommend it, i was quite a stressed out prego lady, but I did it! and now we are marijuana free :) for now, until someone crazy moves in who is connected to our vents...haha #praythatdoesnthappen

So, other things that have happened while we have lived here:

{someone totalled my car}

Someone ran a red light and totalled my car!! Seriously. this was last summer. This was my first car I had ever bought. It was a Ford Taurus that I had bought 3 years earlier and I couldn't believe was still running. I bought it for $2000 and it came with soooo many problems! I had to fill the antifreeze multiple times a week, the oil leaked. The engine had a problem so I got like 13-17 mpg. Seriously! It was a gas guzzler! It cost us 2-3x as much as other people to travel!  But I loved it. I had spent so many hours in it. When I was single, it was my peaceful haven. It got me to and from work. Then when we got married, it was the "nicer" of our two cars (Nate's was given to him and he fixed it up for $500 bucks #nuffsaid). It got us everywhere we needed to go. And in one second, it was totalled :(

The man ran a red light because his "breaks were not working"...I was turning left and was not even the first car in the lane. He T-boned my front left corner of my car and hit my front left wheel. I could barely drive it out of the intersection as he started drving off. I tried to get a picture of his license plate, but he was off too fast. I was so scared he was driving away. I finally got pulled off into a parking lot, and he stopped a few parking lots away....phew! it wasnt a hit and run!    It was boiling hot and eli was in the back. He was happy as a lark, and I'm crying like crazy from the shock of what just happened. So after the cops came and the tow truck came, I sat in burger king.

Nate was in meetings and didnt have his phone on. He actually got all the way home and then called me to ask where I was. I had called my bishop (the ward we had been in for 2 weeks) and he had found a sister in the ward to come pick me up. We drove home in crazy traffic, and we finally made it home. 

The luckiest thing about this is 1) we didnt get hurt 2) they appraised my car for more money than I had paid for it 3 years previous. So, we lucked out on that one!

{how the new marijuana law affects a lot}

So, marijuana didn't just affect us in our own home. It is affecting a lot more things here in CO. There are tons of "help wanted" signs all over. I know someone who is a hiring manager at Wal-Mart and they say that they can't find anyone because everyone fails the drug tests for marijuana. SOOO SAD!! Kids are dropping out of highschool to do drugs. Kids are coming to school high because of the second hand smoke from their parents.  Another big thing is that the housing market is CRAZY here! my opinion  is that its because everyone is moving here for the legal marijuana. i.am.serious.  The housing market is sky rocketing here while the nation kind of levels out. As we moved here, we looked at apartment prices. When we signed 10 weeks later, the same apt had risen $75-$100/month! I mean, we are already at about $1200/month for a reasonable 2 bedroom apartment...but seriously, in 10 weeks, that much! And its increased about that much in the last year! Renting a home is a joke! A two bedroom is like $400-$600 more per month for the same 2 bedrooms. And buying a home. no way! The market is going up so fast, who knows if it will crash and we'll lose $75,000 by selling it in 2 years!    Ok, this is all from my perspective. Its not documented that these are the right numbers, but seriously. They are the numbers we are looking at when we decide where to rent! If you want cheap housing, don't move to denver! (unless of course you are moving from boston or san fransciso, then its cheaper, haha)

{crazy denver traffic}
Something else crazy about denver is the traffic. There.is.always.traffic. The highways here are always backed up. You go out at 1 pm...traffic. You want to go somewhere at 11 am on saturday...traffic! Anywhere we want to go that uses the highway, we have to plan on 30 extra mins to get there. Nate only uses the back roads to get to work because the traffic during his commute every morning is usually at a complete stop!

{crazy colorado roads}
other funny thing about colorado's roads is that lanes get taken out from under you all.the.time!!! seriously, you are driving along in a two lane road, just la la la. then all of the sudden there is a sign that says "Right lane must turn right." and you have no where to go because your lane is not continued into the next road. I mean, seriously. give me a warning, or just create a right turning lane. Seriously. Also, there is no turning left on a yellow here. I mean, in Idaho and Utah I could kind of inch foward into the intersection and right at the end of the yellow I could turn left. But here, everyone zooms through until the last second. Good and bad news....no one speeds here. Well, not no one. Lots of people run red lights and it scares me to death, but on the highways, everyone goes the speed limit...unlike utah where the speed limit is posted so we know we can go 10 mph above that, which I guess I enjoyed because i feel like I am always going so slow on the highways out here, haha



{and whats up with no plowing??}
Then there is driving in the snow here. Um....its not that I can't drive in the snow. Its that I won't here. Because no one plows. Seriously, its like hours after it has snowed and there are still large dangerous amounts of snow on the high ways and main roads. I mean, they must only have one snow plow for all of denver, haha.  But that kind of explains why they are so fast to cancel church. One ward that is right next to ours cancelled it saturday afternoon. We woke up and there was like 3 inches of snow, haha...but i guess i am from Rexburg..the coldest place on earth. That wouldn't have stopped us. lol

Other fun things that happened while we were here:

Eli turned one

I are pregnant with our second child

pretend like its rotated, I can't figure out how to rotate it, haha

Enya lives one hour away
get the story of why that is such a miracle here

Nate has a great job...but we don't like it when the oil prices are down. So thanks to our faith-filled prayers, they are going back up :)

I found a Dr. that helped me overcome celiac disease
here are the links to this story:
 part I
 part II 

We have seen the beautiful east side of the rockies (although for the first few months I was totally turned around, because all my life I knew North South East and West, almost solely based on the mountains being East...and now they are west...so it took me a while!)
But the mountains are beautiful here. They are much more panoramic, but also much farther away than utah's.

We have had visitors 6 times (2 times were thanks to Denver being a very nice spot to stop on a cross country trip)

Last but not least, we went to Rocky Mountain National Park

All in all, it has been a great year.

We have learned a lot:
The church is true wherever you go. Make sure to go to the place the Lord needs us the most, don't just pick a fun ward. (not that our ward isnt fun, we just really had that hit us hard as we were deciding where to live)

I am realizing that I really, really like having family close. I didn't realize it so much in Provo because we were close enough to a lot of family from both sides and had so many friends there. But now that we are so far away, I look so foward to family visiting and going to visit family. All the years I thought I wasn't a home body, and now I really am...haha

I am super grateful for Nate's great job.

I am grateful for wonderful ward members who have become our family out here.

Life in colorado has been interesting, but also fun.
We will never forget it!