Guess what...

The sign on our door says it all! As our neighbor says, we were asking for it by hanging our sign.
We woke up this morning to find it snowing outside! Our yard was covered in snow! It was so beautiful and so very exciting!
Will and I were hesitant about driving, but the roads were fine all day. And apparently nothing shuts down in Boulder for snow! We even saw people outside jogging in the snow!

This is a view of our street.



These are a couple of pictures from the park that is 2 blocks from our house. You can see how much snow we got, and the mountain behind the park is the one we usually hike up.







Here is a picture of the outside of our house. We live in a duplex so our front door is one the side of the house. It doesn't look that nice from the outside, but the inside has become very cozy! And you can see our Christmas tree. You can also see how hard the snow was coming down.



Just to let everyone know...the best way to get the smell out of your Christmas tree is just to febreze it! We febrezed the one side of the tree, and now our tree smells nice and fresh! :)

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree...

So our big adventure was....(sorry it took us a little longer than we said!)..chopping down our own Christmas tree! We found this Christmas tree farm an hour outside of Boulder, in Greeley, Colorado, and headed out there this afternoon to find us the perfect Christmas tree!



Well...Will and I did not realize that all Christmas trees are not the same across the US. We were expecting thick, big, and very green trees....well they don't grow those out here. So we found a great tree, less full, with a hint of yellow in it for our tree this year.



But despite being surprised about the kind of tree we got, we really enjoyed going out to this little farm, choosing our tree, and then actually sawing it down ourselves. It was a really neat experience, and on our drive back home we got really excited about decorating!



Unfortunately we had some problems with our tree stand, so we had to make a quick trip to a local Christmas tree store and buy a new one. When we returned, our neighbors were outside with their dog (who we usually like) and we were chatting with them while our tree laid on the ground. While we were chatting and trying to figure out our new Christmas tree stand the neighbor's dog decided it was the perfect time to "mark his spot" on our Christmas tree!!!!!!!!!!!!!



As you can imagine, we were not happy campers after our little adventure for the day! So unfortunately we were not able to decorate our tree tonight, as it had to "air itself out".



We'll post more pictures of it when we get it decorated.



All in all, we did have a good afternoon chopping down our tree; let's just say we are very excited about having Christmas in NC next year! :)

Life in Boulder...

So we are here! We are sorry it's been several days since we've updated our blog....we've had internet, so that's no excuse! We don't really have many pictures to post. But we've managed a few of the house we're renting.
We got here Wednesday night, but had to stay in a hotel in Boulder because our furniture wasn't coming until Thursday. So we relaxed and got up early Thursday morning to meet the movers. Our furniture was supposed to arrive between 8am and noon, and of course it came at noon! Thankfully we had a beautiful day; not too cold to be outside moving furniture. And Will and I moved all the furniture ourselves from the moving van!
Since then we have just been unpacking and cleaning our house. We just have a little two bedroom duplex, but it's an old house and was kind of dirty...so we had lots of cleaning to do!
Here are some pictures of our first day filled with tons of boxes!



Will with his favorite tools....


This is our guest room. We've got it all set up, and a nice,comfy bed...so we expect visitors! :)


This is our little kitchen. We have just enough room....but no dishwasher!


Will relaxing in our den...


Just a quick look at our house. We still have a lot of cleaning and organzing to do.
We are both enjoying Boulder; the town is so pretty. We went out Friday night with one of our three friends living out here, and it was 19 degrees outside! Despite the cold we had a great time! Boulder seems to be a lot like Chapel Hill.
We haven't really had any snow. The weather report called for lots of snow on Saturday, so of course Will and I stocked up on food (bread and milk) and movies, just in case we couldn't drive anywhere! But we didn't get any snow...just a few flurries that night.
Other than that, everything is going good! We're still looking for jobs and will keep everyone posted! We are doing something fun either tomorrow or Tuesday...so check our blog and we'll have some good pictures up!

Final stretch....

We began another cold day with breakfast at the hotel before leaving for Colorado. After looking at the maps, we decided to head south to make sure we could drive through Nebraska. The scenery was much of the same we had seen over the last few states - lots of corn fields, cows, and farms.



Mission accomplished - we are never going to Nebraska again.

We then headed west to the great state of Wyoming. Scenery was again very similar to what we had seen.



We only saw the Southeastern corner of Wyoming and we know there is more to see there, especially in the parks and in the mountains. We plan to visit soon.

We finally got into Colorado around 6:30 PM mountain time. We drove past one of the Budweiser brewing sites, which we plan to come back to soon for a tour of the facility. We couldnt find a good 'Welcome to Colorado' sign so we took this picture to have for the time being.



We are staying in a hotel tonight and our furniture is to be delivered in the morning. The internet will be set up Friday so it may take some time to get the pics of our house up on the blog. We hope you've enjoyed this first leg of our journey. We can't wait to fill you in on the next chapter - LIVING IN BOULDER!

Where the Buffalo roam....

We woke up this morning to another cold day. There is nothing like waking up to wind at 40 MPH and the temperature at 30 degrees. We headed south to Keystone,SD to the site of Mount Rushmore. The weather didnt get any better there either but at least it was clear.









We then headed to the Crazy Horse Monument. This statue is not complete but has been under way for over 50 years. No one knows when it will be completed because the project is funded solely on donations and admission/concession profits. You can only see the face of Crazy Horse now but the second picture shows what the statue will look like when its complete. When it is done, it will be the largest statue in the world.





The area between the two monuments is mostly rolling hills and full of wildlife. The town of Custer, SD has access to the Wind Cave Park and also the Custer State Park. We took these pictures to give everyone an idea of the terrain out here. It was really beautiful out there today.









We also found a Mammoth Archeological site outside of Custer in a town called Hot Springs. Years ago, a local hotel owner broke ground to build a new hotel and found no less than twelve different mammoths buried in what they believed to be a sink hole filled with water roughly 25,000 years ago. The site we saw is only excavated during the summers so what we took pictures of is the actual site, just done up for tourists.







On our way home, we took a northern route to be able to see more of the two parks. We had seen tons of deer throughout the day but we finally saw the good ones on our way out. Oh, and a buffalo is the same thing as a bison - so we found out.









This was the best view we had of all the bison we saw. You can sort of make out the black shapes of around 150 bison in this valley. Obviously the picture didnt turn out as we had hoped.



We head out to Colorado in the morning. We will try to get some pics up of the last leg of our road trip and of our house when we can but that will depend on when we can get the internet setup in our house, hopefully Thursday!

A surprising turn of events...

Who knew that South Dakota had better cheese than Wisconsin? On our travels across the great state of SD we stumbled upon a small dairy farm in the very tiny town of Dimock (pop. 125!). We got the impression they didn't get many visitors since their whole office was one lady and a small fridge with cheese! But we did get to step inside the factory and take a peek at how the cheese was made, not to mention sample tons of cheese! We got to try bacon cheese, salsa cheese, and tons other of the best tasting cheeses we've ever had. This is a picture of one of the only two dairy farms in SD.



So of course being the cheese lovers we are we promptly bought 3 pounds of cheese, and I had to get a t-shirt!



After getting tons of cheese, we went to the next town and stopped to visit the world's only corn palace. We're not really sure what the big appeal is; we discovered it's just a big building decorated on the outside and used as a basketball arena on the inside. But we did get a good picture!



Leaving the corn palace we made many stops along the side of the interstate (there wasn't much traffic) to take some pictures. One is a giant teepee we found at a rest stop, and the others just random spots along the road we thought were pretty. SD is such a beautiful state to drive across! There are just endless miles of farmland along the sides of the interstate. Tons of cows line the road along with bright red barns. It sometimes looks like the fields are never-ending and that the road might meet the sky. It's very peaceful to just ride and look out across the fields.













Our last stop for the day was at the Badlands. The Badlands National Park is right outside of Rapid City, SD. It's an incredibly beautiful national park that you can drive through or hike, bike, or camp. It has all sorts of animals from bison, deer, big-horned sheep, prarie dogs, and coyotes. We drove through the park on a pathway that was about 30 miles long and winded us through the rock formations. The Badlands were not what we expected; unlike the Grand Canyon you view the Badlands from the bottom of the rock formation. We have lots of pictures of all the formations and open fields we saw; a few from the top of rocks. We also did not see any bison, which was disappointing, but saw lots of deer and even a big-horned sheep.















For the next two nights we are staying in Rapid City, SD and touring Mt Rushmore tomorrow. So hopefully we'll have lots more pictures to put up tomorrow pending the weather! It's supposed to be in the 20s and possibly snowing!!