I found some time to update this blog, for once! Of course, it may take me much longer to complete it, as I have the handyman here, and he may need to ask me questions and what have you, so just bear with me if I seem all over the place. I'll try to keep everything in order, but you never know, with all of the distractions.
Last entry, I told you that I had gone up to Craig early, and surprised Mike with a long visit. When I was up there, we signed the paperwork for the offer we made on the house that we have decided to buy. It's a great house, and it will suit us just great. It is in a great part of town, and we will have a fantastic view from each window of this house. There are no other houses blocking our views! When we saw the house the second time, there were three deers walking around the front field of the house. I think that I may just end up with some pretty awesome wildlife photos!
Because Mike and I didn't have to go house hunting last weekend, we decided to have some fun for once. On Saturday, we headed over to Steamboat Springs to walk the boulevard and window shop through all of the stores there. We wanted to ride the gondola up the mountain and hike around, but there was a huge storm that was heading in, and we decided that it wouldn't be in our best interest to climb up and hike around a mountain while thunderstorms were building.
There is a nice river that runs through Steamboat Springs, so we started our walk there. There are signs posted along the river that tell you that if you fish, you must not keep them, and another sign that says no tubing down the river. I don't know how many people walked past those signs, carrying their tubes and getting into the water. Mike and I had to laugh about that.
The stores there, are more art galleries than anything. We didn't go inside any of the stores, but we did walk through their Farmer's Market, which was three times the size of Craig's. In Craig, the Farmer's Market is pretty non-existent. There were possibly seven stalls in Craig, and they weren't looking too good on what they were selling, which were mostly crafty things, and some pies. Needless to say, we didn't buy anything there. In Steamboat Springs, they had more stalls, and they were doing a lot of crafty things as well, but at least it was nicer. We still didn't buy anything, but it told us that we needed to go to Steamboat Springs if we wanted to buy vegetables for cheap.
For lunch that day, Mike and I found a nice little sushi restaurant and it was pretty good! We enjoyed our little outing there, but we decided that we most likely had seen all that was to be seen in Steamboat, as we couldn't head up the mountain, so we headed back home in Craig.
When we got home, we decided to go to the soccer fields there, and kick the soccer ball around. The nice thing about Craig, is that they really do take great care of their parks. Unlike here in the Springs, where they focus on a select few, while the others go downhill. This trip to the park, made it twice in a row for us. We know that we're out of shape, but hopefully, this is enough to allow us to make the change over. We were out there for about thirty minutes, before the thunderstorms headed in.
The nice thing that I have noticed about Craig, is that it seems like it rains almost every night. It's a nice break from all of the crazy hot weather that we've been having here lately.
On Sunday, Mike and I got up and headed to Utah to the National Dinosaur Park. The park is roughly an hour, hour and a half drive away from Craig, so not too far. The scenery was nice, and so was the company. When we got to the quarry, we took their little shuttle up to the dig site. There is an indoor excavation that they have preserved that is a wall of dinosaur bones. The history of it is this: a massive rainstorm caused a landslide which caused a lot of dinosaurs to fall into this pit, and were immediately covered by mud and rain. That's why there are so many in one location.
The long wall of bones.
Close up of the bones.
More bones.
A skull.There are two stories in this excavation site. All of the pictures above, are taken from the top floor. When you walk down to the bottom, they have case of smaller bones, that are complete animals, and skin imprint and things like that. They even have a small section available for you to touch the bones. They do ask that you don't climb on the wall, which is funny that they have to even say it, but people, as we know, are not smart all the time.
Mike standing next to a dinosaur femur.
Mike next to a full skeleton.
Demonstrating the size difference between his hand and the foot of a dinosaur.
A fully intact little lizard.
An ancient turtle shell.
Skull.
Skull.
Imprint of dinosaur skin.
More bones!
Another skull.
I tried to get Mike to "Run Away" but he told me no.
After we finished up at the Quarry, we decided to head outside. We put on some very expired sunscreen and we headed down one of the trails that makes a big loop to another fossil wall, and then back to the visitor center. The entire loop is about a mile, in the open with no cover. We had the opportunity to join a tour guide, who was leading a group of people down this trail to point out all of the different types of stones, and then point out the clearly marked fossils and bones. We decided that we could just read the sign posts as we found them. We still made it to the center before the tour was over and they started before us.
The views down this trail were quite stunning! We did walk up to the wall of fossils, and found them. It wasn't anything like the quarry, but it was still nice to see, regardless.
Once we got back to the visitor center, we headed back to the hot car, and decided that we should get some food and drinks before heading to the next entrance of the park to drive around the vistas. We headed to Vernal, Utah and finally found their fast food restaurants. We ate as we drove to the next entrance, which was on the other side of Dinosaur, Colorado.
When we got there, we drove through all of their pull out points to look at the views. We sat some really beautiful landscapes, and also a couple of dead forests. All of which, I took pictures of, but haven't had the time to edit them, so you won't be seeing those pictures, yet. I'll be sure to include them in one of the next posts so that you can see them, I promise.
We spent the entire day out there in that park, and it was nice to have had the day to just relax and be together without having to do some sort of work.
When we got back to the temporary housing in Craig, we were both pretty tired, and sore. We took the night off from soccer and just watched some movies and snacked on some homemade dip.
The next morning, I had to head back to the Springs, and it was another sad day. I hate having to leave, but I know that it is only temporary. I just really hope that someone buys this house so that we can be together in Craig. As much as it will suck to leave behind family and dear friends, I know that I will still head back down to the Springs every other week or so, to spend time with them, so I know that it's not like I'm never going to see them again.
Of course, as I hit town, Monday afternoon, I got a phone call saying that the house was going to be shown, and it just happened to be right when I was heading back to the house from the long drive. So, I headed to my brother's house to play games with him and our mom until the showing was finished. I also headed over there again on Tuesday for another showing.
Yesterday, I had gotten together with the girls to have dinner and a movie at the dollar theater. We had Chipotle which was right next to the theater, and then after, because we had plenty of time, we went to a little yogurt shop that they build, literally next to the theater. We sat in the Kiddie corner, with my friend's seven year old daughter. Those chairs are really really small!
Ivey and Beth sitting in the Kiddie Corner!
The yogurt was pretty good, and of course, the kid who charges us for our snack, ended up giving us coupons for a buy one get one free deal, that expires at the end of the month. We were laughing at his poor timing, but that is good marketing for him, as it will keep people coming back for more. I don't think that we'll be heading back there anytime soon!
So, today has been a pretty eventful day so far. I woke up early, did 200 jumping jacks, and got myself together. I started my day by fixing the door to our deck, as some realtor freaked out because she couldn't deadbolt the door and was afraid that she wouldn't leave it as secure as I would like it. My first thought was to say," Was it dead bolted before you went out onto the deck?" The answer would be no...but whatever. The deadbolt has never latched, due to all of the weather stripping on the door. Of course, all I kept thinking was that this potential buyer would hear that the deadbolt doesn't latch, and won't be interested in buying, if they were interested at all. So, I decided that I needed to fix this and soon. I removed some of the stripping, and installed some new ones, and I still need a couple pieces, as there is still some sections that I didn't have enough to cover, but it now latches. Now they can take that off the profile to this house.
The other thing that I spent my morning doing, was scrapping all of the old caulking in the master shower, as someone thought that it was mold. It's not mold, just really old and grimy caulking. It doesn't matter how much you clean it, it's just gross. So, I spent a few hours, scrapping it all out and cleaning the shower. I have to let it dry before putting new caulk in, but at least it looks a lot better than it did!
The handymen are here now. They have successfully fixed the broken, fixed, broken again drawer in our kitchen, I believe they have already re-caulked the walkway to the door outside and they are currently struggling to remove the swamp cooler from the house. I feel kind of bad for them, as that swamp cooler is a pain.
The reason we decided to remove this stupid swamp cooler, is because people know that we have central air in the house, yet when they see the swamp cooler, they immediately think that there is something wrong. "Why do they have a swamp cooler? What's the point of that?" Well, guess what you annoying complainers...it's gone now...so what? Shut up! I don't know how many times I have heard people give the stupidest reasons to not like the house. "There's no laundry shoot" Really? Those haven't been installed into houses since the 70s. If you want a laundry shoot, install one, or build your own house. This one, is my favorite, "There's not pictures of them in the house." Um, I'm sorry, but we are moving. There are no pictures of us, and besides, you're not buying the house for our pictures. I'm half tempted to pull out the pictures again and put them up around the house, just to see if that helps with selling this place. We've had a pretty recent comment about the house, where they loved the house, thought it showed really well, and gave us a high rating, however, we're still waiting and hoping that they make an offer. But, as we've established before, just because people like the house, and thinks that it shows well, doesn't mean that it will be purchased. It's a little upsetting, but at the same time, I know that we have a great house here. Fantastic views and it's not a fixer up er. There is nothing major that needs to be done. I'm hoping that with the swamp cooler and other things that we've fixed, the house will sell. Who knows, but it couldn't hurt to continue to think positive.
Tonight, Mike makes the drive home. I am happy that I get to see him, as I do miss him every day. This separation thing, makes me really respect what military wives go through. We have a full day planned out for Saturday, while he is here. We have tickets to see the Renaissance Festival in Larkspur, as he's never been, and the last time I went, I was about three or four years old. I still have the dress my mother bought from that trip. We are going up with a lot of friends, as it was supposed to be a girl's day out, but because Mike is coming down, and because he would like to see everyone, we changed it to allow everyone to come. I'm excited to go, and it's another fun thing that Mike and I get to do together!
On Monday, I need to head over to the Mazda dealership and get the tire locks installed and pick up the all weather mats for the car. They were supposed to have these things in two weeks ago, but never told me that they had to order them in from a specialty place. So I had to call them a few times before they finally answered me. Mike and I were joking about how this behavior doesn't deserve a 10 rating, as that is what they ask for, or else they fail and won't get as many cars in. I kind of don't care. It's annoying, but at the same time, it's not like I'm going to be one of those people that just have to have things done right at this very moment.
So, I think that about covers it. Lots of drama that I can't really talk about, as it is not my place to say, but other than that, there hasn't been a whole lot else going on. I know that I have been writing more lately, and that's nice to get back into. I believe I mentioned that I have started to publish one story online and have gotten so many good reviews and comments, that it really has started to make me really motivated to continue on with writing again. I think that I get two followers every day, sometimes a week, but it's quite nice. So far, I haven't gotten any bad comments or reviews, though I will take them as constructive criticism if that happens.
Well, I best be off. The handymen have just finished removing the swamp cooler, and should be wrapping it up soon, so should I.
Until next time!
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