The Adventures of Ben & Michala

gingerbread fun

2008-12-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

So I've heard from a few people lately that our blog is seriously lacking an update. Yes, it's been a while. We seem to stay busy all the time. We've had some nice updates on the house, but nothing too major. We seem to have slowed down to a more "normal" pace taking care of a few minor things each day with more stuff going on during the weekends. A few larger accomplishments are that we have been sleeping in our new bed in our master bedroom for over a week now and we have a washer and dryer arriving in a few days. We have our "powder room" completely set up now as well. Our guest bedroom is now set up as a nice second living room with the futon folded up as a couch and we even splurged on a new TV. Apparently neither of us had ever bought a TV before so it was a big deal! Ben has rapidly fallen in love with HDTV.

We have updated a few new pictures of our house and put them up on our "Colorado Photos" link. Hopefully we will be able to continue our daily and weekly improvements and maybe at some point (probably when we're ready to sell the place years from now) we'll actually get everything done!

In other news...We have started getting back into playing badminton on a regular basis and joined a gym near our house so we have been staying very active despite cloudy snowy days. A recent highlight in our social life included a gingerbread house decorating party with some of our badminton friends last night. It was pretty amazing to see how extremely different all of the houses looked and each of them were really awesome! Roof toppings ranged from shredded wheat, random piles of candy strewn everywhere, orderly rows of icing, candy canes, life savers, and orderly rows of candies. This was the very first home that the two of us have built and decorated together and we ended up winning the "best house" award from our friends! Below are a few pictures of our prize winning home!

Quick Update...

2008-11-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

So I realize it has been a little while since the last post and lots of stuff has happened between now and then. Right now I will try to give a quick update and hopefully this weekend I will be able to give a full update of the past few weeks with many fun pictures for everyone!

The main reason for not updating the blog on a regular basis has been a nasty little cold. I don't remember when I last had a cold like this one, but it completely knocked me out for 3 days straight, then moved into my nose and chest, took away my voice completely for about 24 hours, and it has only been yesterday when I could finally talk normally again. The cold started on Halloween and I'm still waking up feeling like crap every morning. The only good thing is each day I seem to get just the slightest bit better so there's still hope! Ben made out pretty well and only missed about a half day of work earlier this week and has the sniffles. Yes, I'm jealous.

We have somehow managed to accomplish a few "new house" tasks throughout the past week. Some of the tasks include, installing new toilet seats, moving some furniture, installing new window blinds, figuring out storage options, and starting to organize the kitchen, and beginning the insulation and drywall installation in the garage. Pictures of Ben and Mike playing with power tools in the garage to come soon!

A few exciting firsts are; we made our first "real" meal in our new home last night and we watched our first movies this week (what else do you do when you're sick?).

Our plans for the upcoming weekend are to continue work on the garage as well as continue to move items over from our apartment. We will hopefully start picking out a few color schemes for our three bathrooms and three bedrooms. We will probably also spend a significant amount of time touring through Home Depot and Lowe's again.

More updates and pictures to come soon!

First Weekend House Fun!

2008-11-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

We had a fabulous dinner in our new home. It started with Spinach & Artichoke hot pockets for appetizers (a new experience for both of us as we've never had those before) and then we had a fabulous Mediterranean frozen pizza. Both were supplemented with wine of course. We then moved on to cheese and crackers provided by our wonderful real estate broker, Staci, while Ben is worked diligently at changing the front door knobs so we have new locks and the ugly brass door knobs from the 1970's are gone!

We started our day by packing up the truck and car with lots and lots of boxes, furniture, and whatever else we could fit in and moved it on over to the new home. After moving everything to the appropriate rooms we settled in to more scrubbing. We worked in the kitchen for a while again and we may have actually cleared up all of the grease! Ben then took off for several hours of research at Home Depot, putting his gift card to good use by purchasing the new door knobs, a garbage bin, a toilet seat, sand paper, paint brushes, etc. Meanwhile, I was scrubbing away! I have to say that I've discovered my calling is NOT cleaning other people's bathrooms. Yuck! Luckily, we've decided we're replacing two toilet seats so I didn't have to touch those and now we've decided we're going to replace the shower doors in the master bathroom. That just didn't want to come clean no matter how long I scrubbed!

The successful installation of the new front door knobs ended with a "Fuck yeah! It totally works!"from Ben. We also worked on the kitchen including removing the 1970's decor. Touch ups on Sunday included new toilet seats, painting touch ups in the kitchen, more research at Home Depot, the purchasing of installation and Sheetrock, and the moving of more items from one place to the other.

Sadly, I am now in bed with a nasty cold so not too much will be completed on the home renovation front during the next few days, but we will definitely continue working for the next several months!

Home Owners!

2008-10-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

We are now officially homeowners! After an exhausting week (that still isn't done) we had our house closing this morning. For the most part it went without a hitch and we were handed our house key by about noon. This afternoon we moved a truckload of boxes, cleaning items, and food over to our new home and spent the evening scrubbing the kitchen counter tops and cabinets.

You will be happy to know that we did take some time to share a bottle of champagne drinking a glass while sitting on the floor of each of the three bedrooms upstairs.

My sister stopped by after her long day of work and was officially our very first guest in our new home! It was definitely a lot of fun to walk through every room and actually play house with each of us sharing all of our crazy and outrageous home improvement ideas.

Tomorrow Ben gets to let the carpet cleaner into the house in the morning so hopefully the stinky smell will disappear. After work tomorrow we're off to have some fun at the Annual Halloween party at Karyn & Scott's house. Then it will be back to work on Saturday morning!

More updates to come along with pictures!

Keeping Busy!

2008-10-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

First I would like to say Welcome to the world to Natalie Elayne Berman, born way far away from me back in VT on Saturday night! Thankfully Natalie, mom Liz and Dad Abe are doing well, but probably fairly exhausted.

We just had our "final" walk through of our home! In general things looked pretty good. They didn't swap out any appliances for old nasty ones, the electrician has obviously been there to take care of the wiring (and still needs to return to pick up his mess, but we were told about that before we arrived), the cracks in the driveway have been nicely sealed, and the split siding in the back of the house has been repaired and resealed. They neglected to fix the siding and seams in the front of the house and have still left some junk in the garage. Hopefully those things will be taken care of soon so we can move along with the closing tomorrow morning. At this point all other items are lined up and ready to go tomorrow morning!

Ben and I had our first commutes from our new home this morning. It took me less than 15 minutes to get to work with no traffic! Not bad at all. It's actually a fairly nice commute with minimal lights, lots of parks and open space around instead of suburban congestion!

Hectic evening tonight with some preparations for tomorrow and the closing, preparations for Halloween, and our final night of ultimate frisbee. Hopefully we'll fit it all in and still be able to fall asleep tonight!

We're almost home owners!

2008-10-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

In almost one week we will be in possession of our very first home! This past weekend we had our inspection and for the most part, things went smoothly. There were a few minor details that needed work and thankfully we have an awesome real estate broker who got the sellers to take care of all the major items on that list. We just received a big packet of loan information in the mail yesterday. Now we have to go through all of that and sign about 15 pages of documents to finalize our loan, but we have an actual loan number now!

Our plan for the upcoming weekend is to pack. And then we'll probably do some more packing. And then we'll probably do a lot of organizing, list making, purchasing of cleaning products, and lots more. Our goal is to have the majority of our apartment packed up and ready to move by the end of the weekend. That way when we finally have our own home we will be able to focus on doing all of those home improvement projects we have been planning instead of packing up our apartment and moving everything.

In other news...weekdays have remained very busy for us. Tuesdays I ride River immediately after work, head home, shovel in some food for dinner, then we take off for 2-3 hours of badminton and get home around 9-10pm. Wednesdays we get home from work, shovel in some food, and take off for 2 hours of ultimate frisbee, getting home between 9 and 10pm. Although tonight we have a game at 6:30 and 8:30 so it will be more like 3 hours. Thursday we get home from work, shovel in some food for dinner, and take off for several hours of badminton again, getting home between 10:30 and 11:30pm. Fridays we are usually ready to collapse, but often find time to visit with friends and be social (at least until 9pm when we usually crash). Therefore, our weekends are usually fairly uneventful due to our busy weekday schedules.

Wedding planning is slowly coming along. More and more little details are gradually getting worked out and coming together nicely. It's nice that the details I have to think about now are what people are going to wear, what we are going to eat, and what flowers are we going to use. Hopefully the wedding planning will remaine this way and we won't have to deal with too much stress in the future as the wedding gets closer. For now, Our main focus is on the house and probably will stay that way for the next few months.

Update...

2008-10-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

Well, what has happened in the world of Ben and Michala since the last post? Not much in terms of house items to report on. We continue to sign and initial more and more pieces of paper than we can keep up with for house stuff, we're researching home owner's insurance, and still planning all sorts of cosmetic renovations. Not much is going on in terms of wedding planning to report on. Rumor has it the invitations are coming along, the name place settings are in the developmental stage, we have possible hand made napkin rings in the works, and wedding party attire is being sorted out. So, if we're not rushing around with all sorts of house buying stuff and we're not rushing around with all sorts of wedding planning stuff, what are we doing?

Ben has been doing an excellent job of sticking to his 5:30am workouts every morning as well as playing badminton two nights a week. We are also playing in our ultimate frisbee league, which is every Wednesday night. When Ben is playing badminton I'm usually at the barn playing with River or riding her. On top of that we're attempting to go running whenever possible and if it's ever nice on the weekend we'll get out hiking again now that my ankle is finally healing. That leaves us with Monday nights to do some grocery shopping and Friday nights to attempt to be social. I'm finally going to see my sister again tonight for the first time in what seems like several weeks! It seems the past few weekends we have been fairly exhausted and have managed to accomplish very little aside from lots of house stuff, watching football games, and watching DVDs of 24. With the closing of our new home coming up in a few weeks we've been gradually trying to pack up a few items each night inbetween everything else going on. Hopefully, by the time the closing comes around we will have everything organized and packed up so we will be able to spend more time playing house and doing renovations instead of worrying about trying to pack up our apartment.

Home Update

2008-10-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

We have a signed contract and it is now in our possession so what is next? Well, we met with our mortgage broker; Jennifer (who has been wonderful), on Friday and we handed over all of our loan application items as well as signed our loan application. We found out we both have very high credit scores! We have spent a large portion of the weekend talking over financials to plan out down payment amounts and all that good stuff. And we have started planning our home renovations.

The financial stuff I could deal without, but planning home renovations is a lot of fun! The nice thing about moving into a place that is “move in ready” is the renovations are all just cosmetic repairs and special touches. We have decided our first items on the list are to finish the garage. We would like to insulate the remaining exposed walls as well as finish and paint all of the walls. We would also like to add in some “StoreWall” that will enable us to hang many items such as skis, bikes, and tools. At the moment we don’t have any idea what colors to use for everything. Any suggestions?

Our next task on our list is to sand down and the paint the interior doors and trim since they are all stained a very dark brown and make the house appear darker than it is. Not sure what color we will choose for the doors and trim, but white will probably work for now. We’re hoping to be able to complete the garage and interior doors and trim before we end up completely moving in (at the end of November) as well as polishing up the kitchen cupboards. Then eventually, we’ll tackle the other items like painting the upstairs rooms, replacing the chandelier, replacing the 1970’s style closet doors, tiling the master bathroom, replacing a bathroom counter top, replacing the patio doors, and probably many more we haven’t even thought of yet!

Next on our list of house items to deal with…looking over the HOA rules & regulations, checking out the title search results, and the one we’re most looking forward to; the house inspection. The inspection will be our first time back in the house so it will be lots of fun to see it all over again and go through it with a fine tooth comb.

Oh yeah, there is still wedding planning in the works as well!

Holy House!

2008-09-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

So it's official! We're buying a town home! We put an offer in last night and they accepted last night! The closing date is October 30th! Home owners in one month exactly! It still all seems a little surreal at the moment. We found out late last night and then of course couldn't fall sleep until late and then woke up early. All excited nerves right now though. Once it comes time to signing over all that money we may feel a little bit different about the whole thing. Last night after Staci, our amazing Realtor, called us and told us the good news, Ben announced, "I want to go to Home Depot right now!" This was after ten o'clock at night. This morning I wandered into the living room to find Ben sitting in front of the laptop, looking up doors and finished garages online at quarter to seven.

It took us a little while, but we finally realized that we wanted something between a "fix up" and a "move in ready" and we finally found it. This place is practically move in ready, but has plenty of room for improvement. We can put in new carpets, replace the ugly 1970's closet doors over time, replace the cabinet hardware, replace the 1970's laminate flooring in the master bedroom, finish the garage, paint, and who knows what else. Hence Ben's excitement to go visit Home Depot. The layout is excellent and the size is excellent (1500+ square feet for a town home!) so the rest will fall into place over time as we gradually put our individual touches on the place!

The pictures below are looking into the living room from the dining room (the fireplace is kinda ugly, we know) and looking towards the entryway, stairs, and kitchen from the fireplace in the living room (the carpet is actually a decent slate blue color, not the drab gray in the photos)

Labor Day Weekend Photos!

2008-09-23T19:46:00.001-07:00

Here are a few photos that we took during our Labor Day Weekend trip. Sorry it has taken me so long to get them up here!

The forest fire in the distance on Friday night!Start off through the ghost forest from beetles and fires!
Looking down at the wildflowers and valley below
On top of the "Flat Tops" enjoying the view!
Collecting water from a stream

Home Sweet Home!The View from our tent!Playing cards and waiting for the sunset!Glowing tent at night!The Milky Way!Sunrise over Big Trapper and Eureka's new advertising photo!Flowers in the morning dewBig Marvine Peak to the West in the morning glow!Little Marvine Peaks to the northwestThe infamous hanging food bagCooking breakfast and MSR's new Pocket Rocket advertising photoOne of the dozens of columbines (Colorado State flower) we saw during our tripThe stormy view of the mountains we were in as we're driving awayOld abandoned building in ranch field during drive homeAnd of course, a view of the painful swollen ankle after our 6 mile hike out during our drive home

Photos

2008-09-23T11:34:00.001-07:00

I realize that I have been terrible at adding photos to my blogs lately so I promise I'm going to try to go through past blogs and update them with photos sometime in the near future. In the mean time you can check out our photos from our "Colorado Photos" link.

River Update!

2008-09-23T11:33:00.001-07:00

As previously stated, my ankle has gradually been recovering thanks in large part to riding River. However, my ankle has still been bothering me enough to prevent me from shortening the stirrups so that I can jump her over fences. That is until Sunday night when I was finally brave enough to try it out again. For those of you who don't know, River is a young and inexperienced horse that my sister and I have been working on training over the past year. We have made giant leaps and bounds in her training and one of our great accomplishments, thus far, has been teaching to her jump. Teaching her to jump has pretty much been challenging in only one way: trying to keep her excitement under control. She absolutely LOVES to jump! So you can probably imagine her excitement of finally being pointed towards a jump again after nearly a month of not jumping. Surprisingly, we didn't get exactly what we expected. She was eager to go over the jumps, but remained extremely calm! This is a huge breakthrough for River as I don't think I've ever had to push her to keep her energy going while she was jumping before. Usually, I'm always holding her back. Needless to say, I had a great ride on River and it felt great to finally be able to get back into some more serious riding without hobbling after the ride.

A few days ago Ben expressed an interest in learning how to ride (and even jump!) so I talked with my sister and we decided that even though Ben is probably too tall and big for River and she is a young and inexperienced horse it wouldn't be bad for her to act as a school pony for a few beginner riding lessons. So after my ride, Ben hopped up on her for his turn. River has only had a handful of riders on her in her short life and having a big 6 foot 3 inch man get on her back was a little bit of a surprise, but she adjusted to the extra size and weight just fine. He made her look like a little pony though! River did an excellent job of ignoring almost al of Ben's initial commands and actually made him work to get her to do anything. by the end of the lesson Ben was successfully weaving through cones, walking over poles, turning in circles, and trotting all the way around the ring. He also even started getting the hang of posting at the trot! I think he's a little sore from his first lesson, but is looking forward to his next one sometime in the future!

Proof of Addiction!

2008-09-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Last night while enjoying a peaceful Friday night at home eating dinner not discussing anything remotely related to frisbee, Ben blurts out:

"The thing I like about frisbee is that it's really fucking fun anyway, but the thing I realized is that if you put X amount of effort into it, you get X pleasure back...like plus 5."

It's always on his mind...Now if he just takes some of that obsession and puts it towards writing his award winning sci-fi novel we will be set for life!

River, Frisbee, Baby

2008-09-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

Not too much out of the ordinary has been going on in our lives the past few days with one exception I’ll get to later. It’s almost as if we’re attempting to fit a little bit of normalcy into our lives again! What’s that all about? Since my ankle sprain from Labor Day I have gradually been working it back into shape using the best ankle therapy that my sister and I grew up with; riding. Horses, that is. I have gotten back to riding River two to three times a week and my ankle is rapidly improving! Good thing too because I’m supposed to start playing in an ultimate Frisbee league next Wednesday. On the evenings I ride, Ben has been playing badminton and keeping me in touch with all of our badminton friends I haven’t seen in months. He then of course still manages to get away a few days a week to play lunch time ultimate Frisbee on top of getting up every morning at 5:30 to work out at the gym. I think he might have an addiction problem, to Frisbee that is.

You know how nerves and muscles often twitch as people are falling asleep with the occasional jerking movement of stepping off a curb in a dream? Ben is extremely well versed in the drifting off to sleep twitching; however, the curb thing just doesn’t happen for him. For Ben, it’s always reaching for a Frisbee. Every Single Time. Occasionally, he manages to smack me with his arm as he reaches out for the disc, but thankfully he generally keeps it to himself. I think he grew up drifting off to sleep dreaming of Frisbees flying past his head instead of sugar plums in his head. So, perhaps he’s addicted? After living in Colorado for nearly a year (still can’t believe it’s been that long), Ben has finally convinced me to join a Frisbee league with him this fall. It starts next Wednesday and I’m sure I’m going to be extremely sore next Thursday and Friday from all the sprinting up and down the field. I’ll have to give a post ultimate update next week.

Now, on to the “exception.” As many of our close friends and family may know, my sister is pregnant with her first baby. Being someone who has had nearly zero experience around pregnant women, young parents, and babies this has all been a completely new adventure for me. It has definitely been fun to gradually (or not so gradually at times) watch her belly grow larger and larger, but at the same time all of those stinking pregnant lady side effects really don’t look enjoyable to me. One thing is for certain, my sister is extremely happy and although the baby is only the size of a red pepper (I get weekly updates about all of the growing changes going on for the baby and each week it’s a different fruit or vegetable!) I can tell that my sister is already deeply in love with her baby.

Last week I received an email from PoppySeed (that would be the name of the baby for now as that’s the size of the baby when she found out she was pregnant) inviting me to a viewing. So last night I got to leave work early with my sister and brother-in-law and go to the very first ultrasound of PoppySeed. Not really knowing what to expect other than thinking I was going to see something somewhat resembling an alien I settled in to the chair next to my brother-in-law. At first, I saw a squirming alien like being inside my sister’s belly. But as we grew accustomed to the image a head with eyes, a nose, and lips began to form before our eyes. Then we saw hands with fingers and a thumb (Daddy counted them and they’re all there). We got to see the baby sucking vigorously on its thumbs and we got to see its feet gently crossed at the ankles. We got to see it’s profile and we’re not quite sure who PoppySeed will look like yet. And one of the best parts was I got to see the expressions of Mommy and Daddy as they got their first glimpse of their baby. I don’t really know how to describe their expressions, but mommy was slightly giddy and in awe while Daddy briefly showed a big smile mixed with excitement and awe. I felt extremely privileged to be invited to such a private moment in my sister’s life and am so thankful I am able to be a part of the whole experience with her.

Real Estate Weekend Fun

2008-09-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

As if our lives are never busy enough we decided to add in a little more excitement to the end of last week and the past weekend. While out house hunting last Wednesday we found a wonderful town home that happened to be in the absolute best location we could think of with the front door literally opening up onto a several acre Open Space Park and with absolutely everything you could possibly need within walking distance! So, after conversations with our real estate broker we took off and visited the place again on Friday with sister and brother-in-law in tow. It confirmed our thoughts and the two of us decided to spend the weekend thinking everything over, talking to friends and relatives, and calculating possible expenses. However, by Saturday afternoon there were 2 other people planning on making offers on the place so we jumped into action sooner than planned. Our realtor, Staci (who has been absolutely wonderful so far), stayed up until 11:30 working on a contract and bargaining with the seller.

We got our bid in first, but in a so-called buyers market, the seller was doing pretty good with three solid offers arriving all within 12 hours of each other and all before the house had been on the market for a full week. So the seller countered all three offers giving us the deadline to respond first. So, Sunday was also consumed by lots and lots of talking with each other, with parents, with our realtor, and with our mortgage broker. Finally, we came to the conclusion that it was just more money than we wanted to spend. We will probably never be able to find a location as sweet as that one, but there are many places out there that we would love that are out of our price range.

As if the weekend wasn't enough, Ben spent nearly 3 hours meeting with our mortgage and real estate brokers yesterday to go over all the specific nitty gritty real estate stuff and to scrutinize over all those numbers again. Surprisingly, we both thought we got a pretty good deal out of last night. I got to head home after a long day of work instead of rush to a meeting and Ben got to go to a meeting to learn all about real estate and come home to a nice home cooked meal.

Still on the house hunt!

Labor Day Weekend Recap

2008-09-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

After exactly two years since our first backpacking trip we have vowed to never take that long of a break between trips again. This past weekend was wonderful with a few exceptions. We had a beautiful drive on Friday afternoon and stayed at a cute little campground in Meeker, CO. The downside to the cuteness was the location (about 15 feet from a main highway and everyone in Meeker owns an F-350 diesel engine truck or the equivalent and drives all night long) and we happened to be the campers right next to the sewer vent (yuck!). It was just one night and we survived. We had a nice dinner at the local favorite Ma Famiglia in Meeker and got to see the Western sky lit up bright red from a forest fire in the distance.

The hour and a half drive through White River National Forest to get to Flat Tops Wilderness was very beautiful and a good introduction to our hike. We drove through numerous ranches and aspen groves with the "Flat Tops" looming in the distance, as well as a ghost forest (from fires and beetles) closer to the trail head. We had a really great hike up to the Flat Tops at 11,000 feet where we were surrounded by endless views of rolling fields filled with wildflowers and lakes with mountain peaks jutting up in the distance.

We reached our first night destination, Twin Lakes, early in the afternoon and had the rest of the day to relax, play in the water, wander around the lakes, take lots of pictures, play some cards, make dinner, and watch the sunset! Overall, our first day in the wilderness was a major success. Sadly, after proudly hanging our food up in a tree, I rolled my ankle over a dead log walking back to the tent for the night. My ankle mysteriously (or maybe not so mysteriously considering the pain I was in) doubled in size overnight and I was greeted in the morning with a tennis ball sticking out of the side of my ankle along with rain and lots of black clouds.

After making breakfast and taking many more pictures we weighed our options and decided that massive storms on a plateau at 11,000 feet combined with wet clothes, tent, and everything else (it started raining while we had everything splayed out drying from rain during the night) and a sprained ankle we should head back to the car instead of trying to stick to our original plan of two nights in the wilderness. We managed to make it back to the car without too much rain falling on our heads, but the trip down to the car took us a lot longer than the trip up took. For the entire two days we were up in the wilderness we saw a total of 2 hikers, 3 dogs, 5 horses, and 5 people riding the horses all of which was below the plateau. It was one of the largest and most desolate places I have been to and we felt like we were the only ones around for miles and that was probably true.

For our drive home we continued East along the Flat Tops Scenic Byway, the continuation of the route we took in from Meeker in the West. Highly advisable if you have the time because it was very beautiful despite the 40 miles of dirt roads. We made it back home to Arvada at a fairly reasonable time and we were able to sleep in on Monday so that was a huge plus!

Overall, despite the ankle and the rain it was one of our best trips we have taken together and hopefully something we will repeat again in the future (minus the rain and injuries). Check out more photos from our trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/MCPeabody.

Wilderness Getaway!

2008-08-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

So the summer has somehow flown by, the major 90+ degree heat wave of July is gone, and somehow the two of us have managed to get this far into the summer without planning a backpacking trip. With Labor Day Weekend rapidly approaching we realized we should get our behinds in gear and actually start planning something. Ben put his research skills to good use and I put my organizational skills (yes, mom I do have those) to good use and within a few days we now have a long weekend backpacking trip planned out!

We are planning on leaving work a little early (who doesn't on a holiday weekend?) on Friday and heading northwest to Flat Tops Wilderness just south of Steamboat Springs and West of Rocky Mountain National Park (where everyone else will be heading this weekend). Our plan is to camp near the trail head tomorrow night and take off Saturday morning for fun in the wilderness! We started getting everything ready last night and our living room is currently a mess with sleeping bags, thermal layers, cliff bars, quick dry clothes, fleece, GORP, and lots more scattered every which way.

This will be our second backpacking trip together and we are both very excited for a long weekend getaway for just the two of us! Our first backpacking trip together was two summers ago in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with Yuki and I can't believe it has taken us this long to get our packs back on. I have definitely noticed the lack of a four legged friend along each of our hikes this summer (and snowshoeing last winter) and can't wait until we are settled enough to have a dog to bring on camping and hiking trips with us again! It will be good to put that doggie pack to good use again!

Now that it is no longer over 90 degrees outside everyday we will hopefully be able to start planning many more trips out into the wilderness in the near future! I'm sure there will be lots to share and many new pictures to blow up and frame (for our new home) upon our return on Monday. Then it's badminton on Tuesday and back out house hunting again on Wednesday in search of our dream home.

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Let the House Hunting Begin!

2008-08-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

As if spending the past year in transition between departing from our settled lives in Vermont and embarking on the insanity of moving to Colorado and planning a wedding wasn’t enough we have decided that we should buy a house and pay our own mortgage instead of watching our monthly rent check go out the window. What better time to buy anyway with housing costs so low and everyone desperate to sell before they fall into foreclosure. So we have started the hunt for the perfect house! Or townhouse I should say. We figured, we don’t need a whole house and we definitely don’t need all of the maintenance that goes into a house so a townhouse would be perfect.

Our first voyage into the house hunting world involved a meeting with a realtor that came highly recommended from several of my co-workers. The meeting took place while my mom was here so it was helpful to have someone who actually knew a thing or two about buying a home with us for our first visit. It was an extremely informative meeting that frankly, overwhelmed us a little bit.

Last Sunday marked our first day of actually going out and visiting places. We started at the lower end of our “budget” and found a few that we liked, but none we really loved. There was one pretty sweet place, but sadly, it would have required long commutes for both of us for work.

Yesterday we took off on our second adventure into the real estate world and ended up finding several places we loved! There are so many places out there on the market right now and so many that fit our needs and wishes. With a handful of places we fell in love with we now have to sit down and really evaluate which aspects are the most important to us and then go from there. I’m sure the search for the perfect house isn’t even close to being over with yet, but it’s nice to know there are several places out there that we can afford and would be very happy with.

More to come on real estate adventures in the future I’m sure!

The Scheduling Begins

2008-08-11T11:43:00.001-07:00

It is crazy to think that it is apparently already time for us to start planning and scheduling all of our wedding weekend events. We've recently had more requests for information, ideas, opinions, etc on a rehearsal dinner from Ben's family and it got us thinking...How are we ever going to fit everything into just one weekend? Between the rehearsal dinner, the welcome party, the lawn games, the rehearsal, the brunches, the hair & nails, the ceremony, the bonfire, the reception, and everything else we will still need to pick and arrange flowers, transport and set up decorations and lots more! Hopefully we will be finding time to schedule in some much needed rest and relaxation.

Thankfully, my mom was out here in Colorado visiting for about a week and she was wonderful at helping us get organized and think everything through so we can come up with some solid plans, some solid alternatives, and some alternatives to the alternatives. I've quickly discovered that while trying to plan out and talk about the major happenings of the wedding weekend all of the little details keep popping up in conversation. Hopefully, by the end of my mom's visit we will have a solid game plan for the weekend along with lots of little details figured out.

Vermont June 2008 Trip

2008-07-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

The main reason for our trip to Vermont was for our friends' Sarah & Nick's wedding who got married exactly a year and one week before our wedding next year! We also did lots and lots of wedding planning. My mom and I played with all of the flowers in her garden as she will be providing a large amount of the flowers for the wedding. We talked more about the dreaded guest list. We discussed possible decorations, favors, candles, lighting, clothes, musicians, and on and on. The highlight of our wedding planning; however, was our visit to Edson Hill!

It was even more beautiful in the summer than it was in the winter under three and a half feet of snow! We got to walk through the entire property, check out every single room, stand like fools at the ceremony site, and visualize every little detail of the wedding while we were there! We also took about 200 pictures in case our memories failed us and we forgot exactly where every single blade of grass was located!

We left Vermont feeling completely and utterly exhausted, but somehow refreshed with our wedding planning. After seeing Edson Hill it has been easier to picture exactly how everything will look in less than a year. It has also helped to push us along to the next stages of wedding planning in order to stay ahead of the wedding planning game and not get too stressed out next spring.

Spring 2008 Flies By

2008-07-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

With both of us working hard, both of us playing hard (Ben playing ultimate frisbee; me riding River, Karyn's horse; both playing badminton), and living in our own place the spring flew by very quickly. I played in my first real badminton tournament in March and then played in my 2^nd, and 3^rd, and 4^th...until I eventually got a little burned out from badminton. We did some excellent spring skiing in powder in April. We got out and did a little bit of hiking. And we were still both looking for “real” jobs.

We had an excellent Memorial Day weekend in Breckenridge with Susan (Ben's mom), Ruthann (Ben's Aunt), and Mary Anne (Ben's surrogate Aunt, who has been gracious enough to offer to make our wedding cake!). We did a lot of sight seeing of the local area, a wonderful group hike to Lily Pad Lake, ate lots of yummy food, and spent lots of quality time with great company. It was wonderful to finally meet Mary Anne since I had heard all about her for years and she had offered to bake our wedding cake!

I started my new job in the beginning of June and then we took off for a nice long and extremely busy trip to Vermont in the middle of June.

The Wedding Planning Begins

2008-07-23T18:50:00.000-07:00

During those months of unemployment we were able to do a large amount of wedding planning. The first hump to get over was trying to figure out a possible wedding date. Generally you would think this wouldn't be too difficult as the bride and groom simply have to decide what season, then what month, and then figure out the exact date once they found a place to get married. Well, we started thinking about all of our immediate family members. We had a few people working in schools with Ben's brother a professor in Tazmania. We eventually came up with the end of June or the beginning of July working for everyone. Then we had to squeeze in between family members' anniversaries, etc. We finally found our two week time period that would work for “everyone” (everyone being just our immediate family) and we moved on to the next task...Finding a wedding site.

Did you know that most popular wedding site locations are booked at least a year in advance with June being the most popular wedding month of the year? With a June 2009 wedding planned that meant we would have to book our wedding site no later than the spring of 2008. We didn't have plans to be in Vermont in the spring so we ended up cramming in 2 fulls days worth of potential wedding site visits while we were home in Vermont for Christmas 2007. Even checking out places that early there were still two places that had already been booked for the weekend we were looking for. Thankfully we found the perfect location and they had our weekend open! We fell in love with Edson Hill Manor in Stowe when we first stepped onto the property and everything started to fall into place.

Mount Princeton Hot Springs and Other Winter Adventures

2008-07-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Late in the fall while still living with Karyn and Scott we all felt we needed an escape from each other. So Ben and I decided to take off for a mini-vacation to Mount Princeton Hot Springs about 2.5 hours southwest of Golden. We had an amazing trip that involved lots of hiking during the day, yummy dinners in the evenings in the wonderful town of Salida, and extremely relaxing nights in the hot springs at the resort. We loved every minute of our trip as it was our first real time we were able to spend alone together since about mid August and we got to play in the mountains the entire time we were there!

Throughout the fall and winter we continued to get out into the mountains to do some snowshoeing, skiing, and hiking. But, sadly, we were still fairly bogged down by the frustrations of being unemployed and living with all our possessions in someone else's garage. Early on, Ben thankfully found us a wonderful weekly escape. Every Thursday night we would take off for four hours of badminton in Westminster with the Boulder Badminton Club. Due to badminton, Thursday nights also became the highlight of the week for Karyn and Scott as they actually had a night to themselves.

While unemployed we also found a great group of daytime badminton players, which mostly consisted of an “older” crowd in Lakewood. So throughout the winter and into the spring we got out into the mountains as much as we possibly could and played badminton regularly.

Welcome!

2008-07-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

The adventures of Ben and Michala started way back in Vermont in the summer of 2003 when our mutual friend, Mary Kate, was kind enough to invite both of us out for a drink. We eventually started dating in the fall of 2003 and eventually got engaged and moved out to Colorado in 2007. The time between those significant dates was filled with lots and lots of fun! Ben taught me his love of Ultimate Frisbee and Badminton while I taught him my love of mountains and nature. We started our outdoor adventures early on with a hike up Mount Philo our first winter together. I taught him how to ski (again) and Ben tried to teach me a little patience and understanding. I convinced him the Patriots and the Red Sox are the best teams to watch and root for while he convinced me that following a little bit of the nightly news is actually a good thing and can be interesting. We continued our adventures of snowshoeing, hiking, backpacking, kayaking, camping, and many sports through out the time we spent together in Vermont.

A highlight of our time in Vermont involved a little fluffy ball of energy named Yuki. For a little over a year, Yuki went everywhere with us. She rarely spent an entire day at home and stopped traffic left and right everywhere we took her. Saying goodbye to Yuki was one of the hardest parts about moving out to Colorado as she happens to be one of my parents top breeding dogs.

We landed in Colorado at the front door of Karyn & Scott’s house in Golden with plans to crash there until we got our feet underneath us. Little did we know we would be living with my sister and brother-in-law for nearly 5 long months that involved hours of job and apartment searches as well as numerous interviews. Thankfully, we both landed jobs around the same time and said our farewells to the guest bedroom and moved into our own place. To this day we still have no clue where we would be without the perpetual support and generosity of Karyn and Scott and we will be in debt to them for a long long time. For a few months Ben worked as a local reporter for two weekly newspapers while I worked for a local elementary school as a para-educator. As much as we both loved our jobs, we just weren’t making very much money and continued our job searches. I finally landed a summer internship (with a little help from Scott, again) at a solar energy company and the position has since moved into a full time position. Ben also recently started a new job working as the online reporter for the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA). So after several long months of insecurity we are finally back on track and able to live our lives in a slightly more normal setting.

With the long and boring introduction out of the way I can now delve into the more exciting aspects of “The Adventures of Ben and Michala” such as travels, weekend camping trips, afternoon hikes, and of course…the trials and tribulations of wedding planning. The next few entries will try to cover a few of the major “adventures” we have had over the past few months in order to get everyone up to date. I hope you enjoy the updates as we will try to keep you somewhat informed on what is happening as we attempt to settle into a new life together out here in Colorado while planning a romantic wedding back in Vermont and still having a social life.