Jen, Stu and the boys, a year in the States 2013, 2014 6 months, 2015 4 months: Birthdays, mountains and BBQ......

I received my birthday present from Elizabeth nice and early....

and then a few days after my birthday all of this arrived in the post...so unexpected and so appreciated. Thankyou to my family and Stu...xxx

Jakeb celebrated his 22nd birthday here on the 9th May, with us, in Denver which was really nice. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my cooking here is a bit of an issue that I can fortunately blame on the altitude, and I wouldn't even attempt cooking a birthday cake....so it was up to Stu to be in charge of the birthday cake purchase. On the way home from school he stopped at a shop and came home with this.....

it looked nice enough until we cut it and saw this........it was bright and colourful, but.....

was really awful, horrible, sweet and disgusting and we threw it out!! But I'm sure a memorable cake for Jakeb! He also bought this, for just in case.....

....as he was captivated by the name! Again, so bloody sweet and quite revolting!
Last weekend Stu and I headed out for our weekend drive. On the way we stopped at a Sports shop to look at snowboarding boots. If your 6 yr old child wants to play soccer, or baseball they go to this shop to buy their gear.....or if you want to buy a bike or go camping or buy tennis gear you come to this shop......... and if you want to kill things you also come to this shop......

A choice of knives....


and guns......


and you even get to have a shot at the two Bambi's in the shop...watch out for the canoes though!!

I do find this very confronting! After passing on the purchase of weaponry, we left the suburbs and headed up to....

..as recommended by someone at Stuart's school. It was a nice drive to get there, including driving up a dirt road to get to the start of the walk. The road had only been opened that weekend due to the snow, so was a bit wet, but really scenic. We couldn't get to the start of the walk as the road was closed, so we parked the car and began trudging through snow and slush....uphill. Not my most enjoyable way to spend a Saturday...but when your head wasn't down watching every step so you didn't slip over, it was very pretty.

If you got tired, there was always a park bench to have a rest on....

I didn't go as far as Stu....but he went on up to the fire hut.......to check out the view...

That afternoon we were invited to Tanya and Phil Hancock's place in Castle Rock for a BBQ. They are Aussies from NSW who are on teacher exchange with their 3 young boys, Luke, Ryan and Quinn. Sharon and Lindsay were also there and it was a great evening to exchange exchange stories!!!
Sunday (Mother's Day) Stuart, Jakeb, Joshuah and Angelo went up to A (Arapahoe) Basin snowboarding. It was a beautiful day for them up there, with plenty of snow. They wore t shirts....