A photo on Pike's Peak

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks, from traveling to Colorado to a huge festival at work. In fact, right now I should be cleaning, including the mound of dog hair that is lying at the bottom of the steps. I swear, Novie has turned into pig pen as fall starts to rear its head.

Instead of starting with cleaning, I figured I would blog for the first time in a couple of weeks.

We went to Denver to see Dave Matthews in concert, which was a lot of fun, especially for Nate. And the next day, we encouraged our friends to take part in some touristy activities with us.

We were sitting at the patio, eating a delicious breakfast made by our friend's wife, and started throwing out suggestions.

"What do you want to do today?" Nate asked.

"We could go to Boulder or drive into the mountains. We go do Garden of the Gods," his friend said.

"We could do Garden of the Gods," Nate said.

"I've never been there," his friend answered.

"What!? We've been there multiple times and we don't even live here!" I said. "We're definitely going to Garden of the Gods."

So, we packed into the car and headed to the gorgeous park outside of Colorado Springs, with its red peaks shooting up out of evergreen trees and wildflowers. It was a beautiful walk, although by the end by hands looked like my dad's --- sausage fingers --- from the altitude and heat.

Nate and I have a tradition of taking an annual anniversary picture, holding the picture from the previous year. So it's a picture in picture in picture. I stole the idea from someone on Pinterest.

Nate suggested that since we would be in Colorado a few days before our anniversary that we should bring the photo and take it in a beautiful locale. What better place to do than from the top of a mountain?

So we kind of forced our friends to join us on the touristy trip up Pike's Peak. We paid the outrageous amount to take the cog train up the mountain that afternoon, and it was a fun experience. However, my shorts and T-shirt weren't fantastic when we started to hit 12,000 feet. The air was crisp, about 40 degrees, and the wind started to whip through the train. Thankfully, my fantastic husband brought his sweatshirt for me to wear, because yet again, I wasn't prepared. Although he was cold, he let me wear his second layer.

We reached the peak, and floaty-headed, climbed down a few layers of rocks with our photo to get other peaks in the background.

Fresh-made donuts, a sleepy ride down the mountain, a drive home, pizza --- it was a wonderful, early anniversary celebration.