Crappy, Crappy Colorado

The title is a bit misleading. I actually really like living in Colorado. It's beautiful most of the time and Highlands Ranch rocks as far as amenities. We have 4 rec centers that are free with our homeowner's fees, open spaces and trails for biking/running, parks everywhere and all kinds of free goings-on. But I tell you the springs here kill me.

Let's take up a non-contraversial topic. No religion or politics, just the weather please. We'll begin our journey back in the winter of 2008-2009. It was dry, cold and windy. Kind of lame. No sledding opportunites. Then came the spring, and Mother Nature decided to catch up with a vengence. Rain, snow, and more rain came down for months. Summer came and the rain continued. We had so many thunderstorms! We went to South Dakota on vacation. It was a rain disaster. To this day, when it's dark and rainy in the mornings J declares "This is just like camping!" All the trip home it stormed, poured and hailed. At this point I predicted it would be a harsh winter. I was right. The snow started up in October and stayed fairly consistent through . . . well, now. We had a couple of weeks in January that were dry. In April, the sun shone for about another 2 weeks (and the cold wind blew like crazy) so the trees started to flower and the bulbs popped up. For some reason though, it was like everything was in slow motion. Finally in May the trees were in full flower. Here's a picture!



See the glorious-ness! Love those flowers! Wouldn't it be awesome if a warm gentle breeze was blowing, the grass was greening and sunshine shone down upon all? Wouldn't it be lovely if I wasn't getting a frost bitten nose and wearing a down coat?

We have had several snow storms this month. I'll just repeat that for you several snow storms this month. I noticed a neighbor of mine has hung up a self made flag on her house saying "Where's our spring?" Good point lady. June is 2 weeks away people! Let's get a move on here!



My poor lilacs, struggling to lift their smelly heads! They call these snows the branch breakers, because they are so heavy and wet they snap off the branches of any trees that have leaves. Luckily, most of the trees don't have any leaves yet.

I have had a rug outside in an attempt to dry it for over 6 weeks now. Whenever it's dry enough to bring in we get snow again. In retrospect, this is probably laziness on my part, but I digress.

Oh, what the heck let's digress again. Paul is in Vegas this long weekend. Guess what he sent me today?



Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh! What a punk!