Who you gonna call??

Ghost-busters!! I mean orb-busters! Last weekend my Aunt Carol and Cousin Katie were in town and I think my mom had been waiting for someone to come to town so that she could have the excuse to go to the Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs. The Miramont Castle is supposedly the most haunted castle in the United States... but you can't call it haunted. The crazy lady at the front desk tried to show us all sorts of pictures of orbs that were around the castle. We wandered our way through the castle and looked around for about an hour, but alas no orbs were seen.

The Miramont is also a Firefighters museum, which featured the opportunity to wear some firefighter gear and take pictures. So we did!

The castle used to be owned by a bunch of rich folk who helped start Manitou and such, which is why they have a lot of fancy stuff around. Like these place settings, I wonder if anyone has to polish these regularly?

The rich people apparently also needed some security:

And a sewing machine? I would be more sure of the history of these items, however one of the first signs in the castle declared that some information on their signs was wrong, but didn't tell you what information or which signs were wrong.

Oh, and they had a fancy pants bath tub where the water came up from the bottom, as opposed to a faucet. It looked odd...

Debbie was really excited about the spirits and the orbs and other fanciful creatures, so she took the advice of the crazy lady and had us take each picture twice. The lady said that would give the spirits a chance to come be in the picture. Really. Manitou is awesome.

Who is really excited about the spirits? Debbie is!

All in all, no spirits or orbs or anything else out of the ordinary for us at the castle. The spirits must have had a party to go to or something and couldn't show up. So we got our picture outside, and moved on.

After wandering around the castle we went to Old Colorado City and visited the Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory and we shared some caramel apples! They were delicious! After that we got dragged around to a quilt shop and a knitting shop... it was very exciting, but we were a little tired after our long runs earlier Saturday morning.

We had a great time looking for orbs and spending time with the family!

Fogo De Chao

Last weekend we went to dinner at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant with Cary and Adrienne who live up in Denver. We had tried to go about a month ago, but got detoured by the snow, so even though it was snowing this time too we were committed to going! And we had a great time!

We got to our table and they told us the system for dinner. The guy said that we should go to the salad bar first (which looked amazing), and when we were ready to get some meat we had a little coaster by our drinks that had a red and a green side. The green meant for them to start bringing the meat and red meant for them to stop. They warned us that if we didn't turn it to red they would not stop coming and they weren't kidding.

The salad bar was delicious, they had everything! Then once we were getting through our salads they brought us mashed potatoes, rolls, polenta and caramelized bananas, all very tasty. Cary was the adventurous one at the table, so he turned his little card to green first, and boy did the meat start showing up! There were five men with meat on sticks before we knew it.

They would ask how you liked your meat cooked and then shave you off a piece. Every time they would ask me, I would say well done if possible, and they would say "I'll be right back for you" almost every time, and then to Mikey's surprise they didn't even roll their eyes! They would take the meat back to the grill and then come right back to our table to shave me off some sizzling well done meat. This happened at such a quick pace that we lost track of the time, all four of us were full and delighted with the meal, and we had only been there for 30 minutes, counting the salad bar! The food was amazing, the salad bar by itself would be a good place for a meal, and the meat was out of this world.

Sorry this picture is blurry, but it was dark and the meat men were moving fast! (Mikey said that I should tell everyone that this was a clear picture, but the men were just moving that fast!)

Here is a picture of Mikey's meat, there was filet mignon, round steak, sirloin, lamb chops, the house special. We missed the ribs, they must have been going fast at another table.

We had a great night, and by the time we were done with dinner at 5:30 it wasn't snowing out anymore! So we went to Yogurtland! It was delicious! I got chocolate cake flavor with walnuts and gummy bears and then I got peanut butter flavor with cheesecake bites and Reese's, it was outstanding! Too bad they don't have one in the Springs.

Remember that time...

I found a dog in my backyard!! Well, yesterday when I got home I heard a dog whimpering outside, at first I just thought my neighbor had a dog in her backyard and it was in a cage or something. After about ten minutes of nonstop whimpering I went outside to take a look. And there was a little bitty dog stuck in my backyard. She had a leash and a collar on, and some how the leash got stuck underneath the corner of our shed... poor little dog, I have no idea how long she was stuck there. She seemed really scared.

I got her unstuck and then took a picture with my phone to show Mikey what I had found... he thought I went out and bought a dog! He was going to be mad at me since he is allergic to them! After that I got it some water and then went and asked all sorts of neighbors if they recognized her or if they knew who she belonged to, and no one knew her at all, it was sad. After asking what felt like the whole neighborhood, I went back to my house and sat on the front porch with her just in case someone came by looking for her and while sitting there I called the humane society to report that I had found her. She ran around like crazy, it was really no wonder she got out of her owners yard.

Well after about an hour Mikey got home and we were talking to our neighbor across the street and he let us borrow a doggy cage for the little pup, and he gave us some food for her too. We let her eat and then put her in the cage and we were going to take her with us to Jim and Amanda's house since we were going over there for dinner. And then, just as I was pulling out of the driveway I saw some kids walking by, so I asked them if they were looking for a dog and they said yes! Yay, parents! I took the little pup out of the cage and the kids were happy to have their dog back. All the neighbors agreed that it was a Mini Pincher, so Mikey and I called her Pinchy, we didn't want to get too attached! It was an exciting two hours!

Oh, and be ready for a lot of posts... I have been slacking...

Feast o' the Irish

In case you didn't know, today was St. Patrick's Day! Fortunately, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day, so we of course had to celebrate with traditional Irish fare. Wandering through Costco the other day we saw a package of corned beef which only required us to put it in the crock pot for about 10 hours and walk away, our kind of meal! We picked up a small one (by Costco standards) and started to plan the feast. We bought some cabbage, carrots and whipped up some leftover potatoes, and let it cook.

We are still in training for the marathon and half marathon, which seems like it is only days away at this point. But with that in mind, we both went for about a 4 mile run when we got home, while the beef was cooking. It was windy and kind of chilly when the sun went behind the clouds. I guess it is technically still winter. Julie took a wrong turn and found herself in a poorly lit creek-bed lined with slippery rocks and mountain lions (probably), only barely managing to make it out in one piece! I got home late, so I tried to catch up to her, and heroically save her from the beasts stalking her in Ute Valley, but she was too fast and I only saw her at home, after she had fended off all manner of beast with her bare hands.

O.K., back to dinner.

We heated up the potatoes, steamed the carrots and cabbage, cut the corned beef, and ate our feast.



That wasn't quite enough for our holiday appetites, so we had to find something else Irish-like to wash it down. Fortunately I read about something called a Shamrock Shake at McDonald's, and apparently everyone loves it! It is a mint flavored milkshake, colored green, covered in whipped cream and topped with a cherry. It is only available during the St. Patrick's Day holiday season (no, really, that is true). In fact, I think only the pictures do it justice:



I'm 90% sure that this shade of green does not appear in nature. Oddly, it is also the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream, mmmmm.



Alright, so that is how we celebrate St. Patrick's Day these days, since we go to bed at 9:30 now. We hope that you wore green to avoid being pinched and had an very exciting day too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Spring is springing!

I got home today before it was dark outside and I noticed a few spring springings! I am super excited for what is growing in my front yard! Last fall, I bought huge bag of tulip bulbs at Costco and planted them in front of the house! AND they are starting to come up!!! I was a bit nervous about them not growing, I have heard it can take a year or more for the bulbs to actually sprout anything.

Also last year Mikey and I went to a local community garden's plant sale, and we bought some ground cover. One of them has started to come up, but the other one looked a little dead.

And, not that I am embarrassed by the picture Mikey put up of the deer on his run the other day, but they were just hanging out down the road a little bit, so I wanted to give the Colorado Rat a better chance to shine!

And I might have been wearing a real funny pair of shoes that I got while I was taking these pictures... hope you will still be my friend if you see me wearing them in public!!!

Garden of the Gods Run

Julie has been doing most of the blogging work for us recently, and I couldn't stand to let her have all of the fun. I thought it might be a good idea to document some of the routes that we run around town, both to show off how cool the town is, and to remember where we've been running.

Despite the warnings of every article I've ever read and my loving wife, I thought it was a great idea to run 14 or 15 miles. Just to recap, I took a week off when the high was in the negative digits, then two weeks off for being sick, and in the middle of that I gave a pint of blood. So, it was probably a bad idea to jump back into 30 miles/week. Turns out, it was a bad idea, I hurt my knee after about 6 miles, and generally felt terrible for the last few miles. Dang.

Other than that, it was a lovely time, a bit breezy and hazy, which created some nice views. To start off, I ran over some of the hills by my house and saw some of the local wildlife enjoying a morning snack.



Running from my house, this is one of the first views of the Garden of the Gods. Pikes Peak poking out behind the rocks, even despite the haze.



Rounding the upper corner of the park about 5 miles in, comes to this great view of the park looking south.



My turnaround point was the Balanced Rock, a rock which looks to be sitting in a very compromising spot, and seems to be only a strong breeze away from crushing some unsuspecting tourist. Fortunately, this has been here for quite some time, and isn't really in danger of making pancakes from Texans!



Because it was a loop, the views are pretty much the same on the way back, and due to the injury and how bad I felt, there weren't many pictures.



While there was a fair bit of belly-aching in this post, this was a great run, and I continue to love the available runs we have just outside out door. If I remember the camera, and feel better at some point, there will be more pictures, and hopefully more remote and scenic locations!

Finally did our taxes!

I know it is still early in March, but we usually do our taxes in early February. And according to my dad, why would you wait if you are going to be getting money back, so I got motivated yesterday to sit down and do them! Now Mikey and I are trying to pick a few things that we want to do with some of our tax return and then save the rest. I am thinking I might pick to go see a show at Piccadilly Circus in London!! I think Mikey will probably pick something along the lines of running, hopefully it won't be an entry fee for an ultra (50 mile race)!

Speaking of running, I am trying to be good and actually train for the half marathon, so on Saturday I ran 8 miles with two of my friends. It was hard, but when I was done I was really glad that I did it! Mikey kept telling me I would feel better after I had finished it. I still am not sure how I feel about adding 5 more miles to that 8 mile run, but I guess it's too late to quit now! Mikey is trying to get back to doing a 20 mile run on the weekend, but we think he might still be recuperating from being sick for two weeks and not running the one week when the high was -2 degrees... I think we will probably take this week a little easy, seeing how it is supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow and we signed up for a St. Patty's Day 5K on Saturday. It should be a fun race! I am excited to be done with the run after 3 miles!!

Mikey had to take his Jeep to the shop to get one of the back windows fixed, it wouldn't stay up. He took it to Amanda's Brother's Friend's shop, and he said it cost about 1/2 of what the dealership quoted. So that was nice.

I got a bit of the sweet tooth the other night, and decided that we should make cinnamon roll pancakes for dinner. The idea is to make normal pancake batter, pour some on the griddle, then pour a cinnamon-sugar-butter mixture in a swirl over the pancake. Flip it once, and then cover it in frosting. Seriously. We had this for dinner. Mikey finished two pancakes, and said his hand felt a bit shaky, I only barely made it through two of my own. The good news, we know what Reagan and Breckin are having for breakfast when they spend the night!!!!! Below is one of the frosted pancakes ready for eating!

Other than that, not too much has been going on, we are hoping we can both stop being sick, and the weather can start to be nice again. Fingers crossed!!!