Ben's Visit!

After a dry spell of no visitors, on July 2nd Ben came to see me! I know some people go months and months without seeing each other but Ben and I had never gone more than about 2 weeks before this summer, so we were a little excited! I picked him up from the airport Thursday night around dinner time and where did we go? Chick fil a, duh. We sat and caught up at dinner and then went back to the Carlson's house to see Dave and Mary, who I have to say by now are like my family :)

Friday morning I had to get up and go to work but my supervisor Tiffany was nice enough to give me a half day so Ben met me at my office where I got to show him around and then took me to lunch. After lunch, we met Dave and Mary back at the Broadmoor for a tour of the property. After this it was on to the tourist activities. First stop was Garden of the Gods:


After exploring around, we came back to the Carlson's and to include Ben on my new love for raw fish we made sushi! Like literally made it...I'm so proud.



Saturday, we got up early and did a nice little hike called the Mount Cutler trail which had great views and was just the right length. PS, our way to the trail my fears were confirmed...in the next door neighbors yard just walking along was a Black Bear. Ben was really intelligent and grabbed my camera and ran AT the bear to get a picture, to which the bear turned around and started walking towards Ben...Ben screamed like a girl (so did I) and we escaped safely with a cool picture to show off/terrify me the rest of my time here.



To finish up, probably our most memorable activity was a hike called "the Incline" which had been suggested to me by a number of people because its just a good thing to say you did. So, thinking that I was way more in shape and athletic than I am, Ben and I decided to try it. WHAT a mistake that was. The incline is not just a "hike", its a straight up vertical staircase up a mountain side leading to an asthmatic's death. I tried my hardest not to faint but after about 30 minutes, I was seeing black spots so I forced Ben to go on without me. While I sat there watching him go, I looked to my left and realized that the massive amounts of flies around me were because of a huge pile of dog droppings right beside me. This was enough motivation for me to get up and take it 100 steps at a time to get to the top. So, about an hour later I had made it to the top...oh wait...the "top" or what you see from the bottom as the top is really HALFWAY. I wanted to die and almost had a temper tantrum but by that time Ben had already made it up to the real top and down to the half way mark to meet me. We decided to head back and spent the afternoon in Manitou Springs, the little hippie town at the base.
Look at what we climbed!


Anyway...the rest of our time was spent visiting with friends and one of the best memories we'll have of this trip was Monday night being treated to dinner at a VERY nice restaurant at the Broadmoor by the Carlson's. We had such a great time on our little double date :)

Ben left on Tuesday, July 6th to go home to a whole new life in Burlington, which will be so strange to go home to Raleigh without him living there. But we are both so excited for what's to come with his new job! But before he goes on to become a farmer, hes taking an awesome 10 day back packing trip with 7 of his Young Life guys who have just graduated from Broughton. They will be back packing through Canada and sharing some great time together, so be praying for Ben and those boys!

I Have Friends!

So, with a little push from Mom to update the forgotten blog that I once kept up with so well...I'm BACK! The last I think I wrote about was our visit from Grace and seeing Sally in Boulder. Since then, I have continued working 8-5 at the Broadmoor (unpaid) everyday. I have 2 other girls working with me so that makes it a little better, and I have to say I've really enjoyed working in the Sales and Marketing office. I feel like I've learned more this summer by actually getting hands on experience than any class I've taken in college. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing...but I'm thankful for the experience anyway! I get a lot of questions about what I do on a day to day basis and really, the only way I know how to explain it is that I do whatever anyone in the office needs me to. After working for about 2 months I feel like I've finally figured out most of what the office does so now I feel like I'm helping instead of being a burden. I do things like help with summer marketing efforts (basically make calls to solicite...which if you know me was a nightmare to be on the phone with strangers!), help write up contracts, take prospective clients on tours etc.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff...I finally have friends! I met a lot of people my age during my orientation but didn't keep up with them much for the first couple of weeks. One day while trying to eat my french dip at the employee cafeteria (which smelled like a Golden Retriever), my friend Alex came and sat with me. During our lunch we basically agreed that neither of us had friends here and all we were doing was working so we needed to hang out and have a life this summer. After that, we basically formed a little group of friends (people we had met through orientation) who were in the same boat as us and we've been hanging out ever since!

Being the planner that I am, I decided that we should put together a "List O' Fun" with activities that we want to complete before the summer is over. Here are some pictures of things we've done so far...
Some of us at a Rockies game


My friend Jess and I downtown eating Sushi at an awesome place called Fujiyama...Jess is great, shes from San Diego and so much fun. She left about 2 weeks ago because she had started earlier than most of us :(

Cosmic Bowling with the group and Sandy! Sandy is here doing an internship with Focus on the Family, its so great having someone here from home. More pictures to come...but all of these people are SO different from me. They are from California, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Oklahoma, Texas, Maryland blah blah. They all think I'm an alien for being from the south and saying things like "ya'll"...also my favorite story about differences so far has to be a conversation I had about flip flops. One of the guys I work with needed new flip flops so I asked him, "Do ya'll have Rainbows where you're from?" He then said, "Yeah, after it rains." Dead serious.

Even though its so different out here and NO one is even a little bit like me, its been great to get to know such different people and to get out of my little comfort zone that is Raleigh, or even the South for that matter.

RECAP

Ok so I know I've been very bad about slacking off with the blogging but in my defense, I am living solo these days without as much excitement to report. I thought it would be appropriate to finish out Caroline and Grace's time here with a little photo tribute with some detailed captions to recap what went on.

First, here's a picture from the mountain death ride on Grace's first day in Colorado Springs. We felt it necessary to pull over and take a self timer picture at this very spot. Anyone who knows us would be able to tell why we took this picture at this particular spot if you were with us. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do the scenery justice so I'll go ahead and state the obvious...it reminded us of TWILIGHT (the meadow scene).




Second, this is another picture from our Boulder adventure, specifically in Happa Sushi! Sally and some of her new friends that are working at camp were kind enough to let us tag along. They were all so cute and it was really fun getting to know people from all over! We certainly broadened our horizons with all the new friends, food and shopping :) We loved Boulder!




Third: Caroline, Grace and I took a highly anticipated trip to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo one afternoon. We are all MAJOR animal lovers and had to check it out once we heard we would be allowed to pet and feed the Giraffes! (If you know Grace Mann, you know this is entirely false about her, but still very true for the Branch girls!) The zoo was awesome! It's the highest elevation zoo in the U.S. and its built right into Cheyenne Mountain. It has SO many kinds of animals and kept us entertained for a really long time. P.S. its baby season apparently because there were some PRECIOUS baby monkey's that I have about 50 pictures of if you're interested :).

The last of Grace and Caroline's trip was finished off by a farewell trip to the Saltzgiver's house. The Saltzgivers have been a HUGE help during our time here so naturally they had to say goodbye. We went over to the house after eating at a local restaurant called Phantom Canyon (where Grace had a Bison Burger, which are actually very tasty, Caroline had some pasta that she wasn't too thrilled about and I chose Pork Chops, why? I still don't know) At the Saltzgiver's house we watched Bedtime Stories with the boys and Ty and ended with some memorable pictures.













As for now, I will try to keep you posted on things going on in my life working and making new friends. As of right now, work is going well, 2 new interns have just joined and they're both really nice. I'm starting to get the hang of things around the office and am learning a lot! Last night I socialized a little with some girls from work so hopefully that will continue and I'll come out of my hermit phase (the 8-5 working day is taking its toll on me so when I get the hang of it, I'll be sure to update the blog with some more adventures that I plan on taking with my new friends).

For now, love you all and can't wait for my next visitor (don't know who will be next, but we'll see!)

Besties in Boulder

So fun seeing Sal!

Pearl Street!

Driving through a monsoon, this was our first sighting of Boulder!

Our First Visitor!

GRACE MANN HAS ARRIVED! Yesterday after waking up and getting cleaned up for our visitor, Caroline and I drove to the COS airport and picked up Grace. We were so excited to have someone from home to share our fun experiences with so we started to drive straight to lunch in our favorite area of town, and of course a street festival was going on so that was not a possibility anymore. We defaulted to the only other non-franchise we knew of and ate lunch catching up and brainstorming ideas for her week's visit. After building excitement for the week's activities, we went home to drop off luggage and get Grace settled in and while talking about what we wanted to do, she wandered downstairs and fell asleep leaving Caroline and I with a Jon and Kate + 8 marathon until about 2 hours later. When she woke up, we had had enough of this sitting around, after all, we're in Colorado. We decided to show her a beautiful view of the city from Cheyenne Mountain (where Davis and Hunter had taken us our first night here.) This idea led us to driving our KIA Spectra up through the mountain at a speed of about 5 mph fearing for our lives as we looked over the unprotected edges that would cause us to plummet to our death if one jerk of the wheel occurred. After gaining a little confidence driving, we started to really enjoy the scenery around us. This lasted for another 20 minutes but faded quickly as we realized we had left civilization far behind. Fully expecting the dirt road to end in the city at any minute, we kept driving...and driving....and driving. Finally after an hour of this and the spotting of a sign that said Colorado Springs 11 miles (the other way), we decided to turn around. At this point, we had about 1/4 of a tank of gas left, it was dusk, and we felt like we were in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. After a stressful trip back up and through the mountain, we made it back to where we started. Although it was miserable at some points, our spirits were high because we had just made it through a great adventure on our own! After our leisurely afternoon drive was over, we came back to the house and made stir fry for dinner and went to bed fairly early.
Today, the Saltzgiver family invited us to church with them. We experienced their church in downtown, which was great, and went to lunch with their family and some friends at Red Robin! After eating, Ty continued his great hosting skills by taking Caroline, Grace and I to see some hiking trails we need to hit. He drove us up to a place called Seven Falls and pointed out the trails we will definitely be trying out. We came home after that and while discussing our possible trip to the zoo, it started hailing outside (again). Weather in Colorado is always questionable, but apparently the last 2 days have been outrageously different...its been raining all day and hailng for a good bit of that time, with gunshot thunder and purple lighting. We had pretty much given up when I got a phone call from my friend Sally, who is working at a camp in Estes Park this summer. She called to say she and her friends from camp were going to Boulder for the night and that we should join them. After talking about it and realizing that we had nothing better to do (also, it wasn't raining in Boulder), we decided to be spontaneous and make the trip! The drive there was typical of our luck so far as we battled through the horrible weather that seemed to follow us the entire way, but with Boulder on the horizon we knew it would be well worth it. It was beautiful and so cool! We got there and met Sally at a coffe shop on Pearl Street. Pearl Street is an awesome strip mall with brick streets, cute shops all along the sides and very colorful people all around. We walked around to the different shops for a while and caught up with Sally, we still couldn't believe that the four of us were just hanging out with Colorado...none of us are very well traveled and our excitement proved it. Around 6:30 the group of us went to dinner at a sushi place! Caroline, Grace and I weren't too sure about this decision, but decided to go with the flow and the sponteneity theme of the day and roll with it. We ended up LOVING it! I got a Philidelphia roll with salmon and cucumer, Caroline got an Asparagus Tempura roll...and Grace got nachos (2 out of 3 isn't bad). We ended our Boulder adventure by going with the group to Boulder Baked, a dessert shop where you order your own cookie and they bake it for you right there. Topping it off with some coffee for the ride home made it a perfect ending to a very fun day. We love sponteneity.

Let the Work Begin

We're back! Sorry about skipping yesterday, we wanted to wait a little while so we could tell everybody more than "today was my first day at work" and "i sun bathed". So, the last two days have been a much different experience for us than the past week of freely sightseeing around Colorado Springs. Monday morning was my first day of work at the Broadmoor! After sleeping in a little bit for the past couple of days, 7 a.m. came very early on Monday for both me and Caroline. Fortunately enough for me, Caroline has been gracious enough to get up with me and drive me to work. Our routine so far has consisted of me getting up and showering at 7, eating breakfast and getting stuff together for work. At 7:45 I go downstairs, wake Caroline up and we are out the door in the next couple of minutes.
Monday and today have been very similar in terms of my experience at work. About 35 employees in training and myself report to the Training classroom at 8 a.m. where we listen to guest speakers, history of the hotel, policies and procedures etc. It's been about as interesting as any orientation and has been surprisingly really helpful. The highlights have probably been the hotel tour, meeting the managers and the President, and getting to know my co-workers. Of the 36ish of us, I am the ONLY unpaid intern, awesome. The majority of the people in training with me are in golf, culinary or food & beverage. Once again I am the odd ball in Sales, but everyone is extremely nice. I don't know why I am always worried about the awkwardness, everybody in there is in the same position feeling like the new kid at school (you should see us in the employee cafeteria, its pretty funny, today I ate lunch with a 65 year old man haha)
The rest of the week I will be going to more classes such as "Presentation of Polish" and "Preventing Harrassment". My supervisor is out of the office this week so we'll see what happens when the classes are over and we're supposed to be working on Thursday.
One of the more interesting parts of the classes was the one on Employee Benefits! I get discounts on almost everything and something that will interest Mom, Jamie, Lynn, Amy and should interest everyone else that WILL be coming to visit us are the discounts for the Broadmoor's World Class Spa! We could also just go to a movie for free :) I don't have to be at work until 9 a.m. tomorrow and should be out early, so hopefully I will have some more exciting news to report. Until then, heres the last 2 days from Caroline's perspective:

Hello everyone!
I'll just go ahead and say not only is this my first post on the blog, but I am not even close to being a writer like Elkie so bare with me. With that said, I'm surprised I even got time to write this being that my days are filled with so much and I'm constantly busy. Okay so that's not true at all, I am not nearly as busy as Elkie and now that she has started work I have found myself searching for fun things to do instead of waiting around in the house all day! Yesterday I took Elkie to work, put on my work out clothes, and was out the door. My first stop was at the cell phone store because being the wonderful sister I am, I took Elkies "broken" phone over there to see what they could do to fix it before she got home. I ended up only needing to get her a batterty and wahlah! all fixed. From there I went to the YMCA in downtown Colorado Springs. I am very glad to know there is one here, but it is a lot different from the one in Raleigh. After working out I went to the grocerty store, and got the things i needed in order to make dinner for the 2 of us. Chicken Parm was the meal and it was wonderful. After dinner we just hung around and watched tv until bedtime. Today was a little less eventful, but after laying out for a little I went to go work out again, and on the way i discovered the SPCA (animal resuce) building, and found myself spending most of my afternoon there. Dangerous for me i know....don't worry mom and dad, I came home with zero animals....this time! So after shopping around for a little bit, I couldnt wait for that phone call from elkie telling me she was finished so I could go pick her up and hang out with someone for the rest of the night. Anyways, this is looking like its going to be a usual day for me so all you guys keep praying that I dont completely go insane because i am not used to not having things to do and people to talk to all the time! I'm hanging in there and love the city, its beautiful! Visits are always welcome and we love hearing from all of you! If anyting interesting happens to me along the way, ill be sure to post and let you all know, but for now you can read this same post over and over again and im sure itll be the same thing i did days to come! Love you all and cant wait to see everyone again! xoxo
Caroline

Picnics and Planes

Right now I'm sitting down to blog about our day and Caroline has never seemed more like Jim Branch's daughter as she has today. They share a really cute/obnoxious habit of making play on words during regular converstaion. Examples of some of hers from today will be included.
So, we woke up this morning with the same excitement as yesterday because we have a car! After eating breakfast and planning out our day we began driving to our first destination, Evergreen Cemetary. Before leaving Raleigh, Mamo gave us directions to her parents gravestones which are conveniently in the heart of Colorado Springs. We found our great grandparents graves, wiped them off a little and took some pictures. The cemetary was so beautiful with snow covered Pikes Peak in view at all times, so we set up a picnic and ate lunch under a tree. We've made our own meals ever since we bought groceries and I'm proud to say, I haven't eaten a single french fry in Colorado.
(Example: During our picnic, Caroline was looking around at the family names on the gravestones and came across a really big one with the name Case. There was a lot of room for names to be added under it, to which Caroline said "Oh, I guess that's just in Case.")
After leaving the cemetary, we drove about 15 minutes to the Air Force Academy. This was really fun for Caroline especially because she was able to compare it to the Naval Academy. When we pulled up to the entrance we were asked for our licenses and to pop the trunk. The guards let us go, but as we drove away, they started laughing. We thought that was a little weird but later found out that Hunter's car had an axe in the back, oops. The Air Force Academy is huge! We drove through campus taking pictures of the beautiful scenery and planes on display. There wasn't much more to it, but we had fun exploring none the less.
While we were out and about, we made a run to Target. Caroline got to look through the cute summer clothes while I spent my time in the Hosiery section with an older woman talking to herself about the difference between "beige" and "nude". With this purchase behind me, I think I'm all ready for work to start tomorrow. We're both a little nervous about what tomorrow will be like, me at work from 8-5 and Caroline by her lonesome. We'll let you know how it turns out!

By the way, today there was a consistent gathering of 5-8 deer right outside of our house. This prompted Caroline to say, "The title of today's blog should be Oh, Dear" harharhar

View of Garden of the Gods


In the park

Shout out to Ben and Will (that's a heart)

Shopping in Old Colorado City

Fun Stores!

Free At Last!

Hallelujah! Today we were finally able to experience Colorado Springs outside of the Carlson's neighborhood. Pitifully stranded without a car, Hunter proved to be a wonderful friend yet again and gave us his car to use for the weekend. After picking us up, Hunter made me drive around the area to point out some main roads and land marks. Even though I admitted that I was directionally challenged, Hunter decided that it would be best to enforce his teaching style of learning by making mistakes. With Caroline's help we did o.k. getting him back to his house and from there to Panera Bread for lunch downtown.
After eating we headed out for our first real adventure, to see Garden of the Gods. Driving through the park, we snapped pictures of the huge sandstone rock formations. Once we found the main entrance, we parked and walked through the trails to get an upclose look. While we explored, we got so excited about taking pictures to show everybody how cool the formations were, that we decided to go a little off the trail. Caroline walked about 2 feet off the path so that I could get a picture of her and quickly realized she had outrageously offended a local man. He began yelling and flailing his arms at her to get back on the path to which Caroline smiled and leisurely walked back with her head down. From then on we just asked other tourists to take our pictures for us, on the path of course.
Leaving the park, we saw a Starbucks close by and had to stop for a snack and some coffee. After looking back through our pictures and finishing up our snacks, we started heading home. As we were driving we stumbled upon Old Colorado City, a part of town we will now make a regular hangout. The colorful storefronts and cute old town feel caused us to immediately park the car and continue exploring! We walked the streets and pointed out restaurants we would need to come back to try with visitors and got into big trouble as we saw how many boutiques stood in front of us. Don't worry Mom, we only looked in a few and the best part is, the prices were awesome!
We finally pulled ourselves away and headed home for the night. Going along with this new independent and domestic lifestyle of ours, we cooked dinner. Shocking I know, at least for me. We made pasta and a fruit salad and finished off a great day with a movie.
Transportation, we love you.

The view from Davis' spot

A little hike up to the view

Exploring the Broadmoor

We wake up to deer outside our windows!

Lessons Learned

Today, we learned many things about ourselves and life in Colorado.
Lesson 1: Be on the lookout for wildlife.
Dave and Mary left this morning for a trip but before leaving made sure to warn us that we would be seeing a lot of animals around the neighborhood. They began telling us that we would see a lot of deer and fox, which we were all about. Then, very casually, they told us to keep an eye out for the Black Bear (mother and cubs) that like to come onto their deck and the Mountain Lion recently spotted in broad daylight devouring a full grown Buck. Neither one of us has ever felt more like a "City Girl" in our lives, screaming with excitement over a deer spotting and looking over our shoulders every couple of seconds for a man-eating Mountain Lion.
Lesson 2: NEVER underestimate the altitude difference.
After eating some breakfast, we realized that without a car(Mom and Dad a rental is needed ASAP), we had 1 option for afternoon activities: checking out the Broadmoor. The Broadmoor is where I (Elkie) will be doing my internship and is only about a mile from the Carlson's house and has restaurants, shopping, a zoo etc. We were so excited and felt so outdoorsey as we rode our bikes DOWN the mountain to the Broadmoor. We arrived and ate lunch at the Busy Bee, an English pub style restaurant, took some pictures around the resort, and checked out some of the boutiques. Once we were ready to head home, we hopped on our bikes and started riding. About 5 minutes later, we were barely breathing, surviving the worst burning calves ever, and in need of some serious hydration. Needless to say, we walked our bikes the rest of the way UP the mountain.
Lesson 3: Sweet Tea is a Southern thing and a Panino is a grilled tortilla stuffed with anything.
After cooling down and regaining our strength from our traumatic mountain climb, we were able to relax around the house, read, talk to some family and friends and get some sun on the front porch. Around 7:00, Hunter and Davis Saltzgiver were nice enough to offer to show us around a little and take us to dinner. They picked us up and showed us some great views of Colorado Springs and took us to a local Italian restaurant where we learned the contents of Lesson 3's title. It was so fun to catch up with old friends while getting a better feel for the place we will be living for the next couple of months!

Here's the view of Pikes Peak on the way to the Carlson's from the airport

5:20 am? Probably Not...

Hello friends and family! We finally gave in to the Blog craze because we figure that with all of you non-facebookers, this would be the best way to share what we're doing and pictures from our adventures!

We'll start with a recap of our day of traveling. First of all, this was our very first experience with flying standby. Uncle Danny was kind enough to hook us up with some buddy passes and a heads up for the best flight. It turned out that this flight was at 5:20 AM...so Wednesday morning came and Mom had us out the door by 4:15ish. Somehow, time sped past us because while we were checking in, 5:00 came and went. The whole time, the only noise in the whole airport was Mom's frantic prayers "Lord, provide a miracle, Lord provide a miracle."

Mom's in good because we were able to make a 6:30 flight to Atlanta and from there to Colorado Springs! We were picked up and cared for the rest of the day by our wonderful host's Dave and Mary Carlson. (Big Rob and Lil Ann, thanks for setting this up, you were right they're great!)

We miss all of you already but are so excited about this summer...come visit us!