Sunday, May 24, 2009


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.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

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

Sunday, May 17, 2009





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

Saturday, May 16, 2009


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.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

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!