The Chou Life

The aspens in the high country shadow my own heart as they shift their appearance in preparation for the cold and hard times.  Even just last week, the little round leaves of the aspens were a dark green.  Returning from our short trip back to Albuquerque, we were greeted with beautiful hills speckled with spectacular displays of vibrant colors that glowed immensely in the sun’s light.  So much has changed in my life so quickly and I feel almost connected to the trees as they change their colors and morph expeditiously.  I’m encouraged to know that God’s hands are directing the change both in my life and in his creation.  I feel hope seeing how beautiful the leaves are and pray that the changes taking place in me would be as such.

Anyways, “why so serious?”  Calla shows us her impersonation of Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker.  Then we have a stop sign I received as a white elephant gift that I didn’t want anymore so I threw it off our third story balcony.  A maintenance guy walked by right after I threw it…he just stared for a little bit.  It was great fun watching people’s reactions when they noticed it.  Next picture shows about 1/5 of Divide, Colorado.  It also shows someone ing in two parking spaces.  Seriously…they weren’t even close.  I felt like causing my door to coexist with theirs.  Lastly, we have Calla helping us move some of our last remaining items into the house.

After a morning of working and looking for jobs, the Chous and Vanaskis headed out for an Old Colorado City adventure.  We parked near the far west side of Colorado St. and started the afternoon at the surplus store.  We went through a couple small stores and looped back around and got some lunch at Bon Ton’s Cafe.  After lunch we got some flavored honey sticks and sampled some honeycomb harvested from Taos.  The honey lady also revealed to us and us alone, the secret to opening the honey sticks…jealous?

Mountain life has been a fun change for us.  We are starting to finish up with the unpacking and getting settled in with all our “nesting.”  We went down to Woodland Park yesterday for a car show and some live big band music by the United States Air Force Falconaires.  I had never been to a car show before and was really enjoying the experience.  After the concert, we walked around town and tried to get some donuts from the Donut Mill, but we were too late and they were all sold out.  Defeat once again.

We have friends from Albuquerque visiting us for a few days.  Brian and Megan arrived yesterday afternoon and after a nice chill lunch at Abby’s parents house, we headed out to the hills.  On our way up, we stopped for some groceries and some of Jo-Mama’s Pizza.  We all shared Jo-Mama’s special and it was 14′ massive awesomeness.  Check the menu for details.  We didn’t get home till late.  We saw a couple deer and a little fox on Twin Lakes Rd.

Oh, and Calla fell down our stairs and her top teeth went into her lower lip and then at grandma’s house, she got stung by a bee on her left eyelid…which was just a little red spot till this morning.

So, we’re moving to Colorado in less than a week.  Our original plan was to wait till after the baby was born to move to the Colorado Springs area.  This past Wednesday, we found a notice on our door.  I wasn’t working because my DOT had expired and was not allowed to drive until I acquired a new one.  Abby picked me up from work and we saw the notice when we got home.  We quickly opened it up and it read: “Notice of non Compliance.”  The letter stated that Keuma was an illegal breed. “Ugh… not this again,” I thought.  We dealt with this exact situation at our last apartment and so we moved out just one month before our lease was up.  Well, it’s happening again.

Our lease is up in October and our plan was to go month to month till December and then move.  With the recent changes, we were given just a few options and very little time to decide what to do.  Our apartment managers gave us till September 4 to either get rid of the dog or vacate.  Keuma has been great for us and he is awesome with Calla.  We have suffered the recent loss of 2 other dogs and we didn’t think that we could bear going through that again.  Neither of us thought that it would be worth giving him away now just so we could live here for a few more months.

After a very stressful evening of trying to figure out what in the world we were gonna do with our lives, we decided that moving now would be the best option.  I worked the last few days of my job at Albuquerque Ambulance and we have started packing up the place like wild banshees being chased by rabid raccoons.  Since we have started the process, we see now that our original plans of doing all this after baby “enter name here” came would be very difficult.  Also, by December, the Pikes Peak area is gonna be buried in like 10 feet of snow.

Anyway, our apartment now is an absolute disaster area that would make chernobyl look like a scene from “precious moments.”  Oh, and on top of all this, we are all deathly ill.  Calla started with a runny nose that brought on a cough, stuffy nose, back to a runny nose with some more cough.  Abby and I are displaying similar symptoms.  I’m sure the copious amounts of dust and dog hair free floating in the air doesn’t help when it is stuck to the sidewalls of our lungs and throat.

Hopefully we’ve learned our lesson now and will abide by the rules set forth by all governing bodies…even leasing managers.  I guess that’s about it.  We’ve got quite a bit of work to do and Thursday is approaching very quickly.

Thanks Dan for the logo!

-Eric