garden of the gods: now and then

over labor day weekend we headed south with our friends the smiths to "hike" around garden of the gods. as we were driving down, dave and i realized that neither of us knew why it is called "garden of the gods" and so i decided to find out. here's the story: in 1859 when two surveyors happened upon the beautiful sandstone formations, one of them suggested that it would be a "capital place for a beer garden" when the country grew up. the other one exclaimed, "beer garden! why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble. we will call it the garden of the gods." it has been so called ever since. it is incredibly beautiful and it was the perfect day to wander around.

 

 logan loved climbing on the rocks

 seriously beautiful!

some people were even rock climbing (if you look close at this picture you'll see the climber)

 hey there hot stuff!

i think this picture of the dads with their kiddos is so cute! since morgan and logan are destined for each other we always joke that pictures like this will go on their wedding video!

as we were driving, dave and i reminisced about our "non-date" to garden of the gods 5 years earlier, almost to the day (september 2, 2006/september 3, 2011). we lovingly refer to it as the "non-date" because i thought it was a date and dave thought we were just friends hanging out (in his defense i had told him at least 3 times over the period of about a year that i was only interested in being friends). the fact that it wasn't a date in his mind became very clear when we stopped to get lunch at the castle rock outlet food court on the way home. i couldn't decide between an italian and chinese place and since i was being slow and dave knew what he wanted, he got his food and said he would go get us a table. i became panicked because i didn't have my wallet with me (and obviously he wasn't planning on paying for me like i thought). i tried to act nonchalant as i asked for his keys and then ran to the car to get my wallet and ran back (the car was not parked close so this took a little time). the funny thing is, i don't think dave even wondered why i ran back to the car! it's a funny and awkward memory to look back on! it was on that drive 5 years ago that dave also introduced me to a great band, quietdrive. in memory of that day, we listened to quietdrive on our drive. we contemplated stopping at the food court for lunch but decided to pass (5 guys was much more inviting than the food court and in case you were wondering, dave paid for me ;).   

september 2, 2006

while the picture on the left is an embarrassing one (although totally typical of me), i had to include it because 5 years later my little family and i had our picture taken in the exact same spot (and it wasn't planned)! the past 5 years have been good to us!