House of Bennetts

I am taking a break from the dump of wedding pictures to share some Colorado summer loveliness with y'all. Andy came to Colorado for a good long while before the wedding and it was awesome. The three of us took full advantage of him being here to explore both the food and the mountains. We are and went hiking a LOT. One weekend I did back to back days of hiking and it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. On one of my Fridays off, Andy and I had "Andy Treana Day"^TM and left LB in Denver working. On this particular A&T Day, we headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park and had a blast on this gorgeous hike. Through the pictures below you can hike right along with us without leaving your office/room/bathroom/what have you. If you read this blog while you are in the bathroom, I suppose that I should be honored?

We went from listening to Radiohead in the car to this view in no time... I love Colorado.

Really gotta focus to get that shot juuuuuuuuuuuuuuust right. I love Andy.

The lake. The hike to here was about 1.5 miles... but there were a ton of switchbacks. At 9,000+ feet the elevation can be a tad shocking at first. But this payoff.... amazing.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures of Andy ever. He just looks so happy. I love that guy... did I already say that?

I was home sick from work yesterday and realized how empty our house felt without him. It bummed me out, but also made me incredibly grateful that we got that time with him. Having him here really allowed me to relax and take time away from wedding planning and stress. Our wedding wouldn't have been as gorgeous and wonderful as it was without him... and not just because having his handsome face there really upped our game. Love you BUDDY!

*No promises on the frequency of posts after today. The wedding shindig-er is in less than two weeks and I am sure you don't want posts about packing and organizing all of our wedding crap. The GREAT news is that I have an AWESOME SAUCE guest blogger who is going to post for y'all a few times next week... plus, and INCREDIBLE house crash on Thursday... stay tuned! A few weekends ago, my friend Sarah took me on a wildflower hike to Silver Lake. What resulted was us sucking air at above 12,000 feet and having a great day together. It also culminated in about 2390584023984 pictures. Some of which are below (and by some, I mean, a crap load). The next day I did another hike outside of Nederland, and the next Friday, Andy and I went up to Estes Park to hike to Bierstadt Lake. I go hiking when I am stressed... and apparently, I go hiking a lot.

This hike with Sarah also took place on my brother's birthday. So it was bittersweet, but mostly a lovely time with my friend. I got to tell Sarah some of my favorite Trenton stories that involved nature: mainly that when he was 9, he wanted to go deep sea fishing for his birthday in July. In Washington, it is freezing for half of July. Thus, there are a ton of pictures of me making a horrible face while wearing an equally horrible turtleneck, and wishing I could get off that damn boat. It makes me laugh because even though he was also wearing a turtleneck, and very rarely smiled by the time he was 9, he is grinning from EAR TO EAR in all of his pictures... probably because he knew I was miserable.

This tree was just super cool looking. It seems as though some ravenous animal took bites out of it and tried to peel it like a potato. Although which wild animal would actually eat potatoes or tree-like potatoes is unclear...

Typically you have to wait to get to the top of the hike for beauty such as this, but this sweet hike had this lake as a teaser to encourage us to keep going. I loved that we could see the lake almost the entire way up.