Category Archives: Colorado Daily Life

Benson Sculpture Garden

The thing Britton and I do for fun and exercise is take walks. We usually go to our closest park, Ramseier Farm Park in Greeley. But in a given month we go to almost every park in Greeley. So this weekend we found ourselves in Loveland and took a wrong turn. I saw what looked like a park and thought it would be fun to walk around it while the weather is still nice. We were in for more than the regular park walking experience!


Me and a huge dog- The sculpture behind is cool too -the body progressively gets larger and larger until the feet are the most distinct things

Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland is half park and half art exhibit. There has to be about 100 different bronze and other forms of sculpture. There are a couple of bridges and wetland areas as well. The sculptures are mostly of nature and historical figures. There are lots of horses, cowboys, and settlers, but also things like African lions, sea otters and some abstract sculptures as well. Around every corner there was a new one that I liked better than the last. It was a cool find to say the least!


Britton with the bench guy

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What a Bloody Mess!

We woke up to quite the mess this morning. A bloody mess to be exact. It looked as if a massacre had taken place….


First thing we saw when we woke up this morning!

What happened? Well, apparently poor old Schnoodle had something wrong with her. The night before there was a little blood on the carpet, but we cleaned it up. We thought maybe she was just getting over her urinary infection. We had only about a week ago taken her to the vet. She was diagnosed with an eye infection and cornea problems, cancer or some sort of cysts, bad rotting teeth, a urinary tract infection, lymphoma, arthritis and some deafness. (Remember she is about 14 years old or in her late 80’s if she were human.)


Old Schnood

So I gave her a piece of an aspirin to help her with some of her pain (thinking that she most likely had some). That was a big mistake!  While we had just a little blood two days ago, this morning, it was like a massacre! There was blood not only on the pillow that she sleeps on top of on the floor, but also…


A bloody wall…


Bloody carpet...


And a Bloody Kitchen

But we still didn’t know what had happened to cause her to bleed so much and all over until we saw this:

Her water dish was bloody which meant that something had happened in her mouth. Perhaps she lost another tooth? We have no idea and she won’t let us look in her mouth. But the aspirin probably wasn’t a good idea in hindsight as it thins the blood.

It was pretty disgusting. And we were joking that it looked perfect for a Halloween haunted house!  We managed to get most of it out of the carpet with oxy-clean. Unfortunately it bleached part of the carpet. We’ve been talking about getting new carpet and I think this probably seals the deal. We are going to wait until we know what to do with Noodle though. We wouldn’t want another episode like that to happen. And tenants wonder why we charge more for pets! Yuck

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Our Next Move

What is our next move? That is what Britton and I have been discussing a lot lately. Obviously, we would prefer our next MOVE to be to Puerto Rico, but that’s not happening quite yet. So we’ve been talking about what would make us feel comfortable to move there…and that would be to have a fairly stable income stream. We have our current rentals, but don’t make very much on them, and certainly not enough for a move, a remodel (or rebuild?) and a complete overhaul of our lives.

We’ve thought about what that number would be, and we’ve determined that unless Britton is able to take his work remote with him that we would need to have a pretty decent income -at least as much as from one of our jobs- from the rentals. Right now, the rentals are more like a hobby business, which is fine and a great starting place, but if we want to go out on a wild limb like living full-time in Puerto Rico, we sort of want a net of some kind. And to do that we need more funds. And more funds means more properties (or fewer expenses related to our current properties).


Newest House Offer

So we decided to put in another offer on a rental property. It’s a short sale, which usually means it’s a long shot and a long time to hear back from the bank. But if it goes through, we would be happy; the numbers work and we could make a decent return on it. We would be getting it for roughly half what is owed on it. It doesn’t need a ton of work and we would live there if we had to (one of our qualifications for which houses to buy).

It’s funny how something as big as buying a house can become second nature after you’ve done it a few times. We’re definitely getting better and learning as we go. However, this short-sale thing is a first for us.  Let’s hope it goes through so we can make our next move across the board game of life!

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Kitty and the Colors

Our cat Kitty, is so pretty. And so were the changing colors in the field behind our house in Greeley this weekend. I caught a couple of pictures of Kitty hanging out on the fence and thought it was a nice reflection of what we see looking out our back door lately.


Kitty on the fence

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