Our first week in Golden

Our first impression after living in Golden for one week is, "Wow, we're not in Utah anymore." We went to the school for a welcome barbecue for Sam's graduate program and the secretary and dean were handing out beer to everyone. It was on campus in the middle of the week at 11:00 a.m., I was somewhat surprised and for just a second I was ready to put on my ruby slippers and wish my way back home. I don't know if it is because we live across the street from the largest brewery in the world or because there is a bar on every corner, but the place just smells like beer. Once you get past that somewhat unpleasant aroma however, there really is a lot to do here and the people are so nice. Because Sam had a light week at school we were able to spend a lot of time exploring. There are several parks within a couple miles of our home and Ollie and I averaged about three different parks a day during the past week. (Ollie has a lot of energy and it is much easier and cleaner if he can get it out at a park instead of in our tiny apartment). We also visited the Denver Zoo and spent some time wandering around a mall that would put anything Salt Lake has to shame.

On Friday we went to a family music and movie night that Golden puts on in one of the downtown parks. It was great for Ollie because he misses his grandparents dogs and everyone here has a dog so he just wandered throughout the crowd greeting all of the dogs. Like I said, everyone is super friendly and after Oliver tried to steal their little girl's popsicle we scooted our blanket over near some new friends and they filled us in on all kinds of things to do here.

Oliver caught on to the zoo thing really fast and as soon as we came to each new pen he would start looking around to see what kind of animal lived there. As soon as he spotted it he would point and then make either his dog or sheep sound (the two animal sounds that he knows) after that he would just start laughing. It was pretty darn cute.


After Oliver chased down a little girl with a popcicle we decided that we had better get him one of his own.



Here we are at Lion's Park, it is one of Oliver's favorites because of the big pond that is great for throwing rocks in and because of the very friendly squirrels.