Why doesn't Evan call anymore?

Evan Sean misses you. Boo m/f boo. ha ha.

So Max the dog cut his leg on some barbed wire. It looks bad but he will be okay. Also a small brown mouse died on our front porch the other day. The little guy jumped or was pushed onto our folding chairs. He got hunged. Sean found four mummified little mice when he tore the plaster ceiling down, yuk.

Well this message is going to be short cause we are hungry and about to eat in a place in greely that used to be the STATE ARMORY. Love all.

sean and christina

p.s. we love our families for posting, we wonder if we have friends anymore hint hint.

pps here's a picture of our weird steep scary stairwell. why the arch? who knows.

mooooooore pictures

PICTURES! heeeeee-oohh!

• 

it's a fine line between ruggedly beautiful and insanely desolate. we walk it on a daily basis.
we'll get some more lighting photos as soon as we find a battery for my NEW (thanks greeley starvation army for not knowing how much a cannon slr is worth... $27? mwahahaha) 35mm camera. these have been a nightly occurence for the past week. terrifying. and beautiful.

the afternoon rainstorms that bring our night-time lightning show. we can see til the earth curves away from us! storms blow in from miles and miles away.

christina likes the colors of a wheat-field against freshly ploughed soil. don't you?


the part of the sign that's not lit-up says "drive thru service"- pull up, get a trim, do a shot, drive on.


playing fetch in front of the house. one of the best things one can do...

...aside from being a dog in a swimming pool on a hot day.

run e.t.! the government's coming!
ah-ha, the classic "is this timer mode working?" shot. brilliant.

seriously, even we were wondering if these crazy get-ups were necessary. after all, we were just gonna pull down some old drop-ceilings...

but you see, that stuff that looks like snow, those are nasty old dust particles mixed with dead bugs and mouse shit. horrible. oh god. horrible.


but, all is well. BEFORE and
AFTER.

------------------------------

we promise more thoughtful writing on how this crazy adventure is going once we get internet in the house and we don't have to post from the front seat of the suburban or the table of a coffee shop. and we miss you all quite a lot, and thanks to our big sisters for sending fun stuff in the mail! you're the best!

til next time-

Thank god for IHOP

yes that's right, the international house of pancakes. right now we are sitting in the parking lot changing a flat tire on the monster of a car we drive. well sean is changing the tire and i am doing little to nothing to help. that's love. we were lucky to get this flat tire in town, but now it looks like it's going to rain, uh oh small drops are falling and we are not done yet!!

so we had our first taste of real colorado thunderstorms on the range. let me tell you they are scary. the rain isn't bad, the thunder is not that loud, but the lightning almost made me run and hide, except there is nowhere to run to. it comes down in huge bolts that last forever and lights up the whole range. we tried to get photos maybe they will be posted soon. in spite of the scary they are beautiful.

we will be home a week from today. because we are going to MEXICO!! maybe there will be a Puebla edition of the blog. thank you to everyone for posting comments, it's great. sean says hello.

love always: christina and sean

Happy Birthday to the wild child

So last night i tried to call you to wish you a happy birthday, your phone did not work. did tri-tech kick you off the plan?? ha ha either way sean and i wanted to say happy birthday, and you won't get a gift cause i am poor and don't live near anything. just kidding. i hope you had a great night and that that the family dinner is fun. miss and love-

christina and sean

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VICKY

she's convinced the gov't puts subliminal messages into tv-shows-on-dvd to make you watch them for 10 hours/day. it's sick i tell you. sick.

how many photos of sunsets can we possibly post? stay tuned for the answer in sept!


the old sink cabinet, and the old fridge. what the hell are we gonna do with all this junk? really, there's no trash service. what the hell do we do? also, do you know how friggin heavy these old fridges are? holy hell!

max the dog, making his worldwide middle0fn0where debut. send him treats in the mail and he'll love you forever.


our first non-cooler breakfast. mixing bowls and wooden spoons: awesome.

christine among the wild shag. she thinks she looks only slightly less dirty and gross than the rug. i beg to differ. opinions?

our lovely little upstairs hideaway from the chaos that is the first floor. i don't really know what she means when christine keeps shouting "flowers in the attic! flowers in the attic!" anybody?


i picked this nice sunflower on the way to our first trip to grover (and subsequently cheyene, as there is really nothing at all in our new home town. seriously. nothing.) only to find it crawling with little ants and insects of various sorts. sad and kinda gross, but it made for a nice picture.

my war is with the fly queen

why are there 3 16th ave.s in greely, co. and no 17th, which is where the dmv is supposed to be. so we have this huge mother of a red pick-up. it rips the road in two. but since it has no plates we cant tear it up.

anyway my war is with the fly queen. if anyone knows how to kill massive amounts of flys(without fire) let me know. also if anyone knows what flys are good for tell. they don't belong here!!

sean and i are lost in greely. we are hungry, tired, and lost in a town the size of my highschool. it really does have 3 16th ave.s
i want food.
we got our appliances today, oh sweet reward!! this is quite a day. just now i realized that we forgot our cooler. how are we going to get the icecream and chops back home?! gotta go.

love christina :: sean

some photos, as requested

and, a bit more info, also per requests...

the ranch is owned by the pres/ceo of an engineering company in lisle, who just happens to have a personal passion for ranching. he currently has an operating ranch in wisconsin, and two small farms to support it (he grows all his own feed for the cattle, and keeps them antibiotic- and hormone-free). he bought this place in the pawnee nat'l grasslands (just south of some amazing buttes- pics soon!) a few years back, and has kinda been waiting to meet the right folks to fix it up for him, get it ready for active ranching. which, apparently, is us.

so, enough dull details. some pictures:

a newly painted bathroom floor. a new toilet. what else could one want for? our old toilet is sitting out front of the house. classiest ranch in weld county.

first breakfast at home. living out of a cooler. delicious. (by the way, ignore any claims of 5-day ice retention by the lying pile of coolers at your local wal-mart. tepid water in less than 2 days. our 3rd breakfast was not so good.)

sunset from the backyard. the digital pixel-grabber cannot do it justice, you can imagine. you'll have to see it for yourselves (hint m'f'ing hint). we also get to see the moon rise. amazing. and the stars?! well. they make christina's eyes hurt. damn!

it was over 100 gd-dammed degrees our first couple days. so the boss bought us an air conditioner, or tried to, but was saved by the sloth and incompetence of our home depot cashier, who not only neglected to scan the thing when he rang us up, but also was kind enough to try to deactivate the security device, "again", after it set off all the bells and whistles. "sorry about that, guys. if it goes off again just keep walking..." thanks pal.

our kitchen is totally gross. at least there's no sink. cause a gross sink might just be too much in this gross gross kitchen.

this is what a lot of the land for miles and miles around us looks like. purty, huh? (this was supposed to be a picture of an antelope, by the way, but our digital camera let us down with a distinct lack of zooming. we also see hawks, enormous owls+baby owls, jackrabbits and of course prairie dogs- which fascinate christine, guess the effect is lost on those of us who had to tread on their shite while walking to friends' houses as kids... but she swears she's gonna send a baby prairie dog to all you all for xmas.)

that's it! hope the comments thing is working. it's really really great for us to read messages you all leave, so don't hesitate!

more soon!

exclaim!

sa!cz!

arrival!

We found our new home, finally, on Friday last week. Mostly as we expected- a few surprises here and there. Spent days and nights pulling up old nasty shag carpeting, prying tack-board and staples from the hardwood floors beneath, cleaning, moving in. The second floor has now been pretty well reclaimed- a nice bedroom and office/painting studio. The next step seems to be getting ready for demolition on the first floor, pulling up carpets and pulling down drop ceilings, probably the plaster+lath ceilings too. Hopefully major electrical updates will happen soon- drive a grounding post outside and pull 14/3 romex to the outlets to start. Plumbing has been off-and-on, got the well pumping only to find the toilet trap cracked wide open. Got a new toilet only to find the flex supply line ~6" too short. But we remain optimistic (thanks in no small part to the availability of showers at my grandparents' place), we think today will be the first day with a fully functioning bathroom, and by Weds we'll have all new appliances, so all is well.

Of course the major problem has been connectivity- turns out cell phones are signal-less out there, as is our fancy cell-phone modem the company gave us. We're hoping for a land-line and dial-up service this week. We'll let everybody know. Meanwhile, if you want to send us mail, we should have our mailbox up today! The address is:

52583 County Rd 107
Grover, CO 80729

So drop a line to say hello! For now, time to get back at it...

here we go

so. the basics:
3 months; 1 ranch house; 10 miles from grover, co.
the job is renovating the house; cleaning up the grounds; mending fences. maybe sub-contracting an addition. getting it ready to be a home and an active cattle ranch again.

why? why the hell not?

we'll be posting pictures and stories and thoughts up here every now and again- let's say about twice a week? we'll put up a mailing address shortly, but you can always email us here. and feel free to leave comments about how we're crazy or your favorite snakebite remedies!

-c+s