My Love and Hate Relationship with Colorado

Southlands Mall in Centennial.  AWESOME outdoor mall.

So for those of you not in the loop, Paul and I moved to Colorado around Christmas time.  So far I am LOVING it!  The weather has been especially nice this winter--I even got a little sun burn on my back the other day!  Total shock.  We are not quite in the area that we want to be in long term, but we're close by!  Denver is just 15 minutes north of us, Centennial (the town we would probably like to move to) is literally 5 minutes down the street, shops and malls are very close by, and we have friends and family ranging from 5 minutes to 1 hour away.  

The Rexburg, Idaho Temple in winter.

This is a complete change from our little college town of Rexburg, Idaho.  We love where we are right now, but we are for sure missing the slow paced life that Rexburg afforded us.  Back there, sand dunes were 20 minutes to the north, you could literally camp across the street from your house, we had lots of family and friends within 15 minutes of us, and you could almost see the shooting range from our backyard!  Downsides of Idaho...WINTER (felt like I was living in rural Alaska...shout out to Shelly!), and you had to drive at least 30 minutes to shop.  Bummer.  

While the snow is gorgeous, it meant that most of my time was was spent doing things like scraping my car and getting snow in my shoes...also, getting my jeans wet about 6 inches up the legs.  (This isn't me in the photo...it's just a google pic.)

So what's wrong with Colorado?  It's busy!  ...well, where we are, at least.  We are pretty close to downtown Denver, so we're living in a busy suburb...basically.  There are just so many people here!  Also, we can't buy a house here for at least 2 years.  Long story short, we can afford it, but banks don't want to loan money to someone that just started a job.  Huge bummer for us!  We still own (and are currently renting out) our house in Idaho.  We miss owning our own space.  We miss not having neighbors living above us.  We miss not having to rent a storage space for all of our extra things.  

See how everything is jammed except the HOV lane?  This is Denver traffic.

Bad picture, but see the TWO cars on the road?  This is Rexburg  traffic.

Well...that, in a nutshell, is why I both love and hate Colorado.