Initial Impressions

Hello All,
I'm writing this on Thursday night, April 28th 2011, the night before we hop on a plane to move to Mongolia.  Miranda and I have been very busy the past six weeks trying to visit and catch up with as many friends and family as possible! We stayed in Woodland Park at my parent's house for a while, then headed off to beautiful spring green Missouri, soaked in some cold, soggy weather back in Gunny, visited friends in Fort Collins and Denver, obtained passports, immunizations, visas, saw a tax lawyer, obtained power of attorney, bought luggage, and the list goes on and on....we are taking 6 checked in bags between the two of us. Is that a lot? It sure looks like a lot of stuff, but heck, its mostly clothes and camping gear.  Definitely having a lot of mixed emotions over the past two weeks.  I think ever since Miranda and I both came to the realization that we actually are moving to Mongolia, its not just some idea or fantasy, we both have felt scared/nauseous/excited/happy/panicked/frazzled/tired and anxious! I think we're both ready to just hop on that plane and get on with it.  Here are a bunch of pictures from the past several weeks:

 Baby Kylei

 Devon looking for trees to water

 mmm...springtime. Too bad winter is still holding on here.

 Overlooking Cedar Creek

 A cool rock tunnel slot we found

 Wish we were camping tonight!

 Earth Day Festival in Columbia

 Better start learning those rocks again!

 Bighorn Sheep near Salida

 Its been raining a lot in Gunnison lately

 I'm really going to miss it here...

 Cookout in the backyard

 Fun times at the wine bar

 Nacho sleeping in a very odd position

 My mom and I

 Miranda is a near professional mountain biker. (wink wink)

 Chelly likes to associate us with "time to leave the house and have fun"

 Interesting story here...we were calling Chelly trying to get her to sit at the base of this ice fall with Miranda. As soon as Miranda called her, she decided instead to run up the frozen waterfall before falling backwards to the ground. She was alright, but Miranda's look is priceless.

 Playing at the REI in downtown Denver

 A walk in Rockbridge State Park

 Beautiful day!

 Near the entrance of the cave

 We had a fun time on this vine

 Yay!

 Run!

 I wonder what these are. 

 Awesome place, especially this time of year. 

 Little Kody getting ready for a ride

 This was a somewhat rare moment when he let Miranda pick him up. He prefers to be on his feet as much as possible!

 Lunch in Columbia with Jim and Judy

 Ummm...yummy breakfast. 

 Shootin some clay pigeons.

 I'm really going to miss having these backyard fires.

 Clearing after some snow/rain while shed hunting

 We found these guys in about 2 hours. 

For those of you who don't know, we're going to be based out of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, with a population of over one million people (the other 2 million people living in Mongolia are nomadic).  Here are a few pictures of the apartment we will likely be staying in: UB Apartment.  Once we get established there, we're going to be taking numerous trips out to the Southern Gobi Desert to partake in geologic mapping.  More to come in the following weeks.....