Crawford Chronicle

Colorado Springs for Valentine's Day

For a combined Valentine's Day and 17th Wedding Anniversary trip, Russ and I spent 4 days in this giant house in Colorado Springs.

It was the smallest cabin he could find. It was new and gorgeous but we only ever used the kitchen and master suite.

Our first night we had dinner at the Craftwood Inn. It came highly recommended and was probably the nicest place, with the yummiest food I have even eaten. I love how the word Craftwood at first glance looks like Crawford.

We had the most requested seat in the place, right in front of the fireplace and it was a chilly night!

I like the "SC" design above the fireplace. (Sarah Crawford- get it?)

On our last romantic get-away I was in charge of the gifts. This time Russ was and he did a great job! He got several fun new games like this one, Godiva chocolates and other things I can't mention.

This was the view from the front of our house

On Saturday we went snowmobiling. It was so stinkin' fun and even colder than that! About 10-15 degrees! This is Russ tearing up the snow.

This is me. Can you see how deep the powder is? We were blasting through 6 foot drifts that would send tons of snow flying over our heads!

Can you see all the snow frozen into my hair?! Trying to brush it out later that day took an hour!

We lasted a few hours and would have lasted longer but the snow was coming down SO hard that we could barely see where we were. It was white everywhere. Plus my hands were soooo cold that they took forever to thaw out on the drive back. They tingled and burned the rest of the day like I'd burned them on a curling iron or something. Frostbite anyone?

On Sunday we took a beautiful drive to a place called the "Garden of the Gods." I had never heard of it before. It was kind of like Sedona just sticking straight out of the ground. They call it the Garden of the Gods because when the first settlers came and found it one of them said, "We should make this place a beer garden!" Then fortunately the other guy said, "A beer garden? This place is the Garden of the Gods!"

Beeeeautiful!

Handsome!

I love this one! You can drive your car right between these outcroppings.

Ahhh, how cute.

We knew something was up before we came home because Rustin kept texting us while we were on the plane wondering EXACTLY when we were going to get home.

Then we saw this on the inside garage door. Hmmmm...

Do you see the silly string? We got ambushed! It was war and we had no weapons!

It's good to be home with these crazies!

No on 406 Rally!

A few weeks ago on March 13th the two oldest girls helped me at a political rally where we fought against high taxes and big government, on a local scale.

Tess, Hailey, Chloe and Bailey helped paint faces.

They painted each other's too when things got slow

Anita is a tireless worker and an amazing inspiration to me.

Dave has been hard at work fighting for liberty for decades. He was the MC of our event and the crowd loved him!

The Ray family are "Defenders of Liberty" and they make a difference in our community!

Erin Scroggin's- Gilbert's next council member and best homemade t-shirt maker!

The main event at the event was making homemade signs against Prop. 406

We call this a Tea Party style campaign. That's me by the way, hiding behind the hair. Oh ya, I gave a speech too. It was REALLY scary but fun once I got going!

I figured I'd make my Suburban politically active too.

Tess and her grapes.

JD Hayworth who is running against John McCain for the Senate, was the only politician able to wrestle the microphone away from us the whole day.

Bill Norton gave a great speach. He is a constitutional scholar to beat all constitutional scholars.

Tess hard at work

Easton's daughters and a friend got really into the face painting and did this to their sister, Olivia.

Cute little patriot!

This family made a great sign!

I made this one. The problem with 406 is not jsut that they are trying to raise our sales tax, but that they labeled it a "Public Safety" thus trying to scare the citizens of Gilbert into thinking that their isn't even enough money to pay for the most basic services of police and fire. We know for a fact that it isn't true. It is just the oldest trick in the book- a scare tactic! We have plenty of non-essential places we can cut and public safety is not in jeopardy!

I went a little crazy making signs with the extra plastic sheets which coincidentally got dropped off at my house!

Chloe came up with the money in the Garbage can idea for this one! It's one of my favorites.

I love this one too!

Our signs were getting stolen as soon as they went up. Most the first few days lasted less than 24 hours. So I wrote this one! It got STOLEN in broad daylight the next day!

The good thing is that we got a lot of extra press (several newspaper articles and a 5 minute spot on the local tv news) because of our unique homemade signs and the fact that our little works of art were getting swiped like crazy. It was fun to be on the news and SCARY!!

I discovered a good way to keep your signs from getting stolen!
Rustin made me take them down when he got back in town. I was emberassing to him!
Who ME???