Take Our Children to Work 2016.

Today's post is brought to you by our favorite guest blogger, Griffin Anderson, founder and CEO of Anderson + Co. Griff lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with his wife, two children, and the family's geriatric cat. He enjoys catching Pokemons in his spare time.

A few weeks ago I received an email about upcoming Take Our Children to Work events at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise offices in Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. When I worked at Blazent in Cherry Creek, Mollie brought the kids by the office a few times. To be fair though, all that did was make them think I played foosball and ate candy all day which was only half true. With HPE, they know that I either travel or work from my home office in the basement. Madelyn was within the recommended age for the event so I thought it would be good to expose her to the greater HPE. Plus, the agenda looked really fun!

On Wednesday morning Madelyn and I drove to Colorado Springs. I don't go into that office too often, but as we walked in I told Madelyn that sometimes when I leave the office there are deer lying in the grass outside. We agreed it would be cool if they decided to show up while we were at the office. I checked Madelyn in with the security team and we headed to the conference room I had reserved for the day. Madelyn and I spent the morning working together since the formal agenda didn't start until after lunch.

Madelyn designed her own website with a Shopkins theme.

She and Sawyer have been really into Shopkins this summer. She seemed to really enjoy building her website and later demonstrated it for Mollie and Sawyer. She says she wants to be a police officer and fashion designer when she grows up, but she definitely has some great technical skills!

After a kid friendly lunch in the HPE Café, it was time for the official event to begin. HPE and DreamWorks Animation have a very strong partnership, so the theme of the event was centered around the release of Kung Fu Panda 3. We got Madelyn all checked in. She was part of the yellow team. I headed back to my office for the day while she took part in different events including "The Panda Express (an obstacle course), "Folding Crane, Inking Mantis" (origami), "Kung Fu Demo" and "Photo Booth".

When I picked Madelyn up four hours later she reported she had a great day and "was glad I worked for HPE". In addition to the fun activities they also got to learn a little bit more about HPE and see things like the data center, at least I think that is where they went. Madelyn reported they had been in a very cold computer room. They also saw a 3D printer in action. The HPE volunteers did an amazing job with the event and I can't wait to take Sawyer in another year or two.

I really enjoyed the time with Madelyn and giving her a glimpse into what I do at work. As we left the office at about 5:30P there was a beautiful doe laying in the grass just outside the office door. It was a nice ending to a wonderful day.

"I am Po. And, I'm gonna need a hat."

Master bathroom.

In addition to running a half marathon this past Spring, my (our) other labor of love was a master bathroom update. Like my blog post on the subject, this was LONG overdue. There were a few aspects of this bathroom I HATED from the moment we first walked through it in early 2011. To the folks who think the mammoth-sized full wall mirrors with mirrored outlet covers and ugly stage lights are good design choices, I do not understand you. 

Oh, we also had some worn out, dirty linoleum floors which it turned out were not the originals. As our contractor discovered, the original linoleum floors were underneath these and were actually pink. Blech.

Let's take a look back at the listing agent's picture, keeping in mind that this was the best shot. Sorry for the blur and poor quality but I didn't have a digital copy at my disposal. So, this is a picture of an old picture.

And, here we are now.

I breathe a sigh of relief just looking at these pictures. Griff and I but mostly Griff replaced the lights and mirror ourselves. Thank goodness the ginormous mirror was not glued to the wall as it left minimal repair once we took it down.

The catalyst behind our bathroom update was the shower frame. No matter how hard we worked at it, the frame was rusting and there was never ending mildew in the seal between the glass and frame. It is so frustrating to clean something and not have it look clean when you're done.

When we researched seamless shower surrounds, we decided that if we were going to spend $x on the shower surround, we could spend a little more and fix the shower surround plus other stuff we don't like so we can really enjoy the bathroom. 

We kept the bathroom footprint the same but replaced the shower base, tile, fixtures, and surround as well as tub decking and apron, tub fixtures, flooring (this was a big ticket item), lights, mirrors, and baseboards.

A few years ago, I painted the existing oak vanity and have been really happy with the results. We like the size and look of it, now, so didn't feel it necessary to replace the vanity. The vanity top, sinks, and fixtures are on our short list of things left to do. However, after the hail storm in June, we're taking care of exterior repairs first before tackling the vanity top and sinks.

I absolutely LOVE the way the subway tiles in the shower and tub surround turned out. When the tilers were here working and I first came up and saw half of the subway tile in place, it took my breath away. The floors are a marble herringbone and they actually were not my first choice. My first choice was a marble basketweave but there was a mistake in ordering and these came instead. They are Arabescato Carrara Herringbone and they weren't cheap. But, they were and definitely are worth the money.

So, the short version of this story is our shower surround is now clean and rust and mildew free and we are happy. And, just in case you need another reminder -

Before.

After. Ahhh...

Ice cream social

Wednesday evening, the Highlands Ranch Metro District (HRMD) hosted an ice cream social at Civic Green Park. The weather was beautiful, the food trucks were aplenty, and the ice cream was all you can eat. We actually didn't pig out which was a little surprising. I think it was, in part, because there were so many other things to see and do like -

Run into several friends and their families from softball. Go Orange Crush!

Sit front row, curbside and watch the Littleton Fire Department demonstrate and extraction USING THE JAWS OF LIFE! It was awesome. Enough said.

Visit the Douglas County Mounted Patrol. They brought a thoroughbread, a pinto, and a smaller brown horse that Officer Domenico let Madelyn and Sawyer hold the reigns and see the horseshoes. So interesting!

Collect swag from the various booths. These kids had a plethora of bubbles, pens, stick on tattoos, candy, water bottles, and much more.

It kind of reminded me of Rusty Griswold from Vegas Vacation. "Well, four slot machines and I won four cars. You know, I put a dollar in, I got a car. I put a dollar in, I got a car. I put a dollar in, I got a car. I put a dollar in, I got a car." However, in our case, the cars were trinkets and the dollars were just waiting your turn in line.

Visit with another Sheriff and discuss handcuffs and whether girls can be police officers, too. According to Officer Blanchard, women are some of the better officers given their natural intuition. Who knew?!

This was the first big HRMD event we've attended and it was really fun. Perhaps this will become a new summer activity for us. And, who doesn't love ice cream on a hot summer night?!

Ice cream! Ice cream!

They waited patiently, oh so patiently, for the ice cream truck today.

Ice cream from the ice cream truck has been on our summer list for a while and today was the day.

So, from our house - sticky fingers, faces, and all - to yours, happy 4th of July!