Living in Evergreen
Hello, my name is Whitney Knause! My husband Will and I decided to move from Denver to Evergreen in June of 2019, where we were incredibly lucky to have found a beautiful house as well as wonderful neighbors who have become incredible friends.
I ended up moving to Evergreen because Will and I were always in the mountains enjoying nature. We were always fly fishing, camping, snowboarding, or off-roading and Denver was getting to be too busy and too much for us.
So we made an offer on our beautiful home in Wah Keeney, I found an awesome dental assisting job a mile away at LeVos Dentistry, we packed up our Denver home, our pups Zoe and Greta, our two cats Jynx and Dwight and moved our lives to beautiful Evergreen and never looked back.
When we decided to move to Evergreen I had kinda thought I’d be traveling down the hill every day for work, but was incredibly fortunate to find that the same time I was looking to move to the area LeVos Dentistry was hiring, and only 1 mile from our new house.
After being there now for almost three years, I have many things that I enjoy about my job, one of which is getting to know Dr. LeVos and his family. I joke with them that I’m pretty much family now.
I’ve also found that some of my other favorite parts about my job are talking with my patients and hearing about their lives and hearing about if they’re from here or why they moved here. I’ve met so many wonderful people that live here through working with LeVos.
Volunteering
How did I get involved with doing the Santa mailbox and other community things? Easy, I’m a small town South Dakota farm girl, community is everything.
Long story short, three Thanksgivings ago my parents were in town staying with us. We started talking about how my hometown of Arlington puts the first grade Santa letters in the newspaper, and I got to thinking how cool it would be to get a letter back from Santa and we had replaced our mailbox and the old one was still in our garage.
So literally right then and there, I put painters tape in the form of candy cane stripes and spray painted it. The next day my dad helped me screw it onto a shelf. That year Will and I hand wrote back to all 43 letters we received.
We promptly decided Santa was getting a printer next year, which was incredibly lucky since it was the year of COVID, and we received and responded to over 500 letters.
After that, we decided Santa had a printer but needed some mail elves, and so I was lucky to share this excitement and fun with some fellow Evergreeners who helped to write around 350 letters this year.
It truly was magical and fun hearing the cute things they were able to read and the sweet responses sent back.
And to all of you parents who may have wondered what happens to all of your little’s letters, I have kept every letter from all 3 years! Great memories to look back on later in life.
As for getting involved with other community volunteer work, it just kinda happened.
After reading, hearing and seeing the destruction of the Marshall Fires so close to Christmas, I knew I wanted to help somehow.
If you’re anywhere on Facebook or NextDoor and on an Evergreen page you know how obnoxious I post (especially around the holidays) so I figured with how many people have already seen my presence online, maybe I can post to get some help and love out to the people who were involved with the fire.
And boy did it work; between the first round of everyday things like clothes, blankets, etc. that filled my dining room and garage, to the January Holly Days Event for the kids, my Evergreen community showed up big.
I was only the in-between and the starting voice on that show of volunteering, that was just many amazing people from this community I’ve gotten to know so well, showing their caring and kindness.
Something people might not know about my volunteer work is that it’s not just me, especially the last two years.
Last year and especially this year prior to the holidays and during, I had so many kind and caring people who actually donated money, envelopes, stamps, ink, time writing and even gas and time delivering last minute Santa letters.
It’s kind of become one of my favorite parts of doing the Santa mailbox, yes the letters are awesome and so adorable, but it’s seeing the community near and far chip in to help make somebody’s day!
About me
In my free time I have started to really get into crafting, especially after doing so much DIY for our wedding last summer.
My newest passion and hobby has been making unique floral bouquets with different kinds of flowers and feathers and other decorative signs and such. I’m hoping to sell them at craft fairs this summer as we’re enjoying another one of our hobbies, camping all over the country!
Something people probably do not know about me is that I am so incredibly accident prone and have been most of my life.
I’ve had surgery on both my knees, both my thumbs and I have a metal rod in my right humerus. That’s not even mentioning all the broken bones, casts, slings, braces, etc.
Let’s just say, a lesson I may still need to learn is to stop trying to show off and realize I’m not the least athletic person on earth, but I’m also very, very far from being the most athletic!