Colorado Trip Post #3

Saturday night at my grandparent's house was the night of the dresses.  After munching on goodies and chatting on the back patio with everyone, Keith took the kids back to the hotel to sleep and then some really fun times began.  My sister knew about some dresses that my grandma has from throughout her life.  Some of them she wore for special occasions and some are costumes she wore for performances and such.  Well, we got them all out and all the girl cousins tried them on.  It was so  much fun.  There were also a couple wigs and that made it extra fun!

 My grandparents loved the fashion show.

 There's my grandma in the middle of some of her granddaughters in her dresses.  So fun!

My grandpa posed for a picture too.  So sweet!

 We loved this one.

 Fun costumes.

Here's my grandma in the dress on the left from above.

 This one is awesome!

 Sisters!  

Oh man, these dresses were so warm!  I can't believe she actually wore them.  I was dying in there!

 And another costume.

I'm so glad my sister knew about all of these dresses and where they were in the house.  We were up late and having so much fun.  Good memories were made here!

Colorado Trip Post #2

WARNING: picture overload!

So, back to Colorado.  The day after my grandparent's 90th birthday party, we gathered at my grandparents house with all of the family who were in town.  We chatted and had pizza and cake and played games.

Camille smiled a lot.

 The boys raced back and forth on the lush green grass.

 There's no fence between their neighbors and them so there's an extra long running strip.

 They also had fun climbing in this tree.

 Smiles with my mom.

 More tree climbing.

 More smiles.

 My grandparent's garden.  Seriously, how many 90 year olds do you know who still keep a garden?  These are the only one's I know of.

 Grant's turn with the camera.

Here's his hand...

...and his mom.

 Oh, I love their back patio.  The weather was beyond perfect that day.  It was such a treat to be outside without sweating.

 Camille with her great-grandma.

 Cake time!

 Grass!  Yummy!

 Love that girls smile!

Later that afternoon we took our friends on a hike a little ways up the canyon.  They live in AZ now, but will be moving to Colorado at the end of this month.  So now they know a fun place to take their kids.

We borrowed my sister's stroller.  It's a BOB jogging stroller.  It was awesome on the trails!  Keith found one on Craigslist today and got it for me!  It's orange and practically unused.  I'm so excited!

 We checked out these "castle" ruins.

 Such a beautiful place!

 Going up-hill.  I took it slow and stopped to get pictures.

 There was this beautiful grass along the side of part of the trail.  Reminds me of wheat.

 Grant asked what every sign said.  He would have loved to go on every single trail.

 Grant picked the ladies a flower.   His dad has trained him well.  :)

 Cool tree.

 Grant was go, go, go.  And then all of the sudden he got tired and sat on this bench for a minute and then hopped up and started going again.

 I saw this dog print in the mud and asked Grant what it was.  He thought for a moment and then very seriously said, "It's a Cheetah!"  He was convinced of it too.  So cute!

After our hike we went out to eat at Noodles & Co.  It was tasty!  Then we took baths and got in PJ's and headed over to my grandparent's house for a night of fun. 

More to come....

100% chance of rain

It's not every day that we have a 100% chance of rain here.  It started raining last night and hasn't stopped.  It's dropping record amounts of rain and tons of schools are closed.  Crazy!  Keith is home today and is helping pump out people's yards.  

It's really neat to see the organization of our church in action.  Everybody's checking on each other and especially looking out for the widows and singles in our area.

Here's our back yard.  We pretty much have a lake.  The water's a couple feet away from our back door and seems to be staying there for now.  

Keith drove Grant to school and said he barely made it through one part of the road in his car.  I'm cozy inside with my kids.  I think I'm going to bake some bread.  Mmmmmm...nothing like fresh bread on a rainy day.

Colorado Trip Post #1

At the end of August we head up to Colorado for my grandparent's 90th birthday celebration.  My grandma turned 90 that weekend, and my grandpa will be 90 in February so we had one big party for both of them.  It was so fun!  I'm so glad we made it a point to be there.  I've been looking forward to this party for years.  I remember going to a couple 90th birthday parties for my great-grandma's and I thought it was so fun.  One great-grandma had a big fancy dinner party type thing (from what I can remember) and the other great-grandma had a luncheon at her small home on her farm in Utah.  We ate outside on little glass luncheon plates and used glass punch cups and ran around with cousins.  I loved it!

It was a long drive to Colorado and we split it up a little by starting out on Wednesday night and going to Keith's parent's cabin.  That way we were out of the house and had a couple hours of driving done.  We left our house late and got to the cabin after midnight.  We were so tired!  We all slept and then woke up early the next day and headed out.  We got breakfast on the road.

I knew it was going to be a long trip and I wanted to have something to keep these boys occupied for a while.  I gave them each a bag of fruit loops and a ribbon.  They spent some time stringing their fruit loops and then enjoyed eating them.  They loved it!  I think this will be a new tradition for us on long road trips.

 We made our traditional stop at the giant Dairy Queen ice-cream cone in Raton, NM.  So glad we stopped there on our way up, because we ended coming home on a different route.  More about that funny story in another post.

 After a long drive we settled into our hotel in Colorado and got some good sleep.  We had adjoining rooms and each room had a little kitchen.  The boys were so excited that they had their own kitchen!  They checked out everything thoroughly before going to bed.

My grandparents party was so fun!  It was at their church building and a group of ladies organized it along with one of my aunts.  We had a slide show going with great pictures, various musical numbers, a group dance that my grandma led, and lots of yummy cookies and slush.  All of the cookies were my grandma's favorite recipes that she makes.

 My girl and me.  Oh, she's so cute!  After a while, Keith took the kids to the hotel to sleep and I stayed at the party.  Keith had been feeling down with a cold so he was glad to get some rest.

 My dad sang a special song for my grandparents.

 They like it a lot.  :)

 We hadn't had much for dinner, beside tons of cookies and punch, so my parents and I went in search of something to eat after the party.  Fast food didn't sound good and we were about to give up when we saw a Whole Foods market.  Oh wow!  I had never been to one before, but my parents had.  I really wish there was one closer to us here!  I got some delicious fresh made chicken noodle soup and a round thing (loaf?) of super yummy bread and some really good butter.  I brought it back to Keith at the hotel, heated up that soup and ate it up with our bread and some sliced apple.  And he was totally better in the morning!  It was amazing.  All he needed was that good comfort food.

When I got back to the hotel that night, I found the boys sleeping like this.  So fun! 

More to come tomorrow!

From around the house

We went the Sweet Tooth Fairy to get a beautiful cupcake for a neighbor's birthday.  It was such a cute shop and the kind lady there let us each pick out a delicious cake bite to try since it was our first visit.

 The boys each got a fun cupcake with a candy crayon on top.  I got a rocky road brownie bar that Keith and I split later that night.  It was delicous!

 I finally caved and let Keith build his man cave.  J/K.  Kind of.  It isn't really a man cave.  It an office.  But I did cave.  I really wanted to keep this third car garage space open for bikes and such, but I will admit that it turned out awesome.  Of course that had to do with the fact that we hired my handy brother to build it for us.  Remember he built our new mantel and installed our family room cabinets?  He has amazing skills!

 Cute cousin time on the slip 'n slide.  These two are 9 months apart and are such chums!

 I painted the toy room.  It is so nice to get rid of the orangey wall color in our house little by little.  After I taped it off Brett was sooooo excited and said, "Thank you for the green tape for our toy room!!!!"  I laughed so hard.  He really thought I was going to leave it.  And that it was something special for them to enjoy.  Ha!  Well the next morning they were just as excited to wake up to their newly painted toy room.  More pics of that to come. 

 My dad worked on our office for a little bit too.

 I found Camille looking out of her crib like this.  Ever since she started crawling a few weeks ago, she's been pulling up on everything.  Crawling really starts a domino effect of development, doesn't it?

 So we lowered her mattress all the way down and now she looks out at us like this. 

(Check out those two cute teeth!)

 Uncle Phil let the boys help him.  They were more than willing.

 Sometimes fruit needs a face.  :)

 Grant started his school read-a-thon today.  Actually we started it yesterday but then found out that it didn't count because it really started today.  Ooops!  He's off to a good start though.