Another family hike

After spending sometime in Virginia Shawn and I realized how much we missed Colorado. Well, we are not taking this beautiful country for granted any longer. We took another hike with the kids. This time we did one called the The Punch Bowls (http://outdoors.coloradosprings.com/traildetails.php?id=35); it is located on land owned by a missionary organization called the navigators. It was a challenging hike. It started off with a trail that led to some bridges that hugged the side of the canyon. Here we are at the beginning of our hike.


There were gorgeous rock formations all around us; every so often you had to take a moment and just look up the views all around us were breathtaking.


About a half mile into the canyon was a small waterfall.


The second half of the hike was extremely challenging and not good for the faint of heart. At times the trail was difficult to find, and we had to traverse some pretty steep terrain; climbing over boulders, wading in waste deep water, and there was an incline which was about 200meters that was virtually straight up. The kids did an amazing job.






The map said it was only two miles round trip but it seemed like so much more. Towards the end, Shawn and I were pushing Kaleb and Skyler up and over the sheer rock face. We sat and ate a late lunch by the 3 pools. Despite the 90 degree heat, none of us really swam because the water was bitter ice cold. Here we are pictured next to one of the three natural pools. We all had a blast and the kids are already want to go back.

Visit to Denver

Well, with the Democratic National Convention quickly approaching my dad has been busy traveling to and from Denver a lot. Well, this past weekend he was working in Denver and we decided to crash his hotel room. We took advantage of the facilities: jumped on the bed, played in the pool, and ate their food.


It was great. We took the opportunity to do some site-seeing in the Denver area. We went to a place called Tiny Town which is in the Denver foothills.

They have hundreds of these mini scaled replicas of buildings: houses, churches, mills, post office, stores etc. It was neat but I think it would have been cooler if the kids could go inside all of them. We rode the mini train and admired the craftsmanship. Some of the mini replicas have been their since the early 1900's when the place was established; can you believe it?


We also made a jaunt over to Golden Colorado where I lived as a little girl for a couple of years. It is amazing how things change. We went to the top of Lookout Mountain and visited Buffalo Bill's grave. Not terrible exciting but very beautiful.

Renaissance festival

Last month we went to the local Renaissance festival, one of my favorite past-times in Colorado. We went nearly every year for the precious 8 years we lived in Colorado. We went with some great friends and just walked around and enjoyed the shows...particularly the Dead Bob show. hee hee

Aunt Dani and Uncle Jason Visit

Aunt Dani and Uncle Jason were in town a couple of weeks ago for a wedding. It has been over a year since we have seen them so it was really nice to connect and catch up! The kids really loved hanging out with their aunt and uncle as well as their cousins...Terrance and Palmer (their dogs).





They went for a hike and got to ride in the cool jeep; here are a couple of my favorite pictures...

If you want to see more pictures from their hike, visit Dani and Jason's blog, linked at the left.

I think the highlight of their visit is when Skyler beat Aunt Dani at boxing on the wii hee hee...

Connecting with old friends...

Kaleb starting attending the Family Development Center (daycare) at age 1year old; he attended there twice a week for 3 and a half years until we moved to Virginia last year. When he starting attending the FDC, there was a little girl in the class named Aurora. She was a very nice little girl and became Kaleb's first unofficial "girlfriend." Aurora had a younger sister, Kiana, who started along with Skyler. It was sad when we left but it is great to be back. I gave the girls’ mother a call and we set up a play date, it was great for the kids to get back together and play. It as like no time had past and they were all best buds again.