Estes Park

A couple of weeks ago Kort, Pratt and Jhett came to play. We had a picnic and swam at Auntie Kindy's pool but I forgot my camera that day. Hopefully I can get some pics from my sisters. Then a couple days later we all met at Estes Park. It was beautiful. We saw chipmunks, elk and a deer crossing the road with her fawn. It was fun to get to hang out with the Aunties and their families.

Briley and Crew were being so sweet that I had too hurry and snap a pic because it wouldn't last long. No matter how much you love your cousin, when you're almost 2 everything is ,"mine" and "no" and "NO, MINE!" I love their love/hate relationship. That day Crew made Briley cry so I told him to tell her sorry and give her a hug. He did and she laid her head on his shoulder and hugged him back. SO SWEET!

Almost everytime Conor is in a picture it's because I forced him to be. Because when your 8 you do not have time for pictures. That's why he looks like he's about to walk away in all of them.

Cool cave!


"Conor, stay!"


My sweet little girly on the other hand kept posing and asking me to take her picture. Sometimes they reverse rolls but seldom are they both feeling cooperative. Then you throw Crew into the mix and we're lucky to get a pic with everyone in it.

The dads and Conor wanted to go on a harder hike up hill somewhere, so us women and smaller kids stayed on the nice path around the lake. I'm glad Conor was with the guys because they got to see a big bull elk up close. They even chased it a little.

We drove up really high, to about 15,000. feet. It got pretty cold up that high.

Notice the snow on the mountains behind us.

Notice the lake behind the goofy guys.

Had to get a little climbing in with Uncle Pratt.

All the kids. Now Conor's cooperating but Crew and Briley aren't. Nice. At least they are all in it, barely. Gotta love it.

Sisters pic. Love these two!

On the way back down one of the paths, Kya started racing with her Auntie and Uncle and fell. Poor girl!

The kids filled out little adventure booklets during the day and told a ranger about their day and got Junior Ranger badges.

This is what happened when Kindy and I left for 2 minutes to get us a table at a restaurant. This river runs right through the town. Fortunately the restaurant could get us right in. Unfortunately the dads were being fun and the restaurant had to wait on us. I guess we should have had the guys go get the table.

We sat outside and the view was awesome. It was a great day. We had a blast and we were totally exhausted by the end. I'm the only one who made it to church at 9 the next morning. Tom always says he feels closest to God when he's enjoying the outdoors. So basically he was at church all day on Saturday, so no need for church on Sunday right?

I sent two of my favorite people off to school this morning. My cute little 1st and 3rd graders. Crew and I will miss them tons. Kya was SUPER excited and Conor was only a little excited. I guess the older you get the less fun school seems. I actually made Kya's outfit and I was so happy that she chose to wear it the first day of school. I made the skirt out of a t-shirt of mine. I didn't like the way it fit me. I found online how to make skirts out of t-shirts. I sewed the little hearts on the skirt and added a big one to a plain white shirt that Kya already had and...voila a cute little matching outfit! I love having a girl to sew for and I love that she loves for me to sew for her.

Kya wanted to hold up 6 fingers because she is 6 years old.

Enough pictures already mom!

Waiting for school to start!

Conor trys tennis

Conor decided a while ago that he wanted to try tennis but it took me forever to sign him up. I kept missing the deadlines. Finally I got him signed up for the very last week until next summer. I know I'm awesome. Oh well he doesn't seem to mind. He had fun and it was actually kind of nice that it was only 1 week long.

Kya rides a bike!

Kya has not been interested in learning to ride her bike without training wheels. She is much more interested in her scooter and zooms all over on it. So the other day I told her that when she can ride her bike we'd go out for ice cream. By that same evening I owed her ice cream! I guess she just needed a little incentive. I love this girl!

Swimming at the lake

My family is wierd and they like to swim in lakes. I think it's gross but I will go and take pictures of them in the water. We went to our favorite swimming lake a few Saturdays ago. We brought our pop up tarp and a picnic. There were a lot of people there but it still wasn't too crowded. Crew liked to stay on the beach like his mama so eventually he got to ditch his life jacket. He found a stick and of course pretended it was a gun and was making lots of shooting noises with it. So cute! Conor and Kya like to swim out to the rope where they can't touch the bottom. The deal is if they go out that far they have to get themselves back. It was cute to watch them, "rescue" each other when they'd gone out too far.

Randomness

I love how lush and stunning the flowers are here, not to mention all the green, everywhere you look it's deep dark green. Gorgeous. I wanted some of my own stunning flowers so I bought this bush at Walmart for $6.50 on clearance. I think I definately got my money's worth.

Gettin'creative with my camera color settings.

Conor and Kya love painting. I thought these projects turned out cute.

These were Kya's idea. I can totally see my kids different personalities in their artwork. I love it!

We've been getting creative lately with all our Elk meat we're trying to use. We've started making sausage with it and this time we put some on our pizza. YUMMY! Tom has been making lots of jerky too. We had chicken fryed elk fingers the other night. Thanks to my dad we now have the correct seasoning for them. Our family is HUGE Johnny's salt fans and a lot of our recipes include it. It's hard to find it in stores sometimes so my dad orders it online.

Kya lost another tooth so I posed her against the wall for a pic, when I turned to walk away I saw Crew standing in the same place saying, "awwww." So of course I had to take his pic too.

So there you have it a bunch of randomness.

Homemade yogurt popsicles!

You'd think I'd just given them chocolate covered rainbow ice cream with sprinkles. They thought these "popthils" (as Crew would say) were sooooo good. Lets just say I've had better frozen treats, but I'm not tellin' them it gets better. We'll keep them innocent for as long as possible!