Blast From The Past

Wow! I was browsing through videos when I came across this one - am I ever glad I caught Kenton with his blankie!! It will bring back memories, Mom R and Joan!

Tunnel Trails, Wisconsin

Alison and Kenton are going through a railroad tunnel on their bikes. It's so dark that you need to walk your bikes and use flashlights! This isn't the longest tunnel on the trail either. One of the other ones (that we didn't go through) is famous for dripping on a person!

Kenton is standing at the entrance to the tunnel right before we went through. It was a wonderful day for biking with the temperatures not being too hot. The bike trail follows an old railroad line and you actually bike through small Wisconsin towns. The part of the trail we were on was mostly shaded.

I think that the entrance to the tunnel is pretty! We were camping with a group from Elgin on Labor Day weekend - Highlights were - Kenton - going home, Kaitlyn - bike riding, Ethan - being held all weekend, Becky - playing croquet uphill with Sam Bachtold (he set up the course!), Ryan - the bike ride and getting sick:(

HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY, Robin:)

We have a gray, cloudy day here which is a bit of a bummer but we need the rain so I won't complain! It would be the PERFECT day for sleeping in but I had to get up early to get a donation out for the Sherwood Center so I decided to stay up and get some things done! Ethan woke up with me but after a bottle he went back to sleep for awhile.

I spent this week house cleaning (ughhh) and getting ready for our trip next week. We leave in the am for a weekend of camping with the Weiss's and than Monday AM Ryan and I take off for a "Look, See" trip to Singapore. That's what his company calls it! The closer it gets to leaving the more anxious I am about leaving the kids. Usually it doesn't bother me much and I'm thankful for the break but I think that the distance this time is my problem. It's not "quick" to get back home in an emergency!

We are set up with Skype now and can talk for free to anyone else who also has it. We're going to try it out next week from Singapore to make sure everything works okay and than will decide for sure once we're there what will work best. Ryan's been gone this week to North Carolina so we've been able to try out the webcam...Ethan was SO excited the other night when he saw Ryan on the computer screen! He wasn't sure what to do and was squealing and jumping around:)

I'm heading to Back To School night tonight for the twins and than we head out in the morning. I've got a LOT of packing to get done today!

BTW: If you click on any of the pictures in my blog you can see them much bigger on the screen.

Pics - finally - from Co

Ethan was so tired one day that he fell asleep in the middle of the living room floor! He never does that! I was trying to hold him off so that he would sleep while we were driving up the mountain to the east of B. Ridge as I didn't think that sight seeing would be all that appealing. BUT, refer to the picture below:)






This was a favorite past time of the kids - checkers! Many games of checkers were played while we were there! The twins learned the game for the first time while A. Rachel had fun beating them:)









This is the front view of Pine Ridge Condominiums. We were on the top right on the third floor. We had fantastic views of the ski slopes and mountains to the west. See picture below, though, to see exactly what our views looked like!








This is a view looking back down a road that we had just come up on the mountain to the east. It was pretty narrow at times and since it had rained a lot that week it was a little scary to pass people - you didn't want to get to close to the edge of the road since we weren't sure how soft the shoulders were and how much weight that they could take!






This is the view from our balcony. We had good days with sunshine and blue skies but this was the predominant weather while we were there. It actually made for a cozy trip as we gathered in the evenings around the fire:) We had to dodge the rain a few times but that made things all the more memorable.







A. Rachel liked pushing Ethan around while we were out and about town. Even though it's hard to see we were heading down the hill from our condo to the downtown for crepes and some shopping. The crepes are my favorite part of the trip even though they take forever to make and some boy grabbed mine and took a bite without realizing it wasn't his;)






E is looking awfully happy about sightseeing! The last day that the kids and I were there we all went up the mountain directly behind B.Ridge to see what we could see. It was a little scary driving - I had the bigger vehicle and as it was a rental Dad couldn't drive it - and I never told Dad that I was NERVOUS the whole way up!! Coming down wasn't nearly as bad. One of the stops we made on this trip was beside a mountain stream - one of our favorite past times. My dad hiked a little way up to where he saw a cross behind a pine tree. He thought that maybe someone was buried right there but mom thought that the more likely explanation was that someone actualy DIED there! We were glad to be leaving that area especially as there was fog rolling in behind us! We beat the fog and rain down the mountain and enjoyed one last meal at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.




I attempted to get a Christmas card picture - out of the many that I took this is the only one that semi turned out:( Not bad but not really what I was after, either!

Back Into The Heat...UGH!

Well, we're back from the beautiful, wonderful, cool, sweatshirt weather of the Colorado Rockies...and into the hot, humid, yucky, dry, peel off the sweatshirt that you still had on from Colorado, and did I mention HOT Kansas summer days! Oh - and nights! On our way home from church tonight the van thermometer was reading upper 80's. Sniff, sniff! I want to be back in Colorado - when the kids and I left yesterday it was 54 degrees!!! You know that it's hot when even I don't want to go swimming. We went shopping today instead! Every time we walked into a store we all collectively sighed at what a wonderful thing air conditioning is! I guess that it's all conditioning us for what's ahead....

I will try to get some pictures posted of our vacation in the next few days. We really had a wonderful time and it was really hard to leave. I tried not to cry the whole way back to Denver from Breckinridge!

The twins had their Jumpstart Kindergarten this morning. They went into school for an hour and were shown what to expect next week when they start school...can't believe that it's next week already! Kenton held back at first, like usual, but soon was on his way with the other kids. They are 100% ready to go and now that I know they will be fine I am ready for them to go too! Well, not exactly but I think that I will be able to make it through the first day of school without crying:)

Pics from the zoo

Well, I've managed to figure out how to post pictures! Don't forget to leave a comment:)


This picture was taken right before Ethan grabbed a handful of goat fur! I guess he had enough of the goat's licking around on him. Becky headed out when she realized that the goats knew where to find the food hidden under the stroller.







Kenton is feeding a budgie parakeet. See the explaination below by Kait's picture.













Kenton is petting the goat. Notice that you won't find Kaitlyn anywhere near!!













The polar bears were another favorite exhibit! They were fun to watch as they would swim around - one even was back floating. It reminded Becky of the Coke advertisements from years ago with the polar bear holding onto a Coke with sunglasses and floating on its back. While we were there we watched them feed the bears which was neat.





If you look REALLY close behind Kenton and Becky you can see a little orange monkey in the tree behind us. This was a free roaming monkey in the rain forest exhibit. Ryan and Becky were thinking it wasn't supposed to be free and alerted an employee who said that it was. During the coarse of taking pictures the monkey almost jumped on top of Ethan's stroller. That would have been an exciting time for all:)











Braedon and Kaitlyn are ready to go swimming at the Holiday Inn we stayed at the night before. We met Lynwood and Jamie there and swam before and after eating pizza poolside.












Ethan FINALLY fell asleep! Neither he nor Keegan did much sleeping on Monday. Too much to see and do! Guess that the polar bears weren't all that exciting:)











Kaitlyn and Kenton were tired on the way back home and fell asleep in the back sleep. Incidentally Ethan STILL didn't take much of a nap! It was early to bed for him when we got home!









This picture was taken inside the budgie exhibit. We had a lot of fun in there and it was a favorite of Becky's! Melissa used to have a little budgie named Skittles which Kaitlyn's bird reminded her of. For a little girl who's terrified of most animals who get anywhere near her she did really well in the aviary! You could buy a Popsicle stick coated with birdseed to help lure the birds in close.

A Day At The Zoo

I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep this one up or not but thought that I'd continue trying to figure things out:) We went up to Omaha last night and met with Jamie and Lynwood. We had pizza by the pool at the hotel and than swam for awhile. This morning we were up bright and early and spent the day at the Omaha Zoo. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed meeting up with them! I will try to post pictures tomorrow fromm today. We all had our favorites - Kenton's was a horse (at a zoo?), Kaitlyn's was the meercats, Mine was the penguins (or maybe the monkey that almost dropped on top of our stroller), Ryan's was the cheetahs, and Ethans was the goat that tried to eat him while we were at the petting part of the zoo! He grabbed the top of the goats head and pulled out a tuft of hair...ouch! Anyway, we are all back home and in bed for the night and ready for another busy week!