Something Fishy

Tuesday was our annual trip to the Uintah's to go fishing at Washington Lake.  We usually go the week before the fourth of July, but because of the heavy snowfall this year the campground didn't open until July15th.  We were joined by our friends the Kotter's and Josh actually took the day off work to join us as well.  It was so much more relaxing having more adult hands to help out this year!

We started out with our traditional hot dog roast, followed by smores.  Holden was really enjoying his lunch of a pickle with a chocolate bar-yum!

After about a half hour, Jensen finally caught the first fish of the afternoon!

Holden got to catch a "pishy" and you should have heard him squeal with delight.  He is obsessed with fish and was so excited to see and touch one!  He loved checking on the fish and "helping" us with our fishing poles.  He was so much fun to watch.

A rare moment of patiently waiting for the fishies to come. 

Ally and her catch.  She hung around long enough to catch a fish and then went back to the trailer because she was bored.  

Logan was all about helping us get our fish in because he was wearing Grandpa's boots.  Gotta love the beautiful scenery.

The catch of the day!  We did throw quite a few back so this isn't an accurate count.  The only bad thing?  I didn't catch anything!  Oh, well.  There's always next year!

Angel Moroni

We have been looking forward to this special family moment for months!  July 12th at noon was the day and time the Angel Moroni would be placed on "our" temple.  I thought long and hard about when we would leave for the temple and where we would try to get a spot to sit.  We left our house about 10:40 and found a pretty decent parking place and a way decent place to sit! I was super excited.

As we were walking to find a place to be, it started to rain very lightly.  So I grabbed the umbrellas out of the van.  Good thing I did because it turned into a downpour!  It rained until about 11:50 and then it stopped!  What a blessing, I thought.  Perfect timing to set the angel Moroni.

What are they peeking at through the fence?

Why, Angel Moroni, of course!  He was so beautiful-glowing almost!

Well, after the rain stopped, the wind decided to blow.  Noon came and went, 12:15 came and went, then 12:30 came and went. The wind was still blowing!  By then the rumor mill was working pretty hard. It was passed around that it was postponed because of the wind and they would continue when the wind died down.

Bummer!

I wasn't sure what to do.  By 1:15 my kids made it perfectly clear that they were starving and wanted to leave.  It was still windy, so we headed out to get lunch.  After we were done eating I noticed the wind was gone. So we headed back over and it was already lifted to the spire!!! Aughhh!  We missed it!

We walked back over to our awesome spot-which was taken of course-and waited for him to be attached to the temple.  By then it was getting hot and muggy, so my kids were not in the best of moods.  I gave up and headed back to the van.  As we were driving away, I noticed he was being attached.  Good grief!

Oh, well.  We will definitely remember that we were there for the occasion, even if we didn't get to see the action.

Rainbows are Scary

We've been having a lot of thunderstorms in the afternoons.  After one of them we were greeted by a beautiful rainbow in front of the mountains.  I called to the kids to come out and see.  Holden took one look at it and said "rainbow scary"!  He seriously started shaking with fear and made me take him inside!  So funny!  I have finally discovered my wild little boy's weakness.  Who knew it would be a rainbow!

I also have to throw this picture in.  It cracks me up too.  This is his "I didn't get my way" pouty pose.  He seriously stood like that for 10 minutes because Grandma June wouldn't let him drink a Coke.  Life would be so boring without him in our lives!

What I Missed

Ally had her ballet recital in June and I never got to blog about it.  I had my friend Kristen take some pictures of Ally in her costume because the ones the studio took didn't turn out very well and my camera is crappy.  I had to do it the day of the performance because Ally HATES getting her hair and make-up done.  I give her a year to a year and half before that changes ;).  Anyway, I lost the cd of pictures she gave me because I am awesome like that.  Ally found it for me on Sunday so now I can blog about it.  What would I do without her?

Her ballet teacher made up her own ballet called "La Danseuse de Ballet".  Ally was a Museum Mademoiselle.  It was loosely based on the children's book "Madeline" and Ally's job was to show the students around the museum while dancing beautifully, of course.

Side view of my pretty girl.  She looked like a different person without her glasses and her hair pulled back.

She got to dance with one of her best friends-Breonna.  We tried a new ballet studio this year and have enjoyed it.  It's ran much more organized than the previous one and it was cheaper. :)

I was going through pictures and realized I didn't have any good ones of Jensen.  So I had her snap a few of my happy guy.  He tends to do the "oversmile" a lot, but we did get some good ones of him.

And of course Holden had to get in on the action.  Logan was at work with Josh, so I didn't get any of him.  Ally really enjoys performing and she is a great dancer.  It is always a lot of rehearsals and practices, but it's worth it in the end.

Summer Vacation Day Five

I can't blog about this trip and not mention the playground in Woodland Park. We had to make a second trip to it before we left. The kids LOVED it!.  It was at the Elementary where Josh went to school.  He says it was similar when he was there but it was bigger now.  

Castle turrets, slides, a ship, tires, boats, swings etc.  Awesome!

Balancing Jensen.

Swinging Holden.

Every kid's dream!

Holden was not as happy about the ride home as the ride there.  We went home through Wyoming this time and the drive was much faster.  We made a stop at the "American Girl Mall" (not sure what it's really called) and let the kids pick out souvenirs at the Colorado Store and then hit the road home.  I lost count of how many movies the kids watched. Thank heavens for the DVD player!

It was a really fun trip, but we missed Willard.  There really is no place like home!

Summer Vacation Day Four

We started out our day with a drive through Garden of the Gods.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was kind of disappointing.  We have way better stuff in Southern Utah!  There was hardly anything to see and it was hot!

Here's the kids in front of the kissing camels.  Good luck finding them (the camels, not the kids)!

Balanced Rock.  The only other thing to see.

Holding up the rock.  My kids are so strong!

The next stop was "The North Pole at Santa's Workshop".  Everyone kept telling us we needed to go there, our kids were not convinced, but $95 later, there we were. (Side note: the pole was actually "perpetually frozen" and kinda cool.)

This is the "Giant Ferris Wheel".  I busted a gut when they called it that and said you could see all the way to Texas.  It ended up being a favorite ride, though.

Hey, little boy!  Keep your hands out of the water!  Yup-that's my little rule breaker.

Merry Christmas! It's ninety-five degrees!

Ally just LOVED Santa's workshop!

Meeting Santa.  Santa was very hot and sweaty in his little house.  Can you tell how excited Ally is to be there?

Holden was in heaven!  He loved everything about the place.  It was definitely geared towards the younger crowd.  There were a few fun rides for the rest of us, but we enjoyed watching Holden have so much fun.  Josh and I discovered that we're getting old.  Some of the rides made us sick.  It stinks to get old!

The whole reason we went on this trip was to go to "Symphony in the Clouds".  Josh has always remembered going to it as a kid and has wanted to go back.  It's at the Woodland Park Middle School and they have the symphony play.  At the end of the concert they play the 1812 Overture and the National Guard sets off cannons.  Then they add fireworks into the mix.  Holden was being naughty (throwing rocks) and as soon as the cannons started going off he screamed "help" and hid under the blankets.  Funny!  That's his scared face in the picture.

This is probably my favorite picture from the trip.  Holden's terrified face just cracks me up.  I guess I'm a mean Mom to laugh!

Summer Vacation Day Three

We started out day three at the Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

It was really fun to explore all the rooms and see how the Native Americans lived.  They had a lot of people living in tiny spaces!

This was the watch tower.

This is his "I'm going to be naughty" face.  He loved running around and climbing where he wasn't supposed to-as usual!

Our next stop was the Cripple Creek Rail Road.  It was a short little train ride with authentic coal smoke blowing in our faces-fun!  They showed us all the gold mines in the area.  There was a lot of gold in them thar' hills!

Holden was just a little excited to ride on the train.  When the engineer got in the front to start up the train, he clapped and yelled "Yay, train ride!".  It really was fun and interesting despite the coal smoke and the kids enjoyed it.

Happy Fourth of July!

Then we headed up to the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine for a tour.  This is how we entered the mine. Straight down in small elevator cars.  The kids were all nervous going down, but I thought it was fun.

Holden loved wearing his hard hat.  At least for a while.  I lost count of how many times he threw it on the ground by the end of the tour!

All ready to go down into the earth!  They weren't nervous yet.

This was after we descended.  Jensen pretty much looked like that the rest of the time.  Everyone else adjusted and had fun.  They took us on a ride on a mine train and it was fun, but they had the lights off for part of it so kids were a little freaked out.  It was really interesting learning about how they mine for gold.  We each ended up with our own little piece of raw gold (a rock with a minuscule trace of gold in it).

We got to try out the "manager's cart".  It was basically a bicycle on the mine cart tracks with places for people to stand on.  The mine tour was probably our favorite activity-well, except for Jensen.

After that we went shopping in Manitou and had some yummy ice cream and candy. The ice cream was called Josh & John's-very fitting for my ice cream loving Joshua John!  Then we tried to convince the kids to go see fireworks in one of the towns.  They didn't want to!  They wanted to go back to the hotel and swim!  So that's how we spent our Fourth of July evening.  I missed being at our little town's celebration. There's really nothing like it, but I loved experiencing new things with my family.

Summer Vacation Day Two

Since our whole family has been obsessed with baseball lately, we decided it would be fun to take the kids to a Colorado Rockies game while we were in Colorado.  

Here we are in front of Coors Field. 

Notice how our seats are nice and shaded?  The shade lasted all of 15 minutes and then we were in the sun. Then it was HOT, HOT, HOT!  Like burning in heck HOT!  We lasted until the fourth inning and then decided we were done cooking ourselves.  Here's a helpful hint for anyone planning to go to a Rockies Game-don't go to an afternoon game in July!  When we got to the car we found out it was 98 degrees-not fun!  We were not loyal enough fans to stick it out, I guess.

Jensen with the Presidents of the United States.  The people in front of us won a trip to Rapid City so Josh and Holden ended up on the Jumbo Tron briefly.  Josh didn't even notice the "presidents" or him being on the big screen.

Holden was fine until they sang the National Anthem and let off fireworks.  Then he was terrified and hated all the noise.  Can you tell he was hot?  The Rockies were playing the KC Royals and ended up losing 16 to 8.

Two days before our trip Ally discovered that there was an American Girl Store in Denver.  She had forty dollars saved up and decided she need $100 so she could get a doll.  She became my little chore girl for two days straight-that was awesome for me!  She even went to Grandma June's house to work for money, too.  She ended up with $90.00 and Josh and I were nice enough to donate the rest.  So after a half hour of trying to decide, she finally picked "Emily" to come home with her.

Then we drove to our hotel in Colorado Springs and went to visit Garden of the Gods.  We just made a quick stop at the Visitor Center and then Josh drove us to Woodland Park to show us his old house.

Yee Haw!