Back from the beach

We're back from spending the weekend in Lala Land (aka, my brother's house). I hope to post pictures of the trip soon, along with the rest of the Colorado vacation, Father's day, 4th of July . . . and at some point, we'll start sanding the old paint off the base boards and get them re-painted so I can declare the hall fully done. Sigh . . .

Happy birthday, Kat!

We've come a long way in the last 12 years. Here you are on the first birthday I spent with you & your dad in the skates I bought you for your birthday.

And now your 15. Wow! You're a beautiful young lady and I love you very much.

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Some pics from the early birthday we had for Kathryn:

Never too old to blow out candles:

Her new slinky:

Cave of the Winds & Garden of the Gods

We spent Tuesday of our vacation in the funky little town of Manitou Springs. We did some shopping, played at the local park and then headed up the hill (way up the hill) to the cave of the winds. Manitou Springs is the town on the otherside of the bridge in this picture taken from the Cave of the Winds overlook.
The entrance to the cave - it's 54 degrees at all times in there. A bit different from the caves we have visited in Texas that average in the 80's with high humidity.

A cool cave picture. We took so many.

This is Laney walking through the lowest, narrowest passage in the cave.

Kat gets friendly with the bear at the entrance.

On Wednesday some friends from college drove down and joined us for a trip through the Garden of the Gods. This city park is a monument of natural sandstone formations.

We didn't hike as much as we'd have liked - Laney had some altitude side effects that slowed us down.

A totem pole:

You can't climb most of the rocks without equipment & permission, but there are a few that are open to the public. Like this one:

Above the hole the girls are sitting in is a path that led to where Rob is in this picture:

Here we are as a group, with one bushed toddler:

Capulin & Mueller

Wow, I've haven't blogged in almost 3 weeks. Holy cow. We were on vacation from 6/12 to 6/21 and when we got back I took a minor computer hiatus. I am planning to do a few vacation related posts over the next week or so.

We took three days to make the 17 hour trip. We had an overnight stop at my parent's, then an overnight stop in Capulin, NM. Across the highway from the campground where we stayed is the National Monument, Capulin Mountain, a dead volcano.

Here's Kat checking out the view from the rim of the volcano. Rob with Laney in hiking backpack. We got some mileage out of this thing.

This was a funny moment - Laney stopped to look out and said, "Look, it's the world!"

For our first day in Colorado, we chose to go to Mueller State Park to do some hiking. We had originally planned to camp there with my parents, but they had some complications and were unable to come with us.

Me & Kat

Rob taught Laney how to blow dandelions

My tree huggers

The girls & me at the visitor center sign

The camping area had a fun playground were we spent the remainder of the afternoon.

Saturday fun

Just a few pics from Laney's Saturday morning. We went to the pool for Parent-Toddler 1 on 1.
Her new Nemo life jacket

Afterwards we took a "quick" (read: 1 hour) trip to the mall. Here's Laney on one of those rides, completely happy & completely unaware that if I put a dollar in it would play music & spin around.

Visiting grandparents

We spent the last weekend of May at my parents house. One of the main reasons we went was so that Rob & Kat could attend Project A-Kon (an anime convention). Here they are ready to go:

While they were at the con, my parents & I took Elena to the park. It was the same park I used to play in as a kid, but it doesn't look much like the one I went to.

We fed the ducks:

Here's one of the few remnants of the old park - the train:

On Sunday when we were getting ready for church the girls played on the piano

And this just makes me laugh. This is a 2 year old, 2/3 of the way through a 5 hour car trip and 1/2 through a bag of Cheetohs.

We're doing a much longer version of this starting Friday when we head off to Colorado Springs for the week.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Ten years! Wowzers. Never doubted we'd make it, but still wow. No pics, we got married before the digital age & my pics are pasted into a scrapbook that doesn't lend itself to scanning. Sorry.

But my laptop has a new power supply, so hopefully I'll get some new posts up with pics of the kids, which is why you're here anyway.