Iowa Bound/Sisters Day

It was time for our annual trip to Iowa with a long list of people to see including a Sisters Day and a wedding reception to attend!!

For once I didn't have to set the alarm for 3:00am - this time it was 4:45am!!  And my good friend Joleen had driven in the day before to "house sit" our home while it's on the market!  She is one special friend to do that for us and we had 2 showings while we were gone!

Caribou Coffee was the top priority when we reached the Denver airport!  Security was easy since we were TSA approved and the flight was uneventful - my kind of trip!!  We arrived on time in Omaha and sister Teri was waiting for us as she had arrived about 1/2 hour earlier - got our car rental and we were off for Soldier!

It's always great to see Patty and Leonard - and that evening Jim and Brenda arrived for our annual farm meeting and a great steak dinner!  We spent the evening visiting and hitting the sack early as it had already been a long day!

Friday was designated "Sisters Day".  Since Teri and I were both coming back for our nephews' wedding reception, we all decided not to do another trip this year and just do a couple of special things together.  We headed over by Logan to see the Museum of Religious Arts - a very unique large building that housed hundreds of religious artifacts!!

Here is the front of the small chapel.

 A very unique Lord's Supper hanging.

 We really enjoyed the display of paintings given to the museum by "Akiane" the 9 year old who painted the portrait of Christ that was featured in the movie "Heaven Is For Real".  Her paintings are beautiful!

After the museum we walked up the hill to the crosses - it was a gorgeous day outside!

 I love this picture of the cross with the beautiful clouds in the background - gorgeous!

 After a stop in Logan for a delicious lunch, we headed to the lavender farm! 

 Unfortunately the farm lost about 4000 plants this last winter so they didn't have a lot in bloom - but we could sure smell the lavender when we ran our hands over the leaves!  The owner did a slide show for us and explained how the farm was started - very interesting.

 We walked up to this cute sitting area and enjoyed just visiting and enjoying the beautiful day!

 Back inside we enjoyed lavender cookies and lemonade with lavender - delicious!  We enjoyed shopping in their gift shop and then sitting in the purple chairs around this fairy garden!  What a great ending to a perfect day!!

More Iowa happenings to come..................

Father's Day Weekend

And MORE visitors arrive!!  Jessi and Gary and family headed down on Thursday to spend 4 days and 3 nights with us!!  How fun to see Gwyn again - gosh is she ever changing!!

 Gary and Evan hiked the Manitou Incline and then they were off with Glenn and Kenzie to go rock hounding - their new favorite hobby!!  In fact, they ended up going rock hounding all 3 days, along with attending the Rock and Gem Show over at Victor!!  What a great time they had and it was nice for Glenn to take some time off!!

Kenzie had fun playing with the "gems" that we have - she made a flag for the 4th of July!!

 Jessi captured a smile from Gwyn as we were relaxing on the deck!!  Love that double chin!!

 Kenzie and Evan both made cards for Papa on Father's Day!!  And the girls gave him a new boat cover for his boat!!

 We had a house showing on Saturday which meant putting the crib and the kids' bed up and all the suitcases in the closet - what a chore to get ready for a showing when you have company!!  But we scurried the guys and Kenzie out the door and Jessi and I went to work!! 

Coffee on the deck - always fun!!

 Gary texted us this picture from Victor - the ice cream looks great!!

 Although Jessi wasn't feeling the best for a couple of days, she did play the marble game with Kenzie - she has all those engineering skills for building that I definitely don't have!!

It was a wonderful 4 days and it was so fun to spend time with Gwyn - I spent many hours just holding and cuddling her!!  And once again, the house seemed mighty quiet when they headed home!

Iowa Visitors

June seems to be flying by with many things on the calendar!  Saturday morning Glenn's son Neal and his family arrived from Iowa!  So the house was full with Neal and Jen, Jen's son Derrick who is almost 13, Chance who is 3 1/2 and Maggie who is 2 1/2!!  We happened to have a showing on our house the morning they arrived so they all headed up to the new property and hung out with Glenn for a while!

The kids had fun riding the trikes on the deck and just playing outside!  For the most part the weather was good but Monday night there was one heck of a storm - lots of thunder, lightning and rain!!

They headed to the Royal Gorge on Sunday and the North Pole on Monday!  And in between that we kept them busy!!

 Papa took Maggie out to feed the deer one morning!!  And we also saw our first baby fawn on our property!

 We wanted to have a marshmallow roast one evening in the firepit but it rained both nights we had it planned - guess they'll just have to come back!!!

And then it was homeward bound back to Iowa - and since we're heading back there in another week too, we'll get to see them again!!

Jessi's and Gwyn's Baby Shower

Sunday Jaime, Jill and friend Courtney hosted a  baby shower for Jessi and Gwyn!  I headed up to Denver in the morning so I could spend some special time with Gwyn - gosh has she grown and filled out!

 Love this plant that was the centerpiece for the table!

 It was so nice outside on Jaime's patio - we enjoyed lots of yummy food !

 Jessi got so many cute outfits for Gwyn.  It's a lot more fun to buy girl clothes - especially in pink!

 Gwyn slept almost the entire day!  Naturally everyone wanted to hold her and she just loves to snuggle!

 We tried to get pictures of Gwyn in this darling dress but she just wouldn't stay awake!!

What a perfect day!

Boys and Camping

We're excited that Jaime and Brad bought 35 acres in a beautiful subdivision only 10 minutes from our place!!  They brought their camper down last week to park it there for the summer and brought along Evan to play with Kylan!

It's so easy to pop over there and say hi!!  They plan on spending a lot of time there this summer so that will be fun for all of us!

Jaime, Brad and Rayna were headed into town for errands one day so brought the boys over to spend some time here!

We've all decided that our family camping trip is going to be at the Smiths' property this year - that way if Jessi needs to use our house for a while it's close by for her and the new baby AND who knows what we'll be doing the end of July - moving? still having the house on the market?   Only time will tell!!

I'm Cracking The Whip!

Now that our old house is on the market, Glenn and a helper are working full speed on the new house!  It seems like there is still a long ways to go but I guess every day that goes by that the old house doesn't sell, means the new one is that much further along!

The rough electric is DONE and inspection PASSED!!!  Wow - what a long journey that was!!  Septic inspection passed also.  Glenn is working with the well guy so soon a pump should be in.

Last week Glenn worked on finishing the chinking inside and then spraying the clear coat on the logs - they look gorgeous and I'm glad I chose the clear coat inside of an actual stain!!

 Now it's on to the outside!  Our helper Chris is doing the chinking and Glenn is doing the staining - using a sprayer so it goes on fast!  We chose Natural Oak for the stain color!

 Also they're getting the chimney ready for the rock!  I can't wait to see what it will look like when it's finished!

 This is the layout on how it will look when it's up!

So progress is being made!  I'm not sure we'll get any camping or ATVing in until fall but as long as this house gets done before the snow flies, I'll be one happy gal!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY LISTED!

FINALLY - after all of the work we've done on our current home, it has reached the stage where we were ready to list it!  As of June 2, it has been officially listed on the MLS.  Realtor.com has already picked it up also and I'm sure Zillow won't be too far behind!!

Time will tell how fast this house will sell - if it's soon, we'll be super excited!!  If it waits till summer is over, then at least we'll have our new house that much closer to move into.  Either way it's a win win situation!! 

A Visit From Teri

Now what are the chances of my sister from Michigan having a conference in Denver?  Apparently pretty darn good as she was here this last week for a work conference in downtown Denver and then stayed an extra couple of nights at our place!

I got up super early on Friday morning and headed to Denver with all the other commuters - grabbed my coffee at Carino's and then headed to Jessi's place to spend some time with Gwyn!  She was cute as can be of course and I even got to see Evan and Kenzie before they headed off to school!

 Jaime drove me to pick up Teri downtown at her hotel - good thing because traffic was awful!!  I was a basket case just riding, let along driving!!  YIKES - I don't know how people deal with all that traffic!  Teri was waiting for us outside her hotel and it was so good to see her!!  We headed back to Jaime's house and had lunch with them on the deck while watching the Thunderbirds practice for an air show the next day!!

 Before leaving Denver, we went back to Jessi's house so Teri could see baby Gwen - she gave her a beautiful blanket that she had knitted!

Then it was off to the mountains!!  I had bought a Groupon for wine tasting and a cheese platter at The Winery so we stopped there and had a great time!!  Good wine - great food!!

 We were stuffed after eating that plateful but still managed to eat a little bit of dinner that evening!

Saturday we hiked around the loop and had coffee on the deck!  Teri was glad to help me out on pictures for the listing on our house!  Between her camera and my camera, we took lots of pictures in different lighting at different times of day!  It actually took us MUCH longer than what we thought but it was so fun to work together on this project and by Saturday evening we had 18 pictures all ready to go!

Sunday morning it was another walk and coffee - the day was nice and warm!!

Then I decided I would have Teri help me fill out all the paperwork for the realtor and MLS listing - my was that a job!!  First the pictures wouldn't download because they all had to be resized - luckily Teri knew how to do that!  We finally got them all to go through and worked on the listing for quite a while - and got it sent in 10 minutes before I needed to take her back to Denver to the airport!!

What a great time we had and I'm sure thankful for all her help!!