I Had The BEST View of All!!

 See those cyclists racing by?  It was the 5th day of the 2012 USA Pro Cycling Challenge and I had a birds' eye view from my window at work!

 

The cycling challenge is a 7 day event that started in Durango and will end up in Denver on Sunday!  On the day they raced through Woodland Park, they started out in Breckenridge and came through about 2:00 - people were camped out along the highway in their lawn chairs, waving their flags and it was quite the sight!  Hwy 24 was shut down, most of the town had closed down by noon and there were lots of parties and activities around the area!

 

The cyclists had a 117.9 mile road in front of them but this day was a lot easier for them than the day before where they had to go over Independence Pass over by Aspen!  We had an install scheduled for that day over there but had to rearrange it due to the closing of the pass!

I guess the disappointing part was that they were all going so fast that if you blinked more than once, you didn't see them!!  Still, it was neat to see them ride by!

That's Where The Tall Corn Grows!!!

Iowa - not somewhere a lot of people go for vacation but Glenn and I make it a point every year to get back at least once to see our families!  We flew out late afternoon on Thursday and for once I DON'T HAVE AN AIRPORT STORY!!!  Can you believe it?  It was smooth sailing up to Denver, parking the car, taking the shuttle to the airport and climbing aboard the plane!!  I LOVE this short flight - about 1 1/2 hours!

It's always a shock to get off the plane in Omaha into their small airport - it's so nice to just walk without having to dodge people and get where you're going in a matter of minutes!  We rented a car or I should say a jeep liberty and headed up the interstate to Patty and Leonard's place!

It was talk, talk, talk before we headed to bed that first night and I slept like a log!!

Friday morning it was coffee time!!  Patty had bought an espresso maker so we compared notes on how we make it and soon I was sipping a wonderful cup of mocha!!  It was pretty enough that I had to take a picture!!

Believe it or not, the Iowa temps were quite unusually cool when we were there and we sat on Patty's deck in the sun, talking the morning away!!  I had to hear about their Hawaii trip and see all the pictures they had taken!!

That evening the 4 of us plus Jim and Brenda headed out for dinner and then went back to Patty's to discuss our upcoming trip in Feb. - it's always a hard decision to decide where to go but we THINK we have it down to 2 places!  Time will tell............
Saturday we headed over to Neal's place (Glenn's son) for lunch - we had brought elk hamburger and fish from Mexico to grill and we had a great time visiting with everybody!!  It was fun to see Nedelle who is Todd's little girl - she's in the 3rd grade this year!

And we got to meet Chance, Neal and Jen's little boy who is a year old!  He is one cutie!!

Here's Todd, Glenn and Neal before we headed back to Patty's!

After we arrived back in Soldier, Patty and I headed down to her daughter Cheri's store where we had fun trying on lots of clothes!  What a cute store it is and of course I couldn't leave without buying a couple of tops and a new pair of bling flip flops!

Leonard grilled up some delicious steaks that night for dinner and Jim and Brenda stopped back by too - Jim brought a whole sack full of drink mix and limes and proceeded to make caboritas which was a drink he had in Mexico when we went to Cabo - isn't it a pretty color?  Reminds me of the ocean!

And before we left Patty's on Sunday morning, of course I had to have a picture of the two of us!!  It's always hard to leave her house as we have so much fun but the good news is that I'll see her again in a couple of months when we take a sisters trip!
Well good ole' blogger is not allowing any posts below this last picture so I'll have to finish my blog!
We headed down to Glenn's mom next - she already had some company and by noon his 3 sisters had arrived loaded down with food!  YUM!!  I ate and ate and still left plenty of room for a piece of fresh peach crisp (made with Colorado peaches!)!  I LOVE peach crisp and hadn't made any yet this year so enjoyed eating it.  In fact, Deanna left the rest of it there so I could enjoy another piece before bedtime and one in the morning!
All too soon it was time to head out by noon on Monday - a short trip but we did get to see all of the family and that's what counts!!

Don't Tell Evan...............

This last weekend when Jessi and the kids were down, Evan really wanted to go play on our steep driveway and roll his cars and trucks down but he wouldn't go by himself!!  I finally got it out of him that he was scared of bears!!  Of course I told him first of all that we hadn't seen a bear yet this year AND even if we had, they would be scared of him and run away!!

Yesterday morning I went over to pull the shade down and guess what's walking across our property - yup, a bear!!  I ran and got the camera (which took a few seconds since I had it in my work bag instead of in its' usual place) and ran out on the deck and snapped a couple pics - I zoomed in on the second one and since the bear had noticed us by this time, he started running and my picture turned out pretty fuzzy!!  But this one turned out OK!  If this is the same bear we had last year on our deck, he has certainly grown!!  I'm sure he was heading over to the neighbors who put their trash out early morning on the road and by the time we drive by, it's scattered all over!!

But don't worry Evan - they'll be hibernating before we know it!!

Speaking of mornings, Glenn and I have both noticed that it's not only a LOT cooler in the morning (yesterday it was 38 degrees and this morning it was 39 degrees) but the sun is coming up later and it's much darker each day we get up..........sigh............once again fall is going to arrive much faster than we all want it too and we'll be getting up in the dark again!

With 4 of the grand kids here this last weekend, I discovered that I really needed to buy some beach towels - the bath towels were needed for REAL baths and it's always nice to have beach towels as their favorite thing to do is to get in the hot tub!!

So I ran to Walmart yesterday for a couple of items and just thought I would check - sure enough they were ON SALE!!  WHOO HOO!!  $3.99 apiece for these colorful towels - anybody ready to hit the beach????

Tea For Two - Or Is It Five?

I've wanted to take our 3 girls to tea in Cripple Creek ever since I went with the choir girls about 3 years ago but it has just never worked out - until Sunday afternoon when Jessi was still here from the wedding and the choir girls were going!!

The regular highway that we take to C. Crk was actually closed down due to a sinkhole so we met Beth in Florissant and took the other route, meeting Arlyne and her friend Mary there!

I had called ahead for reservations and the table looked so pretty with the matching cups and saucers and all the dainty things required for tea!!  After ordering our choice of hot or cold tea from a long list, the first course arrived - the tea sandwiches!!

Now isn't that the prettiest array of sandwiches you've ever seen?  And these weren't even all of them - after we ate all of the 3 trays, 2 more trays were brought in - the little sandwiches included turkey, ham, pastrami, hummus, egg salad, chicken salad, pimento and my favorite, cucumber!!

Even though we were using the miniature fork and spoon, I hadn't noticed the little teapots on the end till Jessi pointed them out to me!!  The grand kids would LOVE these gold utensils!

After a refill of tea and eating those little sandwiches, we were all rather full but the next course was homemade blackberry cobbler - it was delicious!

And our final treat were scones served with honey - they included chocolate chip, apricot and cranberry which was my favorite!

Here's Jessi and I with our teacups!

We explored the second story which has an art display and Jessi was intrigued by how historic the building was!! We both loved the really neat staircase, which has steps going up from the ground floor on each side!

And last but not least, is a picture of the remainder of the choir girls (Arlyne, Beth and I - Marilyn and Clara have both moved away) and Arlyne's friend Mary who is visiting from N. Carolina!

We indeed enjoyed our tea and now Jessi is really excited about getting the other 2 girls over here to enjoy it!!

Papa was babysitting Evan and Kenzie and when we arrived home, they were in the back of the jeep, ready to grade the driveway which had pretty deep ruts from the hard rains!  They loved riding in the back and I'm sure got bounced around quite a bit!!  What a fun weekend we all had!!

Kids, Grandkids and A Wedding

What a busy summer this has been!  Almost every weekend has been jam packed with activities and this last weekend was no exception!  One of my best friends' son was getting married and he happens to be best friends with son in law Robby - so Jill, Robby and the kids headed down on Thursday so Robby could be around to help out with the wedding preparations!

Parker is getting used to staying with us now and it was no problem when Robby and Jill left for wedding rehearsal and the kids stayed with us!  He was giggling and laughing and seemed to enjoy his special time with us - and of course Aleah loves to stay with us too!

Zach and Jaime's wedding day was beautiful!!  The sun was out but not overpowering and besides a few raindrops during the outside ceremony, the weather held out great!!!  I went over early to help Joleen with some last minute things and snapped this pic of Zach and Robby before the ceremony!

Jessi and the kids arrived for the reception - it was a great time eating all the wonderful food and doing a little bit of dancing!!  Here's Zach and his mom, Joleen who outdid herself with all the preparations!

Zach and Jaime feeding each other the yummy cake (and doing a NICE job of it - no smashing!)

Parker was happy as long as he had food in his mouth or was out dancing!

Lots and lots of memories with Joleen and her daughter Becca and it's not often that all 5 of us get together - we danced and laughed and reminisced!  It was a great party but by mid-evening (after a 1:00 wedding start) it was time to not only get the 4 little ones home and in bed, but also the adults - whatever happened to partying 1/2 the night???  I think it's called KIDS!!! (and maybe a little bit of getting older!)

The Fire Ban is Lifted!

Hooray!  Isn't it great to know that our area has received enough rain in the last couple of weeks that they have rescinded the fire ban!

It was an extremely busy week for Glenn so we headed out Friday night after work to relax and do a little camping and ATVing.  We had hopes of going to a new place but because it was further and we didn't know about the wilderness camping, we opted to go to Buffalo Peaks where we knew we could get a camping spot!

We found a great spot to camp and because we had stopped and gotten Subway sandwiches to eat on the way over there, we didn't even have to cook so it was set up and relax!!

We headed out the next morning on the ATV and Glenn was thrilled to find a cabin out in the middle of nowhere!!  Sometimes the forest service has these cabins on a first come, first serve basis and we're not sure this was one of those but it still is a usable cabin!!  Because Glenn and friend Bob may hunt this area next year, he already has plans to stay there!!!  In fact, he thought we should grab the sleeping bags and stay there for the night!!  I assured him that the cabin was a "guy" thing as it needed just a little bit of cleaning and our camper was MUCH more comfortable!!  (our camper also has running water and a bathroom - he he)

But I have to say the cabin is cute perched right there in the middle of nowhere and I can just picture Glenn and Bob sitting in their chairs on the front porch, drinking a beer!!

We hit some great trails and I loved this mountain which looked so very bald from a distance!!

The best part of the trip:  THE CAMPFIRE!!!!  Yes, I had brought a new bag of fluffy marshmallows and they tasted SO good!!  I had almost forgotten how good the a campfire smells!!

Water Balloons and Fun Times

Saturday came and with it, another full day!!  I took Rayna and Kylan to see the new Ice Age movie in the morning - it was cute and I enjoyed it!!  We were 3 of only about 15 people in the theater though and it was kind of strange looking over at the EXIT sign and imagining the horror that happened in Aurora a week ago!!  I had decided I was going to get just a small popcorn and pop when we arrived (even though it was morning!) but I quickly changed my mind - I think they must have increased the prices once again for food and drink - the SMALL popcorn was $6.00 and the SMALL drink was $5.75 - I just couldn't part with my money for that!!!

After the show we went to Little Caesar's pizza to pick up pizza to go - I told Rayna I would be right back - and she turned to Kylan and said "yea, right - let's time her".  Well, Rayna couldn't believe it when I got back to the car 17 seconds later - she timed me!!!!  Yes, they're ready made pizzas already in the box and it doesn't take long to pay and pick them up!!

We took the pizzas to Jessi's and ate with her and by 1:00, Rayna and I were back on the road to go to her volleyball tournament - luckily we packed dinner as it was almost 8:00pm before we got back home!!  Rayna played great and it was wonderful to see how much she had improved from the last time I saw her!!!  Her team even made it into the semi-finals but didn't go any farther!!  I did a lot of reading.................

Besides the jam packed 3 days, I did have fun at the house with the kids.  Their newest thing to do is to make water balloons and drop them off of their parents balcony!  One kid would stand below and you would drop the balloon and get mainly their feet wet!!  Unfortunately, Kylan dropped one down when Rayna was looking UP and she got it right in the face!!!!

This is what you do when there is a fire ban in Colorado and you can't make s'mores over the campfire!

Rayna and I also had a great time shooting baskets!!  Yes, I USED to be a basketball player and I had so much fun shooting away!!!  We played game after game of horse and would also see how many times we could each make baskets in a row - great fun!!!

Even though this picture is one of a tuckered out Kylan, I could appreciate that feeling after my time in Denver!!!  It was a great 4 days but I was sure ready to head home on Sunday!!