Colorado fun!!!

Well, we have been in Colorado for 6 days now and we are having a blast!! Here is what we have done so far....on Saturday July 4th the small town near Erv and Marie's house called Allenspark has a 4th of July parade. Pretty much anyone that wants to be a part of the parade can be. Ahh, the joys of small towns!! So, we had a family effort to decorate the John Deere Gator as an entry in the parade. Uncle Tim made signs for that said "Nana and Papa's Lil Firecrakers" and Marie, Jaimie, and I decorated the gator with balloons and streamers that Tim and Kathleen picked up in town. Then Brune, Kaden, Matthias, and Kaylee all rode in the back of the Gator and threw out candy. They looked so darn cute and had a blast!!! Then that night we took the kids down to Estes Park to watch the fire works. We found a good spot to watch them from last year and we went to that same spot this year too. Rodney and Jaimie joined us for the show. It was late for the kids and after about 3 fireworks they asked when it would be over. The show was great and needless to say both kids fell asleep on the drive back.

Then Sunday we all went down to Aunt Kathleen's church where she is the pastor. After church we all went out for lunch at Perkins. We had quite an experience at Perkins! Some of Erv and Marie's friends joined us for lunch there, so we were a party of 16 in total. There were 2 other large parties there at the same time and the service took FOREVER and a lot of the orders were wrong when we finally got our food. Marie and I went up and talked to the manager and got our bill discounted. I did most of the talking and Marie said that I was a lot nicer then what she would have been! :-) I thought that was funny! Then we headed back to the house and lounged around for the rest of the day. We have had a lot of fun playing the game Ticket to Ride with Rodney and Jaimie and Jaimie and I have played lots of games of Scrabble. We have all played many many games of Uno with the kids too. Jaimie probably holds the record for the most games of Uno and she has a great story of one time she got up to go to the bathroom and came back to find that suddenly Matthias' hand was full of skips, draw 2 cards, reverses, and wilds.....little stinker!! He thought he had pulled a fast one!

On Tuesday Erv took the kids in the morning to ride horses at a near by stable. They are old enough now that he can take them on pasture rides so they both got a turn to do that. They had a blast! I had to stay home because I am VERY allergic to horses. I found out just how allergic last time we took the kids to that stable.....it was not good for me. So I opted out this time. Nana went along and took pictures for me. That same day in the afternoon we took the kids to a place in Estes Park called Trout Haven. They have a fishing pond and supply you with all you need to fish. Matthias has been asking for a long time to go fishing so we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make that happen for him. The kids both got catch a fish and between them they caught 30 inches of fish!! It was a really fun time for all of us!! After we brought the kids home Erv and I freshened up and went with Rodney and Jaimie into Longmont and had dinner and went to movies. The girls went to see The Hangover and the guys went to see Transformers. Jaimie and I laughed soooo hard at The Hangover!! Our movie was over first so we went to Applebees for reverse happy hour and had a drink and laughed about some of the moments of the movie. It was a really fun night!

So, this brings us to today. The guys haven been cutting wood up. I took the kids on a walk, but about 5 min into it, Matthias said "I am exhausted" so it didn't last long. I just finished making enchiladas for dinner for everyone. Erv and I won't be here for dinner b/c we are going to his friend Matt's house near Denver for dinner. Matt is a college friend of Erv's and we always have a great time when we get to visit with him and his wife.