Colorado Vacation Finale

Edited to add: I just noticed that this never posted…so much for setting a date to do it automatically!

One of the last ‘touring’ things we did was to visit the Olympic Training Center.  Honestly, while I enjoy watching the Olympics when they come around, I really didn’t care if we missed that one, but it turned out to be one of my favorite places we saw.

It’s a guided tour, and we were guided by an Olympic-hopeful.  We got some inside information and will be looking for her in 2016!  We saw many of the training areas, walked through the hall of fame, and watched a very inspirational video.  They house many trainees in the Olympic Village, and the trainees can be as young as 15 years old.  I just can’t imagine sending my 15-year-old off to live elsewhere for years for the sake of a sport…

We also celebrated Twinkle’s 3rd birthday on New Year’s Day.  As you can guess, it was a small affair- just dinner, presents, and cake.

“I’m fwee!”

Early the next morning, we headed out!  We decided to spend a day with my aunt in Show Low, AZ so we took a longer different way back.  We decided to stop at Four Corners, the only place in the US where 4 states meet at one point.  There is virtually nothing there but a nice little monument and wide open land.  Oh, and let’s not forget the toilet seats placed over a hole in the ground.  All of that only cost $3 per person!  Seriously, it’s an outrageous price, but we figured it may be a very long time before we ever have a reason to be up that way again.  So now we can say that we’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt.  Oh, wait.  There were no t-shirts…or magnets…or coffee mugs…or anything else…

And that’s it!  The first thing my kids did when we got home was run to their beds and hug them :) 

We had a fabulous time and look forward to seeing all the family again.  Colorado is beautiful, but as the saying goes…there’s no place like home!

Colorado Vacation Episode 3

Let’s combine a few days, shall we?

The next day, we were able to go to Pikes Peak!  My uncle secured a tour bus from his workplace and we all got to drive together like the good, little tourists we were!

“We got the front seat!”

“Look Mom, I’m a big kid!”

No, we did not hike it- it’s winter, after all, and we’re not crazy!  The rode the COG, as in a gear, train.  It normally goes all the way to the top, where there is a gift shop and some secret-recipe, high-altitude donuts.  Unfortunately, the storm that had just rolled through kept the train from getting all the way to the top.  We only got about 2/3 of the way up, no donuts for us :( but it was still a beautiful sight!

Here are some pics of us waiting:

And from on the train (which blessedly was heated!):

Apparently, you can see 4 different states from the top.

“I have reception!!”

~~~

Colorado Springs is also home to Focus on the Family, and with my sister’s recommendation, we went to tour the place.  It was very nice, with the top floor devoted to the strides FOTF has made in the pro-life, pro-family movements, etc., and the lower level devoted to the kid stuff.

When you go downstairs, you’ll find Whit’s End (from Adventures in Odyssey), a nice, little soda-shoppe, and a playground similar (but better) to what you would find in a fast food restaurant.  Then you can walk around ‘Odyssey’ and explore the different stores and businesses from the show.  They also have a recording studio, in which you can record and ‘adventure in Odyssey.’  Hero and Awesome McAwesome wanted to do that, and they did a great job!  Yours truly was the foley, and the sound effects were superb, if I do say so myself :)

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!

Colorado Vacation Episode 2

This is what we woke up to Christmas morning!  My aunt says she has lived in Colorado Springs for 19 years, and they have never had a white Christmas.  I told her we brought it with us from Arizona ;)

All the family would converge that afternoon for Christmas dinner and exchanging gifts.  I was very proud of my kids for not once asking to open their presents early.  Of course, that may have been because they were too busy playing in the snow!

McAwesome was the snowball king!

My brother gave us their sled and once Grandpa tied some rope to it, they were set to go sledding down the street!

Whoever pulled the sled would get a running start, then fling the sledder on down the street.  The kids loved it- and the neighbors thought we were crazy to be out in the cold so early in the morning!

There goes Minion 2!

Hero is such a good big brother!

Tank wasn’t overly impressed with that cold stuff :)

Later, the guys took the kids to a nearby school to sled down a bigger hill, while the ladies got dinner ready.

Dinner was delicious (there was WAY too much food!), and afterwards we opened presents.  Because I was holding the baby, and trying to help the kids open things, I didn’t get too many pictures, but here are a few from the day:

Our main gift to the kids this year was a trip to Legoland (this Spring).  Every one of them (except the baby) is completely into all things Lego, and have been asking to go for a while now.  I gave them each an envelope to open that contained a ‘ticket.’

Opening the envelopes.  What could it be??

McAwesome got his opened first.

They were a little excited!

Finally, we squeezed everyone in for a big family pic!

To be continued…

Colorado Vacation Episode 1

After a VERY long day driving, we wanted to get right out the next morning and see some sights!  Of course, it was Christmas Eve so there wasn’t a whole lot open!

We decided to drive through the Air Force Academy.  It was a beautiful area in the winter and very large and spacious.

Air Force Chapel- famous for its tall spires

Minion 1 loved the jets!

The grandparents with (almost) all the kids

I haven’t seen my sister in a long time!

After that we met the rest of the family for a drive through the Garden of the Gods.  There were beautiful red rock formations similar to what we have in Sedona, AZ.

Dad with all of his kids!

Balanced Rock

Hero and McAwesome holding up Balanced Rock

Minion 1 and Minion 2 found a jungle gym

That evening we went to my brother’s house for pizza and games- none of which I won (but I’m not bitter).  The grandkids played together and before long we noticed that it had begun to snow!  So, of course, my kids had to go out and try to catch some snowflakes on their tongues!

Stay tuned for the next episode…

Catching Up

I’m still here!  But in a different place!  We’ve finally moved, and that’s one of the main reasons I haven’t been around here for a while.  We didn’t even have phone or internet for nearly a month!

So we’ve officially moved into a wonderful new home, to which my husband lovingly refers as a mansion.  It’s not that large, but we have nearly 3000 sq. feet of space to grow into!  We still can hardly believe we’re living here and are in awe that the Lord would provide such a home for our family.  Since the actual moving took place much later than we’d expected, we had only a few days before we had guests arrive!

My mother-in-law and niece came for a two week visit!  It’s been 4 years since we’ve seen them, so needless to say we were so happy to have them come, and we had a great time.  We didn’t really do anything too special, but even just being at the house was enjoyable.  All the kids got along well, and that always makes for a nice visit!

They left last Wednesday morning, and Thursday night my sister and her family flew in to town!  We had them with us through the weekend.  Their daughter is about the same age as my older kids so they loved having another playmate around! 

So this week I’m finally trying to get settled into the house!  We had all the important stuff in, but our garage is still full of boxes to be sorted through.  Little by little we’ll get it all done!

We have a busy summer ahead of us.  This week our church is having Vacation Bible School in the evenings, next week my husband will be away at Teen Camp, and then we’ll have two weeks of ‘normal’ at home.  I say ‘normal’ because those two weeks will be largely spent preparing to leave for the Spiritual Leadership Conference hosted by Lancaster Baptist Church in California, and from there we will be driving to Oregon for a vacation/family reunion.  All in all we will be gone for roughly 3 weeks!  By the time we get home, it will be time to prepare for our next school year and I’ll be in the final couple of months of this pregnancy!  I figure we should be all settled in just in time for this baby to make his arrival and throw us into another couple months of chaos!  I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Yes, I typed his on purpose!  We are expecting a little boy!  All of the kids wanted a boy, so I’m happy we could accommodate their wishes :)

Many of my friends and family reading this already know the name we’ve chosen, but I think I’ll keep at least that much secret from the internet world until the big day!

Okay, I think we’re all caught up!

Aloha ‘Oe

I've been back from Hawaii for almost a week, and I've been chomping at the bit to put up some pictures, but, hey!, it takes a few days to recover the house from being gone for a week!  Just today, I've finally caught up on just about everything so I now feel like we're back to normal, and my vacation feels like it happened a month ago!!

Okay, first we flew into Kauai. 

Isn't that gorgeous?  I read that you can only see 20% of the island by car.  As you can imagine, the airport was very small, and I could feel the humidity as soon as we left the airplane.  Since we were unable to leave the airport, I was glad that our layover was short.

Here we are in Oahu!  Melissa greeted us with leis, as is customary.

We stopped at the Dole Plantation (I’ve been there on a quite a few field trips, and I still don’t like pineapple!), and as you can imagine, they had pineapple-flavored everything…but my dad couldn’t find fresh pineapple juice anywhere!  Doesn’t sound so awful to me, but…

Forgive me if this is common knowledge, but I didn’t know that pineapples grew out of the top of the plants; I thought they were underground.

We stopped at lots of different beaches and lookout points, but I’m not going to name them all.  Here are just a few pretty views:

The above picture is at Shark’s Cove, a great snorkeling place.  We went back the next day with dad’s underwater camera.  We saw tons of fish and other sea life, and we even saw a sea turtle!  We got so close but were just out of reach!

When we went to Bellows to swim and do some boogie-boarding, we saw a rather large, dark creature not too far from us.  When we saw a fin, we thought it would be wise to get out of the water!  Everyone on the beach was somewhat nervous (no hysteria, but a healthy dose of concern!), and when the lifeguard said it was a manta ray and had moved on, we all went back in.  Dad and I thought we saw it again later, but my mom and Melissa were on the shore and said it was a turtle.  All those years we lived in Hawaii, we never saw anything in the ocean, so that day was quite the adventure!

We spent a day at Pearl Harbor.  I was surprised that there was so much there.  Dad and I went on the Bowfin (a submarine), and we all took a ferry out to the Arizona Memorial.  We also saw the Utah and Oklahoma Memorials, and we drove onto Ford Island to tour the Missouri- the last battle ship made and where the end of WWII occurred when Japan signed the papers.  I took a ton of pictures there, but I’m not going to put them up here.  Sorry.

Other pictures I’m not going to post, but still enjoyed taking, are: my old house, the school I went to from 4th-6th grade, the church, my K5 classroom at the church where my sis-in-law now teaches (they even have the same table at which I sat!), the sidewalk where I broke my tooth, the street where my brother ran over my sister with his bicycle, etc.  You get the idea…nostalgic pictures…

Let’s see…oh, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center, which was a great experience.  You visit the different ‘islands,’ and they each have their own activities: spear-throwing, hula, coconut leaf-weaving, etc.  They put on a luau at night, and then we watched a live show that was pretty neat.

Tuesday was my parents anniversary (my birthday was 4 days later), and my brother, by proxy (Melissa), treated us to a nice dinner at the Top of Waikiki.  It’s a revolving restaurant, and you get some beautiful views of Waikiki. 

 Here are a few fun facts (say that five times fast) about Hawaii, just in case you ever make it out there:  hula dancers never wore grass skirts (those are from Tahiti and Fiji), Waikiki is not a city (just a part of Honolulu- like the Bronx in New York City), and if you’re in the mood for a good burger, find Pizza Bob’s.

 Wednesday was spent packing, cleaning, mailing a couple packages (cheaper than checking a suitcase!), last-minute shopping, mailing another package (hee hee), and one last dinner with the four of us.  A nice red-eye flight, a dead car battery in Phoenix, and a nap in the car on the way to Tucson brought us home!