Vacation 2014

I debated on which of my blogs I would post this and I decided here this time. Let's get going on our family vacation 2014!!!

Because of all the hail damage and expenses we all decided to go on a smaller vacation this year but in place of fanciness the kids were allowed each to bring a friend.  A very relaxing fun vacation was had by all as you will see by the photos that follow.

First off, as we are driving I just had to have a picture of this water tower. It is the absolute coolest water tower I have ever seen - an 8 ball!~! The water towers around here are all boring compared to this one.

I also "had" to include this photo as it is a joke. On every family vacation we have gone on with Superman he ends up intentionally or not taking us down some spooky out of the way gravel/dirt/other type of road. This year was no exception! :-)

Next we are onto swimming.  I don't know what is going on with this child but she decided eating rocks was fun.

Superman tried and tried but this was the closest photo we could get of all 4 kids looking at us...we got 3. They had a beautiful day to swim while I lounged on the beach in the shade.

No matter what I tried on this photo the blog turned it sideways. Even when I uploaded it was horizontal until I brought it into the blog so we will have to live with the photo the wrong direction. Even with that you can see the kids were all getting along great and having fun with the bunk beds.  NO they did not sleep like this!!!

Next we are going fishing!  We even got the girls to fish and Ann caught her very first fish ever. You can see them holding it here. Right after this shot was taken the fish decided to "beeee freee". He leaped out of their grasp and went flying through the air landing on my second toe spearing it as it landed. Blood gooshed from my toe. Ann's friend ran to get paper towels. I am healing and that was the worst injury on the trip.

Here is Vern with one of his MASSIVE  catches.  Hey ~ at least they were catching fish.

Here is a much nicer sized fish for a photo.

I am including this next photo because I think it is a great photo of Vern's friend!!! He and Vern had a great time doing boy stuff. Yes, we let them do a bit of playing on games in the evening...

I also included this next shot as it is my favorite of those silly boys of mine. They were chilaxin in the hammock. I could barely pry Superman out of the thing!!!

                                     

Next is Vern on one of the zip-lines. The proprietors were very safety oriented and no one was going to fall out of their lines!

Next is a shot of the two younger guys relaxing in that same hammock.  It was the favorite thing to do after zip lining.

And here we have rock eater posing for some crazy reason. No wonder her and Ann get along so well both are drama princesses!

Another zip line shot of the kids having fun.

Here is a nice shot of Ann on the zip line. She of course thought it was not nearly exciting enough. My dare-devil and fearless child.  She is so beautiful in this photo. (Yes I am biased just go with it k?)

I will end with this scenic shot of the lake the kids swam in. It was so peaceful and not crowded. I loved the afternoon we spent here.

Now back to work and reality...vacation is over.

Family Vacation 2013

Well I debated on doing one GIANT blog or many small blogs...with all the canning and vegetables I have going on and activities with the kids the one GIANT blog wins.  Here was one of Vern's summer family vacations.

Day 1-
We were all up early and ready to leave by 6 am.  I was heading out the door with 2 cups of coffee for hubby when I see a robin has flown into the garage. CRAP, I kick the door shut and yell for Superman. We have a bird delay.  He heads out to do some bird chasing with a broom.  Vern appears. I tell him to quickly open the door let me out with the coffee and shut the door. As he does so the bird flies toward us and Vern freaks and slams the door. No I was not quite out of the way and one of the two cups of coffee spill all down the front of me. After quite a bit swinging the broom we have a KO by Superman (knock out), followed by a toss into the street. As I am backing out of the driveway I see the poor robin sitting up dazed and confused.

Selfie of Vern.

I take the first leg at driving (making up the lost time with my lead foot) and we stop for a picnic lunch in northeast Colorado. There is not much to see in that part of the state but open spaces of brown grass followed by areas of irrigated crops.

By mid afternoon we hit Castle Rock, CO and do some school shopping at outlets. New shoes and school outfits are purchased. Dipping Dots are devoured by the kids and the weather is cool and perfect. Then it is back on the road to our hotel for the evening in Wallensburg, CO. It is just a little spit of a town.  The room was a bit smelly and had a couple bugs but nothing to horrible. I brought the Fabreeze bottle along and all was well. The kids and I swam, played keep away in the pool and had a great time. Wonderful family bonding time.

Day 2 -
Up fairly early as the hotel breakfast only went until 9am. Then it was back on the road to Durango, CO. The drive through the mountains was fun. Hey it was fun because I wasn't driving!  We had a picnic lunch by a small stream through the middle of town. It was nice.

We got checked into our cabin outside of town and the kids went up to the pool and swam while Superman and I relaxed. OHHH how nice it was to do ab-so-lutely nothing. I never do that so I enjoyed every nano second of nothingness. OK, I played Candy Crush and watched some TV but to me that IS nothing. I also read in my book and just enjoyed being away from the rush rush rush of daily life. Did I say how much I enjoyed this evening? I believe I even took a nap!!!! We did go for a walk and saw a small goat farm. LOL

 Day 3 -
This day we enjoyed breakfast at 7000+ feet. Food tastes heavenly when you are on vacation. It must be why you eat so much.  After breakfast we were off to Mesa Verde National Park.  This is an ancient Indian ruins.  We toured 2 of the ruins - Balcony Palace and Cliff Palace. Each tour took an hour and you had to allow 1.5 hours between tours so we spent much of the day at this park.  We had a picnic lunch and tried out our camel back water backpacks. They worked GREAT! We needed them with all the climbing and hiking we did this day. Between the 4 of us we burned through the 2-3 liters in no time.

Ann enjoying the view.

Lunch!

This next photo was the easier of two ladders on the Balcony House tour. I am TERRIFIED of heights so this was so far outside my comfort zone it was not even a little funny. I made it up this ladder but the second more terrifying ladder I froze. People congratulated me when I finally made it to the top shaking like a leaf and mad at myself for being so scared.

On this next photo look way far over there. In the middle of all those rocks is a ladder. Yes, we had to climb that...

These are 800+ year old homes. Amazing how well they have been preserved. Wonderful experience. Glad we spent the day here.

After our trip to Mesa Verde we headed south and west further to the four corners monument. They are finally developing this area and have added booth areas for the vendors. It was a quick fun trip. We got back to the cabin in time for a late dinner and the kids took a quick swim while I cooked. It rained a bit this evening.

Day 4 -
I enjoyed relaxing so much on day 2 we did it again today!  Superman and I walked around town window shopping while the kids went zip lining.  Boy does the time fly when you relax! The hours just fly by or maybe it was the bottles of wine...

But alas it was time to begin packing up for day 5 traveling again.

Day 5 -
This was get up and get moving day. We had to travel back across the mountains. This time I drove. It wasn't to bad except for a nervous Netty passenger. We had a nice lunch before we hit the Great Sand Dunes National Park. What an awesome park! It is mountains of sand right beside a rock mountain. In front of the sand dunes is a cute little stream running through the sand. It's been dry in that area of the state so the cute little stream was just patches of mud...oh well.  We got here in the afternoon and of course a thunderstorm kept us from climbing the dunes. We did manage to get into what I call the foothills of the dunes. You can see from the photos it was not safe to climb when we were there as the lightning has a good chance of hitting you. The warnings were every where. DO NOT CLIMB if thunderstorms in area.

A funny side story - as I was driving through the mountains some white car kept riding my bumper. I went to pass someone and this car got mad because he wanted to pass both of us. Well if you know me....I didn't let him. A few miles down the road he decides to pass me AND a fifth wheel camper. He does get around us with his personalized JAllen plates. I then decide I should pass the fifth wheel camper and as I am about to do so I see police lights. I abort the pass and pull back in.  It seems that JAllen got even more aggressive in his driving habits and passed an unmarked police car. I began giggling loudly as JAllen was beside the road and I cruised on by. He just did not have a good day.

We made it to our hotel in one piece. The kids did more swimming in pool. I joined them this evening and we had another fun time floating, talking and giggling.  The kids also demanded Village Inn for dinner...I am not going to expound on that except for it is NOT my favorite place to eat. They enjoyed it and that is what counts. If I can go out on rock ledges for the kids, I can eat at Village Inn.

Day 6 -
Today Ann was the second one out of bed! She had things to do today. This was her day. We were on our way to Elitch Gardens for a fun day of rides and water park. OK, so it was fun for her and the rest of us had an OK time.  I have to say I paid for VIP parking and it was worth the extra $5. Since we went out to the car numerous time during the day it was nice to have the car close. Ann complained a bit but enjoyed riding the coasters even if she went by herself. Health problems prevent Superman and me from riding and Vern gets violently ill riding spinning rides. Vern did go on one roller coaster and felt so bad after that so he didn't do any more. Gotta give him credit for trying! We rode some tamer rides with him (Farris wheel).

We all decided pizza sounded good after a long day at the amusement park. We decided to try Anthony's Pizza for dinner. We ordered a large since we were all starving but large is an understatement. Look at the size of this thing. It is HUGE!!!

After dinner we nestled into our hotel room and watched some TV. We had a My Cat from H#ll marathon. It was fun. We can relate having 4 cats that all hate each other.  The kids swam for little while but quickly joined us watching TV until lights out.

Day 7 -
Up fairly early and yet another hotel breakfast. By now I am soooooo tired of hotel breakfasts. We get loaded and moving on down the road to home.  We have a decent sized SUV but today after all that togetherness it was a long ride and we were all too close together. The kids and the grown-ups got in each other's bubble. (Personal space.) Boy were we glad to pull into the driveway that night.

To top it all off the kids had to turn around and head to the Grand Canyon on Day 8 with a same type of trip with their father!!! I didn't hear much about that trip except it sounded like more of the same - driving and seeing stuff.