Wow - I missed a whole month on the blog! Oops... I'm obviously a bit behind. I'll try to work on it in the next few days.
I took the kids to Minnesota June 1-14 and had a really great time. We did a lot of fun things and just enjoyed being together for an extended period of time. I ordered a whole Shutterfly book on our trip, so I'll probably keep it short on the blog. We took a trip out to North Dakota, took in a Redhawks game, experienced Summerfest and rode in Grandpa's fire truck in the parade, spent a night in West Fargo with Swensons, saw Grandma and Grandpa's new house (WOW!), spent a beautiful evening at Auntie Angie and Uncle JP's, played with cousins, went to Dairyland, and spent some great time with grandparents. It was well worth the 2760 miles on the road. :) Thanks, Mom, for your hospitality and for flying to Denver and helping drive us to MN!
On the way home, we stayed one night in North Platte, NE just to break up the drive. On the 15th, we finished the last few hours in the car and ended in Denver to meet up with Matt who participated in a 100-mile (century) bike ride as a fundraiser for Young Life. He started at 6:30 and finished around 2:15. He participated with a team of 12 people from Canon and they rode together all day (except for one guy who came in 10 minutes later). It was fun to see him cross the finish line! The kids were very excited to see Daddy again; Alanna would not let Matt put her down for a few hours after the ride. :) We spent the night in Denver at a hotel with four other families that had members that also did the ride. Sunday, Father's Day, we ate a huge breakfast, swam one more time in the hotel, and then headed for home. It was so nice to get home!
So what was Matt doing while we were in Minnesota? Well, he worked probably 55 hours the first week we were gone and was at YL camp the second week. He went straight from camp to the bike ride in Denver and managed to do the whole 100 miles on little to no sleep (7 hours over the 2 nights prior to the ride - yikes!). Matt also managed to get in several bike rides both on his road bike and his mountain bike. He hiked to the top of Twin Sisters peak one day and did all the things that are hard to find time to do when our family is all together.
The latter half of the month has been spent doing nothing at all. :) I've been taking the kids to free lunch at the high school as often as possible, and we've had a few playdates here and there, but mostly we have just been hanging around. Since I'm not teaching piano/voice this summer, we have nothing on our daily schedule. Last Sunday we took a day trip to Breckenridge and enjoyed the higher altitude and cooler temperatures. This weekend we had some later afternoon clouds roll in which also provided some relief from the heat. One thing about summer in Canon City is that it's bound to be hot, hot, hot for a long, long time. :S Right after our MN trip, we came back to hazy, smoke-filled skies for several days in a row. It got old very quickly. It's like hanging your head over a campfire for hours upon hours and not being able to get away from that smell. Our sheets smelled like smoke. Our whole house smelled like smoke. The air filter on the van sucked up a bunch of ash so it smelled like smoke in the van every time we drove anywhere. It was awful for a while! It's better now, even though there are still several fires throughout the state.
In other news, Alanna now says fish, tent, hat, book, hold you, more, oh bummer, and a whole bunch of other words. She's getting really brave and will try to say just about anything, even if it comes out nothing like it should. Charlie has taken a new interest in basketball and will ask you several times a day to play cars with him. His favorite phrase these days is "No, I'm not!" Ugh.
July will be a whole new month of activities and fun; birthdays, YoungLives camp for me in Arizona, Grandma and Grandpa R come for a visit (to watch the kids while I'm at camp!), playtime and pool time with friends, etc. Bring it on! Happy 4th!
