Colorado vacation

We had such a fun vacation in Colorado this summer!  I'm posting... everything... because, why not?  Thanks so much to my wonderful family - we had a great time and we appreciate you!

Our first night in Fort Collins, Doug & Heather very kindly provided pizza at the park.  It was great!  And what a nice park.  Fort Collins has had record rainfall this spring & summer - everything was beautiful.




Uncle Doug has been driving the Kona truck part time this summer, and we went to the park where he was selling to soccer families.  The kids (okay, and all of us) loved getting some Kona ice!






























The next day we had a great time rafting on the Poudre with Mike & Sage.  I didn't bring my camera, but we loved it.  The kids especially enjoyed getting to go down twice, and this time Pierce didn't even fall in. :)  Then after the rafting trip, we all got to help celebrate Grandma's birthday.  We ate a great dinner, the kids sang her a song that Doug wrote, and we got to chat with Miq's family and Jeanette's too.  At the end we sang Grandma "happy birthday" and she got back in the van.  She was so happy, she was just beaming as she left.  I was really happy to get this picture of her.


And then it was on to the cabin!  One morning Zoe and I were eating breakfast on the deck and some little butterflies kept landing on the table next to us.






Pierce (and lots of the other kids) tried so hard to catch a fish.  Like Dad said, the fishing was great, but the catching wasn't so much.  (Nobody even had a nibble, except when Dad caught a duck.)


It was kind of  funny, Doug decided to take a swim in the lake.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that before.  Then he carried his cute baby back in the backpack. :)





Mattie was really happy to be in some pictures.  Some better than others. :)


Zoe too (always on the lookout for a marshmallow handout).


Pierce and Porter were very inspired river engineers.  They dug around like crazy.  (Dad did some restoration at the end.)






Caitlyn is such a darling little girl.  We loved getting to know her a little better!
























































And we spent some time in the pool... with lollipops!  (Not quite at the same time.)


































I love the cute goggles-marks.


Caitlyn was sad in the pool, which was really cute, but it didn't last - as soon as I started taking pictures she cheered right up.






Pierce and Mattie made this delicious treat - it's a candy campfire!  (I'm sure the picture is self-explanatory, but just in case...) There is peanut butter, candy corn, pretzels, kit-kat bars, and marshmallows.  We love to make food sculptures.




And we just kept trying with the fishing.  And trying....












I was trying to take pictures of the fish jumping (jumping, but not biting!).  All I got was some empty splashes.






Zoe came over shouting "Mommy, take a picture of this really cute beetle!"  Just the cutest little beetle ever.


And Heather found this really interesting larvae in the stream water - it's the larvae of some kind of fly, and it makes this little shell-like thing out of gravel.  So cool.




On our last morning there, we went on a nice hike to the big rocks on Palmer Trail. I love how easy it is to hike now that the kids are getting a little bigger.


















Zoe just had to get in the picture of Mattie :)

Some summer fun stuff

My heart is almost breaking, thinking of the kids starting school next week. Summer is so short. I hate it when they go back to school. Some days this summer I have been ready for them to be gone during the day, but looking back at some summer pictures just makes me wish they could stay home forever.

It's been a very big summer for bugs at our house.   Pierce has studied them extensively, along with his friend Parker.  Fortunately for us, Parker is keeping the bulk of their catches in his yard instead of in ours.  But we do tend to have families of roly-polies in various containers in our back yard.  (The poor things.)  Here, Pierce and Zoe had studied some of their roly-polies and Pierce helped Zoe make a drawing.  I love that Zoe still makes her Z's sideways (she considers it a Z, never mind it looks like an N).


And here are some facts that they observed. I believe that Pierce wrote down what Zoe dictated that she'd learned through their roly-poly study together.  Then they categorized two different types: "fast" and "slow".  He's still not sure what the actual distinction is (and neither am I!).  This is wrinkled because it was taped to the roly-poly jar for weeks until we threw it away after we caught a sun scorpion, and killed it, and the jar smelled really bad.


Another cool Pierce project - he loves to make food creations.  He made these little frogs (or "frogies") for his family and some friends one day.  He was sooooooooo excited to share them.  And, he's truly my son, because he knew he should take some pictures of them too!








I've managed to not take the kids on too many photo sessions this summer, but for this one they came along.  Pierce read all 7 Harry Potter novels this summer, and started to re-read them, but Matt told him he needed to read something else between Harry Potter books the second time around.  So here he is reading a token "other book".  Pierce has been reading like CRAZY this summer.  Only in the last few days has he switched to building with his erector set instead of reading all the time.


Zoe always wants to be in the picture.  Here I'm sure she is thinking of a marshmallow.






We have kept so busy this summer. I think we were too busy. In the beginning, in June, the kids had a bunch of sports camps. I liked it, I thought it was good for them. Both Mattie & Pierce did a short soccer camp at the high school, and Pierce loved it (Mattie said the kids were kind of mean). It was pretty casual, from my point of view, and they seemed to mainly scrimmage - no wonder Pierce loved it, he could play all day. Then Pierce did a basketball camp there, which I thought had great structure and I think he learned a lot. He got the "best shooter" award (and was very disappointed as he wanted the MVP award instead). His shooting has come a long way, for sure. And Mattie did a volleyball camp, which she enjoyed. Mattie also played summer soccer - they did a short 3v3 game on Tuesday nights, and it was low-key because they never really practiced or anything. We had to do some fast talking to get her to try them out at first, but then she was pretty happy to play every week. She ALMOST scored a few times, which we were sooooo hoping she would, but I think it was a positive experience. She had to decide, once & for all, if she wanted to play fall/spring ball again this year, and the day she had to decide she had a really good game. So she decided to play AGAIN. I'm glad in most ways - I hope she keeps on trying her best because when she does, she does a great job. But it's going to be a huge challenge to have three soccer players this fall/spring. (Zoe is now signed up for her first year starting later this month.) We found a great dance studio for Zoe and Mattie - I really liked the teacher, and it was just around the corner, so convenient. Unfortunately, after a month of lessons which they loved, the studio closed. The teacher is hoping to do classes at the community center instead, which I really hope works out, even though it will add just that next layer of complexity to our days. Then Mattie and Zoe participated in a play that a lady in our ward does every year. It was fun for them, they really enjoyed it, but it was a ton of practices for 2 weeks in July, and a huge pain (though I shouldn't complain - we carpooled this year and that helped a lot). The play was Peter Pan - Mattie was a mermaid and an Indian Princess and loved it. Zoe was a fairy dancer, and had to go to a ridiculous amount of practices considering how long she was on stage. I don't think they even got to the fairy dancers half of the time at practice. Anyway, I can't do those plays every year, so next year we will take a break from that. And all 3 kids have been singing in a fun choir that a friend of mine does in the summer. They performed at a local retirement home last week (I have some pictures, hopefully to be posted later) and their main performance is later this week. And we had a great trip to Colorado, someday I'll sort through all those pictures. So anyway, I never got to swim lessons at all (except for a week for Zoe), and we didn't have a lot in the way of totally unstructured days. We did have friends over a lot, which usually I like. I just hate how fast it goes. Maybe if I scheduled nothing at all, the days would drag and we'd be ready for it to be over when it is. In the meantime I just can't think about it.