Dunk tank party

Happy birthday to Mattie! I can't believe she is turning 10 years old.  Her party was last week (her birthday is not until this Tuesday - we had to have it early because she wanted to rent a dunk tank and it's availability was pretty limited).  We had a bunch of really cute and happy kids over, and hopefully they all had a great time.  They played in the dunk tank quite a bit - way too many of them in there at a time, until we shooed them out so they weren't falling on each other's heads.  We had a whipped cream eating contest - that's when the camera came out, so the pictures start here:





Look at those happy sticky faces!  You might ask, where is Pierce - was he there?  Maybe you can see him there off in the corner in the dunk tank, with his good friend Lexie.  He does not like whipped cream.




No time to write down the list of who gave her what - we used the camera instead. :)  This way we can give her friends a picture with their thank-you.






I love how people wandered by the back of the pictures.




Mattie picked a homemade ice cream cake.  It was really quite good.  It's chocolate cake, blue frosting (okay, it was kind of seafoam green instead), and cookies & cream ice cream, with chocolate drizzled on the top.  YUM.


Maybe you can tell in these pictures - the flower lei was on fire for most of the time we were singing/blowing out the candles.  Next time I should be more careful about flower placement.




She was so happy - I hope it was a great 10th birthday party for her. And the fun part about doing it ahead of time is that we still get to celebrate this week too! (Fortunately there is still about half an ice cream cake in the freezer!)  I love you Mattie!

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 :)