Happy Birthday Angela! We hope you enjoy your day! You continue to look WAY younger than you are old! 🙂 Love you beautiful!
In addition to Angela’s birthday, we had a visitor come to stay with us from Illinois! Ally Tanner (one of Brittany’s good friends) came out to visit and will be staying with us for the next few days. She is a great friend and we really like their family. Brittany, as you can imagine, was SUPER excited!
Today was the boys first day of school at Clear Sky Elementary. It was also Ben’s first day of elementary school as a new Kindergartner! 😐 That’s the last first day of Kindergarten we’ll ever have for one of our own! 🙁 We were feeling really old today! Ben was a bit nervous to go but was excited as well.
When they got to school, Angela walked Ben into class. We didn’t know about specific traditions, like the kids all getting there early on the first day of school, so Ben was early to school but a little late getting into his class with everyone else. He jumped right in and looked like he was going to have a GREAT time! Zach hit the ground running as a new 4th grader with no snags and we know he’ll do great too!
Kindergarten is full day but only on Monday, Wednesday, and every other Friday here. You have to pay extra for full-day every day Kindergarten. That makes things nice because it saves Angela having to make extra trips to the school! 🙂 The boys got out right on time and were really excited to tell us all about their first day!
They can’t wait for tomorrow! As a reward, Angela let them hang around the park by the school for awhile and play, which was a good thing. It got a lot of their excess energy out for when they got home! 🙂 Great first day boys!
Yesterday afternoon we packed up and went on our first family camping trip in Colorado! We were very excited to get out and into nature. The place we picked is called Devil’s head and is pretty close to us. It’s MUCH better than a forest preserve with a mowed lawn! 🙂 It is a beautiful area. There are campsites there and the trailhead to the Devil’s Head Fire Lookout, which is actually in use!
When we got there, we put up camp, built a fire, and ate dinner. Then the boys went exploring. We had a great time relaxing and enjoying the beautiful night. At first it looked like it would rain a bit (typical afternoon), but then it cleared up and the night was beautiful and perfect for camping.
After dinner we made s’mores and the girls used Oreos instead of graham crackers. They coined the term S’moreos! 🙂
This morning we got up early and went the boys, Angela and I went on the hike up to the top of Devil’s Head. Kirstyn twisted her ankle last night and wasn’t feeling too much like walking, so Brittany volunteered to stay behind with her and sleep. 🙂 The hike was absolutely amazing and we got some GREAT pictures!
When we got to the top, there are about 230+ stairs that you climb up into thin air to get to the lookout post that is situated on the top of the rocks. There is a ranger house up there that is occupied by rotating shifts of forest service personnel.
We could have spent a long time up there taking in the views, but we had a baptism to get to so we had to hurry back down the trail to the car, pack up everything and get home to shower the smoke from the fire off of us. 🙂 The baptismal service (Kelsey Fradin in our ward) was nice and we went over to their home afterward and hung out, ate some food, and chatted with extended family members. It was great getting to know them better!
Today was a busy day. The boys had swimming lessons (which have been going on all week) and really love them. They are quite the fish out of water. 🙂 Their teachers are having them jump off the diving boards and everything. Ben was a little nervous about that at first, but after the first time, that’s all he wanted to do…forget about the technique and actual swimming strokes!
Tonight we had back-to-school night for the boys. They are really excited to be at Clear Sky Elementary, and their teachers seem really good, especially Zach’s teacher. She comes highly regarded from many people we know. We know he’ll have a GREAT year! We were hoping that the boys could have gotten into Aspen View Academy (the new charter school that is just finishing up just across the way from us) but that’s OK. They’ll do great wherever they are! 🙂
After running over to back to school night for the boys, we went over to the high school to attend a freshman parent meeting for Kirstyn. We are excited about her being at Castle View High School! It will be a great and challenging thing for her and we hope she does well. We were able to meet, introduce ourselves to, and talk with the principal there and we were really impressed with him. He seems to have very high values (not just educational, but personal and moral ones as well). Brittany and Kirstyn will love that environment.
Today we had a great and relaxing time! We went to a free concert at Butterfield park (that the Meadows sponsors every year). They brought in a U2 cover band. They were really good, but didn’t play a lot of the really familiar stuff. It was a beautiful evening and with some food, camp chairs, and blankets to sit on as well, it was nice. We invited the Liddell family who came over as well and it was great to kick back and chat with them.
There were also lots of companies there with booths trying to drum up business so the boys got a bunch of free stuff, and Angela and I got “concert series” t-shirts. 🙂 We also ran into our insurance agent who we had a great chat with. She told us to make sure we come over at Thanksgiving to the office to pick up our free pie that they give out to all their clients. 🙂 Sounds good to me!
What a GREAT way to end the month of July! 🙂
Today we are official Colorado residents! We went to the DMV and got our driver’s licenses! Fortunately, all we had to do was take the eye exam. We didn’t have to take the written test like we did when we first moved to Illinois. That was a relief, especially for Brittany!
Zach and Ben also started swimming lessons today at the Recreation Center and had a GREAT time!
Today, I left really early from home and went and picked up the girls from camp. They had a GREAT time and absolutely loved it! The bear thing wasn’t a big deal, although one was spotted, and sleeping in tents was a lot of fun for them. Brittany was a Youth Camp Leader (YCL) this year like she was last year. This was her last year of camp, and it was both exciting and sad for her at the same time.
I helped them pack everything up and then helped our ward pack up and we came home. The girls were exhausted and after the mandatory shower and unpack/cleanup, they went to sleep and slept most of the day. 🙂
Good to have them back home!
Happy Pioneer Day everyone! We didn’t do anything special today… Just hung out and missed the girls who are at camp.
Brittany and Kirstyn left today for girl’s camp! They were a bit nervous because they had never had an experience at girl’s camp like this one would be! 🙂 Instead of staying in A/C cabins and eating in a A/C lodge, everything was outdoors, and they slept in tents the whole week! 🙂 They also had bear whistles and bear patrols to keep the kids safe! In IL, the most dangerous thing you could run into was a skunk. We’ll see how they do! 🙂
Today we took a trip down/up to Pike’s Peak! It’s not a very long drive from here, and you can drive all the way to the top. 🙂 Our 2nd 14er in the bag! 🙂 The view up there was really pretty and it was a great day for it! We didn’t think it was a stunning as the view from Mount Evans, and it was a LOT more tourist-based, but it was a lot of fun. Sometime we’ll have to ride the cog train up to the top as well. The drive up to the top wasn’t near as nerve-racking as the drive to Mount Evans so that was a plus! What is amazing to me is how many people bike to the top! We also saw some joggers! Holy cow! No wonder CO is the healthiest and fittest state in the nation!
After we saw the sights at the top, we went into the gift shop and browsed around for a bit. They also have a cafe where supposedly they have the best doughnuts in the world. They say that doughnuts made at that altitude taste better than normal ones. We bought some and they were good, but they weren’t exactly the best ones we had ever had. 🙂
At that altitude, staying up there for too long being the “newbies” that we were, we were starting to get a little light-headed, so we drank a bunch of water and started our way back down into thicker air. We saw one guy up there totally pass out and hit the floor from a standing position. They have multiple EMTs up there to handle tourists with altitude sickness. It’s a really common thing. Even being in Castle Rock at only 6,300 feet, you can feel the difference whenever you walk, exercise, etc. We get worn out faster! 🙂
On the way back down, we were told we got off the mountain at the right time because they were expecting a big storm to come through. They had one such storm last week and it stranded everyone up there for 3 hours or so until they could plow the roads. At that altitude, it doesn’t rain much! All it does is snow.
On our way back home, we drove through “Garden of the Gods” and we also ate lunch at Rudy’s, our favorite BBQ place that we got to know on our trip to Texas last year! YUM!
EFY ended today and the girls were really bummed! They made a TON of new friends and absolutely loved the program! At first, they weren’t sure that they would (not being able to stay on a campus and all that goes with that), but they were proven wrong big time! Kirstyn can’t wait to do that program again next year! 🙂 We love sending the kids to EFY because they end the week on such a high spiritual note they are so pleasant to be around! 🙂
Today we had our first visit from Chicago friends! The Cerda family just happened to be out in the Denver area for a soccer tournament and called to see if they could come over! 🙂 It was great to see them! Zach was SUPER excited to see his best friend from Illinois again! We had a hard time pulling them apart when it was time to go! 🙂
We had a great time catching up on everything that was going on in the old neighborhood. We love it so much out here in Castle Rock but we sure do miss our good friends from back in IL. What a blessing it is to have modern transportation and the ability to see people from far away more often! 🙂
