Camping at Echo Lake

We spent a very cold weekend camping at Echo Lake.  It's beautiful up at 10,600 feet, but definitely fall weather.  We actually saw snowflakes Friday night when we went to bed!  On a whim, I threw in hand and feet warmers from our ski stuff, and those worked like a charm in our sleeping bags!

We drove up to Mt. Evans...the views are spectacular and the boys loved watching the clouds rush by.

You can park and walk to the actual summit of Mt. Evans, but the wind was blowing so forcefully we weren't sure the boys could stay upright.

 So, they got out of the car to experience the wind and then came right back.  Justin had to hang on to them to keep them from blowing over!

 Jacoby said he couldn't breathe or keep his eyes open!

 We saw a herd of mountain goats.

 We came back down and had a picnic at Echo Lake.  Here are the great minnow catchers.

 It was very chilly and rained off and on all day.  The boys didn't seem to mind.

 We had fun exploring the forest around our campsite.

 And we hiked a bit into the Mt. Evans wilderness area.

Once the rain moved out, the wind started gusting and it got really chilly.

 Thank goodness for our shelter when it was raining!

Boys and their sticks!

This guy doesn't care about the weather...as long as we're camping, he's happy!

Back to School!

It's hard to believe the boys are back in school already!  Jacoby started Monday and Morgan Ethan finally got to go to school today.  They were really excited for school to start.  As I mentioned, we feel so very blessed and grateful for their teachers.  Both have been so warm and receptive to the boys' allergies, medications, etc.  It's going to be a great year!

And with that, here is a photo dump of all the pictures we've taken:

 Our big second grader!

 A photo shoot with a boy just wouldn't be the same without some nonsense and silliness thrown in.

 The brothers

 Mommy and the big son

 Here's one of Jacoby's BFFs...they're not in the same class this year, but they sit together at the peanut-free table and play at recess.  

 First day of school madness

 Morgan missed Jacoby a lot and was very glad to have him home on Monday and Tuesday.

 Daddy and Jacoby

 Our Kindergartner!

 Again with the nonsense...

 Jacoby has been filling Morgan in on all the ins and outs of Kinder

 I can't believe my little one is in school!  Sniff.

 Mommy and the young son

 All the Kinders in line

 And off they go!

Morgan came home and said his teacher, Miss T., is awesome. I think that's a good sign. (:

Summer's End

We have had the best summer!  I have really enjoyed being at home with the boys, and we've just had the best adventures together.  I'm a little bit sad to see it come to an end, but we are sure excited about the upcoming school year and all that it will hold.

After we got back from Montana, play dates were on the top of the list.  We met up with one of Jacoby's BFFs from school and his little brother for a morning of miniature golf.  Four boys with golf clubs!  It was quite the site to see!

We had an outdoor movie in our backyard.

One of my so-called "projects" this summer has been training for a marathon.  It's been as much about building mental stamina as physical stamina, especially when I start out for a long, long run at 5 am and it's dark out.  Thank goodness for a little Van Halen and Bruce Springsteen blasting away on my tunes to make the miles go by! (:

We finally made it to Water World.  It took all summer but we got there and boy did we have a blast!  We were there for 7 hours, and truthfully, the only reason we left when we did was because Mommy and Daddy were wiped out.  We went down crazy water slides (Mommy screamed a lot), played in the wave pool, and the boys had a blast in the smaller kids area.  The boys loved anything fast and furious, and I discovered that anything faster than the lazy river is considered too intense in my book.  It was a great, great day.

The boys were whipped by the time we got back to the car.

I'll be posting back to school pictures later this week, but we are already feeling so blessed and grateful for the boys' teachers.  I think they're going to have an awesome year!

Trip to Montana

We had a wonderful, whirlwind visit to Montana at the end of July!  We really enjoyed spending time with our family and having some downtime from real life.  (:

The boys loved getting reacquainted with Cousins Des and Jax.

They had a wonderful time together.

There was no shortage of imagination, action, and NOISE when the four of them were together!

Cousins being silly for pictures

We spent a morning at Zoo Montana with the Haggerty clan.

And the boys love hanging out with this lady.

Jacoby spent time outside chatting with Aunt Kenzie about various issues in the world...and also finally got comfortable with her dog, Maddie.

A highlight for me was Girls Night with my favorite girls!  We got pedicures and went out for a delicious dinner together.

We spent some time in Bozeman for Justin's 20th high school reunion.  We hiked up to the "M".

And once it was finally time to head back to Colorado, we drove through the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park.  It was so beautiful and we saw a lot of wild life.

Beautiful Tower Falls

A bald eagle

Two bikers offered to take our picture right as we were about to exit the park

We spent the night in Cody, WY and then visited the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis.

It was a very cool museum with lots to see.

It was a great trip!  Thanks to everyone who hosted us, fed us, and spent time with us!

Busy Summer Days

We are busy these days!  The boys have been in swimming lessons everyday for the past two weeks.  And Jacoby is in a Lego engineering camp this week.  We've been having a lot of fun.  I'll let the pictures do most of the talking...

 The boys and I took advantage of a rare cool, cloudy day and visited the zoo.  We got there early, so the animals were quite active and interesting.

 They rode the carousal by themselves.

 We did a food allergy project where we cut out pictures of food from magazines.

 And then we glued the pictures into our "Safe" and "Not Safe" categories.  As you can imagine, we are talking a lot about this with Morgan, since he's off to Kinder in a month.

 We spent a day swimming at the pool and Jacoby conquered one of the big slides.  I lost track of how many times he went up and down this thing!

 The boys have been good buddies this summer and are always coming up with new ways to entertain themselves.

 They've also been really into reading this summer.  We can barely keep enough books in the house for Jacoby!  He's read through several book series, most of the Calvin and Hobbes books, and is now quite a ways into both The Hobbit and The Two Towers.  So thankful to have boys who love to read!

 The boys wanted to do some science experiments, so we tried rainbow eruptions one afternoon when thunderstorms kept us inside.

 These were simple but fun and interesting!

 Pretty rainbow colors.

 The boys picked blueberries off of our bushes.

And we've spent countless hours at a bunch of different parks around town!

We're off to Montana in a few days to spend time with family.  Justin will also be attending his 20th high school reunion.  And after that, it's a short couple of weeks before school begins!