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On our way home from Breckenridge, we took a detour in Idaho Springs and did a little whitewater rafting with Liquid Descent. What a blast! They had all the equipment (wetsuits - yuck - ugly but warm), drove us to the right spots and took a bunch of great pictures. Afterwards, we all agreed that this is something that we must do again and again!
We made our first foray into the mountains as a family courtesy of Mike's job. His organization was hosting a conference in Breckenridge, so we decided to tag along to make sure he didn't get lonely in that great big resort all alone. While he attended sessions during the day, we wandered around the town, visited the stables to check out the horses, swam, found a fabulous crepe place, read books and watched TV. Marisa has a dozen shows that she's addicted to, so I had quite a challenge getting her out the door each day. (I'm seriously ready to toss all screens out the door - except for my computer, of course. hee hee)
Jillian's favorite memory of the trip is sure to be my lapse in mental acuity. That is her favorite spectator sport these days. As we were walking along, I saw a neat sculpture and commented how cool I thought it was. Jillian was more that happy to point out that we were right outside the Bubba Gump restaurant and that the sculpture was in fact a Forrest Gump scene. oh.
As expected, my favorite part of being in the mountains was hiking through the forest. I love trees!
Marisa enjoyed climbing the snow "mountains" that were here and there along the ski slopes. She was Queen of the Mountain!
Our new town has a event every year called Parker Days - a combination carnival and street market. Jillian ditched us for her friends, but Marisa and Mike rode all kinds of rides. As you can see, from the smiles she had a blast!
I managed to snap a couple pics of Jillian while she was stuck on a ride and unable to stop me...
All the girls in Marisa's Brownie troop were excited all year for the campout in a tipi. Finally the day arrived... along with thunder and lightening. Arrgh! But they still had a chance to play in the tipi for a little while, so not all was lost.
We were at the Plains Conservation Center, so we got to go out for a ride in the prairie. With my super keen vision, I spotted a coyote off in the distance - our guide hadn't seen one on the property for two years - so I felt pretty darn special. Unfortunately, it was too far off to get a good picture. We also saw tons of prairie dogs and heard their odd little yips. And we learned that antelopes in America aren't really antelopes at all; they're actually pronghorns and a whole bunch of them live on this little bit of prairie.
After a snack of s'mores (of course!) it was time to bed down. Marisa was the first one in her sleeping bag and the first one asleep. And the first one to snore. Oops! But she was a cutie anyway!
The latest Light of Mine service project was helping out at Saddle Up! - a local therapeutic riding facility for people with special needs. Since Marisa has been riding at places like this for a couple years, it was totally up our alley.
I stuck with Marisa and we cleaned feed buckets, dusted the arena and disinfected toys. She also taught me how to groom. The older kids were all over the place - cleaning helmets, organizing buckets of supplies and building a fence.
All the kids ended with grooming. The perfect final task for a day at the ranch.
As I was about to take Marisa's picture, Duke decided he wanted to pose and swung his giant head around. Big surprise for Marisa!
At the end of the day, Marisa was totally done!
This is where the new house is going to be built.
View toward the curb...
The street ends at a cul-de-sac down the street on the right. A bike path starts there leading into a wildlife conservation area.
This is the view behind the house....
It's green space for a couple hundred feet, and then a new street is laid out to build sometime in the future. Maybe that won't happen very soon and we'll continue to have a nice view!
Jillian ended 7th grade last week and today was Marisa's last day of 3rd grade (that's her with her teacher Ms. Murphy.)
They're both ready for days full of relaxing. Unfortunately, I've got quite a bit on the calendar! Marisa will be going to bike class to finally learn to ride. Jillian has band camp and Marisa has day camp in July. We're all going to Breckenridge in a couple weeks and then Florida at the end of the month.
