Hundreds hiding in every picture

You would never know from these pictures, but they were everywhere.  Can you guess?   While you're thinking, I'll tell you about the rest of our awesome camping trip to Grand Mesa.  We met my sister's family in Colorado, half way in between our house and theirs and had a great four days in the mountains.

YuMmY fOoD!

 Banana Boats











Omelets in a bag

Fish caught Russ, Paul and Haley (and Colton)

Bread sticks over the fire 

 Jiffy Pop popcorn to snack on while we did crafts

S'mores with Grandma Jill 

 









LoTs Of HiKiNg

On the discovery trail, learning all about the plants and trees in this area.

The view from the top made this hike well worth it.  We are at almost 11,000ft and were literally on top of the mountains.  It was gorgeous!  This area is called the Land of Lakes, and you can kind of see it, but there are dozens of them.

Grandma joined us for a hike around "Little Gem" lake. 

Shhh, don't tell anybody that Corbin picked the Columbines.  It sure made a beautiful bouquet though!

Camping wouldn't be complete without all the other fun . . .

painting suncatchers and rocks

bubbles

sword fights

And now did you figure it out or did you forget all about it while looking at the plethora of camping pictures.

Here's a clue we called him "squito face".  (I know it's kind of hidden by all the dirt and the bubbles running down his chin, but his face is not normally all red and lumpy like that.)  Poor thing.

My Short Term Identity Crisis (aka. My week in the Swagger Wagon) cont'd.

In case you missed the first post, you can click here.  And I'm not kidding about the identity crisis, I just know that every where I went people ere looking at me and thinking "Oh my gosh, she's one of those moms with five little kids who doesn't know how to park her van."  Serious.  Every where I went people were looking at me and I know they were when I was driving.  I could feel it.  (Sorry to all of you who have a mini-van, and I know that most of you love them, but I'm a Jeep girl and this was a really difficult transition for me.)

But enough of my wallowing in self pity or whatever it is.  I was actually really grateful that I got to have my neice and nephew for a week and that we had a car we could all fit in so we could go and do super fun things every day.  So onto the happy stuff..

Day Four (Tuesday)

Horseback riding, Ziplining, and Swimming in our underwear (the kids, not me).

Colton's first time on the horse by himself.  He liked it, but lasted about 20 seconds once they actually started moving before starting to slip to the side.  He rode with mom after that.

I was very proud of Corbin.  He doesn't ride very often because he is allergic to horses and because of that has developed a slight fear of them.  But he did great and I think he had fun too.

Lexi LOVED riding the horses and was very happy that she got an extra turn at the end and her and Uncle Russ got to ride fast.  She is a natural with those horses!

Levi was a little bit more timid, but they had fun riding together.  Aren't they cute?!

Cody still doesn't like to do it, but everyone else had a great time doing it over and over - even Colton!

[Sorry, not going to post the underwear pics, there are some weirdos out there.  But those boys sure had fun in Grandma Sharee's little plastic pool!]

That afternoon, after "quiet time", we all went to see Toy Story 3.  It was good, the kids loved it, Colton was almost entertained, but I'm still not convinced it was worth the $60 we dished out.  Maybe next time we'll just stick with movies at home.

Day Five

Hiking the Grotto Trail and a Service Project.

(Why are my sisters kids smiling and all my kids are grumpy pants?)

We made it to the waterfall!

And of course you have to have shaved ice after working so hard on the hike.

You can read more about our service project on my other blog (which is quite sad at the moment and woefully behind on our Summer of Service), but the long and the short of it is we went to a park, had a picnic and picked up trash.  We noticed last time we went to this park that it was in serious need of a clean up, and we were right.  We filled our trash bag and could have done more.  Of course we did plenty of playing while we were there too, but every time they brought me a piece of trash, they got a jelly bean.  It worked out great!

Day Six

Swimming!  (We did clean the house in the morning too, but who wants to blog about that.)  Russ and Colton stayed home and took naps and Grandma Sharee went with me and the four kids, and we had a great time!  It was such a hot day, I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Cody jumped in the pool about a thousand times, right in the same spot, over and over.

Everyone loved the lazy river.

Corbin went down the fast slide!  What a brave kid!

And now for the real truth, obviously (or not) this is a back post, and right now we are actually on vacation in Oregon.  And now it is 11:15pm, which is really past midnight our time, so I am getting quite sleepy . . . so much to your sadness, I'm sure, this post is once again . . .

To Be Continued . . .

Taking Time Out

[Playing catch-up on all my El Salvador adventures]

Yes, I did work my butt off in while I was there.  Most days were up at 5 or 6am and didn't get to bed until 11 or 12 (or later).  There was lots of traveling and walking and trying to stay focused so I could understand everything in Spanish.  But I did get some reprieve on the weekends.  The first Saturday we took the bus 2 hrs away to a cute little town called Suchitoto, which was located on Lake Suchitlan.  It was beautiful!

We ate lunch at a quaint little place called El Gringo (or something like that) and, surprise, it was run by a gringo.  He was a big tall guy from California married to a short little Salvadoran woman.  Nice thing was that you knew you could trust the food.  Best part about that was that we could actually enjoy the yummy smoothies that are so popular there.  And oh were they good.

 

We took a little boat trip out to an island called La Isla Pajarita.  It's this random island that is now protected because there are 14 species of birds that have decided to make their homes there.  They come back the same time every year.  This lake has many islands, but this is the only one with all the birds on it. Weird, huh?

(There are at least four or five different birds above, can you find them?)

The next weekend, I wanted to do something a little more adventurous . . .

ZIPLINING!!  In all my adventures, it's something I've never done and I totally loved it!

This isn't me, but you can see how far it is!  And the view was amazing!

We also took a hike after lunch out to this old volcanic lake.  It was pretty, but not the coolest thing I've ever seen.  The police officers were amused by all our silly picture taking, so we made them take a picture with us too.

We had some great weekend adventures, ate lots of yummy food, and got to see more of the beautiful country of El Salvador.  I loved it!