Long time comin'!

Well, a lot has happened to this family since the last blog. How to start...well, we took the kids down to Colorado for Peg's Peace Corps reunion. It was fantastic! We spent several days just outside of Winter Park at the YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch. We took my niece Bridget with us to help with the kids and she was fantastic. We flew into Denver and drove up to Winter Park. We got a free upgrade on the car and ended up with an SUV. What a great upgrade considering we had 5 people in the car and two were in car seats.

Our time at the ranch was fantastic. We spent our first day, July 4th, in Granby for the 4th of July parade. It was great. The kids had their first lollipops and we got to see a VERY large flag. The kids were pretty enthralled by the whole thing. They stayed near the curb and just watched the flurry of activity every time someone threw candy at the crowd. Luckily they had cousin Bridget because she took care to make sure they got their share of the candy.

The kids played their first round of mini-golf, we rode horses around the ranch.
We rode the chair lift to the top of the mountain at Winter Park Ski resort. We drove up to Grand Lake and spent a day there as well. We had a fantastic time. Peg's Peace Corps friends are about as nice a group of people as anyone could meet.

We then drove down the mountain and spent time with Margaret, Matt, Bridget and Aiden...oh, and Jet! We had an extremely relaxing fun time hanging out with them and sleeping in their extravagant basement. :-)

Matt and I played golf at Arrowhead one day. What a fantastic course! Matt had a spectacular round and I played my highly erratic self.

The trip was everything we had hoped it would be and the flight home was completely uneventful with the kids.

Like I said, it's been busy. Last weekend we traveled down so New Ulm to hang out with Peg's family. It was Heritage Fest and it was pretty minimally attended from what we could tell. We did spend one night out and visited with Lumpy for the first time in a very long time. It was nice to see Lumpy.

Eric's family came into town also. We ate out at the Keiserhof for dinner one night and spent the afternoon on the Schells Brewery Tour. Overall a very good weekend.

This weekend we plan to head down to Owatonna for an evening with Peg's friends from Chicago how are in town for the weekend. Pehaps more to come after this weekend!

Pat.

We've been a little busy......

One rainy day, though haven't been many, we decided it was time to paint. It turned into a finger painting extravaganza, and we ended up with a really cool hand print of each. Hazel is on the left, and Ollie is on the right.

We had a string of pretty hot days and decided it was time to play in the water. Here Oliver and Hazel are running through the new hose. It is pretty fun with all the little hoses squiggling and wiggling. Just last weekend we had an opportunity to go to a friend's family farm! It was so much fun! The kids got to pet little baby calves, chase some big cows, have a wagon ride, see horses both old and brand new, and we had a picnic! It was a fabulous day until Oliver fell off his seat at the picnic table onto the cement patio. OUCH!! But, he handled it pretty well, and was back to normal by the time we got home. We were lucky enough to have our niece Bridget staying with us for a couple days. It was really fun to have her here to go to parks, beaches, and swimming pools!

On Friday we are off for Colorado. I have a Peace Corps reunion in Winter Park for a few days, and then we are going to spend some time with Pat's sister and her family near Denver. We are so excited about the trip, and I am soooo excited to flying and not driving!!