Whew! Where do I even begin? As the title states we have been quite busy these past few days. We had been looking forward to the Labor Day holiday weekend for some time because we were headed to Minnesota.

The first stop on the agenda (other than Mike’s mom’s house) was the Minnesota State Fair. Mike was so envious that he had to miss it last year, so there was no stopping him this year. We made the usual runs to the animal barns, giant slides, dairy building to see the butter sculptures, and several fattening food vendors. The extra 10 pounds I left with were so worth it.

Striking a pose at the fair.

Cowboy Matt and Cowgirl Hayley.

The kids got to pet/feed various animals including goats, lambs, and horses.

The butter sculptures are always a fun attraction.

On Sunday Jake, Mike’s brother, invited us to the Lafayette Club where he’s the executive chef for their annual carnival. Jake gifted us with numerous tickets so that we didn’t have to spend a dime the entire night. There were tons of good eats including the best corn-on-the-cob, mini doughnuts, and ColdStone Creamery ice-cream. The kids had numerous activities to keep them busy, too, such as several bouncy houses, a few inflatable slides, and pony rides. The end of the night was the fireworks show which was probably one of the best I’d ever seen with a finale that seemed to never end. We were very impressed with the entire event and hope to get invited back in the future (wink::wink::hint::hint). Thanks a zillion, Jake!

Of course, we couldn’t visit Grandma Minnesota without also visiting the Minnesota Arboretum. And that we did on our way out of town on Monday. They now have this kewl shrubbery maze that the girls just loved. First they tried out the Jr. maze and then braved the full maze with Daddy. For some reason both the girls have become fascinated with swamps and ask if any body of water they see is a swamp. Fortunately, we got to see one up close and personal at the Arboretum.

Getting lost, ahem, I mean, finding their way through the maze.

Grandma Minnesota and those silly girls.

Cheers! Making a pit stop at the A&W while on our way home from MN.

We got back late Monday night which means I didn’t get as many preparations completed for Annie’s first day of school the next day. Instead I got up at the bum crack of dawn to get most of it done (we failed to get Annie’s homework assignment done though–decorating a choo-choo train and putting her picture on it). Annie was quite ecstatic for her first day of school to officially arrive and even more excited about riding the bus. Our neighbor’s 9-year-old daughter has been sweet enough to make sure that Annie gets on and off the bus each day. Annie returned home with quite a day full of craziness. Apparently, a brilliant student pulled the fire alarm during her lunchtime not letting her finish. The time it took to clear up that mess also ran into her recess time which meant they didn’t really get any time out there. It was a little disappointing to her (okay it was a lot), but I assured Annie that she would get many many many opportunities to eat and play at school. Her second day went just fine, and she’s already making new friends and getting used to her new schedule.

Boarding the bus for the first of many times.

Oh, the heartbreak of losing her big sister to kindergarten.

Hooray! She made it home.

Next up was Mimi’s first day of preschool which was today. Mimi has been waiting for this for many years as she’s watched Annie go. I was happy to see that there are lots of parents involved with the school (this wasn’t the case at Annie’s preschool in D.C.). However, Mimi was a bit upset when she realized that her lunch box wasn’t going to travel with her to school. She got over it pretty quickly though once we got to school as she entered her classroom. I could barely get her to acknowledge me as I was leaving. When I picked her up she had a smile from ear to ear, so she must have had a wonderful first day.

Look how giddy Mimi is on her 1st day of preschool. Will it always be this way?

Like I said it’s been busy around here, but the fun doesn’t end just yet. We had another joyful event this afternoon. The girls started their ice-skating lessons. And let me tell you I had tears in my eyes to see how cute those 2 girls were flailing and falling all over the ice with their little tights and tutus. Annie made real progress in the 1/2 hour there. She was actually scooting around on her own and able to pick things up off the ice. Mimi was quite a different story, but I have faith that she’ll improve within a few more sessions.

This is how it was for the first half of the class, always on their bums.

Annie got a “helper” who looks like she’s about to fall with Annie any second.

Oops! Looks like I was right.

Keep up the good work, Mimi!

By the end of the class Annie was able to pick up objects from the ice. Way to go!

For those of you who have been patiently waiting for pictures of Mike’s new toy, I have no excuse except to say that I just haven’t had the chance to take any pictures. I promise I will make the effort to take some in the next couple of days. Come on people, I HAVE been busy around here.

I know it’s been a few days since I last posted even though I promised more vacation pictures the day after my last post. However, this past weekend we had an out-of-town wedding to attend and didn’t get back home until late Sunday night. I would have posted first thing Monday morning but Monday was full of various appointments for Annie and Mimi. Annie had her first dentist appointment and was the best patient. I was so proud of her. Yesterday is something I’ll have to post about separately, and I will tomorrow.

Like I said, we attended a wedding of a friend this weekend. Mike and I really didn’t know anyone in attendance, so we thought it would just be he and I to entertain each other. Our luck changed when we discovered that we were seated next to an outgoing couple. The husband and Mike could have been long lost brothers because they had everything in common in the way of hobbies. That guy has even been planning on getting a German short-haired pointer. It was all too weird.

Now back to vacation pictures. I know that you all have just been dying to see more. One day all the kids decided they wanted to go to a resort where they featured alpine slides, bungee launching, and other fun stuff. Mike, I, and the kids joined in the excitement, too, but we decided only to ride the alpine slides. In order to get to the top of the slide you have to take a chair lift. Annie and I shared a chair, and I must admit that I was quite nervous about her little frame in that chair so many feet above the ground. She was very comfortable with the situation though, so I tried my best to not let my fears for her put her on edge. The girls had to ride in the “sled” with an adult, so I had Annie with me. It was a very exciting ride down. I guess many of the older kids got a little too confident and came home with numerous burns on their arms and legs after falling out.

Aunty Sara brought along a fun game called “the Werewolves of Millers Hollow” which the older kids loved. Basically, each player gets a card indicating the character they play throughout the game such as a werewolf (up to 4), cupid (chooses 2 lovers, this caused a lot of laughing), the witch (gets to see who the werewolves chose to eat each round and can use a healing potion once throughout the game or even poison someone once throughout the game), the fortune teller (can choose someone to see their identity), and a few other characters. Most people just end up as townspeople. There is a moderator who does all the talking and guides the players through the game. It’s actually a good time, and I would love to buy it one day for my girls and their friends to play. But I think I’ll wait until they are much older. Thanks, Sara, for letting us old folks play, too.

We discovered that Mike is dangerously close to being the shortest man in his family when he compared heights with Jimmy and Paul. Poor Mike!

I realized that I have no upper body strength when I attempted a pull up on the “pull-up bar”. The teenaged boys were showing off their skills all week, and I thought I would try one (or a quarter of one). Mike could actually do like 14 before his body gave up. The tall, skinny boys were able to do much more though. Ha!

One last thing to report. Annie never ceases to crack us all up. She found that she really liked using the sofa arm cover as a head cover. She thought she looked a lot like Mary (as in Jesus’ mother). So to complete the transformation Annie needed a baby Jesus. Apparently, a ping pong paddle filled that role well enough. So on several occasions we’d catch her in costume playing out that character. She even convinced one of Mike’s cousin’s daughters to play along which is shown below.

Speaking of Mike’s cousin, Megan Tripp and her family came for a day to visit since they only live a couple of hours away. Mike hadn’t seen her since he was a teenager himself. Mike’s sisters were ecstatic to see her, too, and chatted her up the whole time. She now has five kids. I’ve got her family blog linked with family and friends under “What a Tripp!”

Of course, while being up in the mountains you have to hike and explore. So we did that on a few occasions. Jenni, Grandma Olsen, Annie, Mimi, Lucy, and I went on one quick hike to a waterfall close by. The girls got to use their water backpacks. Once we reached the river Lucy was thrilled to frolic around in and drink up the water. And the waterfall was very cool!

Another hike I got to go on was a little more adventurous. It was a bumpy 2-3 mile drive and then about a mile hike to Potato Lake. The hike was uphill the whole way and gave us all a good workout. It was nice and quick on the way back since it was all downhill. Lucy came with us and got herself pretty beat up while running up the mountainside on those rocky hills. She barely moved the rest of the trip after that. Lucy did, however, love swimming around in the lake. The teenagers had gone up to the lake a few nights earlier and went swimming as well. Mike said the water was probably a brisk 40-50 degrees. Buuurrrr!!

Ok, I think I’ve gone on long enough about our fabulous vacation to Durango. But I must conclude with the group shots we got in our awesome tie-die shirts made by the multi-talented Aunty Jenni. Can you believe she made about 40 of those? Thanks so much, Jenni! And that’s not the only time she’s done that. Every other Durango trip had an accompanying tie-die shirt (each time with a different color scheme). She has also made shirts for other events for her kids’ schools, teams, and such. Whew! I can’t even imagine all the work involved. I was the master photographer with my handy tripod. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but I forgot a crucial piece for my tripod and had to use elastic headbands to hold the camera to the tripod. No one was none the wiser.

Here’s the whole group minus 3 people who were having car trouble elsewhere.

And with silly faces.

Grandma Olsen with the grandkids.

Sara’s husband’s dad with his grandkids.

The Evans gang.

The Smith clan.

The Jake Hawley fam.

And the Mike Hawley tribe.

Our first big adventure in Colorado was to visit the Mesa Verde National Park. Since I’m not very good at learning about history and stuff, I’ll just quote what is right on their website:

“Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300. Today, the park protects over 4,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States.”

I didn’t really see where the green table fit in because there wasn’t much green in the dry, rocky mountains, and there were no tables either. The trip up to the first part of the park was quite curvy and inclined which left a lot of wimpy folks (including me) not feeling so great. We stopped for lunch and traveled to the Spruce Tree House which is a self-guided tour through hilly trails which eventually led to one of the ruins. It was quite impressive how much still remained of the dwellings.

The kids enjoyed climbing down this ladder into a room underground. Even Annie and Mimi were up for it despite my being quite nervous.

Here are the girls and I grinding our corn for the evening meal.

It really was a cool place to visit, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys learning a little history.

With being up in the mountains with several lakes and rivers close by there was no way to keep Mike from fishing. He managed to sneak off a few times, twice with the girls and a coupla other young cousins in tow. This was the first time the girls really got to fish. They had been practicing at home with Daddy and their new Barbie rod and reels (no joke–they actually make those). Mike said it would be worth missing catching any fish of his own if he could witness one or both of the girls catching a fish. And, that they did. On the first fishing expedition Annie caught a medium-sized rainbow trout. She was even brave enough to eat it after Jake used his mad, cooking skillz to fry it up for her. I got a few tastes as well, and YUUUUMMM!! The next time out fishing Mimi got to reel a smaller rainbow trout. It was too small to keep, but she was ecstatic, nonetheless. Mike couldn’t have been prouder.

Here’s Annie with her catch!

Now enjoying the prize.

Mimi is overjoyed about her fishy.

Tune in tomorrow for more…

It’s always so difficult to get people excited about seeing and hearing about someone else’s vacation. I know this and accept this. However, I still am going to drone on about the adventure we had in Durango, Colorado last week. To eliminate a little bit of boredom though I will break it up into several parts spread out over the next few days.

So we left town on Friday, August 25th after Mike got out of work. We didn’t leave as early as planned and didn’t arrive in Council Bluffs, Iowa to meet up with Mike’s sister, Sara, and her family that evening. The goal was to meet up with them and then caravan together from there all the way to Colorado over the next couple of days. We arrived to Des Moines that night and bribed the Evans to wait for us until we could drive the 2 hours to Council Bluffs the next morning. They agreed, and we finally reached the Evans gang around 9 a.m. From there we synchronized our watches and made sure walky-talkies were in good, working order and then continued our trek west together.

Frequent stops were made due to little ones needing potty breaks, lunch, gas stops, or brakes overheating. I saw this little guy (below) on one of our stops after hot brakes while driving up and down monstrous inclines/declines. I snuck off for a tee-tee and heard something scurry.

Finally by 4 p.m. on Sunday most parties had arrived to the lodge–43 total people were expected. Now when I say lodge I mean a large log cabin that can sleep up to 80 people, has a commercial-grade kitchen, and is as rustic and authentic as you’d expect a lodge in the mountains to be. It was chock full of activities and furniture to keep all the kids (and numerous teenagers) busy and entertained such as a ping pong table, pool table, foosball table, and fire pit. The owners of the cabin must also be pro-hunting because the walls were covered with animal heads including an elk, several deer, jackelope (a fictional rabit with antlers), and a cougar. Of course, Mike felt right at home.

Numerous hummingbird feeders were scattered around the perimeter of the house and provided lots of enjoyment for everyone. The birds weren’t shy about filling up on the sweet, sweet nectar in our presence. Aunty Sara was even bold enough to offer her finger as a perch and several of the critters excepted her invitation on numerous occasions.

Even though we had lots of events scheduled it was still nice to just sit around and hang out with the peops. Mike’s sisters and mom helped me brush up on my knitting skills which made it possible for me to finally start my sweater project that I bought the materials for last year. We all had projects and spent a lot of time knitting and chatting, and I loved every minute of that.

Ok, I think I’ve covered about all I can today. There are still lots of events that we did such as hiking, a trip to Mesa Verde, alpine sliding, playing The Werewolves of Millers Hollow. Check back tomorrow.

It didn’t seem possible that 2 more years of schooling for Mike would fly by so quickly, but they did. Mike was not as excited about the graduation as the girls and I were, but I considered it sort of a passage into a new lifestyle (or at least getting back to an old lifestyle) of having my husband home in the evenings and able to give us his undivided attention. If you think about it, us girls really haven’t had much of that these past 3 years. Remember when Mike went to Iraq for 7 months? He returned only a few months before we moved to D.C. for him to start endo school. So now this new chapter begins for us where we get to enjoy the American way of life.

The graduation ceremony was peppered with musical numbers, speeches, and passing out of awards. All the sailors looked quite handsome in their uniforms especially my own, little sailor. The girls and I tried to coordinate as closely as possible in our white outfits (well, I had a black and white skirt on). Of course, there was a bit of a feast after the service. And cake, too!

Mike receiving his graduation diploma (is it still called that at this level?).

Here are the graduates being applauded by the audience.

We’re so proud of Daddy!

Brady even showed up decked out in his sailor outfit in honor of his daddy’s graduation.

Of course, the boys had to be themselves and pester fellow classmate, George.