::interruption::

We interrupt the long awaited bike race report to bring you some hilarious photos of a small baby eating a large sandwich.

See the bite hole in the top of the sandwich? Normally Sandy will share this sandwich with another person, and I will break it into smaller pieces for him. But today he was very adamant that he was going to eat this sandwich ON HIS OWN.

I love how his biggest bit still doesn't make it through to the innards.

Max can do it too of course!

He kept on attacking the sandwich--usually to quick for me to get a photo.

The most hilarious thing was that he was rooting around on the sandwich to try to find a mouth hold. Sooooo funny.

And there you go. He only got about three more bites than that one at the beginning before he ran out of steam and tried to wrap his leftovers up and put them away. I was very impressed with his tenacity. Dedication to eating, that's a good family trait we're happy to pass on!

::leadville part 1::

Our little family took off on an adventure to Leadville, CO a couple of weekends ago.
In fact this whole story started a couple of weeks earlier when Kathy came to visit us for a weekend with Max's cousin Parker. She decided to take him back with her so he could hang out with the UT family for a while. This all connects to the Leadville story because Kathy brought Max back to us when she met us in CO for a crazy weekend of bike riding and kid wrangling.

On thursday Kris, Sandy and I drove from NM and Kathy and Max drove in from UT. We met at a fun hotel with hot springs pools somewhere in the mountains. This place had an awesome big warm clean hot springs pool and a long and lovely waterslide. We got there and ready to swim about an hour before the pool closed. We got in and did about two slides (Sandy really didn't like sliding. He did it twice, the second time was essentially against his will.) Anyway, we were on our way up for a third slide and BOOM!!! Thunder! So we were cut off early. But Max got up in the morning and hopped in again while Sandy took him morning nap and Kris drove up to Leadville for his pre-race extravaganza.


The scenery there is AMAZING!!


After the swimming and the napping the non-racers of us headed up to Leadville to check out the scene and to check into our little ratty motel. The story behind the motel is kind of interesting. The reputation of Leadville hotels is that they fill up super fast and are way overpriced. So we didn't even try to get a room there, but originally reserved a room in a CO town about an hour away. Well, a week before the race I went to check on the room reservation and realized that I had reserved a room in a town in TX with the same name as the CO town--much more than an hour away, serious whoops! So suddenly I was desperately trying to figure out what to do. I called around to a couple of the Leadville hotels, and crazily enough there was a room for us. And it almost sounded big enough to fit us all. Was it WAY overpriced? Absolutely. It was nice though to stay close to the action. We could walk to the start and finish of the race. Always nice with little ones to have a home base nearby. Anyway. We got there and made ourselves at home in the little room, despite the abandoned prescription meds in the medicine cabinet and the smoked cigarette butts in the side table drawer. The place actually could've been a lot worse, but squeezing us all in there was tricky. And this is where we'll end the story for tonight. With another end, a special one.

::the fourth::

So so so so long after this should be posted, here it is. Kris had to be gone on a training bike ride in the morning, but Kathy was here visiting, so we got ourselves up and went to the Eldorado Fourth of July parade--for the first time since we moved here!

Max was more engaged in the situation than he appears. But we did have to park and walk a ways, and it was warm. You know how kiddos get in those sorts of situations.

And it didn't take long for the parade to come along.

Here come the Scouts. This is the troop that's always trying to poach us from church--the cubmaster is in the ward!

And the firetruck parade! We have lots of cool firetrucks in the neighborhood--two fire stations. Crazy, right? We're a little fire paranoid around here.

And like any great small townish parade there was lots of candy thrown for the kids to collect.

Sandy wished he was just a touch bigger so he could hunt down the candy too.

Instead he got a crazyish clown with bubbles. He wasn't so sure about it.

Quite the haul. We didn't come prepared with collecting bags, duh!
This was my favorite part of the parade, some cute teens as eagles, nests and etc.


It turned out really fun. Short, candy-filled and entertaining.


I love my boys and it was so fun to have Kathy there.
Later when Kris got home we BBQ'd some yummy dinner and relaxed for most of the rest of the day. Since it was in the middle of the week we had to work the next morning, so no fireworks or late nights for us. The end.

::::

Ode to a Grandpa. My Dad is an awesome Grandpa. When my parents were here a couple of weeks ago I had a pretty stressful week that involved a lot of work, church work and other crazy stuff. My mom helped me with a lot of stuff, and my Dad stepped up and hung out with my boys a TON. They had so much fun together. He let Sandy drip bubble stuff all over him many times. He rode bikes with Max. He played board games and cars. When I came home from one of my long days doing whatever I found the sandwich cutter shaped like the Millennium Falcon out, so he cut sandwiches into shapes for the boys. I was impressed. Did you make Max still eat his crusts though Dad? And plus he fixed my pepper shaker so now it actually peppers food. He's amazing.

::babycakes::

::some boating fun::

Our friends the Hansens have a boat that they like to take out on a lake that's about an hour and a half away from our house. We were lucky enough to get taken out by then in June and had a really good time. I brought my little camera to document the trip. Kris of course still remembers how to waterski. He looked pretty comfortable up there. Sandy was pretty intimidated and fascinated by how fast the boat went at first. He eventually got comfortable and I had to explain to him that running around on a boat while it's driving is a bad idea. Max felt pretty cool hanging with the big boys. We naturally brought lots of snacks. It just wouldn't be the same without the delicious snacks. Max wanted to take a turn on the skis--so he got put up on the little wooden trainers. It took a lot of tries, but he kept soldiering on. Luckily he had experienced people giving him advice and getting him started. He finally got "up" kind of up to about knee height. Turns out that one of his feet was halfway out of the foot holder and so he couldn't stand up completely. He was satisfied after this success and came back into the boat. And of course I had to take a turn. It's kind of embarrassing to do it with everybody watching from the boat--especially when one has only ever water-skiied twice before in one's LIFE. Audience. After a bad try I got up and going. I couldn't navigate or anything, I just had to hold on tight and hope that the wake wouldn't knock me on my head, but I stayed up for a while a couple of times and then my exhausted muscles were done. Max's #1 favorite thing was the tubes. There were two gigantic tubes pulled behind the boat. The kids would ride on there and bump up and down the wake and feel the wind on their faces. Max almost cried when he finally had to get off so the big boys could take a rougher ride. That was a pretty fun way to spend a saturday morning. We'll be up for it again soon.

::desert walk pt 2::

FINALLY!! Part 2 arrives. And mostly this will just be photos, since it took me all night just to get them ready. Enjoy the other little surprises I found walking down into our arroyo. Our front gate with our new little aspen trees (well, they were new in May, but they feel pretty at home now.) I had to look hard to find these tiny flowers in the driveway. Man with somebody's beloved pink fish. Where did this crazy red come from? These big fluffy guys were hiding down in the grasses. With these little purple guys. Seriously who knew the desert was so full of flowers?! And this was even before our rainstorm season. Saved my favorite for last: Yucca. I haven't seen a lot of them with a red tint. Some of these guys can grow flowers on stalks that can be like 10 feet tall. They're insane. I'll have to try to take a picture of one of those for you one of these days--I've only ever seen one in a nursery though. Thanks for walking along with us, though it took waaaay to long to post.