::1,000::

Post 1,000 on our little blog! Can you believe it? That's cause for celebration, and of course another interruption of our Leadville story (I bet I can draw it out for the next two months.) In celebration I'm going to post a few of my favorite photos from a family shoot we had with Josh Solar, one of my favorite photographers. He does such a good job capturing families and feelings. He and his family were on a roadtrip through the west, so I snagged him and I'm so glad I did. I love these pictures!








YAY!!

::leadville part who knows what::

I think my biggest blog problem right now is just that I've got a Leadville mental block. It was such an intense weekend and there are a lot of pictures. And I've been so busy. It's all combining to make my blogging stink. So I've got to get 'em done. Here are pictures I missed when I did the last post. These are from the evening before the race. We got into Leadville mid-afternoon and it was like a huge party. Tons of people, crowds, bikes. So many people that using the phone was tough. Cell towers overloaded. Anyway, here are a few fun photos.


Boys playing with little toys Grandma got to try to entertain them. It worked pretty well.


Max will be big enough to ride this huge bike too soon.

Kris is hopeful and excited.



If only we could've left Max there overnight to reserve us a great seat.

Here's Max with his special souvenir,GOLD! What better to get from Leadville? Max was delighted with it.

And we headed back to the hotel to try and get some sleep.

::sneak peek interruption::

This little interruption to the LONGEST drawn out bike race report ever is to give you a sneak peek of the yard/garden stuff I'm going to show you later if I can ever get to it. This is a rosebush that lived in our courtyard before we lived here. It was dying. I had never seen in bloom in the year since we moved in. Then we got the drip system installed and a new planter built and a while later I checked the bush and there were what seemed like a dozen buds. It was amazing. And the roses are gorgeous.

I'm very happy with our courtyard right now and I'm excited to show it off!

::leadville part 2 part 1::

This is mostly just photos for you. Pre race at 5 something AM in the morning. Crowds crowds and crowds.

A sea of helmets.
Kris is pumped up!
At least when he knows we're watching!


Max was the one that was really pumped up though.

::::

I figured since it's been a WHOLE MONTH since I posted last, I'd better post something so it didn't seem like I had left the country or died or something. We're still here! It's just been a very very busy summer with work. We bought another practice and hired a new dentist and figuring out how to manage all that along with all the problems that come up at our main office has been really challenging. I'll post the rest of Leadville soon and we just went on a fun beach vacation to San Diego and I actually had time to take some photos. We also did some cool things with our little courtyard in the middle of the house and now we have flowers! So this is my hope--that I will get to post more, because I love to do it and I miss it when I'm too busy. And later on when I go to read back there'll be a big hole in the fun history. So hold me to it, I'll be back soon.

::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.