Fabulous Foto Friday

This is a spin off what my mom does. She does "Fun Foto Friday." You can check out her blog at OnWingsOfWords.blogspot.com. I think it's pretty great, but I might be biased.

I don't have many pictures that I would consider 'fun' but I do love to take landscape photographs. This is one of my favorites.

Every year for the 4th of July, we go up to this little old mining town in southwestern Colorado called Silverton. There is a train called the Durango and Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad that travels through the mountains from Durango to Silverton. This shot was taken from our campground in Silverton. My kids are even beautiful from behind!

School's Out For Summer!

The kids are finally out of school and I couldn't be happier. I love summer and spending time with the kids and doing fun, quality activities with them....

But before we can have all of that fun quality time with them, we have to get through the end of the school year, which can become soooooo busy! Here's a run-down of the activities we all did.

Halle:
Halle's end of the school-year activities started out with the Fun Run. This year, Halle didn't think she'd do very well because she's not playing any sports, so she thought she'd be out of shape. Her goal was just to run the entire time. Last year, her goal was to get a medal. The top five girls and top five boys each get medals. She didn't get a medal last year...and she was VERY upset about it. So this year, with her not-so-lofty goal in mind, she began the Fun Run at a good pace and kept up very well. And stayed up! She ended up finishing 5th place and got her running medal! Go Halle!

Getting ready for the Fun Run. Halle is in the pink shorts outfit looking at the camera next to the kid in the green.

On the run



Coming to the finish line! Go Halle!

Receiving her medal and certificate for her 5th grade, 5th place finish!


A couple of weeks later, the 5th graders went to the Rec Center in Durango, CO. This was fun because Sherry (Chad's mom) is Halle's teacher so she got to go to, which was a big help with the baby girls.



Halle's new love at the swimming pool is the high dive. She love love loved it! And she even let me go off one time without getting too embarrassed. Actually, when I asked her if she would get embarrassed if I went off, she looked at me like I was crazy thinking she would be embarrassed. She said, "You go off the high dive?" Oh yeah. I go off the high dive. I think she thought it was cool. But she would never say that! It was a really good time!









Also in Halle's end of the school-year activities was "Fun For All Fifth-Graders." It's a variety of events where each class competes together against the other classes. Mrs. Magee's class won!!!

Here's Halle doing the Egg Relay
Here's Halle with her friends



Here's Halle running the 4x100 meter relay. She was the first leg and the team won the event!


The day before the last day of school, Halle's class and two others also went to the Aztec Cemetery. They learned about epitaphs and collected data from the headstones. There is a man buried there who was born in the late 1700s and died in the early 1900s. That's three centuries!! Amazing! Here's Halle tracing a picture from one of the headstones.

I told her she didn't have to smile so cheesily. It was a cemetery, after all.

Ethan:

Ethan's end-of-the-school-year activities also started out with the Fun Run. He didn't do quite as well as he would have liked, but he did run the whole way and did a great job anyway!
Here's Ethan and his buddies, getting ready to run.


This pic is blurry, but it's the best I've got. Ethan's wearing the grey shirt with the dark collar.


Here's Ethan running in to the finish line. Very determined! Not sure why the pics are so blurry!


Ethan also had Play Day. These are also a variety of activities, but not for competition. Ethan was so helpful with Jayci and played with her the whole time.

Here's Ethan going down the slip n slide.


Here's Ethan helping Jayci run to the high jump.


Here's Ethan helping Jayci get over the high jump.

Here's Ethan throwing a wet sponge at one of his friends.

Here's Ethan in the sack race. What a jumper!!


So that's that. One more year down for the record books. I can't believe how quickly the time is passing me by. I really try to cherish each moment I have with my babies. I can't believe that in a short 10 years, Ethan will be graduating from High School. Halle got a shirt that said "Future Aztec Graduate Class of 2016" on it. That's in 7 years!! The time is flying!

Here's Halle and Ethan on the first and last day of 5th and 2nd grade. The middle picture is the first day, the outside picture is the last day. Beautiful!

Have You Saved a Life Today?

Well, neither has Chad... But he did yesterday!!

He and some other guys were eating at Serious Texas Barbeque in Durango, CO and one of his buddies jumped up to help this woman who was choking. He tried a couple of times, but was unsuccessful, so Chad shoved him out of the way and gave her the Heimlich Maneuver and the hunk of meat came out after one try! GO CHAD!! It turns out that the lady is a single mother of 2 kids.

So here's what you need to know about the Heimlich Maneuver:

1. You're supposed to thrust upward from the belly button. Not the sternum. This is because you need to get air up out of the diaphragm to expell the obstructive object.

2. The food didn't go flying across the room like it does in the movies.

Just had to brag on my husband a little bit. I love him.

A-Camping We Will Go

Every summer, our family and some family friends camp at various places in southwestern Colorado. One of our favorites is Echo Basin, near Mancos, CO. It is VERY kid friendly and quite affordable. And it has full hook-ups to boot! So we have electricity, water, and a dump for the toilet (invaluable when you have a 3-year-old who waits for the last minute to go potty).

Last year for Memorial weekend, it snowed about two inches overnight and it was miserably windy and cold. But, gluttons for punishment that we are, we decided to brave it again for Memorial weekend this year... and it was wonderful!! We did get the occasional rain shower, but that's nice because it just brings you closer to nature and God and the beautiful world that He created for us.

The kids love to go for walks and play on the merry-go-round and the grown-ups love to sit and relax and watch them.

These are our kids and our friends' kids (The Andersons) at the elk ranch right across the road from Echo Basin. It stunk REEEEALLY bad!! I mean BAD! Jayci's holding her nose. Here are some more from the elk ranch.


Chad bought some elk meat for hamburgers (elkburgers?) that night and I couldn't eat it! I've had elk before, but never saw one up close earlier in the day. It's easy to eat meat when you don't see it hours before you eat it. I'll try again another time. Maybe some sausage. Mmmm...sausage.

These are the same kids throwing rocks into a fishing lake. Don't remember what the name of the lake was, but the fishermen didn't seem too happy.

This is at a pond in the campground. Last Labor Day weekend, the water wasn't as high, so the kids caught crawdads (crayfish). Jayci remembered this and kept saying that she wanted to go catch "Dad Crabs."

My little Kammy Kam. Had to add this pic because it's just so dang cute. I pointed the camera at her and she just smiled like she knew she was supposed to. Adorable!

We went for a drive trying to find some different camping areas and some 4-wheeler trails and came across these Bison or Buffalo, or whatever you want to call them. Awesome!

They wanted to go swimming, but the pool was pretty cold, so they went hot-tubbing instead. Yeah, they were my kids were swimming in their clothes. I'll have to remember their swimsuits next time.

Papa, Jayci, and Daddy enjoying the weekend!

Well, I have some more amazing photos that I want to get posted another time. I think I'm going to have to start selling all of the beautiful photos I have. I love them. I wonder if anybody else will...

I'll post again very soon with all of the end of the school-year activities that the kids have done!

Funny Website I Stumbled Across

This is a picture from the website www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com. The caption is underneath. There are some pretty funny pictures in there. This one was one of my faves. Take a look if you have a minute. It's good for a laugh.

Someone should let this mother and daughter know that there’s a strange man in their photo.

We Love the Springtime So So So Much!!

I have taken great pride in making sure that my children are lovers of the outdoors. I love that they love to look at bugs and dig in the dirt and watch the rain fall. Children are so natural outside. It's where they belong. And I say that as a nature lover...not as a mother of four who sends her kids outside all the time.

Today, Jayci found a Sowbug (or rollie pollie, as we like to call them). She carried it around for about 10 minutes before I finally decided to make it a little home. She kept asking me if he could sleep in her bed with her. Of course, I said no over and over again and told her to take it outside, but she wouldn't. Finally, while carrying him around, before he got his home, she said, "I wish I should be a Ladybug so I can be with him and live under a rock." That's when I decided to get him a little home so he could stay with her. Here's a video of her singing to another rollie pollie:

Another interesting thing is this: a little mommy and daddy bird decided that they would build their nest under the eave (not sure if that's what it actually is) of our house. Here's a pic of where the nest is:

That's the sun room, so don't worry. They don't have access to the attic. When they leave (if they ever do...) we're going to seal it up and fix it.

Anyway, so for about a month we've been hearing the baby birds chirping and seeing the mommy and daddy bird bring food to the babies, though we can't see the babies. Then, the other day, I came home to find my sweet, stupid dog Blake with a bird in his mouth in the back yard!! It was still alive and was trying to fight him away, so of course, I went out and got him to leave it alone. The poor little bird was so scared and was trying so hard to get away from me, but I was bent on catching it and saving it.

Long story short, I caught it, called Game and Fish and they told me to just put it back in the nest. It had a messed up leg, thanks to the dog, but the G&F guy said that it would be able to function just fine with one leg. All it needs to do is learn to fly. If its parents think it's worth saving, they'll continue taking care of it until it's better. So I put it back up in the nest and it jumped down again and got in the apple tree.

The weirdest thing in all of this is how many other birds there were sitting around watching! It was like the Hitchcock movie The Birds. I thought everybody had seen that, but I mentioned it to Chad and he didn't know what I was talking about, so I guess not everybody knows, but anyway, here's a picture of that! I think at one point, I counted 12 or 13 birds just hanging around watching. It must have been the bird equivalent to a bad car wreck that you just have to stop by and watch. Two of those birds are the parents. It was kind of creepy after awhile. Sadly, Blake killed the other baby bird before I had a chance to save it. Gross. So so gross. Eww.