Its been a long time since we last updated our blog ( I started this before the hair post of Hill’s), so its time to wake it from the summer slumber we seemed to have put it in.
Since mid June, we have been having a lot of good family time. This has been brought on by Ben no longer having a job as the economy finally caught up with his position at work as they were running out of money and decided to close down the department he was in. This opened up the opportunity to head down to NM and visit family down there, getting to finally take Brenna for her first camping trip.
Then we headed out to OR and visit family there. While in OR, Tana got to spend some good time with her Auntie Gina around the pool.
Gina got Tana over her aversion to water and now has her loving the water; not quite swimming on her own yet, but at least enjoying the water and not freaking out if her head gets wet any longer. We got to spend some time at the beach and enjoy watching Tana run all over the place and make multiple sand castles
, Tana also got to go for her first canoe ride
– and Brenna
injest a good bit of sand; she looked quite cute with her sand gotee.
Tana got to celebrate a birthday for every year old she is this year (not something we intend to continue). We had an early birthday party in NM after the Tour de Los Alamos as we did last year
; then we came back up to CO for a short bit and had another birthday party for her at Boulder creek
. A fw days later we went out to Oregon and had yet another birthday party out there for her
– and in a rare treat, got to see her Aunt Sara and Grammy at both the NM and OR b-day parties.
Beyond the travels, we have been figuring out as many free or very inexpensive things to do that are fun during the day with kids as possible. Luckily, both Tana and Brenna love going for a ride in the Bob or Chariot, however we can’t spend every waking hour exercising, so we had to find a few other things to do as well. Boulder Creek quickly has become one of our favorite hangouts when the weather is warm as it is right near the farmer’s market, has nice grassy sides to hang out on and let the kids play, and for a few months the water is flowing well enough that it is quite fun to tube down as well.
Close to home we also have “the bay” water park, which is a nice small water park setup for families with kids.
Once fall started to roll around, Tana got to start pre-school as well. The very first day she was already leaving us without a worry to go play with other kids and then was quite sad that she had to leave when her session was done for the day.
We finally got up for a camping trip in CO as well to celebrate our wedding anniversary ( 9 years!!) and see the beautiful fall colors in the mountains.
We are really looking forward to doing some backpacking next year.
Ben is working on an update of his races as well for another installment. Check out the Photo Albums tab above as well as we have loaded quite a few new pictures as well.