Westward Bound

Since we had some extra time off this weekend, we decided to head west to Colorado and visit Ken's family. His sister and her family live near Loveland, which was about a 6 hour drive. It was much more doable, then the 10 hour drive it would have been from Atchison!

On Saturday we met up with our friend Andy Reimer and went for a hike near Boulder. Kennedy opted to stay with her cousins and play, but Judah was up for the outdoor adventure! He did really well. You can tell that he really likes being outside, because he barely made a peep on the 1 hour hike. In fact, he even fell asleep in his pouch for a while. Ken's back was a little sore after the excursion, as you can imagine!


There was a really neat area at then end of the hike with a ton of super tall skinny trees. The weather was perfect that day and the mixture of shade and sun was great. It would have been the perfect spot for a hammock.

The trail we hiked followed this river. The sound of the rushing water followed us along the entire hike. We got pretty close to the water at one point. Right as we were posing for a group pic a snake got really close to us, which freaked me out a bit.

This is our group at the end of the hike. There is a little bridge that you cross to get back to the parking area.

Okay, so Boulder is the HOT SPOT for bikers. We seriously saw a couple hundred bikers on the 30 minute drive up the mountain. Andy said that it's not unusual to see that many on any given day. It was a little crazy how fast some of the bikers were flying down the mountain. We had to be really cautious while driving because they were taking up a lot of the road.

We also saw at least 3 different people trying a new sport. I guess I'll call it Alpine Roller Skiing, since I'm not sure what it's actually called. The first 2 guys we saw were going UP the mountain and I seriously thought they were going to have a heart attack! Basically, you wear rollerblade boots, but they are mounted on long skis, which have rollerblade-type wheels in the front and back. Then you use ski poles to push yourself, so all of the workout is in your arms, since you can't move your feet very well. (Imagine trying to navigate in skis on wheels!)

I took this picture while we were driving back down the mountain. This girl wasn't moving quite as fast as the other guys we saw, so it was easier to take a pic. You can't really tell that her blades are on skis, but they are.

Tiffeny's daughter Emma June is just a few weeks younger than Kennedy. They had a blast together. They were so cute in their matching PJs that I made.

Before we left on Sunday we headed to an awesome park in Loveland. They had really unique equipment. They had an awesome water park area, a park for younger kids, a park for older kids, and then a large shaded sandbox area. Luckily, the weather was just warm enough for the kids to play in the water.

This saucer swing was really fun. I hadn't seen anything like it before.

We finally had a chance to get a picture of all 4 of us! Judah is closing in on 4 months old and these are the first family pictures we have!

We got a shot of Tiffeny and 3 of her kids. The baby was sleeping, so we decided to leave him alone! This is Tiffeny holding Tessa (18 mths), Emma June (almost 3) and Conner (almost 6).

Kennedy loves this frog slide. It's mouth opens up and you slide down the tongue!

Judah loves to swing. It only took about 5 minutes in the swing until he fell asleep!

Also notice Kennedy's boots. We found them on sale at Target and she wore them the entire day...she wouldn't even take them off on the ride home!

There you have it. We packed quite a bit our trip and we were only there for less than 48 hours! It's back to reality tomorrow as we both have to go back to work. At least we got a small break!