April 22nd, 2006

So, today we had a mellow day. We drove up to check out my work, show Jess, basically. And we wanted to hit the Skechers shoe sale at the outlet up there. After those two things, we drove out and around Cherry Creek Lake...A quote from a website discusses the lake's size. It's enormous, and has so much land around it, it's awesome.

Cherry Creek's trail system will lead visitors around 3,915 acres of land and 880 acres of water.

What a great place, we can rent a boat or Jet Skis, until (or unless we ever buy) a boat of our own. It was in the 80's up there and gorgeous and there were still areas to park and picnic if we wanted. Less than an hour away, we will definitely head up there for some water fun!

And speaking of water fun, I mentioned how we took Summer swimming in the hot tub before. Well we took her back! Here she is getting ready to get in the water.


Then I take her in and get her really ready to swim around.


When she wants she splashes and has a BLAST!


I try to get her to float, I put her under the water a little bit. Jess read to blow on her face to warn her, she seems to do all right. Never seems scared.


About never seeming scared...well, that's scary for us, in itself. I'll put her on the seat, where she can stand holding the wall, or rail, as in the first picture. And she'll just turn towards the water and fall forward to go go go!

Yep, it's time to get her some serious swimming lessons, so she can save herself. I've read of some places which do this, so we just have to find one to trust and has a decent schedule.

Anyway, after shopping for shoes, we ate lunch and hit Pier One and other stores. Always on the lookout for furniture and things for the new house. Well, we found a coffee table and such things for the family/great room. We also saw and bought these letters at Linens and Things...I just had to put this together for Summer. Too cute!


OK, that catches up for the day. Hopefully, I can update the house blog and put up a few more MN pictures tomorrow...for now, I gotta hit the hay. Good night.

Beanbag Chair

OK, so we check out the model home at times...today we went and let Summer explore the loft area. She just LOVED the beanbag chair...I guess that means we'll have to get one, too!

Easter and 10 Months...

WOW...Happy 10 Months today, Summer! Late night post, but I can't miss a birth-month post! :-)

And, happy belated Easter to everyone. I would have posted a bit earlier, but as many of you know...we all took off to Minnesota for the weekend. Yeah, that's right, Friday morning, we just jumped in the car and drove ~13 hours to get to my Mom's place! What a trip!

So, Summer got to celebrate her first Easter with some family. Of course we took some pictures...100 to be exact. So, will just throw up a few here for now. Takes time to edit and comment on them, and I'll be wanting to post a bunch, so here are a few for the moment!

Here is cute little, Sum-Sum finding her very first Easter Egg!


And, of course, after she finds one...you KNOW where it goes!


Then, we have to help get it into her Easter Basket!


So, that was her Easter Morning. She found 8 Easter Eggs that morning!

A quick aside, since we were at Bob and Bumpa's...Mom "tried" to baby proof just a little bit, by picking things up...Well, Summer wasn't happy with that, she likes her books and did what she could to find one!


OK, so, another big part of this trip was meeting family. Here is Summer Meeting Grandpa Dave (Bumpa).


On Saturday we stopped by Summer's Great Grand-Parents on the Breneman side.


On Easter Sunday we went to Summer's Aunt Ginger's house. We kind of changed everyone's plan at the last minute. Thank you everyone! So, here is Summer finally getting to meet more of her family. First up is Grandma Deb feeding Summer a bit of a bottle.


Next up is all of the cousins. From left to Right, Nick, Lindsey and Natalie. We have more pics with the kids, but this is good for now. :-)


And last, but not least is Summer's Uncle Andy. He showed up later, but did see Summer awake...we just didn't get pictures of everything.


OK, so that catches up on the trip a little.

We came home right about when Summer went down for that nap you see her taking in those pictures with the cousins and Andy. We had to get ME home for a job interview on Monday. Which went well, by the way. So well, in fact, that Daddy has a job! Yay! Now, we can actually stay in Colorado...at least we SHOULD be able to get a home loan, so we can get our dream house that is being built and keep working on our new life here!

Water Baby

OK, so I don't have pictures to prove this...but when Jess came home, it was still about 80°F and nice outside. We bought Summer a bathing suit last weekend, since she loves the water so much and we have been wanting to take her to the pool.

Well, we tried the pool, the cover is off, it is half full (aint I the optimist?) and dirty. So, we tried the hot-tub. It didn't seem much hotter than the baths we usually draw, so we went in there, and she laughed and played HARD for 10-15 minutes. After that, we brought her back to the apartment and got her ready for dinner...but she had other plans and PASSED OUT HARD!!!!


So, no pics of swimming, we'll bring the camera next time...but, boy is she sleeping hard!

And also, here is another picture I found from a few days ago, just another of many pics of Summer just hanging out and being herself.

April 11th

Hi All,

Long time, no post, I know. Sorry. Been kinda hard to get to it, with so much to do. I actually have an interview next week, thank goodness. Keep all your fingers and toes crossed! Summer is finally happy at a daycare, or so it would seem.


When we picked Summer up and received these pictures it immediately reminded us of being back at CC's. She would take some of the cutest pictures of Summer when she was in daycare.


This new place...what about it? Why? I said I would mention what happened. Well, Summer was first enrolled with another place, which had more younger children, and MANY of them. 8 kids in total, 5 for each teacher. Well, to deal with the kids they would place them in exer-saucers to be able to do feedings and diaper changes, etc. Well, we mentioned Summer doesn't like being in them when we first visited. Well, on Summer's last day we saw her put into a saucer and left alone, not even pulled over to the other kids to see. And it seems it was done to stop Summer from playing on the OUTSIDE of a saucer near another kid. Summer is just plain to active for that place. No problem overall. Some teachers we didn't have the greatest vibe with, but whatever. The largest thing was the saucer and not catering more to Summer's developmental needs.

So, on that day we went to another place, north of our home, but less than 2 miles away. We liked the people and they listened to our concerns. They have fewer infants, so Summer can get more one on one time AND they let the older kids come down into the infant class to visit. So, Summer can see older kids, which really helps her out. In addition to all of that, they are a very good place as far as flexibility is concerned. At that first place, IF we could get part time, we'd only get Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tough to try and work around that. With the new place, we can bring Summer in 2-5 days a week, on any day we want and can change the actual days from week to week, as needed.

Summer has seemed very happy there this week. I am about to go pick her up in a little bit.

OK, so, it's Springtime here. It's over 80 and georgeous outside! Here are a few Springtime photos of Summer.


Yeah, these are professionally taken pics. We sent some to some of you. I hope you've received them by now, since I spilled the beans about them. :-)


Isn't she cute. I need some props and a nicer camera and some photo-lights to help set of such good shots.

OK, so that's it, everything is caught up. Have a great weekend!

Mt. Rushmore

OK, we went to Mount Rushmore, as a few of you know. It's only a 6+ hour drive from here. Not too bad. We took LOTS of pictures (about 150). I'll post just the best 18...yeah, 18...Summer is home from daycare again today...will get to that story later, too...Without further babbling, here are the pictures.

First and Foremost...you can find MILLIONS of pictures of Mount Rushmore on the web and other places...but here's our main look at it...this is why we went on the trip...to see an awesome American Monument.


It's a quick drive. 75mph speed limit most of the way. That's what you get when you go through the empty west. There are a lot of small towns, but none smaller than Lost Springs...


Yeah, population of only one...yikes. How'd (s)he even get the city incorporated and get their own sign? Hmmm...Anyway, it was not tourist season when we got to Keystone, the place we stayed, about 5 minutes from the monument. Mt. Rushmore is open year round, except Christmas day, but many/MOST other places are closed. We'll have to go back someday. Keystone in the off season is just about a ghost town!


There were some people here and there, but it was basically empty, which we liked. No crowds. Yay! We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express and there were plenty of families there, all enjoying the ease of getting around, I'm sure. We had a nice room, with plenty of room to set up Summer's Pack-n-Play, and room for Summer to scoot around and have a blast.


So, after we got there Friday night, we got a good nights sleep. We woke up, had breakfast and headed on out to see the Mountain. What was really neat is for only 8 dollars you get to park, and that's the only cost, and to make that even better, that one car pass is usable through the entire year for that car. So, we could go back in the Summer when there are more people and more open shops/sites to see and go to the mountain again for free!

Well, I went to Mt. Rushmore when I was about 8 yeards old. I don't remember much from it, but my mom says we went with Cousin Mike. So, that was probably pretty cool. I don't remember what the park was like, but what is cool is the walk of flags leading to the monument.


And here are a few more shots from the park:






Summer started getting sleepy and we saw what we wanted, so we headed out. Jess saw on the map that there are three tunnels cut into the mountains that point directly towards Mt. Rushmore. So, we went on those roads to see what that looked like. And here is the third one...as we approached.


As you can see they are single lane tunnels. Again, it turned out great that it was off season, as we passed maybe 4 or 5 cars on this road. Much easier now than during the busy season. It was so empty it allowed us to stop in the middle of the road and take this picture from the middle of the tunnel.


So, we got to through the last tunnel and we had to decide to just backtrack or keep going. We wanted to check out Rapid City, which was maybe 10 or more extra miles if we didn't turn around. We decided we had nothing but time and Summer was still sleeping, so we just kept going. Thank goodness we did. About 20 minutes later Jessica kept saying she wanted to see some wild buffalo...but, what we came across made us laugh...and that woke up Summer. And when we showed Summer why we were laughing she just stared:


Well, what Summer was looking at was this!


Yeah, that's right, WILD DONKEYS!!!


There were a few cars stopped here, as the donkeys approach they try to get food. There were about a dozen of them all told.


After getting to Rapid City, eating lunch and all that we headed back to Keystone to take a walk. In our walk we got a few photo ops for Summer. Here she is sitting on a barrel.


In addition to the barrel there were a few horses. One coin operated one and this old fashioned one. Did Summer think of her horse back home?


And here she is still on the horse, but more of a close up of her.


And the LAST picture to share from the trip is Summer sitting on a Mine car.


OK, that was our trip.