Salida Hot Springs...

In Salida they have a pool that is fed by Hot Springs. The temperature is cooled to 98 degrees in the summer months. Thursday nights are family nights so we took a trip and played in the pool for a while on my Birthday! I could get used to swimming in water that warm!

Seth's Birthday...

We didn't forget... Seth turned 5. His birthday happened so quickly after we moved that we spent a couple of days trying to figure out what Birthday's were going to look like this year! There is so much of Colorado that we want to experience and some of it is rather expensive, so we decided to use our Birthdays as an opportunity to do some of the more expensive things. The boys gave up presents and we said we would pick one activity for each Birthday.

Seth chose white water rafting! We were so excited to go, but it got put off until August 16th because of scheduling conflicts!

We went (I didn't bring a camera and unfortunately the company that took pictures of our boat had some technical difficulties that afternoon... so there is no picture record of it...) We took a trip through Big Horn Sheep Canyon! Our guide was great and even taught us how to surf the rapids! The boys thought it was great as we got ourselves stuck and flooded the boat over and over!

Definitely a good pick for a birthday celebration!

Happy Birthday to my baby! He is growing up so fast!

Oh and we did have a cake with the members of our church at our welcome dinner which happened to be the same day as Seth's birthday (8-4)... I just didn't have my camera along that day!

Skyline Drive

After our whitewater rafting trip we took a drive on this ridge in Canon city called Skyline Drive. You drive right along a ridge. There are a couple of places to get out and take pictures and walk around, so guess what we did!

Dirt Bike Ramps...

We have found a park in town where there is a dirt bike trail for the kids... Needless to say, the kids love it!

Leadville Trail 100 Bike Race...

We got up bright and early to see the start of the Trail 100 bike race... While the air was a bit chilly yet (the sun wasn't even over the mountains yet), it was a neat sight to see the 1600 bikers riding down the road all at once.
This was the first group to go past....and then they kept coming.... and coming for about 10 minutes...
This is a picture of the back of the pack clumped up on their first of many hills... After heading through town and down to the fish hatchery the rest of the race is on dirt trails through the mountains....
It was quite the sight to see and the Zeke said they were going by so fast they looked like they were changing colors...

We also do have work to do here...

While it may look like we are out having a lot of fun (and we are), we also do have "work" to do here...

This week and next week we will be baking 100's of dozens of cookies for the upcoming Leadville Trail 100 bike race and the Trail 100 foot race. These are 100 mile races on bike and foot through the mountains. They call them the "Race Across the sky"
Here we are baking and wrapping the cookies (the individually wrapped cookies are for the bake sale that we hold along with these events. We don't individually wrap all the cookies for the racers.)

After baking the cookies we all pitch in to serve a dinner and fellowship a little!

A new tooth for Noah...

It was December of 2007... Noah was 3 1/2 and the boys were on their way to bed when JJ and Noah bumped heads. The next morning we took Noah to the dentist where they decided that one of his front teeth was too badly damaged to save... They also said that the other one would likely fall out on its own soon and sent us home to watch it. The goal was to keep it in his mouth as long as possible while avoiding infection... In July of 2008 it got looser and looser and darker and darker and it fell out too...

This was 2 1/2 years ago... Today on our train ride, I noticed something that we haven't seen there for a long time... A tooth starting to poke through where there has been nothing for so long! Welcome back to the world of corn on the cob Noah!