Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park/Estes Park

This was the kickoff to our summer vacation 2009. We met Karen (Steve's sister) and her husband Jon and son Walker at Estes Park, CO where we have a cabin/resort timeshare. This picture is at Bear Lake in Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park.

Jon and Karen with baby Walker at Bear Lake. The altitude here is 7-8,000 feet.

These are the beds that Hyrum, Lexi, Eliza and Joe fashioned at the cabin.

Here's a group shot outside of the cabin taken by the camera timer. We had racoons snooping around right on our roof one night.

Blanchard family on our hike around Bear Lake.

Lemonade Stand

Okay so life has been really busy lately, but I found these pictures from the end of summer and wanted to include them in our blog. I've kind of decided that blogs primarily are a nice way to keep an electornic family history and it makes me much more excited to do it now just to preserve the memories. The lemonade stand is such a childhood classic that I really wanted to put it in. This is Lexi with her two friends Kara and Linsey Price that Angie watches right before we left on our summer vacation.

This photo shows the majority and certainly most faithful clientele of Lexi's Lemonade stand: her brothers Joseph and Hyrum and their friends Danny (glasses) and Josh Price (Kara and Linsey's brother).

Going to the Broncos game for Grandpa Myers

So we haven't done an entry for a long time with vacation, etc. so we'll have some makeup to do, but first.....We wanted to publish this entry. Five years ago this very month Angie's father passed away. Shortly before his passing we had moved to Colorado Springs. He was a huge Broncos fan and we had invited him to come down and go to a game with us. The hat that Angie's wearing we sent to him that year for his birthday, which is September 10th. He wasn't able to make the game and he passed away unexpectedly a couple weeks after his 59th birthday. This game was very meaningful and memorable for all of us.

Angie and the boys at the game.

Steve and the boys with our view of the field.

This is right before the Broncos scored a touchdown.

This is the fire and fireworks display after each Broncos score. We literally could feel the heat from the fire. Maybe Grandpa Myers was watching that night. The Broncos who had struggled in all of their other games, looked really good tonight and won 19-0.

Lexi's new Haircut and gymnastics fun

Lexi asked Angie to give her a haircut like Lucy from Chronicle of Narnia. Here she's showing it in her gymnastics outfit.

All of the kids got to go on an open gym experience at Lexi's gymnastics. Joe is suprisingly nimble for as big as he is and can do flips I never could as a kid.

Hyrum's always been our daredevil.

Eliza (although not doing it in this picture) loves to swing from bars and shout "I swingin like a monkey!"

Lexi has loved gymnastics and has done a wonderful job at it.

The Miracle of Life

We had a dove move into our deserted flower box on our front porch this summer. We were excited to see one day as it moved out 2 eggs laid. For the next couple of weeks we watched the miracle of life unfold from our front window. The picture above shows the dove laying on the eggs.

This picture shows the baby birds about 5 days after hatching, still relatively small and very timid.

Here you can see one of the babies (on the right) with mother just 4 days later, already considerably bigger.

Here's one of the babies that same day feeding from mom. Aren't you glad humans don't feed their babies this way? Although I must admit the way the baby attacked her mother somewhat reminded me of some of our babies eating!

The baby birds much more independent at this stage, starting to venture to the edge of the pot. They would leave the nest the next day, not even 2 full weeks after birth.

Eliza's 2nd birthday and a couple other pics

Here's another cake masterpiece from Angie. Eliza loves Barney (better than Teletubies I guess!)

Two whole candles!!! We've stopped counting them on ours! Eliza actually did blow them out this year.

She's a little more skillfull in getting the cake into her mouth this year.

Just a few throw-ins. Hyrum is such a crafty kid. He fills his bedroom with his homemade crafts (as well as our kitchen and living room with the project scraps!). We finally get to the point where we make him weed some of them out but we always take a picture of them first. Here's 3 of the recent casualities.

Joseph and Hyrum both went to Cub Scout camp this year a few days prior to Eliza's birthday.

Jon, Karen and Walker Ficklin visit us in Colorado!

We had a great time having Steve's sister Karen and her husband Jon Ficklin and their baby Walker come and visit us a few weeks ago. We spent some time at the Denver Zoo. This elephant is a life-size cut-out advertising the new exhibit they're building, but from a distance it looks real. The first time we saw it when we came around the corner it kind of freaked us out.

Our last Denver Zoo trip. (Our membership expired 2 days later and since we're moving soon we decided not to renew it)

We took Jon to the famous BMX dirt bike track. I think this was his favorite part of the whole trip!

Jon and Karen with Walker at the Colorado Rockies baseball game. It was a beautiful night with lots of scoring, home runs and a 2 out bottom of the ninth rally for 2 runs that gave the Rockies the victory. It was a really exciting game....a bit too exciting (and loud) for Walker.

Jon really got into the 47 waves that the Rockies faithful were determined to do! We had a great time having them though and welcome any and all visitors!