I know it’s been a few days since I last posted even though I promised more vacation pictures the day after my last post. However, this past weekend we had an out-of-town wedding to attend and didn’t get back home until late Sunday night. I would have posted first thing Monday morning but Monday was full of various appointments for Annie and Mimi. Annie had her first dentist appointment and was the best patient. I was so proud of her. Yesterday is something I’ll have to post about separately, and I will tomorrow.
Like I said, we attended a wedding of a friend this weekend. Mike and I really didn’t know anyone in attendance, so we thought it would just be he and I to entertain each other. Our luck changed when we discovered that we were seated next to an outgoing couple. The husband and Mike could have been long lost brothers because they had everything in common in the way of hobbies. That guy has even been planning on getting a German short-haired pointer. It was all too weird.


Now back to vacation pictures. I know that you all have just been dying to see more. One day all the kids decided they wanted to go to a resort where they featured alpine slides, bungee launching, and other fun stuff. Mike, I, and the kids joined in the excitement, too, but we decided only to ride the alpine slides. In order to get to the top of the slide you have to take a chair lift. Annie and I shared a chair, and I must admit that I was quite nervous about her little frame in that chair so many feet above the ground. She was very comfortable with the situation though, so I tried my best to not let my fears for her put her on edge. The girls had to ride in the “sled” with an adult, so I had Annie with me. It was a very exciting ride down. I guess many of the older kids got a little too confident and came home with numerous burns on their arms and legs after falling out.

Aunty Sara brought along a fun game called “the Werewolves of Millers Hollow” which the older kids loved. Basically, each player gets a card indicating the character they play throughout the game such as a werewolf (up to 4), cupid (chooses 2 lovers, this caused a lot of laughing), the witch (gets to see who the werewolves chose to eat each round and can use a healing potion once throughout the game or even poison someone once throughout the game), the fortune teller (can choose someone to see their identity), and a few other characters. Most people just end up as townspeople. There is a moderator who does all the talking and guides the players through the game. It’s actually a good time, and I would love to buy it one day for my girls and their friends to play. But I think I’ll wait until they are much older. Thanks, Sara, for letting us old folks play, too.


We discovered that Mike is dangerously close to being the shortest man in his family when he compared heights with Jimmy and Paul. Poor Mike!


I realized that I have no upper body strength when I attempted a pull up on the “pull-up bar”. The teenaged boys were showing off their skills all week, and I thought I would try one (or a quarter of one). Mike could actually do like 14 before his body gave up. The tall, skinny boys were able to do much more though. Ha!


One last thing to report. Annie never ceases to crack us all up. She found that she really liked using the sofa arm cover as a head cover. She thought she looked a lot like Mary (as in Jesus’ mother). So to complete the transformation Annie needed a baby Jesus. Apparently, a ping pong paddle filled that role well enough. So on several occasions we’d catch her in costume playing out that character. She even convinced one of Mike’s cousin’s daughters to play along which is shown below.

Speaking of Mike’s cousin, Megan Tripp and her family came for a day to visit since they only live a couple of hours away. Mike hadn’t seen her since he was a teenager himself. Mike’s sisters were ecstatic to see her, too, and chatted her up the whole time. She now has five kids. I’ve got her family blog linked with family and friends under “What a Tripp!”

Of course, while being up in the mountains you have to hike and explore. So we did that on a few occasions. Jenni, Grandma Olsen, Annie, Mimi, Lucy, and I went on one quick hike to a waterfall close by. The girls got to use their water backpacks. Once we reached the river Lucy was thrilled to frolic around in and drink up the water. And the waterfall was very cool!


Another hike I got to go on was a little more adventurous. It was a bumpy 2-3 mile drive and then about a mile hike to Potato Lake. The hike was uphill the whole way and gave us all a good workout. It was nice and quick on the way back since it was all downhill. Lucy came with us and got herself pretty beat up while running up the mountainside on those rocky hills. She barely moved the rest of the trip after that. Lucy did, however, love swimming around in the lake. The teenagers had gone up to the lake a few nights earlier and went swimming as well. Mike said the water was probably a brisk 40-50 degrees. Buuurrrr!!


Ok, I think I’ve gone on long enough about our fabulous vacation to Durango. But I must conclude with the group shots we got in our awesome tie-die shirts made by the multi-talented Aunty Jenni. Can you believe she made about 40 of those? Thanks so much, Jenni! And that’s not the only time she’s done that. Every other Durango trip had an accompanying tie-die shirt (each time with a different color scheme). She has also made shirts for other events for her kids’ schools, teams, and such. Whew! I can’t even imagine all the work involved. I was the master photographer with my handy tripod. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but I forgot a crucial piece for my tripod and had to use elastic headbands to hold the camera to the tripod. No one was none the wiser.
Here’s the whole group minus 3 people who were having car trouble elsewhere.

And with silly faces.

Grandma Olsen with the grandkids.

Sara’s husband’s dad with his grandkids.

The Evans gang.

The Smith clan.

The Jake Hawley fam.

And the Mike Hawley tribe.
