September Morning, and vacation and other things

Every fall I seem to need to take a picture of sunflowers. I thought I would just not do that this year, but Sunday the fog was so beautiful, and the sunflowers so bright... I was late for church but I needed the picture.

I promised Becca a month ago that I would get some pictures up from vacation. Maybe tonight I can work fast and actually get that done.

One thing I've had to admit after downloading all of these pictures is that I'm terrible at documenting my life photographically. The highlight of the trip was that my parents were able to share it with us, and yet I don't have a single picture of them on vacation. Maybe my brother or sister can help me out there.

For those of you that don't already know, we filled every seatbelt in our Dodge Caravan, stuffed things under the seats, in between the seats, behind the seats, and on top of the van and took off for Colorado. We chose to leave as soon after Laura got off work---usually around 4:00 am, but we were about an hour later than that.

As you can see, in the back seat the passengers were shoulder to shoulder, and yet we all got along great!

In Denver we chose to go to the Aquarium, thinking that it would entertain Luke since he would be able to get close to the fish and see them really well. We didn't count on him being very tired and sleeping through most of it. But we enjoyed it anyway.

Waiting in line.

Becca in her diving suit.

Hanging out near the tiger area. Yeah, I know, tigers don't live under water. They do NEED water though, so I guess that counts.

Outside the aquarium waiting for Chuck, Laura, and Luke to finish their shopping in the gift shop.

And here is Laura with the sleeping Luke, ready to go back to the motel.

We generally packed our own food for picnic lunches, but enjoyed eating restaurant food in the evenings. The first evening we followed our tradition of ordering pizza delivery. The second evening in Denver we took advantage of Becca's knowledge of the city and had her pick us a great Mexican restaurant---Hilarios.

I love eating out, and I love really good Mexican food!

From Denver we went to Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp where we stayed in a great cabin and attended family camp with my parents, my brother's family and my sister's family. These are pics from the cabin in no particular order.

Luke really loves Chuck, so we got plenty of adoring Grandpa/Grandson pics.

There was time to play cards

paint T-shirts with designs based on our relationship to Luke

and just generally hang out.

Luke

Becca and Luke

Tim and Laura

Kate

One night a thunderstorm brought hail, cold winds and even some snow.

We also did some hiking. My first hike was to ice falls with many of the others from the family.
Here's Becca

Laura and Luke

Wil

Molly

Larry and Sam

The second hike we attempted was to the solution pools and Luke had a hearty start, wearing a Jayhawks hat much to the uncles' delight.

He soon decided hiking was not as good as riding

and then decided to come to a full stop---or a melt down, whichever. So Laura and I handed off my camera to the hikers and we had a very pleasant leisurely walk back to camp. That is after Luke had a nice nursing break and then fell asleep.

The others took pics at the top.

Larry and Wil, Becca, Kevin and Annette

and again

Kevin and Annette

a pile of ladybugs---how cool is that?

Chuck

Annette

Kevin

We also spent a lot of time in the dining hall. Here Wes and Luke are playing.

We did lots of other stuff too, like a fun nature walk, like sitting and knitting and talking upstairs at the cabin, like taking naps whenever we felt like it... It was a good and relaxing trip.


Now for a couple of other pictures I promised Becca. At home again, work resumed. Chuck had arranged to have his hog lagoon cleaned out so this huge earth mover came to do the job.

Scoop it up...

dump it out.

I'm sure not too many of you are interested but it took Chuck a couple of weeks to haul all that manure to our fields. Crops should be fine next year.