A couple weeks before our annual family reunion in the Tetons we decided to "practice" camping with Bradley. The farm turned out to be the best option so that's where we went. Bradley passed the test, he did pretty well sleeping in the tent. Here are a couple pictures of our time there.
As promised here are some pictures of our trip to Denver.
We first visited The Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. It was beautiful and fun and we would have stayed longer but Bradley and our friend's three kids were getting tired and anxious. This is us by a sign about the garden.
This is an example of some of the beautiful rock formations. This one is called Kissing Camels because it looks like two camels kissing, but you can't really tell that from the picture.
Bradley loved that we let him run around.
But he wasn't very excited when we put him on one of the rocks.
Next we visited Pike's Peak.
This is Bradley and I at the lookout. It was kind of a cloudy day so we didn't get to see very much from the top of the mountain (no Kansas), but we did get to see snow on our drive up.
We all crowded into our friend's Suburban. This is Bradley mesmerized by the Jimmy Neutron movie we watched on our way home.
On the Fourth of July we watched fireworks from the local Aurora golfing green. This is Bradley and I playing follow the leader.
Brian and Bradley. (Aren't my boys cute?)
Bradley was a little tired, but mostly stunned by the fireworks. Amazingly he didn't seem bothered by the bangs that accompanied the lights.
On our last day in Denver we visited the zoo. This is Bradley smiling at . . .
. . . this rhinoceros.
The rhino smile is the most reaction we got out of him all day. He was kind of tired so carried an expression like this.
On the last leg of our drive home Brian snapped this picture. Our happy traveler.
Bradley has been moaping since he got up from his nap this afternoon. I don't know what happened, but he has been quite whiny. I just thought I would share what I've been listening to for two hours so far. It's actually kind of funny, but it does get irritating after a while. So a word of caution, don't watch this video repetitively unless you really want to sympathize with me.
We recently borrowed my aunt and uncle's truck to do some work around our house. In an attempt to keep Bradley occupied while we loaded the truck, we also borrowed a little van. Bradley has had so much fun playing with it. He loves getting in and out, opening and closing the doors, and loading and unloading his little soccer ball. We've had fun watching him play.
We just got home from spending the Independence Day holiday with some friends in Denver. I was going to post some pictures from our adventure, but Brian has already cleared them from our camera onto a different computer. I will have to let you know what we did later. But for now, here is a video.
Bradley did a really great job on our trip. He was an excellent traveler, and did pretty well sharing with our friend's kids. We knew he would be excited to get home and back to his stuff and routine, but we didn't quite expect this. Here is Bradley proclaiming his joy to be home. It was really quite funny, he did this for about ten minutes straight and occasionally throughout the rest of the day.
Last week we celebrated our seventh anniversary. Brian took the day off and we did very romantic things like taking two trips to the dump and one trip to our local green waste. And, no, I'm not kidding. We really did go to the dump on our anniversary. I know it doesn't sound very fun, but we enjoyed our day. It was very relieving to clean some stuff out, and fun to work together. I wish I could say that we turned things around and went out for a nice dinner, but that didn't happen either. We had pizza and then I went to Pack Meeting. Okay, so it wasn't the most spectacular of anniversaries, but I guess that's what you get when you have two very practical people, and a trip planned for the following week.
Now, to redeem ourselves, in celebration of our anniversary, I'm going to copy my cousin and tell you a little bit about how we met. Actually, that's not very romantic either, but oh well.
So, Brian and I were in a single's ward together at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Brian was the Elder's Quorum President and I was the ward sport's person. We first met at an Ultimate Frisbee activity. Brian will tell you that he first noticed my eyes, and then was impressed that I rode my bike to the park. I was impressed with how much he could run around during the game, and I did notice him loitering as I was asked out by two other guys. He was waiting for his turn, but gave up when he realized he was in a line. He didn't give up for good, though. The truth is, as the Elder's Quorum President he had a colored picture list of all of the member's of the ward and used said list to make a list of the ten girls he wanted to ask out. I happened to be the first on his list, so he couldn't give up, he had check marks to make. In an effort to work his way through his dating list, Brian tried to strike up conversations with me at a couple of activities, but I was rude. I was not interested in dating anyone at the time, and I really didn't want to waste my time flirting, so I was rude and brushed him off. Finally, though, his persistence paid off, he called my home, but I was at work, so my Grandma gave him my work number. He called work, but I was out delivering prescriptions, so my coworkers gave him my cell number. He called the cell phone, and I answered. I was so caught off guard that I couldn't say no, so we had our first date planned.
On September 8, 2000, we met some friends, went to dinner then a corn maze, and then went back to my Grandparents house (where I was living at the time) for ice cream. When it was over I figured that I had fun, but it was a pretty normal, awkward first date. There was nothing too fantastic, but then Brian proved his interest by sitting by me at church and at a fireside the following Sunday, making an effort to find me at Family Home Evening on Monday, calling to set-up another date on Tuesday. Confirming the date on Thursday, and then going miniature golfing as our second date on Friday. From that point on, we were pretty inseparable. I guess you could be very cliche and say that we just clicked.
We continued to date through all of the holidays, got engaged on February 24, 2001, and then were married on June 26, 2001. It was a pretty fast courtship, and an even faster engagement. Now it has been seven years, and we couldn't be happier. It's actually kind of hard to believe it's been as long as it has. Here are a couple of pictures of then and now. We've grown in age, weight, and by one child, but otherwise we're pretty much the same.
Saturday we decided to hike waterfall canyon. At the top we wanted to take a picture of us and the waterfall. The waterfall was too tall but by taking two pictures and stacking them on each other you can see how high the waterfall is. We went with some of my friends the Gracey's. We are sad they will be moving to Bear lake but are also happy they are close enough we can visit easily.
Of course Bradley was a trooper as usual. If fact he usually would spur us on whenever we stopped for a breather.
