Balloon Festival

Brian was off today so we decided to go and watch the launch of some hot air balloons at the Ogden Valley Balloon Festival. It was really interesting to watch. It made for an early morning, but the day was beautiful so it all turned out.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Did you know Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house in Bountiful, UT? Maybe I should back up, do you know who Frank Lloyd Wright is? He was a pretty famous (and revolutionary for the time) architect who lived from 1867 to 1959. A couple of his most famous buildings are the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Falling Water, a home in Pennsylvania. If you want to know more you can look it up. But anyway, back to my original question, Did you know he designed a house in Bountiful? I didn't, but was really excited when I learned that he did and saw that it was going to be opened for tours.

The house was built in about 1953 and lived in for a few years until the original owner had to move out of state. It then fell into disrepair until about ten years ago when a pair of guys found it, realized what they had, and worked to restore it. The house is about 1,600 square feet (pretty small) and sits on 10 acres in the mountains in Bountiful. It's for sale for anybody interested, only $4.1 million (Yikes!).

Here are some pictures of the outside of the house. They're not the greatest, but since Frank Lloyd Wright liked to blend his homes into the landscape, it's hard to get any really good shots.

Tetons

Over the first weekend in August we were in the Tetons for the annual Bradley family reunion. Here are a couple of slide shows of our time at camp. The fist is Bradley playing with Noah and Todd. The second is just a bunch of pictures in no particular order.

The Farm

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 (better Late than Never)

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.

Moaping

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.

Oh What Fun ...

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.