Summer 2020 Continued

After our Utah/California trip, we came back home to Colorado and enjoyed some summer fun there. Of course, Nana's and Papa's backyard was a favorite retreat. 

I mean, what could be better than water guns...

... and popsicles on a hot day?

On that particular day, there was even a beautiful butterfly Carter tried to catch.

With Covid still making things weird, there was also a lot of time spent at home. Clara took the opportunity to explore the house.

And the kids played cutely together (sometimes, haha).

We also grew some summer squash in our garden. Here's one of our first squashes!

One thing that was fine to do during Covid was hiking, so we took the opportunity to explore a part of Castlewood Canyon we hadn't been to before.

It took us to the old Lucas Homestead, which was built in the late 1800s by an Irish immigrant family. Aubrey and Carter enjoyed exploring the ruins of the house, which were pretty cool.

Here's the old fireplace:

Then, at the end of June/beginning of July, we spent three different days at Nana's and Papa's, all close together. The first day was just a for-fun trip to hang out. Papa played soccer with Carter, which was so cute.

And Clara hung out with Daddy. (Terrible photo quality alert.)

When we went back to their house a couple of days later, it was for Papa's retirement party! Karen got this cool map for him to put pins in all the places he went for work.

And I made him a landslide German chocolate cake. It's kind of a mess, but landslides are messy, okay?

The kids also made Papa some cute cards. 🧡

Carter also decided to provide some musical entertainment for the party. Hehe.

The third time we went to their house in that short time period was the 4th of July. Here's Clara all decked out in patriotic clothing!

The kids had to have popsicles again, obviously.

And then there were s'mores! Quite a good day, treat-wise.

Clara discovered a love of graham crackers during the s'mores making. It was her first time eating them.

Because Covid was still going strong and there wasn't a vaccine yet, my mom and dad didn't feel comfortable getting together with the whole family at their house like we usually do in summer, so Maren and Kara, their kids, and our family all rented out a house in Woodland Park, a mountain town near Colorado Springs.

While there, we all hiked to Monument Rock. I took too many pictures...

Carter and Bennett were cute buddies, as usual.

And we tried for an all-children photo (minus Clara, I guess, since she was in the hikking backpack) by this little pond, but Carter was feeling uncooperative. Good times.

So this is the best we could get:

Pretty place though, no?

The littles were good hikers. I think it helped to have the positive peer pressure of cousins there.

More photos of the rock (told you I took too many):

Just at the base of the rock was a huge, muddy puddle (I can't really call it a pond). The little kids had to spend a good deal of time throwing things into it, of course.

The older kids, however, preferred to climb the rock.

After the hike, we went up to Castle Rock to eat some Dos Amigos. The littles enjoyed climbing around at Festival Park after they ate their three bites of food.

Then we went back to the house in Woodland Park and mostly just hung out. I don't have any other pictures, so I don't really know what we did, haha. I do know both Aubrey and Carter had some... stomach issues, we'll say, which led to their first tastes of Gatorade. Carter became a big fan.

I also know I found this book in the house library...

... and we were inspired to watch Hamilton for the first time (just the adults). Kara had already seen it, but Maren, Daniel, and I had not. We loved it, and I sometimes wish I could go back and watch it for the first time again, just to experience the sheer surprise and joy of it. I laughed so hard at all the King George scenes. Ah, so good.

Anyway, here's a cute video of Clara I took at the house there. She thought it was funny to make it impossible for me to change her diaper.

And that's all for now!

Summer 2020 Road Trip

If I'm being honest, the first few months of Covid shutdown were actually really nice. Having Daniel home all the time, all the hiking and bike riding, the excuse to avoid other people... Haha. The big downside, however, was that so many fun plans got cancelled. One of those fun plans was our Jibson family trip to Croatia, which was supposed to happen in June. So when we couldn't go there, we decided to go to Colt's family's cabin in Utah. 

Not quite as good, obviously, but not too shabby... not too shabby at all. We had fun driving around in their ATV thing (I have no idea what it's called). It's so beautiful there! Here's Papa driving us around.

And here are some vultures we saw in the trees as we passed by.

Pretty lake! 

We also played a bunch of cornhole. Here was a match between Daddy/Papa and Colt/Karen, with the cute Aubrey and Emma as assistants. I don't remember who won.

We actually had a tournament between all the couples, and Daniel and I (amazingly) won! I don't have photos of that... Too bad.

Anyway, Carter and Nora were content to sit on the swing while the adults played cornhole. They're so cute! They seemed to be deep in important conversation. Hehe.

One of the days we walked the short distance into Zion National Park. We took our time. The kids enjoyed picking dandelions...

... and playing with sticks...

... and just generally exploring nature.

Of course, the view when we finally got there was beautiful.

But kids enjoy playing in the dirt more than they enjoy basking in glorious vistas, so that's what Carter and Nora did.

They were REALLY dirty afterwards. *shrug*

But I really enjoyed the view, both close up...

... and far away.

When we weren't outside enjoying the beauty (but not the heat), the kids made their own fun. Superheroes to the rescue!

We also had a fun family singalong one afternoon, accompanied by Aunt Sharon on the ukelele. 

We even got a solo from Daniel!

But, of course, we always made our way back outside...

... until it was time to leave. It was a wonderful, relaxing trip that was much needed after all of the covid isolationism we'd all been experiencing.

But our trip wasn't over!

From Utah we drove up to northern California to visit Maren's family. We started out meeting them in Sequoia National Park. 

In case you didn't know, there are a lot of big trees there. ;)

Here's a cross-section of a tree trunk.

And here's a fallen tree that they cut a pathway through.

This is just pretty.

And here we are with the General Sherman tree.

Clara had the best gig, just sitting in the hiking backpack bein' all cute. 

After seeing a bunch of the big trees, we hiked to Tokopah Falls. The whole hike was SO pretty! Here's a photo dump.

Clara didn't make it, haha.

But it was fine that she fell asleep since she ended up going back to the car with Daniel and Aubrey after Aubrey fell and hurt herself a bit. As a result, it was just me and Carter (from the Jibson clan, anyway) at the waterfall. 

It was so pretty around there! I'm sad Daniel and Aubrey missed it. The rest of us spent awhile just sitting on the rocks and taking it all in.

After a few minutes up there, we had some cute visitors.

Again, I'm sad Aubrey missed them! And I feel bad that Daniel missed this:

Carter enjoyed it at least.

So did the McEuen boys, who can barely be seen in the bottom left corner of this photo:

And so did Maren and Scott. They look like an advertisement for hiking pants or boots or something...

Anyway, I tried to force another Mommy/son photo out of Carter before we left, but he wasn't into it.

What can you do? Right?

The walk back to the parking lot was a lot faster than the hike up to the falls, but I still managed to snap a couple of photos. I just felt like this scene was so idyllic.

I have no idea what this plant is, but I thought it was super cool.

Anyway, we drove the rest of the way to Maren's house and enjoyed some down time with cousins. Evan was super cute and helped Aubrey and Carter build a little fort.

And Aubrey—don't ask me why—decided to label things with post-it notes, including Rusty, the dog.

She also drew a picture for him... D'awwww.

Anyway.

We also had to go to the beach while we were there, because California. Clara just hung out on different adults' laps the whole time, which she was fine with.

When she sat on my lap, we played one of her favorite games. That laugh! 💗

She also hung out in the tent. We all did, actually, because it was very windy and weirdly chilly.

But the temperatute didn't stop the kids from having a lot of fun! Carter played in the sand to keep him warm. He found a cool shell, too.

And Aubrey just toughed it out in the cold water. She even had Evan teach her to boogie board!

In the end, everyone was tuckered out. Carter even fell asleep on the drive home!

We also drove into San Francisco for a day. First we went to Golden Gate Park, which I had never been to before. We crossed the bridge over Stow Lake onto Strawberry Hill...

... where we checked out Huntington Falls.

We walked all around Strawberry Hill, and I tried several times to get good photos of all the pretty flowers there. Alas, this was back when I still had my crappy phone with a crappy camera, so all of the photos were garbage. I did get this shot of Stow Lake though. 

And then we got a photo of the kids that reminds me of a band's album cover.

After that we drove over to the Sutro Baths at Point Lobos. Again, I had never been there before.

The kids had fun rock scrambling and running on the beach while the adults took in the view.

We also went into this cave you can see here:

This was the beautiful view for those who walked through the dark cave to the opening on the other end:

After exploring that area for awhile, we reigned the kids back in. They had to do some more rock scrambling to get back to us. It was Aubrey and all the boys, haha.

We then walked up a little trail to a lookout point with more great views.

While we were up there, Aubrey climbed up to the highest point she could for an even better view. It was a very Aubrey thing to do.

We then headed toward Golden Gate Bridge and got an obligatory family photo in front of it. Not sure why I'm cradling my jacket like a child, but whatever. This was the best we could do.

And then we walked across the bridge.

I didn't get many photos because it was really windy and cold up there. Plus Carter had a hard time with the windiness and coldness, so I was trying to keep him going. Then he ran away from us and... yeah, it was a whole thing.

But we made it to Ghirardelli, so it was all okay.

Anyway, that sums up our summer road trip! Just to finish, here's a cute photo of Aubrey and Carter sharing a hotel bed. Because why not?