Colorado day 2 July 26th 2012

Today before we started to head farther west we made a couple stops first. We went to Manitou cliff dwellings. It was really gorgeous.. as well as a place called Garden of the gods that we stopped at after that.

A VERY LOOOOONNNGGGG DAY Colorado Day 1 July 25th 2012

Wednesday turned out to be a very long day. We left Maryland and headed out west for a trip with my parents but for us the day started at 12:00 am Wednesday morning. You see we never went to bed that night. Ken got home from work at 11:30 and then we had to be at my parents house at 2:30 because a shuttle was picking us up at about 3 or so to take us to the airport. It just didn't make any sense really to go to bed. So we headed to the airport picking up some other people along the way in the shuttle. It still amazes me to think how we can defy gravity like we do when flying.

After we got to Colorado , got to where we were going to stay and took a little nap, We took a train ride up the mountain to Pikes peak... What a site. Talk about beautiful..

on the way up the mountain

on the way up the mountain

we saw these wild rams or whatever they were on the way up

made it to the top.

what a view...

As you can imagine.. We were all REALLY exhausted by the end of the day. Looking forward to day 2 though .. More to come..

A Day at the Beach

It's taken me a few days to post this but last Wednesday, the boys and I took a day trip to the beach with some friends. We don't get to see them that often so the boys were really psyched. We got there a little after 11am and left the beach about 4:15 pm but it didn't feel like we were there for 5 hours at all. On the way home we stopped at Grotto's and got something to eat. It turned out to be a really nice day.

My friend Heather and Me

Left to right.. My son Jordan, Patrick my son Tanner, and Josh

The boys being rebels.. Patrick, Josh, Tanner and Jordan

Wordless Wednesday

I took this pic when we were at the Relay for Life

A HOT Home project

We had been talking about building a fire pit in the back yard, you know just a simple one dug out a little with a circle of rocks around it. Nothing too fancy. Then I came across this picture of a fire pit on Pinterest.

I really liked it and thought ..we could do something like that. How hard could it be?  So I showed it to my husband and he agreed it shouldn't be that hard. It wouldn't be something we would get done in one day but we could do it. And so After a couple days work, here is our version of the picture above.

I just wish I had gotten a picture before we started burning in it.

Christmas lights turned into Summer Lights

Now that Summer is here I love spending time out on the back deck. Even at night it's nice to just sit out there and relax chatting with my husband or the boys. To make it more inviting I like to add some lights out there. Using some strings of old Christmas lights and whatever else I had laying around,( A basket ,an empty concrete planter and an old jar), I made a few light pieces for out there.

An old concrete planter that I just stuck an old string of lights in.

The planter in the corner

Here I took an old hanging basket and put an old string of lights in it.

The basket hanging on the railing

Here I took a string of lights and put them in a jar on a table

A close up of the jar

Face lift

Last Saturday we took down this Aluminum Awning that was on the front of our house. It was on the house when we bought it over 2 years ago and I was never really that crazy about it. Now that it is down I like it so much better. Our next step is to power wash the house and then paint. These are some before and after pictures.

This is the only before picture I could find right now. It's a little hard to see it with the snow.

This is after we took it down. It opens things up A LOT..

Can't wait to re paint the shudders and door a different color other than black.

Any suggestions on a new shudder and door color? The house is staying white.

Insect or Fowl ?

The other evening I was sitting on the back deck and I happen to see this thing hovering around some flowers we have. At first I thought it was a little humming bird because of the way it was kind of still in mid air except its wings which were going so fast you couldn't really see them. When I got the camera however and got a closer look, I could see that this thing didn't look like any hummingbird. It looks like some kind of insect or something. Some one said it looks like a cicada but I'm not sure, I've never seen a cicada like this. Does anyone have any idea? Whatever it is it's pretty interesting.

Wordless Wednessday "Little Thieves "

The birds are taking the mossy grass stuff from my planters

If you look real close you can see some of it in the birds beak.

Guess they have to make their nests from something.