At Home

The kids and I returned home today from a VERY long trip. We had intended to be home by Wednesday (Roy's and my 14th anniversary), but our car had another plan for us. It ended up in the shop until late yesterday afternoon in Cortez, CO. The good part was we got to stay with my brother and sister-in-law for a few days. We enjoyed our time with them very much - I can't think of a better way to be stranded.

Nathan came home from work and laid in the floor to relax a bit... apparently the monkeys thought he looked like a good jungle gym.

Nathan and Vanessa have a trampoline that the boys couldn't get enough of! This was taken a few hours after Austin came running in saying "Bryce hurt his back - I heard it pop and now he can't move!" Every mother loves to hear that! Obviously, he was fine... couldn't wait to get back to jumping.

Rego is my doggie-nephew. He is cute, but naughty. He likes to run away and chase rabbits. I took him out with me once and he stayed right with me earning my trust. So, the next time I went out I confidently took him with me - he ran off and I spent half an hour chasing him. I think I heard him laughing at me. Needless to say... he lost Aunt Donna's trust. But he is still cute!

The last morning we were there - this was the view out the front door. Low laying clouds... beautiful view! At first it looked smokey which wasn't unusual since there are two uncontrolled forest fires in the area and on certain days the sky was quite smokey over the mountains. On our way home we ran into some rain not far out of Cortez, hopefully they got some of it.

When we were picking up the car, the mechanic said "you're not planning to drive home right away are you?" To which I replied "YES!!!" Then he said "you need to break this new part in slowly - you need to only go 50 or 60 miles then stop and let it cool off". SERIOUSLY?!?!?! Do you know how long it takes to drive 500+ miles at 60 miles at a time?? I much prefer to get behind the wheel and get where I'm going with as few stops as possible... so this was a painfully long journey home! On the bright side, we used a couple of the stops to knock out some back to school shopping. The other bright side is that my car no longer growls at me.

When we pulled into the drive-way, I was delighted to see my sunflowers not only living, but flourishing! (These are the ones that were protected by the wall in the wind storm... the others were a total loss).

To put this photo into perspective... for those of you who haven't seen the boys in a while... Austin is 5'1".

After being cooped up in the car... they were ready to clown around for a while.

All-in-all, we had a wonderful trip and like the end of any trip - we were ready to be home.

To everyone who helped us get our cars' boo-boos fixed and let us crash on you in the process - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! Love you all dearly!!