Our Little Vacation

Hayden had a dentist appointment over in Pueblo on Tuesday, the 5th, so we decided to leave on Saturday morning and have a little vacation for a few days. We left on Saturday morning and headed up to Denver for my nephew's birthday party. Hayden had a lot of fun at the party - slaying dragons and pinning the fire on the dragon.

After the party, we headed back down to Colorado Springs, and went and ate at Old Chicago with some of Waylen's family. Then after eating, we went and checked into our hotel. Hayden had been waiting all day to go to the hotel and go swimming. It was a little disappointing because the water was ICE cold. Kayla didn't like it at all, and it was way too cold for me and Waylen too, but it didn't seem to bother Hayden at all. So we sat and watched Hayden jump off the side into the pool. Kayla acted like she wanted to jump in, but she'd get right to the edge and stop, I guess she didn't want to FREEZE!! We let Hayden play for awhile, then went back to the room when he was ready for a nice hot bath.

The next morning, we got up and went and had the kids pictures taken at Sears. It was a bit of a challenge, since Kayla did not want to cooperate at all. It just wasn't her idea, so she didn't want to do it. But the photographer was really patient and you'd never know she was being a little stinker by the looks of the pictures. After the trial of picture taking and some shopping, we went back to the hotel and Waylen took Hayden swimming again, while I stayed in the room and had a little nap with Kayla.
That night, we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's for dinner, we hadn't told Hayden we were going there because we didn't want to have him ask a hundred times when we were going to go to Chuck E. Cheese's. So, he was pretty excited when he noticed that we were going there, and he had a lot of fun.

Kayla loved it too, she had so much fun going from one ride to the next.

Waylen and I joined all the fun and helped Hayden win as many tickets as possible. I got lucky on one of the games and won him 50 tickets, 3 times!! Jackpot!! He ended up winning over 400 tickets, so he picked a miniature basketball and some candy for his prize.

On Monday, we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and of course the kids loved it. What kid doesn't like seeing a bunch of animals?

They both liked the giraffes. We got there right when they were letting the giraffes out, so we were able to see all of them as they walked by.

We went back before we left, so they could feed the giraffes some crackers. Kayla ended up throwing hers at the giraffe, but a little girl standing next to her, gave her one so she could FEED it to the giraffe.

Another favorite for the kids was watching the bears play, and Kayla was ready to jump right on in with them and every other animal. We should have left her with the monkeys!!

After the zoo, we went to the mall and had lunch and did some more shopping (we were still looking for some shoes for Hayden), then we headed down to Pueblo that afternoon. We got to Pueblo, and went to Kohl's where we finally found him a pair of shoes. Thank goodness!! --We spent the night in Pueblo with Ben and Kaley, then took Hayden to his dentist appointment Tuesday morning. After his appointment, we went and had lunch at Hayden's favorite place, McDonald's, then we came home. We had a lot of fun on our little vacation, but it is always nice to get home!!

Celebration Fun

Well, the Celebration has come and gone, just like that!! Thursday night they had what they call a Kick-off Social, but we didn't attend it. Then Friday morning they had the parade. Hayden was a little hestitant at first about riding the float, he wanted to just ride in the back of Papa's truck like he did last year. But after a little bit of coaxing from some of the other kids and my sister-in-law's dad, he found his spot on the float. And he was a pretty darn cute cowboy too on there!! He had a lot of fun riding the float, and was excited to get a pop at the half way point. --The parade goes through town (which is about 9 blocks) then it turns around and comes back through. Just in case you miss it the first time!! Later in the afternoon, me and the kids went with some of Waylen's family (Waylen had to work on Friday) and took the kids to the carnival for awhile. Then around 3, we all went back to my in-laws, and me, and my MIL & FIL headed down to work our two-hour shift in the hamburger stand. After working there, we all went out to the rodeo. It wasn't a very good rodeo this year. They had 14 bull-riders, but none of them lasted the 8 seconds. We needed some real cowboys in our rodeo!! The kids seemed to enjoy the rodeo, but luckily it didn't last too long because they were starting to get a little restless near the end. After the rodeo, we went back to the in-laws to visit for awhile before heading home after our first day of the Celebration.
Saturday started off with a 5k, which Waylen ran in. It started at 8, and I was hoping to get down to see him start and finish like we did last year, but Hayden didn't wake up until after 8:30. I guess it had been a long day on Friday!! Anyways, Waylen made it home around 9. He ran the race in just over 30 minutes, which is really good considering he had only been "training" for about 2 weeks. He said it about killed him this year, and I had to remind him he is a year older now!! Great job Waylen and everyone else who ran -His sister Melody took 3rd in her age group, and his sister Jacki took 5th. His brother and his wife also ran, and did really good and had decided at the last minute they would run.
After Waylen got home, we all finished getting ready and got Hayden down to the float again, and headed down to watch the parade. Kayla loved watching the parade both days, and loved all the horses. The second time by, we were going to get Hayden off the float, so he could watch the rest of the parade, but when Waylen asked him if he wanted off, he said "No". I guess he was having too much fun!! After the parade, we went out to the motocross for a few hours. The races were o.k, they've been better in previous years. They did have several wrecks, and one of the kids in Waylen's young men's class wrecked and ended up with a broken arm!! But it lasted a little longer than needed, it took them over 2 hours to get to the intermission. So, we left not too long after they started racing again, it was starting to cloud up, and we wanted to take the kids to the carnival before it rained. --But it ended up starting to rain while we were at the carnival, it rained for about 10 minutes, then just drizzled for about 15 minutes, but then it started raining hard again, so we decided to just go back later. So, we went back again later, with Waylen's family, and Hayden had fun again riding the rides with his cousins. And we finally managed to pull him away before we went broke buying tickets!! Later that evening, we went back to the in-laws and everyone enjoyed watching the fireworks. On Sunday, they had a special two hour meeting with all 3 wards combined, but we skipped out last year and this year. Shame on us!! But it is way too hard to wrestle with Kayla for that long. After the church meeting, we went down to the in-laws and had lunch, and spent the afternoon and evening visiting with everyone. And that pretty much sums up our adventures for the Celebration.

Presenting: Me and My Gang

Celebration Candids

Parade Floats from the Past

So, in one of my last posts I mentioned about the Pioneer Celebration that our town has every year. One of the highlights of this two-day event is a parade. When I was younger we attended many parades in Waycross, so when I think of a parade for a town it was like those: marching bands, T-ball teams, cheerleading groups, and such. Well, the parade here for Manassa Pioneer Days is nothing like that. There are Floats, and more floats -built by the local businesses and then each organization in the church in 2 of the wards build floats also. So, there's usually somewhere around 15 floats in the parade. And that's about all besides all the demolition derby cars!!


I thought I would post a few pictures of the floats that have been done for Larry's Garage (my father-in-law's buisness). My mother-in-law and her kids have been doing these floats for many years, and have had many great ones. They took a sabatical for a few years, and started back a few years after me and Waylen got married, so these are ones that I have helped on with all the rest of the family.

This is known as the "comeback" float - it was the done in 2003- after a few years of them not doing one - this is the first float I ever helped on.

Float from 2004: It's an octupus if you can't tell

This is the Riverboat float from 2005:

Float from 2006:

One of my favorites - Mater from last year - Definetly going to be hard to top that one -Lots of people loved it!!!

And this year we are doing the toys from Toy Story - Woody, Buzz Lightyear, the dinosaur, the pig, slinky dog, and Mr. Potato Head. It's all starting to come together slowly but surely, and hopefully we'll have it all done by the end of the week. Then, we can relax and get a few other things done before the Celebration begins next Friday. So, once again - Stay Tuned for how Woody and his gang turn out!!