Pictures of the Week -- Week 12

This week was busy with the usual stuff ~ soccer, gymnastics, baseball, cooking, cleaning, working, doing homework, etc. But, we celebrated a very special boy's 10th birthday!!! See that story here. We spent the weekend in Estes Park and, in lieu of having a birthday party, Josh got to invite his best friend, Anders, to be our adopted son for the weekend. We had a great time! We took off Friday around dinner time and got to Solitude Cabins less than 2 hours later. I ran to the store while Jeff and the kids got settled in. We stayed up late playing video games and finally sacked out for the night. In the morning, we had breakfast in the cabin and then headed to the Estes Park Mountain shop. Initially, we were going to rent snowshoes, but the weather was so beautiful that we decided to go for a hike instead. The kids had a great time finding rocks to climb on, locating the best walking sticks and finding random snow to play in. We were excited to get to Gem Lake, but when we finally did, it was a little disappointing. The views on the way up were amazing, but the lake was really tiny. Like a pond, really. A frozen pond. We watched some teenage boys try to impress the girls they were with by dragging large logs and rocks to throw onto the pond. They were not very successful and ended up looking like dumb asses. Jeff & I jokingly commented to the kids that the teenagers were showing them what NOT to do. We actually meant it, though. : ) After the hike, we had a spaghetti dinner at the cabin and then played games, watched tv and goofed around. At about 8pm, we hit the hot tub, but it was only about 90 degrees and didn't even feel good. We were all looking forward to it so much and were pretty disappointed that it didn't work out. The kids didn't seem to mind, but we didn't stay long. On Sunday, we drove around Estes Park and did some souvenir shopping, but not much else was open this time of year. We found more rocks for the kids to climb on and Jeff pulled a flyer for some land. We dreamed of how wonderful it would be to have a cabin in the mountains. What a nice retreat it would be. Someday, maybe. We love Estes Park. It was a great weekend getaway and I'm sure we'll go back some other time this summer or fall. We have grand plans of doing a LOT of hiking this year.