Dillion, Colorado Retreat

This is a blog post that is impossible to write. And by that I don't mean that the content is too sad or mind blowing to discuss. I mean I'm sitting here on the couch with the laptop and my almost 11 month old baby wants to know whats going on. He literally just pulled the screen all the way back and stuck the corner in his mouth. He also likes to reach up and pat the keys whenever he can so any typos or weird things I don't see as I'm editing this that end up posting to the world-- that's him (suuuure). This is the reason I almost never use my laptop or desktop. Thank goodness for smart phones and tablets. Anyway, I must press forward because I've fallen behind on my blogging duties once more.

Well, as I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago, my family had planned a trip out to Colorado this summer which was postponed due to my dad having a heart attack (he's doing much better now, by the way). We were unable to cancel our reservation at the time so we decided to move it to October. So a couple of weeks ago we made our second trip with Luke by air travel. Since the flight was so much shorter I anticipated it going easier than our trip to Maryland in July. In a lot of ways it was (no layover, for one thing) but as he gets older he has a harder time sleeping anywhere but a crib or pack 'n play (my arms). He will do it sometimes... in his room, being rocked with the lights off... On a cramped plane with weird air levels and bright lights and unnecessarily loud people is a lot more difficult of an environment. That made naps hard and if you know me you should know I'm
always think of the naps. They rule my life. I should probably try to be a little more relaxed about them, especially on vacation. I just know that if my little boy doesn't get his naps he will be Cranky. That's right, with a capital C. So anyway, he slept about half an hour at the end of the flight out. On the way back our flight was very late and he fell asleep in my arms in the airport and woke up as soon as we boarded. He stayed awake the whole flight, was crazy and then crashed on the car ride home from the airport. Oh, travel. You're not really my friend. Good thing the trip in between always makes it worth it.

My parents picked us up from the airport in this huge 10-11 passenger van. Luke was less than pleased to go from one cramped, confined space to his car seat for a two hour trek up into the mountains. By the time we got there it was bedtime for baby and we were able to relax a little. Natalie and her family have since returned to Qatar so those who were there were Mom and Dad, Tammy and her daughter, Stacey and three of her four boys, Hailey and Brian with their three kids, Lindsay and Morgan with their two girls and of course Bryan, Luke and I. I would say it was a full house but this cabin was so large that it easily accommodated all of us. A couple cool things they had were a pool table and a pin ball machine. The older kids seemed to really enjoy that. Luke and his cousins (just 3 months older than him) just toddled around throwing balls and getting into trouble.

That first night my mom gave each family a present. She and Hailey are working together to put all of our family pictures into printed out books. They have blurbs about what happened each year, etc. Anyway, this is our second volume so we had fun laughing at each other's bad perms and retelling old stories (like the time Lindsay had her friends paint birthday messages to Natalie all over our basements walls while my parents were out of town). While there we went swimming at a nearby rec center, strolled around some neat quaint shops in Breckenridge, took walks from our cabin to the gorgeous lake but mostly we just hung out and enjoyed each other, which is what I always find to be the best part of vacations. One night we played a couple of rounds of Tyler's favorite game, Werewolf, which was a total flashback for Bryan and I-- we played it with a group in our singles ward almost every Sunday when the flirting days were going strong. It was a fairly short trip and on Sunday, since we happened to go on this trip during a regional conference for all of Colorado and Wyoming, we had our own little church program and watched a conference talk and Mormon Messages. When everyone had left except us, my parents and the Handleys we all took a nice drive up into the mountains to enjoy the scenery.

Here are some pictures from our trip (of course most of them are of Luke):

Luke and his cousin buddy.

Love it.

I love these sweet girls so much!

Buddies dining together.

Snuggling with Grandma

Our day out at the quaint shops in Breckenridge

I can't believe my 16 year old nephew is already as tall as dad!

All the grandkids who were there except napping babies.

I can't get enough of these buddies!!!

I thought I had walked into a painting.

Skipping stones with dada!

The cabin we stayed at.

On our drive on Sunday.

We found snow! (One little pile pushed to the side in a parking lot...)

On Monday we cleaned up, packed and headed to my sister's house, since she lives nearby the retreat. It was my niece's (her daughter's) birthday and, while we did celebrate with everyone on the trip, it was nice to be there for the actual day. My parents and the Handleys left for the airport in the afternoon but we were able to stay later since our flight was so late and we got to go out to birthday dinner and everything! So nice to be able to be there since we get precious little time with our family.

Here we are at the airport. I do love my sleepy little boy. I miss holding him while he sleeps. The flight back would sure have been much smoother if he had just stayed this way...

He sure is growing up and doing so many things. The first year goes so slowly but also so so quickly. He's less of a baby now and more of a little boy! He can climb stairs, no problem. He has advanced from his funny little army crawling to full on hands and knees fast crawling around the house. He gets into everything, loves to play with cords (eek!) and put things in his mouth. He's a great little eater and gobbles down pretty much everything we put in front of him. He loves string cheese, grapes, blueberries, bread, etc. He pulls up to everything and cruises around. He's seriously going to be walking before I know it. He also is growing at least his 7th and 8th teeth and possibly more than I can't see. We've been trying to teach him to wave but he doesn't do that yet-- he does clap his hands, which is so so adorable. Oftentimes I roll a ball to him, he picks it up and then I put out my hands and say, "Okay, can Mama have it?" And he grins really big and puts it squarely in my hands. He has some pretty grumpy times but I just love my sweet little handsome boy.

Halloween is this Friday and I'm hoping to have another post next week. October-December are such crazy busy months already but now we each have a birthday in them as well! Oh yeah, did I forget to mention I turned 28 a few weeks ago? It was a nice day and night but honestly I'm much more excited for another birthday coming up in just over a month! I can hardly believe it. Hopefully it'll be blog posts galore in the weeks to come.