Colorado July 2012

During the first week of July we took a trip to Durango Colorado for a family reunion/40th Wedding anniversary celebration with Preston's family.  We did a lot of fun stuff during our 5 day stay. It was a very busy few days. We got to experience a lot of new things. Warning this post has A LOT of pictures. So here is our trip in a nutshell. Enjoy

 

 Hanging out at a park while we waited for the vacation rental home to be ready.

 4th of July morning.

 The kids had a lot of fun with some marshmallow guns that Nana and Grandpa gave them.

 Preston found a water snake the kids enjoyed checking it out.

 Nathan decided he would hold it too. I think he was the only kid that actually held it.

 It did not want to leave Nathan so it made a tight knot with his tail.  This made for a longer snake holding experience then Nathan originally bargained for.  :-)

 We also checked out a children's discovery museum in downtown Durango.

 Preston put on a puppet show for Amanda and Jessica.

 Then Taylor and Natalie took a turn.

 That afternoon we watched the parade.  It did not measure up to an Eagar parade at all but at least we could watch a parade.

 Natalie thought parts of the parade were far too loud.

 I was a victim of a water fight between some spectators and parade walkers.  It is hard to see in this picture but it looked like I was in desperate need of a ladies room.

 There was a parking garage that we passed and Nathan saw this car and had to get a picture. Funny thing is shortly after we took this picture the gates to the parking garage were sealed. Guess they didn't like commoners near the car.

 The vacation rental home had a hottub.

 They could not have any fireworks due to all the fires burning in Colorado over the summer so we improvised with sparklers. Didn't feel much like the 4th to be honest.

 One of the nights we were front row at a Melodrama.  It went really late and was long but the kids enjoyed it and even participated a little in the show.

 We took a ride to Silverton and did some shopping and ate lunch before riding a train back to Durango.

 Natalie slept at almost every activity we went to.

 Amanda loving the train whistle.

 We took some old time photos one day. It was really fun to dress up.

 We also looked at a train museum.

 Had some fun with a fake cowboy.

 

 One night we went to Bar D Wranglers for a BBQ dinner and a show.

 Natalie also fell asleep here during the show.

 

 We also went white water river rafting.  Nathan got to go on the raft with his Uncle Kendall and Aunt Liz and we took Natalie and Taylor with us.  Once again Natalie fell asleep. She just curled up and went to sleep in the front of the raft. Obviously it wasn't as high adventure as we originally thought it would be, but it was a lot of fun.  It makes me chuckle to see the pictures. Almost everyone Natalie has a look on her face like "Are we having fun yet?"  The rest of us really enjoyed it.