Friend and Family Visitors!

Earlier last month my friend Destiny from MN came out to celebrate her 30th birthday!We felt so special that she would want to spend it with us, and had a great time showing her around. The first day she arrived we went to check out Red Rocks Amphitheater. This is one place I've always wanted to see, but have never been. I definitely plan to check out a concert here next summer.

Before going out for Destiny's birthday we took her to a couple of haunted houses with a bunch of our friends. I don't think I've been to a haunted house in over 10 years, and the first one we went to reminded me why. I was pretty scared! The second one was in the set of an old mine shaft and seemed pretty cool. However, I think they spent too much money on props, because there wasn't really any actors inside to scare us! I HATE haunted houses, but I was actually bored through this one.

Here's Destiny and Kiana at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs!

You can't come visit us without taking a trip to Bishops Castle! He has really done a lot since I was last there a year or so ago.

They even have a gift shop open now. Kiana got to be the princess of the castle for the day.

After Destiny left, Kiana got a visit from her Grandma and Grandpa Johnson from Missouri for a few days. One of the days they were here we decided to see if we could drive up to the top of Pikes Peak. Typically you can only drive to the top a few months during the summer. Most of the time it's just too windy. We'll that day seemed pretty nice, so we thought we would give it a try. Sure enough they opened it all the way to the top for the first time in over a week. I've only ever been to treeline, so being able to go to the summit seemed like a treat. I knew it would be colder at the top, but it was unreal how fast it got so cold and windy. It was a three hour drive round trip to the top and back down again, and I bet we only spent 5 minutes max at the top. The weather went from being 60 degrees in Colorado Springs to 11 degrees with 40 mph wind gusts at the summit. It was FREEZING!!! I felt like I was back in MN, in the middle of January, and standing in a blizzard. Except as you can see below, the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

Check out the viewer to the left! I don't think that will be working again for awhile. Kiana didn't cry at all, I think she was in shock as to what was going on. She's never been in weather that cold before, and especially with the freezing wind she just wanted to snuggle into me!

The view from the top was pretty spectacular. As you can see below the top flattened out in some parts, and was covered in huge boulders. That seemed so bazaar to me. Typically when you see boulders at the bottom of the mountain it's because they broke off and fell down. These though are at the top, so where did they come from?

Thought this was a pretty view on the way back down!

There's a reservoir halfway down the mountain. Now that we were mostly out of the cold we thought this would be a good place to take some better pictures.

Kiana got to even open some early Christmas presents! Her favorite one was definitely the piggy bank!

Just enjoying the nice weather and spending the rest of the day at the park!

Thanks everyone for coming out to visit! We love having you here!

Pumpkin Patch & Broncos Game!

On Saturday we took Kiana to the local pumpkin patch. I'm sure she enjoyed it a little more then last year when she was still in mommies tummy!


She was having a blast in the corn bin! She kept grabbing the corn around her like she couldn't pick it up fast enough!

Every year they have an awesome corn maze. This year they made it a little more difficult by putting a scavenger hunt in it as well. You had to find the right stamps to answer the questions on the card, right away we realized there were some trick stamps as well. Notice how well the wooden stick blends in with the corn stalks. We were mainly looking for the colored square stamp on top. This got even more difficult when it started to get dark.

On Sunday Kiana got to go to her first Broncos game! She was so excited she was cheering with everyone else, in between her shocked "what the heck is going on" expressions of course! It was so HOT and we sat in the sun most of the time, so unfortunately the broncos outfit had to come off pretty quick. We also had to spend half f the second quarter and part of the third quarter in the concessions area just to stay out of the sun, but otherwise Kiana had a great time. She was ready for a nap by half time and lately hasn't been wanting to be held as often so this was an interesting introduction as to what our plane ride to Hawaii is going to be like. Here we are right at kick off! GO BRONCOS!

After the Broncos were robbed by a shitty call the last minute of the game, Kiana decided she was done watching and finally passed out!

New Toy and Wedding

Kiana's getting so good at pushing her alligator toy around the house, she seems to think that everything is now a push toy. She pushes her floor toys all around and now she pushes her new activity table around. We thought it would be fine as long as it wasn't on the hard wood, but she must be stronger then we thought. It usually ends up shoved in a corner!

Notice how her acivity table is in a different place each time, and she even lifts our rug up.

The following video shows her pushing her toy. She's gotten to the point where she can walk around her table in order to push it back to where she came from.

The following video shows Kiana shaking her little booty to the alphabet song! She started dancing recently, but since the wedding she seems to want to dance even more!

Kiana went to her first wedding on Sunday. She had a great time dancing with Daddy! And Daddy couldn't be happier to finally have his little dance partner! Think she'll be able to keep up?

10 Months Old! (a little late)

This last month has been a big one for Kiana! She's mastered crawling a few weeks ago, which means she is into EVERYTHING. Although it also means that she doesn't have to get upset when I leave the room, she can just follow me. At the same time I can't just leave her for a minute anymore, she has to be watched constantly now! She's gotten really good at walking behind her push toy and she can cruise around anything now. She's so proud of herself when she moves from the coffee table to the couch and back again. She's also become our little cleaner, or in other words if there's anything on the table within reach it always seems to end up on the floor. One thing that has made us sad is that she doesn't like to be held very much anymore, she wants to always be down walking or standing. She's also done eating baby food. She wont take any of it unless it's sweet potatoes, which as always been her favorite.

We didn't go to the nursing clinic this month, so I tried measuring/weighing her myself. She is somewhere around 16 lbs 3 oz and 26.5-26.75 inches long. She's had a big growing spurt this month, but I attribute that to all the yogurt, pasta and cheese she has started eating. She still fits into her 9 month clothes, but since it's starting to get cold she's been wearing her 12 month winter clothes. She's wearing 12 month footies and still outgrowing those faster then her regular clothes.

I needed to make room for her bigger sized clothes, so this weekend I cleared out her dresser and closet of all her newborn to 6 month clothes. I got one of those vacuum air tight bags so I could store them flatter, but it wasn't quite like what I was expecting. I guess if your flattening a pillow or a comforter like the commercials so it would work, but lots of little bulky clothes just become a squished bulky bag!

Here's the before...

and the after!

Weekend Getaway to Aspen & Denver

The other weekend Grant had a three day weekend so we decided to take advantage of it and get out of town for a few days! In the five years we have lived here I have always wanted to spend some time in Aspen during the warmer months, but I have yet to go that far into the mountains. So on Saturday we drove up to Aspen to spend a couple days. The drive was beautiful, especially once we got to Twin Lakes, Colorado. The Aspen trees just started changing color so the mountainsides looked like they were on fire! The ski resort and the town of Aspen were much smaller then I was expecting. The main town was probably only 4 by 8 blocks square. I knew Aspen was known for shopping, although it seemed a little strange to see stores like Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Prada, and Gucci in such a small town.

View from Twin Lakes, Colorado


Just on the other side of Independence Pass

We ended up staying at The Little Nell, a beautiful resort right at the base of the mountain. If it was winter we could have skied right up to our room! We actually got a great deal since we showed up pretty late. We realized how nice of a place we were staying at when the Concierge walked over to the restaurant he recommended to us just to bring back Kiana's pacifier! She must have dropped it on the floor in the lobby. The restaurant was a few blocks away from the resort, so I guess it was a good thing that we didn't decide to go somewhere else!

Kiana got her own crib, but until we got settled for the night she was enjoying the big bed. Can you see her, she's waving at you!

Sunday morning we had planned to go on a hike. We were told that you could hike up to the top of Aspen Mountain and take the Gondola down. If you don't know, hiking down a mountain is very hard and rough on your feet and knees, and you're more likely to slide on the gravel and fall! So making it up to the top was always my plan, allowing us to hitch a free ride down! We'll, we were told by a friend that "everyone in Aspen does it," and most people said it should take about 2 hours. A two hour hike up to the top didn't seem to bad to me. I used to hike up ski slopes in ski boots carrying my skies when I raced in high school, and Grant just went on a six hour hike up a mountain with his SORT team, so we didn't think it could be that bad. Boy were we wrong!!!!

First of all, this was STRAIGHT UP the mountain! Secondly, those that say "everyone in Aspen does it" have never done it themselves. And they forgot to mention that, everyone in Aspen looks like and probably does hike up the mountain every other day! These people were intensely in shape, and probably twenty to thirty years older then us! They were telling us that it takes them about 1.5 hours to get to the top. Since they were going double our speed as they passed us, we knew from the beginning that our two hour hike was definitely an underestimation! Also, we had Kiana strapped to us, so as the crazy mountain hikers passed us by they must have thought we were crazy! That or they underestimated us, because almost everyone we asked how far it was tried to get us to turn around and go back!

I had Kiana for about the first 30 minutes, then Grant took over. He carried her most of the way until we got to apparently the steepest part of the hike. This is when she decided to have a meltdown, so mommy had to take over! At this point we were already two hours into the hike! It was to the point where I was taking baby steps up the mountain because I was so tired, but didn't want to stop. I was feeding Kiana a banana as we were hiking just to get her to stop crying! Apparently it's only about 1/8 of the trip distance, but it took us about 1/3 of the time to get past it. Once we got mostly through the steep part, people were encouraging us to keep going! We made it that far they all seem to say the rest was easy! WHATEVER, I don't remember ANY "easy" parts! By the time we got to the top of the steep part I was basically done hiking, but now we had gone too far to turn back. Thank goodness Kiana's melt down had stopped and she was in a good mood again, because I was ready for it to be Grant's turn carrying her again!

Here we are at the top of the steep part! It's been about 2.5 hours up at this point, but unfortunately we still can't see the top! See the town at the base, that's where we started! Grant and I were expecting it to be cold at the top, so as you can see were a little over dressed. I bet the top was around 65 degrees. So, the extra weight and layers of clothes didn't help either!

Here you can see the road that goes up the mountain, another path to choose from. The way we went was about 1.5 miles straight up a path, we could have followed the road, which is more of a gradual incline, but it is about 5 miles up. It didn't seem too gradual or that much easier since your still going up, so we figured we might as well take the shorter route. At least now we can see the gondola again, and it doesn't seem as far above our heads, so we know we must be getting closer!

Finally 3.5 hours later we made it to the top! So much for a 2 hour hike! At this point I was glad we brought extra water and food for Kiana! She's worn out too, can you tell!

My free ride back down now! I had never seen a more beautiful sight then this!

Until of course we actually got to the true top and took a look at the other side of the mountain! It was absolutely beautiful, and worth the hike!

Sitting back and enjoying the ride down! The bottom looks so far away! I can't believe we actually made it to the top! I don't know that I have ever done anything that intense before, even Grant said this mountain was a lot steeper and harder then the one he climbed a few weeks ago! The total increase in elevation was about 3,300 feet from the base to the top!

All the Aspens in the area were so beautiful, it makes me want to go back in a week when they have all changed color!

More views of the area!

We left Aspen after our crazy hike and headed to Denver for the night. I was looking forward to taking Kiana to the Aquarium the next day! She seemed to love watching all the fish when we went to the zoo so we thought this would be entertaining for her.

If your whole body can fit into the helmet, you might be a little too small for the outfit!

Below are a bunch of pictures we took while at the Aquarium!

Watch out for the Flash Flood!

You may not be able to see in the picture very well, but there were about five giant sea turtles swimming above us! She wanted to lay on her back to watch them.

Help Mommy! We're in the fish tank!

Just swimming with the fishes!

Some of the tanks you could look over and see inside. These were Kiana's favorite tanks, she was acting like she wanted to jump in and swim with them!

The aquarium even had Mermaids!