Vail

We made our yearly trip to Vail. We could only go for a quick weekend but we still had fun swimming and going to town. We even found a Pirate Ship Playground for Dylon to play on.




Dylon in the Crow's Nest of the Pirate ship.

Swimming!

Estes Park

We sent the weekend in Estes Park. We watched the elk in Rocky Mountain National Park and went for a hike around Bear Lake

Bauer Family Picture - A chipmunk took it for us :)

Having fun! Dylon was mad because he wasn't old enough to ride the Go-Karts

Going for a train ride

We filled up the whole train. It's a good thing we were the only ones there.

Here's a video of the elk bugeling

Thomas the Tank Engine

Thomas the Tank Engine was in Golden at the Colorado Railroad Musuem so we went to see him. The whole place was set up for Thomas' visit. The kids got stickers and temporary tattoos. Dylon is holding on to his sticker so it doesn't come off and he walked around the rest of the afternoon holding up his arm so he could see his tattoo.

They hooked up some cars so that you can take a ride with Thomas. He goes around their track 3 times.

Waiting to get on the train.

Getting ready for our ride.

After the ride we got to take our picture with Thomas.

Bowling

We took Dylon bowling a few weeks ago and he had a great time. The hardest part for him was waiting for his turn. The pictures are a bit blurry because of the lighting, I couldn't use the flash.

Where's my ball?

The Zoo

Grandma Shirley and Paula took all the boys to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo before Paul left to go back to Texas and Paula had to go back to work. (sorry it's been a while)

Sam feeding the giraffe

The lion. Dylon calls them "Roar"

The new bear exhibit was pretty neat. The bears were playing and wrestling right in front of us.

Dylon checking out a peacock

It was pretty hot and they had misters around. Paul and Sam enjoyed them.

James and Paul in their matching shirts from our trip.

Dylon crawling through a tunnel

All the boys before we went to see the grizzly bears.

Birthday party for Paul

Since Paul lives in Texas and we don't get to see him on his birthday (September 4th), we had a birthday party for him in the RV. We had cake and ice cream. He really enjoyed it.

Pictures of the Road

We made it home Friday afternoon. Here are some pictures we took along the way.

We were a little baffled by this guy. He had a boat on the top/back of his truck and was pulling that behind his RV. It gave us all a good laugh to see it and we wanted to make sure we weren't following him.

James, Paul, and Kathy were all playing the same video game on the Nintendo DS. Kathy was playing with Sam's and Sandy is watching.

We found a really cool campground with a cold pool and trees. The only problem was that it was right by I-80 and the GPS took us on the scenic tour through town instead of the shortest way possible.

Thank goodness we didn't have to pile all 11 of us into this.

Dylon got so hungry one day at lunch that he started eating the lemon out of my iced tea. He was eating the rind and all. Yummy!

Sam never had his shoes on when we would go to get of the RV to see something. We always had to wait for him to get his shoes on. His socks were normally off too.

Sleepy boys

Barry and Nancy got a box of crabs in the shell. We cracked the shells and at the Maryland Blue Crab for lunch. Grandma Shirley is a crab fiend and spent a long time eating the crab. It is a lot of work for the little amount of meat that you get but it is delicious and fun to crack them open.

Sandy was always cold with the AC blasting from the front of the RV, so we gave her one of Dylon's blankets to cover up with.

As we were driving through Arkansas and Tennessee there were Waffle Houses everywhere and Grandpa Chuck kept pointing them out. So we had to take a picture of one. We never stopped to eat at one though.

As James says, "Mom gave Grandpa a bad idea." They are cleaning the smashed bug guts off the RV once we got home.

James and Sam hard at work.