Day 3 of our Vacation

So we took a drive down to a place called Cripple Creek. We stopped at a mine. They had all of these old rusty things that we kind of liked!
This is what the mine looked like where you go down.

Everyone who was going on a tour of the mine got a hard hat and then a coat if they needed one. We were going down 1,000 feet so it would be cold. This sign was the last thing we saw before we went down in the dark.

They put about six people in that tiny space and then there was another one right on top of that one.
This was our tour guide who works as a miner. He showed us how they used to mine through the years. He definitley fit the "miner look". His favorite thing to say after almost every sentence was, "Just one of those things". It got to be kind of funny!

At the end our guide picked out one of those rocks that had flecks of gold in it. This mine was one of our favorite things we saw on our vacation. At the visitor center in Cripple Creek they had a diagram of what the whole mine looked like. After we ate lunch we went drove through a town called Victor. They had lots of abandoned mines that you could walk through
We saw this off of the side of the road. It used to be a tunnel but I guess it wasn't sturdy so they built the road around it.

The last thing we did that day was we took a cog railway up to Pikes Peak. It was freezing all the way up there! We saw a couple of big horned sheep. The views were really beautiful. It was cloudy at the top so you couldn't see that far.

Day 2 of our Vaca

So it's been a little longer than a day since I've posted, but I found time today! ; ) So the first place we went was to the Manituo Cliff Dwellings. It's a remake of Mesa Verde cliff dwellings that you can go walk around through. It was neat to see and read about the history there.

This next photo we found these in a gift shop and thought they were funny!

The next place we went to was called the Cave of the Winds. We took tons of pics but hardly any of them turned out as well as they looked like in real life.
This next picture is what they call cave coral becuase it looks like under water coral. I think it's pretty!

Close to the top of the picture is what they call cave bacon. Do you see it?!?
This one was a column and then the floor shifted and the column broke.
The next place we went to was a cute little town called Manituo Springs. They had the best custard there yummo!


This bike was ginormous!!! I had the hardest time reaching the handlebars on that thing! This bike was just sitting on the sidewalk just begging for a photo! The last place we went to was called Seven Falls. It was beautiful!





This shows what a hike it was to get up there. I think there was at least 300 steps!!! Well I covered almost everything that we did our first full day in Springs.

Day 1 of our Vaca!

Well we finally were able to go somewhere this summer! We took a billion and one pictures so I'm going to just post 1 day at a time so this post isn't decades long! We decided to go to Colorado Springs on vaca. We drove for ages through Wyoming and saw a whole lotta nothing. We got to Colorado Springs on our anniversary about 7:00. We checked into our hotel and then went out to eat at Carrabbas. We got a free appetizer there which was a bonus! We stayed at a resort that had a private lake and beach, tennis courts, pool tables, and swimming pools.



So reallly we didn't have much time to do stuff our first day so I'll get to the fun stuff we did tomorrow!

Our Patio is finally finished!!

Well, we tried to have Dalyce tell us how to put that slide show up right and I guess we got half of it right! We have really enjoyed our patio so far! It's nice to have it done and not have to look at all the weeds. Of course we still have to move all of that extra dirt off of the hillside. Yep, fun times up ahead there. Our next adventure will be coming up soon. We are heading over to Colorado Springs for our 4th anniversary! I can't believe it's been that long already. We'll have more pictures to put up when we get back!!! ;o)

St Charles Girls Camp

Casey and I got back from Girls camp on Friday. We spent two days and three night there. We both had a BLAST! All of our girls are so so so cute and fun! For our first day there, we went on a hike to Bloomington Lake. We hiked up this little creek here. Casey carried one of the little beehives up this. (I was scared that he'd slip and they'd both go down, but Casey got up just fine!)

There was a little pond up there where our president read a story


Here's a couple more pictures from the hike


When we got to Bloomington Lake this is what we saw.


There was a really cool rope swing here. Casey and I didn't have our swimsuits so we didn't do it but the girls did. Here's a video

That night we had fun around the campfire. There are some pretty fun camp songs. One of my favorite ones is called the jellyfish. The girls got Casey to join in on some of them!! He was so cute with the girls. He later said as we were coming home that he felt like they were all his little sisters. How cute! That night was the snipe hunt. Casey, of course, wanted to scare the girls. We heard all the girls scream not once but twice when he scared them. After that the girls had us try star tipping which I had never heard of. You spin around with your head up looking at the sky. Then you say when you are dizzy and someone flashes a light in your eyes. As soon as that light hits your eyes everyone goes down instantly. It was weird but funny! The next day we spent at Bear Lake and had an awesome time. That night was our testimony meeting and the value trail. The spirit was so strong there. All the girls and leaders shared their testimony. Of course there were a lot of tears. I gained a lot from girls camp and so did the girls. Here's a picture of almost everyone.

Way Way last weekend we did this!

Ok so I'm finally getting around to putting our fabulous time we had at the Stadium of Fire on here! We went out to eat at Outback Steakhouse. I had the best babyback ribs....Yummo! We got there a little early to park and find our seats. We took some pictures before it started.





We snuck this pic of Henry and Dini. I really like this next one it's priceless!

We weren't that high up in the stadium, but I bet it did help to have the binoculars!

I thought I took a picture of when Carrie Underwood sang the national anthem. That was such a moving performance. I had goosebumps and I even started to tear up a little bit. I'm glad we live here and I'm grateful for my country.
This is a video of Carrie Underwood. The recording and sound isn't the best though.
We tried to take some videos of the fireworks. Hopefully it turned out ok!

Well we took lots more videos and pictures but they're just not the same as being there. Here's one more we took of us.

Casey, I think, has his eyes so wide because he always blinks during pictures. So he makes his eyes go big like that!