A Much Needed Vacay!

Since about the beginning of the year we had planned to tag along with Tyler's family to Colorado for their family vacation this summer. As summer approached and began to blister and Tyler's schedule for the upcoming semesters began to pile up, I was SO looking forward to a whole week away in the mountains. I'll spare all the details of getting to Colorado for another post(as this was a low point in Tyler's life), but we finally made it to Colorado at about 5am on Sunday morning with me driving through the night. Nixon slept about 90% of time since it was in the middle of the night, but my parents portable dvd playe

r for sure came in handy! Nixon loves monkey's and making a monkey noise so let's just say h

e enjoyed watching Tarzan about three times throughout the trip.

We stayed in the coolest little, individual condos right along the lake. It was beautiful. Nixon especially loved seeing the HUNDREDS of geese roaming all over the place! Seeing as how I drove straight through the night, we pretty much slept the first day we were there.

We borrowed my sister's handy backpack again and enjoyed taking a few trails through the mountains.

...to only be stopped on the trail by SNOW! It really didn't stop us though. We just kept hiking through it and made it to a fun spot to let the boys have a snowball fight.

Nixon thought it was fun to copy his uncles and try to throw some snow as well.

By the end of day two he was exhausted. How comfy does that look though? He's got it made!

We also took a quick hike to this awesome waterfall. They had a bridge right in front of it and a deck up a little higher so you could feel the mist....or more like get drenched by the freezing water.

Tyler's dad took this picture up on the deck as we were down on the bridge.

The condos had a little mini golf course and there was definitely lots of trash talk and playing here as well. Nixon was quite pleased to have his own size club to walk around with.

And yes, I did beat all the boys in one game!

Day 3 we took a two hour drive and headed up to Mesa Verde where we got to tour this ancient Indian ruin built hundreds of years ago just up against the mountains.

The boys took a tour and climbed up all sorts of crazy ladders.

It's so crazy to think that these Indians built this and lived there.

After Mesa Verde we headed to downtown Durango to walk around where Nixon met his new bff, Truffles, at the chocolate store.

Day four we decided to take it pretty easy and just chill. I loved how Colorado has tons of rivers, creeks, and lakes everywhere! So we decided to head down to a river to let the boys play in and have a picnic for lunch.

Nixon loved the water and throwing rocks in it. Such a boy. He sure does love his Grandpa Farnsworth as well.

After doing lots of hiking one day and walking all around Mesa Verde the next, we decided the next night we would head down to

the Pagosa Springs to soak our bodies! I had never been to a hot springs before and it was quite the experience. This place had tons of little pools built where the springs naturally flowed through. Each pool had a different temperature posted and one was even 112 degrees! Super hot! I enjoyed chilling in about 100 degrees...and So did Nixon.

The last couple days of our vacay was all about just chillin'. No rush to go anywhere. We did visit some fun shops and bought lots of yummy goodies!

We also spent another day hanging out by the river.

The boys had fun playing in it and jumping on rocks.

This was Nixon's favorite as he could get more dirty of course!

He loved crawling all over the rocks and eating dirt.

A few things Nixon learned from hanging out with his teenage uncles for a week:

How to sag his pants.

How to jam out and use earphones.

And how to hang his head over the balcony.

Overall it was a great family vacation and probably our last as how Tyler has an extremely busy next three semesters...but then he's DONE!