Christmas 2009 Cohrsville Times

This year marks the first electronic Christmas edition of the Cohrsville Times. We decided to save some paper (& printing costs!) by doing things online this year, which has been fun. So thanks for logging on and checking it out. I noticed though that it's much easier to include a lot more pictures and text about our year than on the one page sheet we typically do, so I apologize in advance and feel free to browse at your leisure. I'd just like to say thanks to all our family and friends for their love and support this year. I feel truly blessed and amazed everyday at the wonderful family God has entrusted me with. He deserves all the glory and I really enjoy this time of year that we can pause and focus on His love for us shown in the gift of his Son. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a great 2010!

Nashville trip

In early November I had to go to Decatur, AL for a work trip, so I decided to take my girls for a little trip to check out Nashville the weekend before (Layla is under two and still free to fly, I wish we could have taken the boys). We packed a lot into the short trip, visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame, the main drag in Nashville with Tootsie's and all the live music venues, and the Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg, TN. We also got to see some family, as my Grandma Joyce and cousin Tammy live in Nashville. It was great getting to meet Tammy's husband, Andronicus, and their new babygirl Myla, and catch up with Adrin and see how big he is these days.

Here's Elvis' gold piano in the Country Music Hall of Fame:



There was a club right on the main drag called Layla's, so of course it was a great photo opportunity:




Baby Myla is adorable, her and Layla had a lot of fun playing together:




Here's a great shot of Layla with Grandma Joyce, it was great getting to see Grandma and stay at her place for a little bit:

A Bedrock Halloween

This year for Halloween Becca had a great idea to follow up last year's Peter Pan theme, we decided to go as the Flintstones! Becca and I were Fred and Wilma, with Dallas as Barney, Tanner as Dino, Jackson as Bam-Bam and Layla as Pebbles. It was a lot of fun, and the kids had fun watching old episodes prior to the big day to get into character. We managed to repeat our prior year win at my office party for best costume, and we hit up a few more Halloween events to maximize the costume usage.

Here we are at the GT party, Becca's Dad made the 'rock' pumpkins for the candy, they were a big hit:



Pebbles discovers the joys of M&Ms:



The boys and their fake Halloween teeth

9/9/09!

This year we held a Cohrs family reunion in Branson, MO on 9/9/09 to celebrate my Grandpa's Universe of Nines, a mathematical theory he developed around the number nine that's pretty cool. Branson was a nice central point between the Colorado Cohrs, the Michigan Cohrs, the Chicago Cohrs and the St. Louis Cohrs and turned out to be a fun town. We went golfing, took in a few shows, held a special toast at 9:09 pm on 9/9/09 and generally had a great time being together as a family. It was great meeting my cousin Becky's new daughter Sophia, her and Layla hit it off. We drove out early with my brother Aaron and his wife Kristi and did some water skiing on Table Rock Lake, which was a blast. Unfortunately I broke our camera right before the big day, we visited the Precious Moments Chapel outside Joplin, MO, which was amazing and I was skipping with Jackson on my shoulders and the camera fell right out of my pocket and broke, so I was bummed we didn't get any photos of the actual 9/9/09 celebration. But here's a few before the camera broke.

Becca and Jackson in the float tube at the lake, they had a lot of fun although the tube cover broke right after this picture was taken so this was the only tube run of the day:


Here's photographic proof of me water skiing, it took me awhile to get up, but it was great once I finally did it. Kristi is an old pro and Aaron did really good too, it was nice because the water was so warm.



Everyone in the water! The boys had so much fun jumping off the back of the boat into the water, we did this for hours.



Here's a shot inside the Precious Moments Chapel right before the camera broke. This place was really impressive, the guy who created Precious Moments painted everything in here by himself and it's really well done.



Here's a good shot of the Cohrs Clan on 9/9/09 my Dad took:



Dallas, Tanner and Jackson learn the 'Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil' Cohrs brothers tradition



Nice group shot before the Dixie Stampede, long live Dolly:

Summer Sports

This summer Dallas took golfing lessons and Tanner played his first year of T-Ball. Dallas really seemed to pick up the golf swing and had a lot of fun, and I helped coach Tanner's team with my friend Ivan so we had a lot of fun together.







I tried my hand at an adventure race this year with some co-workers and had a great time. We ran in the Wild West Relay, which is a 200 mile race that starts in Ft. Collins and ends in Steamboat Springs and even goes through Wyoming. You can compete in 12 man or 6 man teams, and we chose to do a 6 man team, which was more challenging but a lot of fun. We ended up running about 34 miles each over 6 different legs, and it took us around 34 hours. The scenery was amazing, you run through some less traveled areas of northern Colorado on dusty mountain passes(one of my legs was at timberline), then you have to conquer the mighty Rabbit Ears Pass (which is steep in a car!) before the finish line at Steamboat. I especially enjoyed running at night in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, with no one around but a full moon. We had to pack our own supplies in our van and had to be ready for every extreme, with temps ranging from mid 90s during the day (very hot on the asphalt) and near freezing in the middle of the night, which felt really cold in our sleep deprived state. But we finished the race together and are already talking about doing it again in 2010!


This was the last leg on Rabbit Ears Pass:

During the heat of the day our squirt gun was a lifesaver

At the finish line, not bad for a bunch of CPAs!

Summer Fun 2009

We had a blast this summer exploring the great state of Colorado. On Memorial Day weekend we made a last minute decision to road trip the state and it was a lot of fun. We packed our camping stuff and hit the road, stopping first at the sand dunes, which were really fun, like one giant sandbox for the kids. The boys also had a lot of fun sliding down the steep slopes and rolling down the hills. It took a good week to get all the sand out of everything, but it was worth it!




Here we are playing in the river that runs at the feet of the dunes, the boys were having so much fun, we could have stayed there all day.

After the dunes we headed southwest to camp at Mesa Verde. Unfortunately it started raining really hard that night and by the time I got the tent set up it had turned into a swimming pool. So we took everything out of the van and set it up in the tent and camped out inside the van that night. It was certainly an experience, not one I'd like to relive anytime soon, but it was actually more comfortable than I thought it would be and we all managed to get in a decent night's sleep.

The next day the sun came out and we had a great time exploring Mesa Verde and the four corners.



Next was a trip to Buena Vista for a Montoya family reunion, which was a great time. We all camped at the feet of the chalk cliffs just south of Mt. Princeton and the kids enjoyed playing in the river by the campsite, hiking up to a scenic waterfall and getting to spend time with some cousins they hadn't met yet.




The next weekend we made our annual trek to Glenwood with Becca's family for some fun and relaxation at the Chair Mountain Ranch. This year we took a road trip over McClure Pass through the vineyards of Paonia and down to Ouray, which is a beautiful part of the state. We hiked up to the waterfall outside of town and also saw the Box Canyon falls and really enjoyed exploring the town and being with family.



There are some great beaver ponds near Marble that always have a few hungry rainbow trout. This year Grandpa David and I took Tanner and Jackson fishing and caught a few wild trout on their Spiderman poles (we released them to catch another day).

Such a beautiful place. I love this picture, look for Jackson's little head peeking out over the reeds by me.

Hanging out by the campfire.

Fireworks at the Rockies Game

On the 3rd of July we went to the Rockies game to see them beat the Diamondbacks and watch the post-game fireworks show. The fireworks were great, probably one of the best shows I've ever seen, you're so close to them and they went for at least 30 minutes.



Jack Attack is ready for the game!



Mr. Lee searching for a lost Cracker Jack...



Tan the Man picked up some tips for t-ball watching Brad Hawpe at the plate



Rockies girls



Waiting for the fireworks to start



Layla fell asleep in the Snugli leaving the park. She's still clutching her little American flag, and looks so cute in the purple and black tutu Becca made for the game

Castlewood Canyon

In early July my Mom and Michael came for a visit, so we took them for a hike in Castlewood Canyon, which is about 9 miles south of Parker. It's really cool, an oasis of rock canyon in the midst of the great plains with Cherry Creek running through.



Becca and boys on the trail.



Me and my girl, she had a blast in the backpack, just taking in the sights.



We stayed here awhile wading in the creek and trying to catch crawdads, there were a lot of them, some were huge, like mini lobsters. I finally caught one on this attempt, see a close up of Frankie below:



Frankie had some strong pinchers, but the boys had fun touching him and I had fun chasing the girls with him. We let him go and he scooted off to seek counseling.



Into the Wild