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

Anniversary at Castle Marne

Alright, so it's been a long time since the Cohrsville Times has been updated, we need to hire a full time editor to keep up with all these kids! We had a great time from Halloween until Summer 2009, but it would take a long time to chronicle all that, so I'll start with our 7th anniversary at the end of June. I suprised Becca with a night downtown at a bed and breakfast called Castle Marne, it's really cool:



It's a house built in the late 1800's by a silver baron, just off Colfax and Park Avenue, the inside was amazing too, they tried to replicate the rooms based off photos of the way the house was originally.



Here we are on the main staircase. The woodwork was so ornate, and there's a giant original stained glass window behind us on the landing. We read after checking in that the place is supposedly haunted, but had no ghost sightings luckily. Our room did have a private balcony with a hot tub though, so that was nice.

We had a nice lazy morning and the breakfast there was great, some quiche thing that was pretty good. Then we roamed downtown for awhile, we toured the Molly Brown house and Becca even let me shop for records at Wax Trax for awhile without complaining, good times.



What do you mean you're out of Barry Manilow?



Flapper Becca at the Molly Brown house

Halloween 2008

Another year, another themed costume bash. This year it was the Peter Pan theme, with little Layla Mae starring as Tinker Bell. The rest of us fell in as supporting characters, and we had a blast wherever we went, this year we hit up 6 different venues for candy and Layla needed help eating all her loot, so I was happy to oblige...



Peter Pan family at home before Halloween with Horses in Parker, photo by Grandpa Dan.



At GT for the annual bash, we even won the coveted best costume trophy!


Mr. Peter Pan



Tanner as John, Wendy's oldest brother.



Jackson as Michael



Layla as Tinkerbell

Grandma Joyce turns 79!

In early October my Grandma Joyce visted Denver to celebrate her 79th birthday! The surprise was the vist from Holly, Lynn and Cally, which was great fun, we had a great time hosting the family and celebrating another year in the life of my amazing missionary grandma!




Aaron, Kristi and Grandma at Aaron's house for Grandma's surprise b-day party, it was great, and I enjoyed the grape/mango juice.



Buca del Bepo, they've got a killer Tiramsu.



Main man Michael, Mom, Gma, Aunt Holly and Uncle Lynn at Buca.

Denver Marathon

On Sunday, October 19th, some friends and I ran the Denver Marathon in the relay. It was great, I ran the first 6 miles, starting at 6:30 AM, and we ended up in 52nd place (33rd place considering our 10 minute delay at the 2nd relay station, my fault for running the first leg faster than anticipated), not bad for 330+ entries. It was a perfect fall day, and I discovered that running 6 miles is much easier than running 26.2!



Jamie, Sands, Mark and me. Mark is an ultra-marthoner, Sands is Giambi as a CPA (without the steriods) and Jamie is my personal trainer. I felt priveleged to be in such successful company.



Me and the fam at the Art Museum after the race.

Everyday life

I've noticed that blogs tend to focus on events and non-everyday occurances, so I thought I'd post a bit of our everyday life, which is every bit as action-packed as these photos depict:



Me and my baby girl on a call and online (probably talking to Aaron and viewing the NYT crossword)



Momma and her boyos



Jackson and his triptophan lunch...



Our flower girl

Back to School night

Alright, I'm a bit late on updating the blog, so for you loyal readers out there (probably still a circulation of 2), here's some recent news. We went to Dallas' back to school night in early September to visit his school and show the family how he's now spending 3 hours of his weekdays. He showed off his new school proudly, and Gold Rush Elementary didn't dissapoint, it truly is a great school and we're excited to be a Golden Retriever family.



Dallas proudly shows his Grandmas his classroom



My girls



Jackson has a thought