Colorado Part II

We have spent a lot of time in the car...

Here are the happy travelers again. The boys are doing great!

Yesterday we drove down near Colorado Springs to take the Cog Railway up to the top of Pike's Peak. It is one of the "fourteeners" in the Rockys. Here we are on the train. Brady was so excited to be riding on a real train.

Alex was all giggles and grins on our train ride.

He loved looking out the front window watching us chug up the mountain.

Good times on the train.

Here was our view from our seats. It was amazing how steep the tracks were.

This was the view part way up our ride.

If you look closely you can see another train coming up the mountain just like ours.

The view from the summit - Pike's Peak.

Our train

Breath-taking...literally.

Here we are at the summit. Alex was snoozing by this point in the train with Grandpa. There was snow and ice on the ground and the temperature with the wind was 24 degrees!

Brady passed out on the way down the mountain. Too much excitement for one day for our boys.

The snoozing continued as we headed to the Garden of the Gods.

One amazing creation after another.

Our family at the Garden of the Gods. This is with Andy's parents and his brother, Matt.

So many beautiful pictures!!

These rocks looked like stairs.

Brady called this one an ice cream cone. He wanted to climb it.

So he did.

Westward Ho!

This past week we loaded up the car and headed for Colorado! The car was packed tight and Brady was so excited to see the mountains. Here are the boys all loaded up and ready to go.

Brady has gotten the hang of using head phones on this trip. Andy and I wanted to be able to listen to tunes on the drive and Brady wanted to be able to watch his movies. He has done pretty well.
When we saw the Brady, NE sign along the highway, we had to take the 5 minute detour to find the "Welcome to Brady" sign. Too cute.

We entered Colorado on a very rainy, overcast day. It had just hailed as we headed into the Denver area. This was one of our first view of the mountains.

Rain, hail, and snow...in June!

A couple days into our trip we headed a bit farther north into Rocky Mt. National Park. It was snowing that morning and in the 30's. Here we are at the Grand Lake visitors center. This is Brady by the snow. :)

He had a blast putting his hand prints in the snow too.

This is Brady warming his hands in my sweatshirt pocket.

Our first family picture in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Andy and I at Grand Lake.

I have taken way too many pictures of the mountains. They are just all so beautiful!!!

We took the trip to Golden, CO to tour the Coors Brewery. Here are Andy and Brady in the main brewing room.

This is one of the largest brew houses in the world. My picture is only a small part of it.

Here are the boys with their beers. Brady was so excited that he got to have a "beer" with daddy and grandpa. No worries, his is rootbeer.

To get to our condo, we get to drive this curvey mountain road every day. The hair pin curves are crazy! The view is amazing!

God's creation is spectacular!

Another day we took the trek to Estes Park. While there we went in to an old fashion candy shop to get Brady a treat. Choices, choices!

Like any child, Brady picked a huge colorful stick of straight up sugar!! He called it his lick stick. :)

Enjoying his treat with daddy.

Brady has been so excited to see Uncle Matt. He has not left his side since we got here.

This is Brady touching a mountain. He had this idea that he could reach out and touch it (not stand on it) so we had to make that happen. Naturally, he tried to climb it too.

We had hopes of driving the Trail Ridge Road through the park and for the first several days we have been here, it has been closed due to snow and ice on the road. The day we went to Estes Park they opened the road in the afternoon so we decided to take it back to our place. Shortly into the drive we spotted this elk along the side of the road. It was awesome!

A little farther along we came to this field...filled with elk. Brady thought that was pretty cool.

More of the Rocky's

Another family photo in the Rocky's. It was so windy that in almost every picture one of the boys is making a terrible face as their breath was caught by the wind.

The snow wall along the side of the road.

So many great views

Andy, Matt, and their dad took the chilly walk out to a lookout point at the top of the Trail Ridge Road. I took one step out and went immediately back into the car. It was super windy and sooo cold.

Seems to be a tradition for these two to take a dumb picture on vacation. Here it is folks. Enjoy.

Being Brave

Brady is a pretty cautious child. We have been trying to get him to try out bounce houses for a while, but he has always been too scared. At a grad party not too long ago, Brady got brave enough to give it a go. With a little help from daddy and some of the high school kids that were there, he gave it a good go.

You can tell he was having fun because my pictures eventually all turned into a blur. :)

REAL DRUMS!

Jim Hermann has always been one of Brady's favorite people. On this particular Sunday morning, Jim ranked number 1. Jim is one of the drummers at our church and had his REAL drum set there for the services a couple weeks ago. After the service Brady got to play and thought it was the best thing ever. Jim even helped him play a real beat. The look on Brady's face was priceless. Thanks, Jim!

Chillin' in the Man Cave

The Berge's came for a visit a couple weeks ago. I had to laugh when I went downstairs to check in on the kiddos and all the boys were sprawled on the bed in Andy's office watching a movie. Too cute.