One Day At A Time.....: vacation

We had such a wonderful trip visiting Colorado. We went there to scope out a town called Loveland (NW of Denver) and surrounding area, to see if it is a place we would want to call home someday. We still have 3 years left in residency, but vacation time is limited, so we are trying to take care of certain things before times runs out, like where we want to live when we finally are done with school and have to "settle down." Aric doesn't want to move to California, too expensive and too much traffic, and I don't want to live in Kansas, too flat and windy, so we have been trying to narrow down a place to live. We went to Colorado for a family vacation 2 years ago and just fell in love with the area. So we decided to come back this year to see if we still felt the same way. And thankfully we loved it even more! We spent 4 days in Loveland and were just amazed by this " jem" of a town. It is about 60,000 people, but seems so much bigger, without all the downsides of a big city. Lots of great shopping (and outlets!), a few different hospitals for Aric to do surgery, and many medical plazas in the area to own a practice. Many, many lakes! This was our favorite part about the town, there were lakes everywhere. It seemed like everyone in town owned a boat and jet skis. The town was so green and clean, and lots of commercial and residential building going on, the town is growing so fast. I think we are both getting tired of living in a semi-permanent area and are really looking forward to finding a place to call home for good.

These pictures were taken at a park in the middle of town in Loveland, right next to a huge lake.

Breck riding a mini train at the park

Grandma holding Hannah so she doesn't fall in

I think She almost fell in here.

This was one of the many amazing houses on one of the many lakes in town. I don't know why I took a picture of it except that it was pretty. We looked at many houses (just driving by) and even some oral surgery practices just to get a good feel for the area. It doesn't look that big, but it was a HUGE house on the lake, complete with 4 car garage and loading dock to the lake below. It's actually way to big for me, but fun to look at.

After we went to Loveland we stayed in a cabin for a week in the mountains with Aric's parents and his brother's family. We did lots of hiking, eating, and just hanging out. Hannah and Breck had so much fun playing with their cousins, which Hannah called her "Boys"

This was our little cabin in the woods

Grandpa and Breck sharing a moment

Breck found some "dinosaur" bones on one of our hikes

This was taken on one of our hikes that was close to our cabin

This was another hike higher in the mountains. The kids were so excited to find a big patch of snow to play in. Brecklen has been asking if winter will be here soon ever since. Me, I think I can wait for winter, take your sweet time. Here's Breck about to tag his cousin with a snowball.

Hannah and her "boys"

This was taken on another hike in a meadow that used to be a mining town. There are a few houses still standing (or parts of them). Breck had fun climbing the rocks, and Hannah was in heaven picking all the flowers.

I am trying to figure out how to upload my pictures of our vacation onto my computer. We got a new camera and I have only uploaded pictures once. Aric always does this, so our pics are still sitting on our camera. I spent about 5 min. trying and have given up because I am impatient. But I have some pictures of our Colorado trip two years ago that we never really got to share since I just started this blogging thing, so I will share now. Some of these are my favorite pics because they are so beautiful, and others because they are so funny. Namely the one of Brecklen peeing in the lake on our beautiful hike. Classic. This will be the picture that I will always want to bring out to show people and he will hate me for it. Also a favorite moment from this trip two years ago is when I asked Brecklen what he wanted for his 3rd birthday. "To smoke" he says. I will never forget it. Aric and I started laughing immediately because we had no idea what he was talking about. It took us many months to figure out that he must really have meant to say, to smoke, as in cigarettes. He must have seen grandpa smoking on this vacation and was curious.

After this initial trip to Colorado two years ago, we fell in love with the area and decided this is possibly where we want to raise our kids. This is what spurred our summer vacation this year. Pictures of recent vacation soon to follow, but here are a few from 2006.