A Story In Pictures

Joy

A Baby Shower

Last Saturday we had a baby shower for my niece Felicia. She is due the beginning of September and she looks like she's the same size I was when I was only 3 months pregnant! She's so tiny!

She knows she's having a baby girl: Nevaeh, is her name. Which is Heaven spelled backward even though it took me about 10 minutes to spell that word backward in my mind to make sure I typed it correctly. Spell check will probably still tell me I'm wrong.

My sisters and I planned the whole thing out to a T. We did an excellent job if I might say so myself. Although I was the only sister who SHOWED UP ON TIME but I won't mention that here.

Felicia with her sister Shadow.

Shadow wrote Felicia a poem that made us all cry. Good thing I don't wear makeup.

If you look close enough at the cake, you will see the spot where Dawson stuck his finger and swiped it across for a nice taste of the frosting... right after she sat the cake down on the table!

I'm proud of the refreshment table. It takes a creative mind to make a refreshment table look splendid. Although it wasn't my creative mind that did so.

Who can pass up a chocolate fountain at a party?! I personally ate 9.27 rice krispy treats dunked in the chocolate pool.

Time for games!

Shadow chose my Aunt and one of Felicia's friends to dress a baby blindfolded. Supposed to give them the real time feel of taking care of a baby at midnight that has pooped it's pants. These dolls didn't cry though. So in the background you can hear me going WAH!! For 10 consecutive minutes to make the game seem more realistic.

My sister Bobbie had everyone see how many safety pins they could find in a bowl of rice while keeping their eyes closed. They had a time limit. This game is surprisingly difficult! I had everyone play the "memorize the tray" game. Anita cheated.

Let's open gifts!

Gift table. Girl ready to open gifts on gift table.

Karen made this awesome "diaper cake". She's got skillz!

I got her this diaper bag. My sister got her a diaper bag that was bigger and better. Hmph.

Cousin Debbie made this beautiful quilt for baby girl.

Flip with Dawson.

Apparently baby girl slept through the gifts and wanted to come out and play when it was over. I could feel her little feet poking through.

Parties over. Time for pictures!

My mom and sister Bobbie with (most) of mom's sisters. They all look alike!

All of us girls:

You can plainly see none of us girls are happy with our hair color. We ALL highlight the same color.

Come soon baby Nevaeh! We're excited to meet you!

Love, Aunt Joy

Telluride, CO.

Have you ever driven 1200 miles in a compact car with 2 boys that have feet that smell like sour vinegar? I don’t recommend it. Welcome to my vacationing world.
Also,

Don’t mess with me when I drive.

Jason and Dawson:

Before I get started, I HAVE to show you this playground I saw on our drive out to Colorado:

It's in the middle of a stinking corn field! (It's not too far from our home... go figure)

I'll zoom in:

We decided to vacation this summer in Telluride Colorado. “Legend” has it that travelers called this little town “to hell you ride” because they would get robbed by bandits as they tried to enter. However, that is legend according to my father-in-law, who I think just likes to say the word hell because he’s a pastor. The truth is, Telluride is named after the chemical element Tellurium which was found there in the old days. 

I guess I like the other version better.

We actually stayed in a condo located in Mountain Village, which is located above the tiny little town of Telluride. In order to get to Telluride we had to take the FREE gondola down the side of the mountain. Please share with me my first experience using this transportation service in daylight by watching the following video:

Here are some pictures taken on the gondola ride.

Dawson continually asked if we “get to ride the sky choo-choo.”

You can see how small Telluride is.

My sisters would not be able to live there. They are claustrophobic.
Jason and I tried hiking on this famous trail that was being held hostage by millions of flies. We got half-way up the trail and Jason said he couldn’t handle the flies anymore and we turned around. We walked down the main street in town:

and stopped for lunch at this little hole-in the wall place which had a dog sitting outside that stared at me begging for nourishment from my Panini. He was chained to a bench near the table I was sitting at. But I didn’t give him any food because the dog belonged to the owner of the place we were eating at and I thought the dog should be wealthy enough to buy his own food then.
The condo we stayed in was incredible. -The Peaks Resort.

We had a beautiful view from our balcony.

This is famous-Bridal Veil Falls:

This is the center of our Mountain Village where our resort was. And the way you get to the gondola:

We went swimming in the pool you see here.

One morning I placed a bet with Greg about whether or not the pool had water in it. “$10 bucks says the pool doesn’t have water in it.” So he threw quarter into the pool from our balcony. Then we saw these little ripples from where the quarter landed. I still owe him the $10 bucks. Then again, I’m thinking it was illegal for him to throw a quarter from the balcony so maybe he should be paying me to keep my mouth shut, saving him from attorney fees?
Jason took lots of beautiful sunset pictures from the balcony.

On the night we chose to eat out, we selected this little Italian place called La Piazza. We found out that Tom & Katie Cruise dined there with Beckham and his wife while they were there. Hey, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us. Here I am showing off my bread with olive oil which was the best thing about the meal.

There was nothing for Dawson to eat because he didn’t want curry soup that looked like watered down mashed carrots. He’s so picky! $52 bucks later, we got enough food to feed 1 ½ ants. Tom and Katie can have that place. I wish we could’ve ordered pizza.
Here are pics of the inside of the condo.

The living room and kitchen.

Dawson napping on our King size bed in our bedroom. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with a king size bed. I felt like Jason was so far away I needed to call him on my cell in order to communicate.
I’ve got to say, Telluride is probably my most favorite vacation by far. It’s beautiful. On our way back to Colorado Springs from Telluride we stopped in Ouray.

“The Swiss Alps of the US” and then made a last minute decision to stop in Gunnison at the Black Canyon:

I didn’t let Dawson out of the car when we took the little hike to get some of these pictures. He can read the blog later.

We took Cottonwood Pass back from Gunnison to the Springs and this was my first encounter with cows on the road:

This has nothing to do with anything but I like this pic of me and Dawson at Greg&Goria's house:

One funny story about him though. When we drove through Iowa and Nebraska we saw plenty of those huge white windmills that look like they could chop off your head if you decided to stick your head under there for some psychotic reason. Dawson kept talking about “the spinning nails” and Jason couldn’t figure what on earth he was talking about, until it hit him that it was those windmills he was referring to.

I'd also like you to watch the video of the thunderstorm/hail storm I had to drive through at 2:00 a.m. in Colorado:

Jason never got into any storms! He even drove right past the world's largest truck stop.

Apparently this truck stop didn't matter to Dawson either.

And that is the story of our vacation in Telluride, Colorado.
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