Joey - 15 months

Can I just tell you how much of a rockstar this kid is?  Ninja. Rockstar. Possum. Bear.  Kid has too many nicknames.  Haha.

This month:

- Joey's been in this weird stage where he's trying to transition from two naps to one, but one nap is not enough, but two is too much.  It makes things a little difficult sometimes because I have no idea if he is going to need one nap or two that day.  So, we're kind of just winging it right now.

- We went on a hike with the Young Women in our ward to fulfill their Girl's Camp hiking requirement, and had a blast.  We went up to Gem Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Joey was so excited that he refused to take his morning nap.  So he finally fell asleep in the backpack on the way back down.  It was pretty darn cute (if I do say so myself).

- We went to the Family FunPlex in Greeley during Neal's lunch one day.  They have a super cool pirate themed "little kid" pool.  Joey really enjoyed it for the first time, and started putting his head under the sprayers and such.  He had a blast.

- A very kind person anonymously dropped off a kiddy pool and a bunch of toys on our front porch.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to whoever decided to do that!

- We went camping.  Read all about that here.

- I went up to Girl's Camp, so Joey spent a few days with friends and family, and then spent the evenings with Neal.  Those two really seemed to have a blast while I was gone (though I don't have any pictures!)

- We went to the rodeo at the Greeley Stampede.  Joey was fascinated by the horses, cows, and sheep that we saw.  Every time a contestant would come out of the gate, Joey would stop whatever he was doing and just stare.

- We celebrated Independence Day, which is always a blast.  We went to our church for a breakfast in the morning, and then watched the Greeley Stampede parade later in the morning.  Then we headed down to my parent's house for lunch.  Afterwards, we went to Firestone's celebration and Joey got to pet animals in a petting zoo, and ride a pony.  We enjoyed listening to a band that was playing while we cooled off eating snow cones.  Later that night, we watched Firestone's fireworks with my family and Neal's cousins.  Joey was such a trooper that whole day.  He didn't get much sleep, but still was happy and excited most of the day :)

- Joey said his first word: "ah-der" (translation: water)

- We have officially entered the climbing stage.  There aren't many "safe" places to put stuff in our house anymore.  Thankfully he hasn't figured out how to move chairs yet ;)

Other cute pictures from this month :)

North Michigan Reservoir

Our second trip to the mountains was supposed to be a trip to the cabin that the City of Greeley employees have access to.  Unfortunately, the rains washed out the road up to the cabin, so they closed the cabin until the middle of July.

Instead, we took a camping trip to one of my favorite lakes, North Michigan Reservoir.  We went there a lot when I was a kid, so I was pretty excited to share it with Neal, Joey, and Neal's parents.  We were up there for two nights and had SO much fun.

We stopped at the Moose Visitor's Center on our way to the lake and Joey thought it was so fun.  They have buttons that play the sounds of moose and elk when you push them.  Joey pushed the buttons so many times in a row that we finally had to take him outside because it was getting a little annoying.  

When we got to our campsite, we set up our tent and Neal's parents' tent.  Then we took Joey down to the lake and let him wade around for a little bit.  Then we drove around for a while, discovering new places while Joey took a nap.  When Neal's parents arrived, we ate dinner, ate smores, and then put Joey to bed.  After he went to sleep we spent the evening sitting around the fire, talking. 

The next day, after breakfast, we drove to a trail head, and by the time we got there Joey had fallen asleep.  We decided to go 4-wheeling instead, and took an old logging road around a mountain.  It was kind of depressing to see the amount of beetle kill that has happened up there.  We also discovered several other trails that we'd like to hike someday.

After lunch, we went and did the hike that we were planning on doing that morning.  The trail was called the "Beaver Lodge Trail."  They had a little brochure that had different stopping points marked so you could learn about the nature around you.  We actually learned a lot about the history of North Park while we were on that hike.

In the evening, we drove around the lake to show Neal's parents some of the things we had found the day before.  While we were driving we saw three fox kits wrestling each other.  It was pretty funny to watch because dad kept running away from them when they tried to get him to play with them, and mom just laid there and ignored them jumping all over her.  It was SUPER cute.

We unfortunately did see any moose, but we did hear bats fly around us as the sun went down.  We thought it was a bird originally, but then realized that the "call" we thought we were hearing was actually the wind moving through the bats wings.

Joey loved being allowed to play in the dirt and get as dirty as he wanted.  He did really, really well while we were up there.  We discovered that the secret to getting him to sleep IN his sleeping bag was to put him in it after he had been asleep for a while.

We really had a good time, and can't wait to go back up there to do more exploring and to take Joey fishing.  

Memorial Day 2015

Neal's family almost always goes to Hermit Park up by Estes Park for Memorial Day.  They rent a cabin for the weekend, and the whole family comes up when they can. 

This year we were just going to go up for the actual day of Memorial Day and have breakfast and lunch with Neal's family.  The day before we were supposed to go up, however, we found out that Neal's brother's kids had caught the stomach bug that had been going around their family.  We made the decision to not go to the cabin and set up some other things with some friends.

On Memorial Day, we went up to a place called Bunce School Road by Allenspark with Neal's coworker, his wife, and their little girl.  We met in Estes Park and the kids played at the park for a little bit.  Then we went and had our picnic and hung out for a while.

After that, we headed down to Fort Collins to go to a BBQ at our friends' house.  We all have kiddos about the same age, so it's really fun to hang out and watch them play.  They always have so much fun, and it's nice for us parents to hang out and have adult conversations (that almost always end up being about our kids).