Wyoming

We spent the past week in the mountains, first at Wild Iris, then in the Tetons, and finally at Independence Pass.  We had a cabin in Lander courtesy of Trango, but after that we camped.  It was our longest stretch camping with kids-- 5 nights straight.  We were ready to come home by the middle of the week, but we stuck it out.  The kids loved camping-- every night was a party in the tent with lots of wrestling and dive bombing mom and dad in their sleeping bags and many threats before everyone finally settled down to sleep. The best part was falling asleep to the sound of rustling aspens outside... over and over and over again, as we were woken up by repeatedly each night by the kids. Besides the camping and climbing, we got in lots of hikes to mountain lakes, bike riding, superhero coloring, and games of Uno-- interrupted periodically by Amelie trying to sit on the cards and steal the draw pile.

We stopped at Vedauwoo on the way up to Lander-- we've driven by it a million times but never stopped to look around.  Turned out to be really cool with lots of massive boulders to play on.

Logan & Mark under the boulders

A quick climb on our hike up to the lookout

Running down

We spent a couple days climbing at Wild Iris during the Lander climbing festival.  Logan has discovered big swings-- enabled by ropes hanging from steep overhanging routes.  He has now started negotiating for his turn to climb or swing.  I feel like this is a precursor of years to come when Mark will no longer be the only one deciding where and when to climb.

A different kind of swings at the Lander park

After Lander, we headed to the Tetons.  Here's Logan throwing rocks into Lake Jackson.  This is right before he decided to wade in fully dressed and got completely soaked.

Biking through Grand Teton National Park

Hike to Taggart Lake

Logan & Amelie at Taggart Lake

Logan can't resist an icy mountain lake.  He reminds me so much of Andrew at this age-- looks just like him and acts like him too. He sure didn't get his love of water from Mark or I!

We took the boat across Jenny Lake and hiked up Cascade Canyon

Continuing our tour of Grand Teton lakes... sand castles and swimming at String Lake

String Lake

We camped at the Signal Mountain campground.  Here's the view from the top of Signal Mountain, looking out at Mt. Moran.  We were hoping to camp at Jenny Lake, but it was full, and Signal Mountain turned out to be great for wildlife.  We saw a grizzly and a black bear!

After the Tetons, we made the marathon 8 hour drive down to Independence Pass near Aspen.  Our original plan for this trip involved driving all the way to the Canadian Rockies, but we gave up on that idea.  8 hours was plenty, so we were really happy we didn't have to drive all the way to Canada.

Climbing at Independence Pass. The kids are getting better and better at the crag-- Amelie is pretty happy as long as she is next to me with a bucket, shovel, truck, and bag of goldfish that she can pour in the dirt.  Logan plays make believe Minecraft games.

Thank you grandma for the matching sweatshirts!

Amelie & me

Besides climbing, we did some rest day hikes around Aspen.  This is Weller Lake.  This was just a short distance from our campground, but was not as nice as the other mountain lakes-- full of sharp rocks and mosquitos.  Logan, however, did not mind.

Maroon Bells.  This was the coldest lake of them all

Hiking at Maroon Bells

Logan & Ama at Maroon Bells

 

Back at home, playing with the bubble machine.

Fourth of July

We headed out to Independence Pass near Aspen for 4th of July-- we were only there a day and a half, but packed in some hiking, camping, and just enough climbing to realize we need to go back.

Hike to Linkin Lake.  0.62 miles. Seemed much further, at 4 year old speed.

Snowball fights along the way

Ama and mama.  I'm rocking the socks, dad would be proud.

It rained and hailed on us twice, but the sun came out in between.

Made it!  Time to throw rocks in the lake.

Back at camp, Axel reading to Logan.  They had such a good time together.  Most of it revolved around a medium sized Home Depot box that they tried to cram themselves into.

Tent fun

Ama and I went for a hike up Mayflower Gulch near Leadville on the way home

And then we got 4th of July fireworks ice cream.

Happy 4th!

Amelie- 2 years

Amelie is 2!

We celebrated Ama's birthday with a barbeque. I realized later that this was probably the last thing she wanted-- she spent the better part of the night hiding behind me, monitoring our guests (all of whom she's seen a million times before) from the safety of mom's leg. She's super shy right now-- doesn’t like people even looking at her—though she’s not shy about giving them an evil eye or yelling at them to let them know she doesn’t like them looking at her.

Amelie is talking more and more—though sometimes it still takes several tries to understand what she’s saying.  Many things are "bop", which could mean airplane, blanket, baby, potty, and endless other things.  We just keep guessing, and she just keeps yelling bop louder and louder until we guess correctly. Yop, yop! means stop. 

She loves her lavender knit blanket, and drags it everywhere with her like Linus.  With summer here, that often means it gets dragged around outside and returns full of  dirt,  grass and leaves. She loves horses, and we must say hello to them each morning.  She likes reading books, climbing in Daddy’s gym, and she’s just started riding the Strider bike. She plays trains, legos, kitchen, and mothers her baby dolls. She does not like yellow and refuses to wear yellow clothes. She’s inherited our sweet tooth and loves ice cream, cookies and chocolate.  At her 2 year appointment, she measured 25^th percentile for weight, 25^th for height, and 60^th for head size. She gave up her bottle recently and now uses a sippy cup (mainly because I didn't want to answer yes if the doctor asked if she was still drinking from a bottle). 

Some pictures from her big day:

move up

Feeding baby

Black Canyon Camping

We went camping at Black Canyon of the Gunnison this weekend. We were half dreading it, because we're not really into camping-- we only camp if it facilitates an alternate activity, like climbing (and even then we usually just get a hotel). But our friends were going, and we didn't want to miss out on the fun, so we went along. It turned out to be great. It was, admittedly, really hot during the day.  But the kids had a blast riding their bikes around the campground loop and having water gun fights. We went climbing in Ouray and hiked down into the canyon. And, most importantly, our kids slept. All night. In their own sleeping bags. This is a huge improvement over last year when Amelie kept us up all night, and made the whole experience so much better. We were even able to leave them in the tent and go hang out with the adults while they went to sleep.  How far we've come.

Ama riding around the campground.  This is the first time she's really shown interest in riding a bike.

Ayla & Logan

Water gun fights

Happy hour

Campground time cooking on a charcoal grill.  Only when camping does anyone have time to wait for charcoal.

Ama & mama selfie while climbing

Ladies' day hike down into the canyon

We made it to the Gunnison River at the bottom.  The guys took care of the six kids... and got some comments from other campers to the effect of "What kind of bet did you guys lose?"

Katrien pulling herself back up out of the canyon