Wednesday, July 7, 2010

What I did on my summer vacation- a short essay by Erin

You know what I hate? When I make promises. Like the promise I made about finally getting around to blogging about our vacation to Colorado, which happened almost a month ago. I don't know why I have felt so uninspired to share with everyone the details of our trip (uninspired being the nice word for lazy). It was a fabulous trip after all. I think the laziness is occurring because it's so hard to explain in words the beauty that surrounds you in Colorado. And as much as I had good intentions to capture the beauty in amazing photographs, I only ended up taking a few pictures of actual landscapes. But, a promise is a promise so here it goes. 

I won't recount every minute of our great vacation but instead will highlight a few activities (more like I'll tell you about the things I actually took pictures of). The first day we were in Colorado we rented bikes and rode down Vail Pass. And rode is a very loose term, since it was downhill and I think you could make it the whole way without pedaling once. We got passed by a lot of real cyclists who were climbing the pass rather than getting dropped off at the top of the mountain and coasting down :). But I would definitely recommend this activity if you're in the area. 
Getting ready to start our biking adventure

Beautiful views while riding down Vail Pass
The next day we went whitewater rafting. I wish I had pictures of this, because we all were in wetsuits! But rapids are generally not the safest place to bring your camera and we forgot to go look at the pictures taken by the professional photographers. And before y'all think Chris and I are nuts for taking two year old's white water rafting, Conner and Lizzie got to spend the afternoon at the Breckenridge ski resort kid's camp. We had a great time rafting- but next time we are going to up the ante and head down some Class IV rapids. 

The last few days of our trip were filled with less than optimal weather. One day was rainy and pretty cold so we took advantage of the crummy weather for spa treatments and shopping. Then on the morning of our last full day in Colorado, we woke up to a surprising scene. I looked out the window of our condo only to see the trees covered in snow and big white flakes falling from the sky! Seriously, snow? In June?! And of course the snow all melted pretty quickly but it made some toddlers very happy and surprised!
And that about sums up our vacation. It was great to spend time with Auntie Meg and Grannie Elaine and I know the kids had fun saying "Mountains!" at least 500 times. 

Our best attempt at a family photo



Sunday, July 4, 2010

Happy Fourth of July!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Fourth. We are having a party at our house tonight with a 10 x 25 foot slip-n-slide, lots of wonderful food, three types of homemade ice cream, and fireworks to close out the night. Wish y'all could join us! Hopefully I'll remember to have my camera with and can get some good pictures. I'm especially excited to try taking pictures of fireworks. Here's a hint that I learned in my class about capturing fireworks in pictures- slow your shutter speed (if you can do that on your camera). You'll probably need a tripod to prevent camera shake but if you slow your shutter speed down enough you should be able to get the picture you are after. I'll try it and see if it works. So look for some firework photos next week and I promise I'll get around to telling all of you about our awesome vacation in Colorado that we took almost a month ago!