Well, it seems summer is over, and today is our first day of school; so far, it has gone smoothly, and the boys have enjoyed it.  Jaden gets bored every so often and wants to do his own thing, so I just let him, and he comes back and wants to do some more.  Since we just got back from our camping trip, I thought I’d journal it a bit, starting today with day 1 of our trip.  If we could have stayed, we would have, and if we could go back, we would be there.  If someone came and told us to pack our stuff today, we’d be gone.:)LOL  It was lovely and beautiful and just some really amazing family time together, plus we had no cell service, except in town, which frankly, did NOT bother us at all.  I definitely recommend it for everyone.  Affordable too, as we camped the entire time, except for our very last night.  Boy, that shower, that last night after five days, felt awesome!  (Yes, I said 5 days; when you’re camping, and there are no showers, you learn to make do, as in the hat I wore for the last 2 days. LOL  We were honestly having so much fun, though, that showers were the least of our worries.)  I think it’ll be a place we go back to over and over.  Anyway, here’s day 1….We got out of bed around 4:30am, ran some quick errands, and headed for the Missouri/Kansas border.  We drove through Kansas today, which is, by far, the longest state EVER!  Parts of it were so beautiful, especially with the prairies and the wind turbines and the hay bales, the riverways and plateaus here and there….other parts, however, kinda boring.  There was an eerie feeling surrounding the turbines; they just aimlessly go round and round with a push from the wind, but with so many of them scattered in the wind fields, it was an impressive site.  McDonalds in Russell, Kansas were wonderful enough to give us 3 heaping bags of ice for our coolers, free of charge.

It was a long trip, but we finally started seeing the mountains about 5 or 6pm, off in the distance.  The excitement started to mount.  Dan had never been to Colorado, so he’d never seen the Rockies.  Neither had our boys.  As we got closer and closer, Denver finally came into view, and we crossed into Boulder, then on to Estes Park.  The drive to Estes was breathtakingly beautiful. Wow, there are some very cool houses out here.  Houses below the mountains, on top of them, on the sides….and a river flowing right through town.  Town was full of cute, little shops and tons of tourists shopping, eating ice cream, and just having fun.As we entered Rocky Mountain National Park, it was dusk, and darkness was falling fast in the shadows of the mountains (pics were taken the next morning).  We entered our campsite, our name on the late list as we went through the empty ranger station at the entrance of Moraine Park Campground.  We had to watch closely for our campsite on all the signs….we knew ours would be off the road a ways.  Finally, we found our campsite; thankfully, families were still up and about, having fun, playing with glow in the dark frisbees, sitting around campfires.We quickly got our bearings, gathered our things, and made several trips back and forth on the trail from our van to our campsite.  By the time we had our tent up, it was getting quite late, so it was time to just eat a quick sandwich, make a quick trip to the bathroom, and head to bed.  Quiet hours are enforced in the campground, so we didn’t want  to be a disturbance.

We couldn’t yet see the splendor that we’d wake up to the next morning….(continued Wednesday with tons of pics from high mountaintop roads and hiking trails galore).

Well, we are back from our camping trip at Big Spring.:) We had a great time! We ended up going down on Saturday and stayed until later on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t get any really good pictures of the actual spring, but it is really beautiful. Josie learned how to ride her bike without training wheels.:) Trey was just a cutup the whole time and was a lot of fun. The kids all had a good time. Jacob was in his prime.:) Jaden was a dirty little baby the whole time; we had no water, only what we brought and could fill our jugs with.:) We swam in the river (I took pictures mostly), and we ate good food.:) The kids caught crawdads in the river. Dad and Mom just were relaxing and having a really good time too. I’m really glad because they have had quite the summer, between Dad’s illness and tractors constantly breaking down. Nicholas, the cat, made a few appearances when the kids weren’t anywhere around.LOL Dan and I learned how to play Hand and Foot, a card game Jimmy and Jennifer taught us; I think that it could be really addicting, because I already want to play again. Anyway, between getting our tent all set up and just relaxing, it was a really good weekend. I’m ready to go again.:)