Camping Redemption!

This past weekend we went camping with our church life group.  There were 17 (or so) families that came out and we literally took over about 1/4 of the campground at Cutty's resort.  This was a GREAT camping experience for us for numerous reasons.  We opted to rent and "try out" a pop-up tent camper since tent camping has not been hugely successful for us in the past (verdict: it was awesome.  We are now in the market for a used pop-up tent camper if you hear of any good deals).  The campground had so much to do, was off the beaten path, and had great views of the Rockies.  We also had a wonderful time getting to know other families in our new church.  It's never easy to transition to a new church family, but I really like the people I am meeting there.  Everyone is very friendly and out-going, love it!
Oh, and there was barely any rain!  The "Recke Curse" is broken!! :)

View of the Rockies

A deer Tom admired...a little too much.

On Friday we drove to the Royal Gorge, not too far away from our camp.  We chose not to pay the crazy-expensive entry fee (we were just there 2 years ago anyway), and took pictures from scenic overlooks.

I love the juxtaposition of flowers on cacti.  Just don't accidentally brush your hand on it.  Those needles are sharp!

The pop-up. Oh how I miss it.

Tom loving the quality time with the kids

Unfortunately, with the lack of moisture in Colorado this year, we were unable to have any campfires.  Even charcoal grills were banned.  So, we all came prepared and used propane stoves for cooking.  I also made some meals ahead of time so I could just heat them up with minimal prep.  While I missed the gathering around a campfire (and s'mores of course) we managed quite well!

White bean chicken & bacon chili hit the spot!

I also made some s'mores brownie bars.  Hey, had to get s'mores somehow!

One big reason we enjoyed Cutty's so much was the amount of activity they had for kids.  There were indoor and outdoor pools, miniature golf, horseshoe pit, volleyball court, shuffleboard, a playground, and a creek running by our campsite.  The bathrooms/showers were very clean too, so other than them ALL being uphill from our campsite, going the bathroom was a non-issue.

The girls analyzing the course.

Apparently that analysis wasn't "on par".  ha.

Tom also took part in some friendly competition.  He did pretty well considering he never played before.

On the last day I took some pics of the kids playing by the creek. I had fun playing with the "manual" setting on my camera here.

What a fun time.  I can't wait to get back up there and do it all again!

Part One: Our Vacation to Riviera Maya

This weekend Tom and C took off for Texas to be in one-of-Tom's-childhood-friend's wedding. So that left me to my own devices...using my time alone wisely to clean organize make freezer meals blog.  I figure it is high-time I posted about our incredible week in Mexico, and try to sort through the digital stack of photos on my computer.  I think the most efficient way to do this is to post about each day, showing pics along the way.  I hope you don't get too bored!

DAY 1:  We (Tom, me, and our friends Wendi and Gary) left Denver at o'dark:thirty to make the 9 hour trip to Cancun (including a layover in Houston).  Definitely one of the easiest travel days I've ever had so it was off to a good start.  We arrived in Cancun and met up with Tommy and Sara, the third couple.  Once we got through customs, we went to the car rental place (herein known as "rent-a-wreck").  We proceeded to get the most beat up cars you've ever seen...to include a burned out tail light, missing hub cap, and dents/scratches galore.  Mexico mandates that we get car insurance which, we were soon to find out, does not cover much at all.  Quite a racket they have going on there.  I had to laugh at the notion that we girls thought we would bring along our ipod cables to listen to non-mariachi music in the cars.  Laughable because we actually assumed we'd be getting cars manufactured after 2000.  Silly Americans.  Needless to say, there were no auxiliary ipod hook-ups in the cars.
So, we went on our way...down the highway from Cancun to Riviera Maya, about 2 hours south to where our rental house was located.  Tom and I in one car and the other 2 couples in the "swagger-wagon".  I have to insert here that I had done some "travel advisory" reading prior to our trip and was made aware that corrupt police like to target rental cars (read: Americans), pull them over for some bogus thing, and ask for a bribe in exchange for letting them go.  We were advised to carry a separate wallet with about 200 pesos for this very situation.  Well,  Tom and I failed to get pesos (or any cash) at the airport, and thusly had no bribe money what-so-ever.  Poor Tom, the whole way down all he heard from me was, "slow down!", "I don't care how fast Tommy is driving, we need to stay at the speed limit!", and "I don't care that the locals are all passing us, we are foreigners and they know it!".  Um, yeah, I don't think the police looked twice at our rent-a-wrecks.  Guess it does pay to rent crappy cars in Mexico.  Either that or the stupid travel advisory is being overly paranoid, as usual.  Live and learn.
Around 7pm we finally arrived at our house, Casa Escocesa.  It's a gorgeous, private villa located well off the beaten path.  We were greeted by the caretakers, Elder & Elda, who were easily the sweetest people we met down there.  We had pre-arranged to have Elda cook our first-night dinner, and she was grilling meat kabobs when we showed up.  She prepared the most delicious meal of the kabobs, rice, beans, salsa, and guacamole...all homemade.  It was awesome. 
After dinner we all changed into swimsuits and jumped in the pool, with the clear starry-filled sky above us.  Not a bad start to the week if I do say so myself.

DAY 2:  Shopping day.  Before getting out and about, we needed to go to the local super market and pick up food and other necessities.  Tom and I stayed behind and relaxed, taking in the house and the beach.  Here's some shots of the beach as we saw it from the house...

We even had Elder nab a couple of coconuts for us to enjoy...

Aside from lots of swimming and napping, that pretty much sums up our first full day.

DAY 3:  We went a bit south of our house to see the Tulum Mayan Ruins.  Luckily Tommy is a planner and we got there well before the tour buses and extreme heat...which also meant not sleeping in.  It was worth it though, we got some great photos without tons of people in the way.

DAY 4:  Was basically a repeat of day 3, but this time we got up early and headed west to the Mayan Ruins of Coba.  This was a bit more of a drive but totally worth it as we actually got to climb one of the ruins.  Also, if you ever find yourself visiting Coba, rent a bike!!  We chose to walk the ruins which was crazy dumb in the heat.  Plus, these ruins are extremely spread out within the forest.

gotta get a  "Captain Morgan" pose in there

Tom, Wendi, and Gary climbing the ruin (which I ventured to do after these photos were taken)

view from the top, amazing!

At one point in our hike, Tom had a footwear malfunction...not surprising since the only time he EVER throws something away is when it literally falls apart.  The above photo to the left is him trying to go all MacGyver and reattach the sole of his sandal with vine or a palm leaf or something.  The photo to the right is the sole of his sandal, after giving up on the vine and walking the rest of the way on the leather foot bed.  Needless to say, those sandals did not make it back home with us.

Wendi & Gary...walking one of MANY trails at Coba.

Tom and Gary did the zip-line over crocodile-infested water.  

I was happy taking pictures from non-crocodile-infested land.

{Ok, I'm burned out and need to stop avoiding my child. I will post days 5-7 later. Adios!}

South Dakota Trip

This year's family vacation was to the Black Hills of South Dakota. We went with some great friends and stayed in a cozy (very rustic) cabin for a few days while taking in some gorgeous views. And the weather? So perfect! It was in mid-seventies with no clouds during the day and lows of upper-thirties at night...just enough to enjoy a fire in the wood stove and/or fire pit.

 

On Saturday we visited Mt. Rushmore.  C was excited about seeing the "statues" (for about 5 minutes) and we adults enjoyed learning about how the monument came to be. It was also humbling to see the flags at half staff since we were there on Sept. 11.

That night we returned for a video presentation about the presidents, singing of the National Anthem, a dedication to all war veterans in attendance, and a lighting of Mt. Rushmore.  It was quite moving and I am really proud to be an American...despite our faults.

The next day we ventured to two more tourist traps:  Cosmos Mystery Area and Crazy Horse...

Cosmos Mystery Area is supposedly an area in the Black Hills where physics is all wackadoo.  Trees curve down (our friend Austin pointed out that this seemed to happen only to the saplings..), the cabins all are slanted but level (the picture above is how you have to lean when inside.  I got quite sick in there and basically hugged the wall the whole time).  In my opinion this 20 minute tour was not worth the $10/person fee, I could have lived without it.  Made for some fun pictures though!

We then moved on to Crazy Horse.  This was also somewhat disappointing.  The monument is really far from the visitor center and you have to pay an extra $4 (on top of the $10/person entrance fee) to take a bus to the base of the mountain.  It seems like this is really a slow process so I'd be curious to see it in 50 years when they are hopefully done with it (it's taken 62 years just to get to this point).  Right now it's just not that exciting (note C's thrilled look)...unless you are really into Native American history...then the visitor center is right up your alley. :)

Sunday Sept. 12 was also Tom's birthday!  Our friend Erika made Tom a slow-cooker chocolate pudding cake with whipped cream and topped it off with 33 candles...

 (the candles melted fast in that bonfire)

We sang our best off-key rendition of Happy Birthday and topped off the night with some bad wine with a cool name (at least it appealed to us Mommy's):

And the next day we left our wonderful vacation behind for a 6 hour drive back to Denver.
Thanks for the memories everyone, it was a blast!

Not a good camping year for us...

Hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July! We decided to head out of town for the holiday weekend and camp at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska. This was supposed to be our redemption camping trip since the last one (3 weeks ago) was pretty much a lesson in learning how to listen to weather forecasts and avoid camping in any situation where there is a 50% or higher chance of rain.  We listened this time around and the chance of rain was 30%...better odds and we did have a brand new tent after all!

That said, let's just put it right out there that this summer is thus far a humid one for Colorado.  Head East and you get more humidity.  Humidity = mosquitoes.  A plethora of them.  As in, we each needed our own personal bottle of bug spray to apply every 20 minutes.  Get the picture?  Add to that an unknown fact (until now) that E has brutal reactions to bug bites.  At any time during our trip she had eyes swollen like she had been in some cage fight (Tom's words, not mine).  She also had a huge knot in the middle of her shin...all from stupid mosquitoes.  On top of all that, I was completely paranoid about putting any deet-based bug repellent on her for fear of causing blindness or some kind of poisoning.  Here's an example of my paranoia:  during the first night, E woke up screaming.  Tom tried to calm her down but it just got worse and worse.  Next, I tried to calm her down.  I noticed in the beam of the flashlight that E was not focusing on anything and looked blank.  I started screaming at Tom, "She can't see!  Can she see?!"  to which Tom replied, "How the heck should I know?!"  Then I started yelling at E, "E, look at Mommy!  E, LOOK AT MOM-MEEEE!!  Tom, she's blind!!  She can't see me!"  Tom just looked at me like I was crazy and said, "What are you talking about?!"  I said, "It's the deet!  She's blind from deet!"  About that time was when E snapped out of whatever nightmare she was in and finally looked at me, put her binkie in her mouth, and laid down to go back to sleep.  Crisis over.  The next morning our friends in the tent next to us asked how E's eyesight was.  Yeah, I don't do well with paranoia in the middle of the night.  Oh, and for the record, C sleeps like a rock.  Not once did he waken in the midst of the chaos.  Bless him.  I, on the other hand, got about 4 hours of sleep since there were also train tracks just over the hill from us that (and I am so not kidding here) had a train blowing by every 20 minutes or so.  That was the first night.

The next day, 4th of July, was nice...albeit cloudy and nowhere near the nice hot temps of the day before.  Despite that, we walked to the lake and played around a bit in the water until C was shaking uncontrollably and had blue lips...a good indication that perhaps it was time to go.  We then returned to camp to eat lunch and take much-needed naps.  Around 6:30 we packed up food and grills and headed to Ogallala for tailgating and fireworks.  Nice right?  Weeeell, the fireworks started about an hour later than expected.  During this time you see another kind of fireworks on the horizon, in the form of lightening...the constant un-ending kind with no real thunder.  Not a big deal in theory.  Until we left.  We drove in a TORRENTIAL downpour all the way back to the campsite.  This was the stuff of hurricanes with excessive wind and rain.  We show up at 11pm to this:

Yes, that would be our collapsed tent.  Our brand new, barely a month-old tent.  

Here's a "before" just for kicks:

Yep, our tent was done in by the storm.  The front pole snapped in two places and bent at very odd angles in others.  On top of it all, water managed to seep in and completely drench our sleeping bags and clothes.  Fun times.  While Tom was in the pouring rain assessing the damage, I proceeded to have a total breakdown in the car, crying "why?! WHY??!!", tears streaming down my face, and shaking my fists at the sky.  Keep in mind, I was very tired and I think we have already established that I don't do well with drama when I am tired.  So to make a long story short (I know, too late), we ended up checking into a crappy Motel 6 at 1am in the morning with a car full of wet stuff, leaving our forlorn-looking tent back at camp.  Our very kind friends (who had a pop-up tent camper, mind you) ended up dismantling the tent for us and brought it to us the next day..when the skies were clear and blue and the sun was shining and we were not there.  Sigh.

Tom came home today and immediately started looking for used tent-campers.  We are so done with tents.

Memorial Day 2010

Hope everyone took a moment today to thank our troops (past & present) for their sacrifices (and trust me, they ALL sacrifice!).

We had a great family weekend. Tom didn't have any inspections scheduled, so we were able to spend some quality time with the kids. We also bought our first "family tent" in anticipation of our camping trip in two weeks. Playing it safe, we put the tent up in the backyard today to make sure we have no surprises when it comes to the real thing. The kids had a blast pretending they were camping, as shown in the following pics...

The tent...it's awesome! :)













C doing some awkward modeling pose...where does he get this stuff?











My girl.  Just love that smile.

 "Such a roomy interior, Mom!"

It's just not camping without a dog...

Hope you had a wonderful long Memorial Day weekend too!