A Perfect Summer Day

Our little Daredevil

He's so BRAVE! or CRAZY!

Here's our little daredevil up to his latest antics. We couldn't believe when he so bravely not only rode bareback, but decided to stand up!!! Oh dear.

Dance Jadeyn! Dance

Up until now, Jadeyn's dancing consisted of rocking back and forth on his knees and waving his head back and forth which makes him dizzy. It's adorable! But this week, he discovered that he can dance with his feet too!!


I played one of the dance special feature on Shrek 2 where all the characters let loose and dance away. Jadeyn loved it! He popped right up on his feet and danced along with them! He also added a little Ooooohhh! to sing with them. He's really getting to be quite the little boy and quite the character!

The worms crawl in...The worms crawl out...

....The worms play pinochle on my snout!!!!

The morning after returning from our camping trip, we had a funny surprise waiting for us in the refrigerator. All our little worms that had been so neatly tucked away in their blue Tupperware, had managed to push the lid open and slither out of the plastic baggie and out into the fridge!!! Who would have thought that they could be that strong; unless of course it was a group effort. What a mess to clean up along with all their dirt! We always did think that the Canadian Night crawlers were the healthiest and lasted the longest, but this was ridiculous!!

And by the way, I never new how to spell pinochle until today when I looked it up on the internet. I guess its not spelled phoenetically like I thought: peanuckle!

Camping! Finally!

June 19-21, 2009

With all the rain that has been plaguing and blessing Colorado, we haven't had a perfect weekend to go camping. It finally arrived!!! We packed up tons of good food, all our gear and headed to Painted Rocks campground near Manitou Lake. This is Jadeyn's 5th time camping, but his first time since he has been able to walk! Big Difference! HE LOVED IT! From day two after he was born, he was happiest outdoors, so he was in heaven!

A perfect camping spot has nice trees and beauty, a great fishing spot and some mountain biking. This place had all three. We biked to the lake and there was some awesome fishing to be found. Nice little lake trout, but lots of them. We had some fun with catch and release, but ended up keeping three and accidentally feeding one to the seagulls which was pretty noisy!

Jadeyn loved the lake. Kevin fished while I chased the little guy around and kept him from running straight out into the water. He loved to squish his feet in the mud. We knew that he would get dirty and were excited to let him have free rein of the place, but I really didn't think that he could get this dirty! It was great! He played so happily in the pineneedles and dirt. After about an hour of fishing, Jadeyn decided it was naptime and crashed right on the shore by daddy's fishing bag!

Jadeyn caught his first fish!! He loved helping dad bring in the line and was so excited when there was a fishy flopping around on the other end. He would squish the slimy fish and laugh!



We finally broke down and bought a "family tent." A nice REI Kingdom 6 with a room divider so we could separate Jadeyn a bit from us. Not for privacy, but if he could see us, there's no way he would sleep! He ended up being the perfect sleeper in a tent. We bundled him up in his jammies and his sleep sack. He fell asleep promptly after 8am and slept until 5:20 (typical) the first night and 6:30 (amazing father's day gift!) the second night! I guess we really wore him out!

Ouch! We only had one incident which is amazing considering all the activities we did and the uneven ground that we did them on. Jadeyn tripped on a root and took a header into the picnic table bench. I didn't think that a bump could swell as quickly as this one did. It was almost instantly about 1/3 of an inch raised. Poor kid! He cried four about a minute and a half while we iced it, then he was off and playing again!

What a fun trip and what a great way to spend Father's Day! The summer is flying by so fast and we are sad to have our camping weekends limited! But lots more fun to be had!!

Hershey, PA

Vacation to the Sweetest Place on Earth!!

Kevin / Rebecca / Jadeyn

Jessica (Kevin’s sister – graduation present)

Stephanie (Kevin’s Sister) Michael / Kallee / Kyle / Kody / Kamden

Fun at Hershey Lodge.

Walk in the doors of Hershey Lodge and you smell chocolate!!! The place was amazing. The gardens outside were mulched with the husks of the cocoa beans, chocolate bars are handed out at the front door, the vending machines even have chocolate milk!! We were in heaven.

Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!

Chocolate was everywhere as you could imagine. With all these adorable kids with us, we took full advantage. Each day when we would return to the Hershey Lodge, one of the kids would ask the front desk if they had any chocolate. The guy would ask how many people we had, they would answer 10 and boom! we had ten full sized Hershey bars! Wahoo!

Kevin’s sister, Jessica, and Stephanie and family joined us for this adventure. We had our rooms next to each other so the cousins could be close and romp the hallways. There was a wooden sloped platform in the lobby at the Lodge and the kids chased each other around and around stomping their little feet on the hardwood. Jadeyn was in heaven playing with the “big kids.”

Cousins!

The closest cousin to Jadeyn’s age is Camden who is five months older. These two were often mistaken for twins since they are pretty much the same size. They ran their little legs tired every night.

We played miniature golf and swam at the hotel on our last day there. Yup, you guessed it, Jadeyn had to have his own balls in order to allow us to play. Jessica got three hole in ones!!

Chocolate World

Chocolate World

Wall to wall chocolate and candy! Anything you could imagine was sold at this place: kisses, york mints, twizzlers, 5 lb chocolate bars, t-shirts, basketballs, pillows shaped like reese’s peanut butter cups! Etc. It was great fun.

Chocolate Drinks

A highlight of our trip came in six little shot glasses. We bought a tray of chocolate from around the world: Mexico, Ecuador, Sao Thomas, Madagascar, Tanzania, and an Indonesian Island called Java. Each chocolate was flavored uniquely to that part of the world, complete with its own strength of cocao. Very very strong, to light, almost like milk chocolate. It was such fun to each get to try theses different chocolates and enjoy the differences.

Milton Hershey

The Chocolate Museum and factories were amazing to tour. The story of Milton Hershey is really quite an incredible on of dedication, generosity, good luck and again generosity. He never laid off an employee even during the depression and war years, instead he put his factory workers to work building a stadium or the park. He stopped production of his Hershey kisses during the war to preserve the aluminum and instead provided chocolate bars in the soldier’s rations. He built a school for under privileged children which is still successful today and mandated that the majority of the profits from the factory go to the school. We wouldn’t have such amazing chocolate if it weren’t for one amazing coincidence. Hershey and his wife had tickets to the maiden voyage of the Titanic but had to reschedule because she got sick!! That would have been such a tragedy!

Hershey Gardens

One of the days it was raining so steadily (imagine that!) that they had to close down most of the rides so we headed to Hershey Gardens. Acres and acres of beautiful roses in full bloom and unique plants we had never heard of. There was one whole section of chocolate flavored plants. The Children’s Garden had all sorts of unique musical instruments that the kids could stomp on or slap. The highlight for Jadeyn was the Hershey Kiss shaped granite fountains in the middle. They would periodically spout out water mist and make a whistling noise. He just could get enough of them!

Rain Rain Rain!

Rain Rain Rain!

It rained a good portion of our trip, but it didn’t dampen our spirits or melt our chocolate. We still got to enjoy the water park, complete with a super soaker coaster and awesome tube rides like the toilet bowl and tornado. The kids absolutely loved the kids water area. Jadeyn just plowed right into the fountains – I guess taking him into the shower with us all the time really got him used to it!

With the rain came puddles and the little boys took full advantage of that too!

Meeting Mr Reeses

Mr. Reese's!

Everywhere we turned we ran into the candy characters and the kids loved it!! Jadeyn's favorite (and his daddy was proud) was Mr. Reese's Peanut Buttercup! At first he was a little hesitant, but then as he saw him each day, he really warmed up to him. One day when Jadeyn was completely wiped out and fell asleep in my arms, Mr. Reese's came up to me carrying a baby Reese just like me!! Late one night we yook Jadeyn on the Carosel and each time it would circle he got excited and pointed. Then we realized that Me Reese nearby!

Rides At Hershey Park

We had a great time at Hershey's Park and the rides were second only to the CHOCOLATE!! They actually had some great coasters and lots of fun ones for the kids. Our favorite had to be Fahrenheit and Stormrunner. Both had killer drops, one slowly taking you to the top and dropping you, the other blasting you off straight up to the top of the hill only to drop you straight down again!

We enjoyed the motor cars, truck, lady bugs, bumper cars etc. It was wonderful to have cousins around because some of the rides the adults could go with the little ones, so Jadeyn had a blast with his cousins Kallee and Kyle!

We had prepared Jadeyn for his first rollar coaster by putting him in the laundry basket and spinning and sliding him around on the carpet. It was perfect and he loved his mini coasters!

Measuring Up! Everyone was catagorized by size to determine which rides they could go on. Here is some of Stephanie's family trying to measure up. Nice tippy-toes Steph!!