One of the things we wanted to do as a family was go on a nice hike. One that would be rigorous enough for those of us who loved hiking, but easy enough for those of us under 6... and the few who just wanted a nice stroll.

We decided to go into Rocky Mountain National Park and hike up to a waterfall. It was a beautiful day with a few clouds in the sky, chilly (we were up at a pretty high altitude) and the trail was pretty nice. A bit steep at areas, but we all managed from the 3 year olds to the 70-somethings.

 Aunt Nicole and I having a chat either about Thailand, cameras, or Switzerland, I'm not sure which.

Halfway up the hike - a lovely picture of Papa and myself. And Addie crawling around on the rocks.

Uncle Jürgen waving at the camera... and his kids, Chris and Nicole stopping for a Kodak Moment.

Christopher enjoyed the hike immensely - all he had to do was hang on!!

 Here we are in front of the waterfall. It was huge and very pretty.

 You rarely ever see a picture of my uncle without a camera - even at the edge of a waterfall. Especially at the edge of a waterfall!

A lovely group shot with Papa and Nana. Speaking of Nana...

 We had all gone up the mountain at about the same pace, but we went down in smaller groups - Some people (those without children) even opted to go farther up the mountain. Nana and Aunt Ann went down first with most of the littler ones, then Mom, Uncle Chris, Uncle Jürgen and I went down together - Uncle Chris and Mom racing each other to take pictures of different flowers and insects.

 This was the last picture we took of the group before ours - and we were scared for a bit that it would be the last picture of Nana that we ever got!

 When we got to a bend in the road, Nana, Aunt Ann, and some of the younger kids accidentally took the left bend, not the right, which was the way to get back to the starting place. We managed to catch Aunt Ann, and all the kids were with her.

(the infamous bend)

 It wasn't until we were all getting into the shuttle back that we all realized that Nana was not with us. Mom, Papa and Aunt Ann all stayed to search out Nana, and the rest of us got onto the shuttle back to the parking lot. Everyone was very worried about Nana - but there were kids who were getting cranky and hungry. I was left in the parking lot with the keys to Mom's car, and everyone else went back to the condos.

 I heard some interesting conversations between the shuttle drivers, the park ranger (it took me a while to realize that the ranger was actually a she!) and the hikers who seemed to have no reason to be lounging all over the benches at the waiting area. Then over the Ranger's walkie-talkie I heard something about 'No woman of that description up here... but we'll keep looking"

 I could only assume they were talking about my grandmother.

 About an hour after I had been left on my lonesome, Mom, Aunt Ann, Papa and Nana got off a shuttle. Apparently Nana had kept going when she and Aunt Ann and company went off the wrong way. Mom had alerted the rangers after we had left, and they were all over the place looking for Nana. Aunt Ann and Mom went up the way Nana had gone, hiking halfway up to the next shuttle stop and then back down to the original trailhead - where they found Nana, who had just thought she was having a pleasant hike, and wondering where the rest of us slowpokes were.  

 We all went back to the condos - me to finally get something to eat, (it was tiring just sitting there waiting... the only thing there was to read was an old copy of Rebekah's Pointe Magazine) and everyone else to a well-deserved rest.

 Tomorrow, we have the trail ride!!

  Sarah Beth

 The day after we arrived in Estes Park, the rest of the family showed up - there were 20 people altogether, including our family.

 With our family no occasion, whether it's Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, or a random get-together, is complete without a sing-along. We had two of these during our week together. I started us off for the first one with my rendition of Beauty and the Beast.

After I finished showing off, we picked songs from the songbooks Mom made (and they were wonderful Mommy!!) We had everything from well-known camp songs like You Are My Sunshine, and She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain, to classics such as Dixie, Singing In the Rain, and When It's Roundup Time in Texas! Well, ok, perhaps these are only classics for our family, but we all had a lot of fun!!!

Everyone singing - from left to right we have Allie, Katie, Greta, Aunt Ann, Rachel, Addie (behind Rachel)Aunt Wendy behind the lamp, Uncle Jürgen, Uncle Chris, Papa and Nana! And this is only half the room!

Now in this picture, form left to right we have Tom (playing the piano) Rebekah, me, Aunt Jen, and then Allie and Katie again. As usual, Mom was taking the pictures.

Here we have the younger generation - Rachel is the oldest, Christopher (in the next picture) is the youngest. They're all sitting with Aunt Ann

Christopher, (with his daddy and mommy) getting his dinner before the sing-along.

 Each family had a night to do dinner for everyone else. Aunt Ann and Uncle Jürgen opted for the outdoor BBQ!

Here we have Uncle Kent and Aunt Nicole on the left and as for everyone else... you can figure them out yourself. Tom's the one with the camera.

Can't miss him.

Here we have the cutest 3 year old twins on the face of the earth - Greta and Addie!! Addie had just gotten a very cool lip gloss that she kept smearing all over her lips... after all, what else are you supposed to do about chapped lips in that dry Colorado heat?

Here are Addie and Greta's dad and mom.

Daddy and Rebekah... Rebekah was probably just teased about something. She has that 'I'll look decent for the camera, but I'm seething inside' look.  

 Me...

 That's it for today.. tune in tomorrow for the infamous hike pictures and story... where we lost a member of our family for an hour and a half in the Rocky Mountain National Park!!!

  Cheers!

 Sarah Beth

 I finally got the Colorado pictures!! YAY!!! I'll be doing a few days of pics at a time because there are tons of really good pictures taken by my mom, dad uncle, and yes, even yours truly!

   We'll start on the day we left - early in the morning and we all got ourselves situated in the van, which was to become our home-away-from home for the next 3 weeks!

 Rachel had a little menagerie in the far back - all the stuffed animals went to her and she made sure that they were all comfortable and not squished as mine had been up in front.

Rebekah was in the middle - in charge of the food!! We all had to be really nice to her otherwise we'd get half a cookie or squished grapes. Or she wouldn't hear you ask for the food at all.

Mom was the captain of our ship - she kept a firm and steady hand at the wheel. And a lead foot on the gas pedal.

 Our first stop on the journey was the Blue Ridge parkway - which we passed on our way to West Virginia.

I can't remember where we stopped the first night - somewhere in Missouri I think. This was all you saw of me once we stopped at the hotel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 When we went through Kansas we knew we weren't in the east anymore!! It was really flat and boring - just like I remembered from our trip across country 7 years ago.

See? Flat. And. Boring. (No offence to those of you who live in this state... you're actually quite brave.) By the way, this is one of the few pictures I took. Please - no autograph requests.

A cute picture of Mom and Rachel in Kansas -

And since we were in Kansas which is nice and flat - I was told I had to drive a bit.

 In case you Easterner's don't know - unlike here where the speed limit is a lovely 65, from the Midwest  on, it's usually 75. Which is fast. And when you have to pass trucks you have to go even faster. I was practically hyperventilating, but I managed to make it up to 82. And I have proof!!

Here we are right after I got out of the car after driving - I was relieved to be finished.

When we got to Colorado, out first stop was at Casa Bonita, in Denver. It's a rather famous restaurant in Denver, and that's about it. It's kinda cheesy, and the food isn't all that good, but they had cliff divers in the restaurant (Most of it's underground) and arcade games and treasure hunts and mariachi bands and stuff like that.

Then the girls got funny and decided to try to push me into the fountain. Ha ha.

We got to the Condos in Estes Park that afternoon and we were all exausted!! Except Rachel who wanted to explore.

That's it for today, but I'll be back tomorrow!!

   Sarah Beth

 Hello everyone!! I've been waiting and waiting for those Colorado pictures I promised you (hint hint Dad) and they haven't showed up yet. So I don't really have anything interesting to tell you.

 My 8yo cousin, Allie is here for the next week and a half. Mom took her and Beka and Rachel to the beach today. I stayed home to help move the oven. We finally got the old oven that came with this house out of here, and moved up our oven. I'm soooo happy to have this oven back - the stovetop is much easier to clean, and this oven has consistent temperatures unlike the old oven that was all over the place. So, I'm really happy and I may have to celebrate the return of this oven by making some cookies or something.

 Here's a picture for you until I get the family reunion pics up. Rachel got this cowboy hat in Colorado and didn't seem to take it off until we arrived in Virginia.

Cheers!!

  Sarah Beth

 I forgot a picture yesterday - after we visited the DeSmet homestead we went into town, and saw the house Pa built in town, where Ma and Mary lived until their deaths.

 The next day we went to Walnut Grove in Minnisota.

 The first place we went to was the dugout by Plum Creek. This, of course was where the book On the Banks of Plum Creek was based. The dugout is not there today, and the site is actually in a private piece of land! Thankfully the people who own this land knew a good thing when they saw it, and it only costs 4 dollars a car,(which is disposited into a little box by the side of the road)  then you follow a dirt road down to the creek, and there is a sign where the dugout used to be.

Rachel and Rebekah wanted to go wading in Plum Creek, and they managed to drag me in too.

 Even Mom got in for a little bit!!

Rebekah ran around in the prairie grass -

 I contemplated on a rock -

And Rachel was her usul self -

After we froze in the creek, we headed off to the Walnut Grove museum.

 We used some old-fashoned transportation to get there!

Here's a close up -

 We found out something interesting about Walnut Grove. While the museums at DeSmet were very adamant that they had all authenticated stuff from Laura's time, and that they had done all this research to make it as real and authentic as they could; the people in Walnut Grove were fine with the fact that their main claim-to-fame was the Little House on the Prairie TV show. The gift shop had memorabilia from the TV show (we went in and Mom screeched "I had a lunch box just like that one!!") and they weren't ashamed at all. And down the road we ate lunch at a place that was only found in the TV show - the real Nellie(s) wouldn't have been caught dead around a place like this.

About an hour away from Walnut Grove was where we pitched camp. In the small town of... I can't remember than name, but it was pretty much Nowheresville Minnesota. There KOA was very nice though, and we had a really fun time roasting hot dogs for dinner!! (yes that is an air-conditioner on the cabin. That's MY kind of camping)

Rebekah had time for a little solitude (we were all starting to get on each other's nerves by this point)

Rachel and I had a fun time so long as we were a safe distance from the campfire.

The next day we went to Iowa to see the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum.

Hopefully Mom will get her blog back and running again, because she should really be the one to show the pictures that she took here!

 Well there you go! I don't know when exactly I'll get the family reunion pictures up, but I'll try to get to those soon.

 Cheers!

 Sarah Beth

 Well, we got all the Little House pictures downloaded, so I thought I'd put them up. There are a LOT of them, but they're pretty cool, and it was amazing to actually be in the places that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in her books. We started off in the town of DeSmet in South Dakota. The actual claim that Pa buys in the books is there and there are reproductions built in the actual places where the house and barn were.

You can see the house and the barn in this picture. The barn (the building to the right) is a little bigger than the one Pa built, but the house is about the same size.

This was a reproduction of the dugout that the Ingalls lived in, in Walnut Grove.

Rebekah and Rachel running to the well pump.

Petting a little pony like the one Laura rode in The Shores of Silver Lake.

Walking up to Ma's little house.

Rachel (of course) found a mama cat and her kittens up in the top of the barn.

The girls made corncob dolls - they used a special machine to strip the dried corn from the cob.

Like all good prairie girls, We went to school...

Although by the time Laura Ingalls was my age, she had been teaching school for a year and a half!!

Rebekah and Rachel passed their spelling test

And we all solved a riddle.

Some good advice.

Riding back in the buggy.

Making rope the way the pioneers used to make it.

Grinding wheat with a coffee grinder. The Ingalls had to grind their wheat this way in The Long Winter.

The only original trees left on the homestead from the many that Pa planted. These are 5 cottonwoods that Pa planted for his girls.

 That's all for today. Tune in tomorrow for Walnut Grove pictures!!

  Cheers!

  Sarah Beth