July 22nd-26th, 2010

On July 22nd - 26th we went on our annual camping trip with the Wright, West, Milnes, Sachs, and Wehri families. Julie and I spent the second night at Rim Lake where Steve's ashes are. We took the side by side four wheeler to the wilderness area and then hiked the rest of the way to the lake. The lake is so beautiful and peaceful that we had a wonderful time staying there for the day and night. We did not see any bears or any signs of them and the mosquitoes were not quite as bad as last year. The photos show our campsite at Rim Lake and the marker that we placed there last year for Steve. Julie and I found a feather on the way there, which has some significance for those of you that understand so you can see that in the photo. Also we placed the Old Man on the Mountain flower there, which is a flower that Steve loved. The Tetons were beautiful this year and very clear. We chose a perfect time to go because it didn't rain on us once and the skies were cloudless for our entire trip! Unbelievable! Tom is shown doing his Tipperary joke and there is a photo of the lake next to our main campsite at twilight. DJ and Leslie have an ammo box that we hid by horseshoe lake in a rock crevice (following photo) to put on the geo cache website. If we can't put the coordinates on there, we hope people will still find it and add to it. Brad caught the biggest fish at 15.5 inches. The last night we did a log cabin fire in honor of Steve. We had a really nice year...

July 17th, 18th, and 20th, 2010

We went to Denver to Jen and Greg Seitz house for a get together and a bunch of friends were there with their kids. We did our best to get the kids together for a photo, it's hard to get that many kids to sit still! From left to right it is Chase Benning, Vesper Seitz, Chloe Kalkofen, Caden Kalkofen, Logan Lani, Riley Lacroix, Kendall Lacroix, and Ava Peralta. I stayed with AJ and Anna that night and the next day we went swimming. Chase is excited to stay with them while we are in the mountains (I think?!). The last photo is the night before I left him there and AJ was showing Kendall and Chase how to play Fuse Ball! They were having a great time...

July 16th, 2010

Today was the big garage sale! Thanks to Martha, Kathleen, Royetta, and Kay who came over and helped me organize it! Grandpa Gene played with Chase for awhile and Ann Blackwell came over and took him to the park for most of the day. There is no way that I could have done it without all of the help. It was also my birthday and my parent's friends all got together for Friday dinner. Jerry Cole made me a cake! I thought that it was a wonderful birthday spent with good friends and family!

July 14, 2010

Kris and Gustavo happened to be in town while I was here so they invited us out to the Seitz Ranch outside of town. Jen Seitz and Vesper also came along. The kids had an absolute blast as you can tell. Chase climbed the hay stacks, he had a little bit of a melt down when he didn't get his way (he IS getting better though) and he had fun riding on the four-wheelers.

July 11-13, 2010

Chase has been "patiently" waiting for this Garage Sale to start. When I say "patiently" I mean that he has had to spend a lot of time on his own which as you can tell from these photos means that he is BORED. This is one thing that I can tell you, Chase likes to be around people. We went to the park the other day (which meant me pulling him in the wagon up a hill about a mile long) and he didn't want to play UNTIL two little kids came along, then he was all about it. Remind you of anyone? I also forgot to mention that when Kim was here he called her "Uncle Tim" knowing full well that her name was Auntie Kim. Remind you of anyone that was always looking for a reaction from something that he said???

July 10th, 2010

We had a "Breakfast in the Park" in memory of my Mom. All of her friends and colleagues that were in town and available came to the park to celebrate her. We had a wonderful time. I didn't get enough photos because I was busy speaking with everybody, but I would like to thank Ann Blackwell and Jerry Cole for putting it together and thank everybody that came and brought food.

July 9th, 2010

I took everybody to the Bit O Wyo show to thank them for all of the help. Chase fed the horses, we had a delicious steak dinner and then there was Cowboy music and poems. We had a lot of fun. Chase was even dancing to Back in the Saddle!

July 8, 2010

Kim, Steve's sister came out to Cheyenne with her daughter Hannah to help me clean out my Mother's things. As you can see she is as silly as Steve. We're having a garage sale in a couple of weeks so Kim and I placed everything in the garage and Hannah cleaned it and put labels on it. Hannah also watched and played with Chase. I took them to the Children's garden and they enjoyed seeing my Mother's bench and watching Chase play. I also took them to the horse drawn carriage ride in Downtown Cheyenne and we took a tour around the city. We had a fun time! Chase had a couple of meltdowns, but with Kim and Hannah around he did much better. I'll post photos of the garage sale later.

July 5th, 2010

Last night I visited with Anna and AJ Lacroix and we had a great 4th although it was about 50 degrees and we could see our breath, brrrrr!!! I miss the humidity. I saw a friend that had not seen me since Steve passed away. He totally broke down and we spent time reminiscing about some of the silly things that Steve did. One was when Steve had the "tough guys" drinking strawberry daquari's at Bennie's Bachelor party. Some of the other stories I won't mention but it is amazing how much Steve affected people in such a short time. I think that Steve hung out with this person a total of only 4 or 5 times. It was hard to see him so upset and his pain for our loss, but it reminded me about how special he was and it made me so grateful to have had those fun times that we had with Steve. The stories help the healing although it hurts that we won't have any more stories. We have to keep the ones that we have close to our heart...

Chase hung out with Gradpa at the pool in the back yard today. He had a blast...

July 4th, 2010

We went to visit my brother in Denver for the 4th. We had a great time and had lunch and went to a fair in Highlands Ranch at the Town Center. They had some bouncers and other things. Notice that Chase refused to look at the camera at lunch (he will do the opposite of what you ask), and his expression when he needed to wait to go into the bouncer. Priceless. This is a toddler for you!!!