Google

I still look forward all the time to what google is going to look like every morning.... Today, It's the Flintstones 50th annviersary! LOVE the Flintstones!

Can you see the word Google in it?

Way Back When

Look what I found on my dad's cell phone last week? I couldn't believe he still had this picture of Colin!! Colin must have been maybe around 6 weeks old I think?? I am judging by how much hair he had lost. LOL Just about when the colic & reflux were in FULL swing! Anyway, LOVE this picture of him!

Red Birds & Merry Go rounds

Man I wish these were clear pictures - these amazing birds were in the Lorkeet's landing at the Buffalo Zoo when visted, they just sit there and watch you, they are SO beautiful!

And Here are my guys on the Merry Go Round - Again with my cell phone, we had the camera with , however the SD card? Yea, I left that in the computer at home. Opps!

Caden

Courtney

Colin on the mini horse~ love it!



Poor Bobbers

Poor Bob got neutered today... {ouch!} Here he is, not too happy with me, on his way to the vet this morning. the kids are very excited for me to pick them up after work today, so we can go get bobbers. Their concern for him before we left this morning, was the cutest thing ever!

My Dad

I am sure my dad will GREATLY appreciate that I am posting this picture (not) - however I thought it was pretty decent, considering. This was AFTER {yes, after I said} his heart procedure last week. It was however in his defense, after we gave him some nice pain meds as well. He looks pretty good though for just being a few hours out of surgery. He is doing well!

The Boys

This is a bit blurry - since it was taken on my cell phone. But, doesn't Colin look SO grown up??? This was from our trip to the zoo last weekend!

Green Eggs & Ham

The newest breakfast in the Beyer household. Colin actually asks Courtney to make this now! Everyone apparently enjoys it ~ I personally can't bring myself to try it. Not sure why.......

If you haven't visited the blog lately. I've done a ton of updating. Still not caught up all the way, but there are about 3-4 new pages of posts, so make sure you check out the older pages as well!

Happy 5th Birthday Caden man!!

So now that Caden is 5 years, 1 month and 6 days old, I guess it's time to post about it huh??? Since we were leaving for vacation just 2 days later, we didn't really have time to do a great big party, but 5 is a milestone, so I wanted it to be pretty special for him too.

The night before, I went and got him a dozen mylar balloons and colorful streamers and decortated his room after he went to bed and feel asleep. I think it turned out pretty cool.

I even got him this personalized party hat balloon. I thought it was way cool, since it's hard to get Caden on anything! {for now anyway}

We decorated the kitchen and dining room as well with streamers and signs. He woke up the next morning, so excited and SUPER suprised about all the balloons surrounding him. It was so adorable! Actually he still has some streamers on the ceiling in his room, he wont' let us take them down yet!

Of course, Aunt Norma pulled her magical talent out and made him this ADORABLE monkey cake, that he just loved to pieces! AND we got a Schawnn's delivery every other Wednesday, well it just happened to fall on this Wednesday. The boys LOVE scott, our Schwanns guy and he is really good with them as well. SO when Caden told Scott it was his birthday, he whispered to me if can he have a certain ice cream (he knows the boys can't have red dye, how cool is it that he cares enough to even ask??!!) So he brings me my order and gives Caden his own 1/2 gallon of Birthday Cake confetti Ice cream. (for free mind you, his gift from Scott!)  I wanted to cry and Caden just loved it! The boys sit each week and watch him get our order for us in awe, so this was extra speical for him. So needless to say, we had his ice cream with his uber speical cake!

Singing Happy Birthday to our Special Caden man!

What an awesome smile in this shot!!

BlackBerry was in charge of guarding all the gifts from the other kiddos! Great job kitty!

Caden's god mommy Kasey stopped by earlier in the day to drop off this awesome present. We never get to see them, and of course missed them this time too, becuase we were at work, and the boys in school, But Courtney was excited to see them and take the present in!

This tractor was a HUGE hit!!! Kasey always hits the nail on the head when it comes to things for Caden!

His Remote control car!

Yikes! Squirt guns!

We got him this cool rolling tool box and case and some additonal tools, so he can work on his cars with everything close by! It went right in the garage next to his car, that is up on blocks and hasn't moved since. He won't ride or play with the truck either, just tells us it's getting fixed all the time.

Handy Manny Playsets from the klee's.

Bart having fun with a balloon necklace.

All in all we had a nice time. Aunt Norma & Uncle Bob, Mom and Jack, and the Klee's all came over, we were just missing a couple good friends, but it was also a school night and it was late too, so we understood. And of course, Dad & Cheryl were on a cross country trip!

Happy Birthday Caden, we hope you have a wonderful 5th year!

Crazy Colin

I just love this picture of him. This was taken at the ice cream social the last week of Summer School. He was riding down the {fire} pole on the playground, I told him to smile and this is the silly look I got. :-) Silly little guy. Our friend David is patiently waiting behind him for his turn!

Mike's Pond

So after {years} of wanting a pond, Mike has finally got one. He found a liner on ebay one day for $15, so I told him to go ahead and get it. Once we got it, we discovered that it wasn't indeed a liner, but the underlayment for UNDER the liner. Needless to say, Mike had already begun digging his hole in excitment. I was actually getting excited too, thinking this may end up after all, being a cheap project! No so much.

After the first (HUGE) hole was dug, I wasn't happy with where it was. It was in front of the swing set, but SO close to the swings, that if a child feel off, they for sure would have hit their head on a rock or worse. So I had the thought of moving it to the other side of the slide, by the rock wall.  I asked Mike to wait patiently for me to get back from dropping off Courtney so we can discuss where it would be. Alas, in his excitement {again} he began digging hole #2. I again, didn't like it. By this time (days had gone by mind you) Mike was tired of digging (however keep in mind, I never told him to dig the 2nd time) and quite a bit moody (sorry honey!)  We also still had NO liner, no rocks to line the pond, nor pump, filter or fountain. After doing some research of my own, all of these seperatly would have ended up costing well over $300 - um so much for our cheap project huh??!!

I took a 1/2 day one friday, grabbed Courtney and was DETERMINDED to get Mike a pond. Well being late August, selections were pretty nill. After 5 stores, our last stop had this awesome pond! It came with the plastic form, the waterfall, pump, filter and fountain for $150!! What???? I didn't care at this point if he liked what I chose or not, this was GOING to be our new pond. Thankfully when Mike got home, he did like it. We moved {and sold} the kids old climbing center {they never used it anymore anyway} and made space for the pond. Our friend Jason came over the next morning and helped Mike dig, about 2.5-3 feet down. We only hit a cable line once. {yeah we had to readjust a little bit} In the end it did turn out nice. (and not so expensive either!) I found us some free water plants on craigslist and we have a quick pond! Next year the garden will extend right back to the waterfall, so we don't have any empty spaces back there. We are also going to take the white rock out, and I think that will make it look MUCH nicer. I think the white rock is way to much when the pond itself already has defination to it. But here's is our new backyard water feature! Oh yea ~ Thank you to Jason too, for helping to dig and giving us the underwater light!

We have  a TON more water plants in here now, I'll get more pictures later on. Maybe after I get rid of the white rock.

Meeting Jess

5 years ago, TO THE DATE that I was in Colorado, I suffered from severe PPD. It was horrible. I now know that time in my life prepped me for the future, but during that time you can only wonder why? Why am I sad? why can't I leave the house? open the window? Answer the phone? Why can't I stop crying? What is wrong with me? Thank GOD to Mike mostly, for recgonizing that I was sick and getting me help, and even more so an amazing support group that I found online. Jess, who is one  the administors on the website has been not only a friend, but a source of support and enouragments in many aspects of both my and mike's lives. She is one of the few people who at the time could COMPLETLY understand what I was feeling and going though. It's funny how full circle we all come, and then get to meet 5 years later! As soon as I found out we would be in Colorado, I got in touch with her and had to make a point to get out to visit her! I've been lucky enough to meet heather, now Jess!

We were about 2 hours from her house, so got to see the amazing scenery along the way. She lives in Pueblo, and we got to go past the Awesome Colorado Springs and the air force academy as well. it's pretty awesome out this way!

Here is Jess & I with her daughter Nicole. Nicole was SO sweet and fun to be around. It was great to hug Jess after so many years. She got to know me at the darkest time in my life, so to be able to see her now, another child later, 30 lbs lighter etc is so wonderful! (BTW jess lost an INSANE amount of weight, doesn't she look awesome???)

Jess & Nicole. I wish we would have got more pictures, but at least we got some! We couldn't stay too long, because we still have to make the 1.5 hour drive out to Pike's peak for our 4pm train ride.

There are SONIC's in Colorado!!! We BOTH thought this was the neatest thing EVER!! Of course we had to stop and get something. Here Mike is ordereing. You order and pay all while you sit right there. They bring the food right to you and just eat right there!!! (yea, we are pathetic, i know)

The menu!!

Cog Railway ~Pike's Peak, Colorado

On Monday of our vacation, after visitng my friend Jess, we headed out to Manitou Springs to ride the cog to the top of Pike's Peak (AKA - American's Mountain). The Cog railway, takes you up to the 14,110 foot summit at the top of the moutain. It's insanely beautiful and breathtaking. When you get to a certian spot on the mountain, NO more trees go, becase at a certian elevation point, trees can no longer grow, there isn't enough oxygen for them. Interesting huh? I thought so. It was pretty amazing. It was about 80 degrees at the bottom of the mountain, and it got colder and colder the higher up you went. By the time you got to the top, it was a chilling 39 degrees! Yep, it was COLD! And it was hailing, and SNOWING! becuase the weather was so bad, we couldn't get many pictures of the surrounding area. First of all, it was too darn cold to be outside, The hail/rain/snow was whipping around so violently, it actually HURT your bare skin (since we did have on shorts. LOL) secondly, we were in the middle of a cloud. Seriously, you'll see from the pictures what I mean. Becuase of the elevation, your only allowed 30 mintues at the top before the train comes back down. 30 mintues were all we needed. The elevation really messed with our heads. it was hard to breathe and we got very light headed. it's a strange feeling. Enjoy the pictures. These do no justice to the beauty we were able to see in person!

From the parking lot

The Cog that we rode!

Mountain view.

Clouds started popping up the higher up we got.

I can't remember the name of that mountain over there, but it's sister mountain to Pike's Peak.

See the cloud out there?

Amazing isn't it? And it might seem like I took these pictures crooked, I didn't, that's how steep this was, your at a pretty severe angle.

This is where the trees stop growing.

Windy Point, Elevation 12,129 feet!  That building is straight, we were on the incline.

View of the building as we continued uphill.

At this point it was COLD. We had the windows on the train up.

Here we made it to the summit. The summit is known for these famous donuts, that can only be made at this elevation. They were good. Too bad they cost $2.99 EACH! *YIKES* but of course, we had 2 each. LOL

Man I wish this wasn't crooked!

here's the train, surrounded by the massive cloud! Not only was it snowing and hailing, it was thundering and lightening, and you can't see ANYTHING expect the cloud around you! Freaky!

Here you can tell how hard the wind was blowing and we were getting slammed by the hail. It hurt BADLY. Kudos to Dan (Mark's friend from College who we met at the wedding and ended up on the cog with!)for braving the elements and taking this shot for us! Not many people were brave enough to go outside in this!

Top of the mountain. They had EMT's on staff, for people feeling the elevation effects.

The snow!! Remember it was August 9th, 2010!

Liz & I playing around

Gina & I

Mike & I, back on the train, trying to warm up. I didn't mention before how long the ride was did I? It was long. 3 hours. It took 1.5 hours  EACH direction!

On the way down.

People actually live on the moutain. They are over an hour drive from anything.

We were graced with this pretty double rainbow on our way back down. What an awesome end to the afternoon!

I can't wait to someday go back to Colorado again! We do have MORE Colorado pictures that I still haven't uploaded to the blog. they will be mixed in here and there with all the other posts.