Seven Quick Takes- What I've Been Up To

1. I've been MIA from this blog for a bit...but for good reason I suppose.  Rest.  Recovery from the end of the school year.  Summer busyness.  And VACATION!

I actually still in the beautiful state of Colorado...

...visiting with all of these lovely people.  My sister and brother-in-law S&S and I roadtripped out to CO to see our other sister and brother-in-law E&L.  This pic was the first time we had all been together in six months.

2.  We have had plenty of adventures and also plenty of rest and relaxation time, which has been awesome.  Many of our adventures have involved driving in the mountains.  This fun road had Steph a little nervous, but had a beautiful view:

3. We did some shopping in everything from touristy-small-mountainside towns to a giant outlet mall.  All of us came home with some great new clothes, even the guys :).

4. I got to celebrate my birthday in CO.  (We also celebrated Steven's birthday, the 4th of July, and E&L's anniversary, all on this trip!)  My birthday was capped with our only trip for ice cream.  We have eaten out a few times, but actually have done a lot of cooking and had some pretty delicious meals, if I say so myself.  Emily suggested we all cook dinner together once a week, but the almost 1000 mile drive might be a deterrent.

5. We visited some of the beautiful parks, including Garden of the Gods.  Steph, our resident photographer, always had at least one and sometimes three cameras with her. 
The result is:
a. She has all of the good shots on her camera, and the rest of us have to be patient while we wait for her to edit them.
b. She is often behind and not in front of the camera.  I thought this one was cute of her, though :)

Here are the boys doing some climbing and seeing the landscape.  The boys were more adventurous than the girls, and even did the Incline, a challenging mile long, 2000 foot elevation climb comprised of all steps.  Yay for them, the girls stayed home and watched a romantic comedy in our pjs.

6.  We also made a day trip to Estes Park, which was everyone's favorite event.  We enjoyed visiting the shops, loved our coffee which we drank next to a rushing mountain stream, and then drove up into Rocky Mountain National Park.

 Beautiful doesn't even begin to describe it.

 

 It was also pretty crazy to go from a hot summer day to super chilly temps.  At the top, there was still tons of snow, but right next to it were cute little mountain flowers.  God is pretty original!

7. One of our last adventures was to visit Holy Cross Abbey in Canon City.  It is not a functioning Abbey any longer, but has been reopened as an event center, office space, museum, etc.  There is also a winery on the grounds.  It was so cool to see how they are taking a holy space and beautiful historic building and using it in a new way.

 I also wanted to steal some of their "historic" furniture.  Take these chairs for example.  They would look great outside of my apartment.

And this hutch.  It is fabulous.  I am sure that it wouldn't be missed from the former Abbey Sacristy, right?  Unfortunately, it won't fit in the car on the return trip.  Darn.

The trip isn't over yet, so I am sure that I will have more stories and more picture to share.  Hope your summer is off to a fabulous start!

Thanks to Jen for hosting! Go visit Conversion Diary for more quick takes!