Labor Day Get-Away 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Em.  13 

I can not believe that I now have a teenager.  Really?!?! I had this great idea to make some yummy brownies for his b-day cake, 1. because it would be easy to make, and 2. because he loves brownies.  So when it came time to make his bday brownies I made them like I always do and with the remaining we thought it would be fun to make brownie cookies.  Well at 9000 ft things dont cook like they usually do.  The brownies were rock hard and the cookies stuck so bad.  It was a full body workout to get them off the cookie sheet.  This is Em's "Cow Pie" as we called it.  It was the only thing I could stick the candles in.  Hahahaha, he loved it.

I found a great cabin in the middle of the mountains near Florissant CO.  It sleeps 13 and was a perfect size.  It had enough chairs for dinner, enough places to sleep, enough room so you didnt feel closterfobic, even and a game room.  So the family arrived on Fri. evening and we stayed untill Mon. afternoon.

O was so excited to see his cousin C.  They had a great time.  And they ended up bickering just like brothers by the end of the weekend, I call it brotherly love ;-)

This is Z, I have not seen her since Thanksgiving.  She went from a baby to a little girl.  What a cutie!

The cabin had a tree house.  The boys absolutly loved it.  O even being the climber that he is, would not go up that high..... maybe it was a good thing.

My brother and his cutie.  We played a game on this wall.  She kept calling it a slide and would scoot down it and I would "catch" her at the bottom.  We had so much fun she wore 2 holes in her britches, sorry mom!  She never went anywhere without her bunny.

I thought these were so cute.  Growning in between the concrete steps.

Tyson helped Ay make a bow out of a stick.   He worked so hard carving the little slots for the string.  Just as I was getting ready to take a picture of him drawing back to shoot his arrow, the bow snapped in half.  He giggled and went and found a new project.

Z loves putting on lotion or sunscreen. 

She lathered up her daddy's face and then moved on to Papa T. 

This is the only photo I took of Melinda.  There were some who went on a little run in the woods.

 I was NOT one of them.

EYES!!! Need I say more.

O decided to read Z's new book to her.

Grandma brought new activites for the kids.  This is the kids dividing up the dinosaurs and animals, for a parade.

Durning the weekend we had a Taylor Family Scrabble Tournament, there was a game going somewhere all the time,

 no idea who won but it was fun to play.

The kiddos would take a movie break every now and then.

One day we drove to 11 mile Reservoir. Tyson decided to fish for awhile.  Papa-T, Tennille and Ryan went and hiked around a bit.  Me and the boys hiked around on the rocks.  We started finding crawdad claws all over so it turned into seeing who could find the most claws.  We came home with quite a bag full. 

 

There was some great rocks along the shore line.

 

Hey look, its me.  I got a photo of me because Em had the camera.

 

This is Em pretending to be a bunny hidding in the grass.  "Shhhh, Im hunting wabbits"

About 4 years ago, the lady that own the cabin, was staining the porch.  A bear got into the stain and walked along the sideway and tracked the stain all over.  There were bear stain paw prints all over.

One of Ay's favorite things to do with Tyson is cook eggs.  Tyson taught him to make scrambbled eggs about 2 years ago and this time he learned to make an omelet.

Z loved Papa JT, even fed him breakfast one morning.  She was so cute with him.

When we were done at the lake my sister decided it would be "FUN" to run the 6 or 8 miles back to the cabin.  At 9000ft I think shes nuts!

 

My boys spent most of the time surrounding this pool table. 

Oh look I did have a photo of Melinda. 

This is her trying to teach the 4 boys how to play a new game. 

This is Em, but over the weekend we called him "The Baby Whisperer", he is so good with little kids.

Papa JT and Z

No idea who took this photo of Tyson and he will probably kill me for posting it (but I dont think he reads this blog so just dont tell him), but it was toooooo funny not to post. 

Good Morning Sunshine :0)

Z spent one morning watching the deer eat breakfast outside the window.

O and Z played quite a bit together.  I loved how he would call her Bebe Z.

This is O being a windmill.  This is not a great picture but it was actually spinning.

So that was our weekend.  There were so many more photos but these were the ones that told my story.  We are already looking for our retreat for next year.