Day 6: Thursday July 5th

Much to my delight, Jason agreed to try to match today to take some family pictures. After all, Clara is 6 months old. We thought about the morning to avoid the sun, but Clara is sick and has been waking up twice in the night and then super early. SO, that idead went out the window before we even got out of bed. In the afternoon, we were waiting for the clouds to cover the sun so I just took a bunch of Clara. That's right, I can't stop taking pictures of her. The older she gets, the more entertaining her little personality becomes. And I have decided that as soon as we sell our house in Utah, I am buying a new camera. We took these pictures with Ryan's camera (Cannon EOS or something like that) and it's awesome. NO delay at all and the pictures are just crystal clear, except of course when Clara shakes her arm wildly in the air with excitement.

Okay, now no one needs to wonder how Clara got her mouth open as big as she did in my post from when Jen was here... :)
Hmmmm, I now appreciate people with more than one child that get a family picture with everyone looking AND smiling. My dad took these pictures and as you can see, there was no one around to act like a fool to get Clara to smile. Oh well, there's always next time... :) Jason loves that I take pictures non-stop...
After our attempt at family pics, we went and drove around for a bit. Jason was pretty confident that his Corolla could take the jeep trails since it is front wheel drive, but we opted to just enjoy the scenery from the dirt roads. After that, we went back to the mine for the picture... what a sport. Jason didn't complain once and he didn't start his smart alec comments about the amount of pictures I take until we got back to the house.

Okay, this is sweet, Clara grabbing Jason's neck while he was kissing her. I feel like I am crazy for how in love I am with my baby. What could be better than this? Nothing beats this feeling!! I often wonder how I could have enough love to share with another child?
After we had our photo shoot at the mine, we went to tour the Mayflower Mill. That was pretty cool. Milling is what they do to the ore after they mine it... essentially, they take the rock and turn it into a powder and then I think they ship that overseas for the next step. There was a lot of BIG machinery and you could turn some of it on. Jason likes to see how things work, so I think he especially enjoyed it. This picture is by the ore buckets. They would put the ore in these and bring them down the mountain. I think my brother said the line is like 2,000 feet. What is crazy is they had little tiny buckets that the guys would ride in and they weren't more than 2'x2'... once again, glad I didn't have to do that!When we got home, we were walking in the door and I asked Ryan to take some pictures of us in front of the house and that's when Jason started with his comments. I told Ryan I only wanted a few, so Jason in an ever-so-sweet voice says, "We just want 36 up close, then 32 far back and take 28 longways..." Ha ha ha... very funny.
For food, we decided everyone (us, Ryan and fam and my mom) would each bring one meal to share and then we were on our own for the rest of the meals. Well, Ryan decided he didn't want to bring any food, so instead, he took us all out to eat to The Pickle Barrel. We were told it is the "fine dining" of Silverton... The food was actually pretty good. They had sweet potato fries, but not near as good as Durant's, but I don't know what I was expecting in a town like that. Most fun was being together with the family...Remember the spoon obsession... hopefully she will be equally obsessed with HER spoons when I start her on solids (of which I continue to put off).
Daniel tries to be sneaky and hide from the camera all of the time. When I made my mom her Mother's Day book from myPublisher, I had to go to her house and tell Daniel what I needed pictures of him for and take them of him. Naturally, it became a game for Jason to see how many he could get of Daniel that night. Don't mind his icky scab, he wrecked on his motorcycle and trust me, that's not even the worst one.

After dinner, we got all packed up and ready to head home...

Day 5: Wednesday July 4th

Let freedom ring! Wahooo, I LOVE this Country. I am thankful for the freedoms we enjoy in this Country and feel so blessed to have been born here. This morning we went to the parade in Silverton and it was great fun. They threw lots of candy and lots of bead necklaces, which Clara loved. At one point, 4 jets flew in formation over the parade and then back over us. I am not sure why, but seeing that always makes my heart proud to be an American. I suppose it's a way I see very fitting to honor those that have fought and those that continue to fight to allow us to live the lives we do.At the end of the parade, well, they say that, but it was in the middle of it, the Silverton fireman have a tradition of having a water fight with their fire hoses. We all scattered to avoid the drenching stream of water, but no worries, I still made Jason take a picture of the water in the background.
This afternoon my dad, Daniel and Daniel's friend Josh drove up to hang out with us up here. My dad is such a cute grandpa and absolutely adores his grandchildren. Clara always stares at him like with this really concerned look and will ocassionally reach out and touch his face. I think my dad's week of scruff was especially confusing to her. But at least she was looking at the camera! :)After the parade, Jason and I went to go grab some lunch and my mom watched Clara. Well... if you look at this picture of her and my dad, you'll notice she has different clothes on. My mom was holding Clara and felt something warm on her legs and looked down and Clara had pooped ALL over my mom and the couch!! There was a tiny drop on her onesie but it seriously looked like my mom lost control. Luckily, Kathryn let us borrow her OxiMagic and it came out and my mom worked her own magic and got it out of the LIGHT beige couch. I am pretty sure this can be attributed to dad putting her most recent diaper on... he suffers from the syndrome that instills fear in you of getting a diaper too tight, so it gets put on too loose. Anyway, I went on a jeep ride with Kathryn and Ryan up to Clear Lake. Jason stayed home to watch Clara because my mom was watching the twins. I took about 30 pictures of this same mountain from the jeep, I suppose it was my favorite. I just loved seeing the really red rock with the green trees on such a large mountain. The jeep ride was fun and very dusty! We went up to Clear Lake and be warned, these pictures don't compare to the real thing... this earth is BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING.
Not real sure what I'm doing here, but hey, I can laugh at myself just like I laugh at others! :)
This was a huge waterfall... that yet again looks like some trickling water in the pictures.TA-DAH! Here I am at the lake. The lake was HUGE, trust me. It was really chilly up there too, but just breath taking. I often wonder how people can question the existence of God. Stuff like this just doesn't happen. Me and the jeep. I trust Ryan's driving so I never once feared for my life. Not my child... I didn't even take this picture of Elsa, BUT, I love the angle it is taken from and the mountains in the background. This is when they were waiting for the fireworks to start and I don't even know who took it, but it's an awesome picture.

Jason and Clara watching the fireworks... I started out holding Clara and Jason kept staring at her and asked me if he could hold her during the fireworks. It was pretty cute. Clara loved the fireworks and was half asleep by the time they were done, but managed to keep her pretty little eyes partially opened until the end.Here's Clara, me and a few fireworks. It has been a while since I have ever seen such a fabulous firework show. Last year we went to the show at Tempe Town Lake and I swore I would NEVER do that again. It was miserably hot, we had to walk really far (it didn't help that I was pregnant and sick) and all that was to stand on concrete. We had blankets on the grass, but too many people were standing up so if you stayed on the ground, you couldn't see. Anyway, I decided I will go somewhere cooler for fireworks or not watch them at all. This show is funded completely by donations and I think the only one that compares is the one I saw on a sail boat, in a harbor in San Diego when I was like 9. Everyone from Durango comes to see it. The show lasted at least 45 minutes and had some pretty cool fireworks. It was done on the side of a mountain so the echo down the canyons was incredible. Some of the "booms" were more fascinating than the fireworkds themselves! The last firework, though, was better than any I have ever seen. It was HUGE and shimmery and never seemed to go away. It had to have been in the sky for at least a minute and the shimmers made it seem like it was moving. It was VERY cool.

Day 4: Tuesday July 3rd

Early this morning Jason and Ryan went jeeping around the Alpine Loop. They are proabably about 12,000 feet up in these pictures. I laughed that they took pictures of each other while they were up there, but they did it so Kathryn and I wouldn't get mad. Really, you have to be there to truly experience the mountains.The babies in their RETRO pj's. :) You can't see in this picture, but Clara's have peace signs on the feet. Jason and I went to eat lunch and left Clara with my mom. As I was leaving my mom said, if I get desperate, I will just give her a sucker. I told her that was fine, as long as she took pictures. For those of you that know me, I am pretty particular about what my baby eats and have still not given her rice cereal... we were gone for 40 minutes for lunch and sure enough, Kathryn documented Clara's first sucker experience while I was out.After lunch, we walked all around the town. The shops are fun and the funnel cake was fantastic. Ryan bought some for us on Monday and today we tried one with carmel. It was so delicious but I think the high fat and sugar content was too much for my body because I felt so sick afterwards... so that was our last one for the trip. MMMMMMM!This is the County Courthouse. I think it's one of the prettiest buildings in the town. I am sure it isn't that neat to anyone who has lived on the East Coast, but just let me think it's cool.Here's another house, just to show that all of the houses are so colorful. Grandma reading to the grandkids, no wonder they are so smart!One of Clara's new loves is for spoons, plastic or metal. But as you can see, a happy face can quickly turn grumpy if that spoon goes anywhere.While Jason and I were out and about, we bought some bubbles for the twins. I'd like to think I bought them for Clara too, but she just isn't real interest in those quite yet. The twins, however, loved them. Elsa loved them so much she took a step towards me as I was blowing bubbles towards her. For dinner, Ryan and Jason grilled up the fish they caught (plus James' and the neighbors gave them some as well). They were all Rainbow Trout and Jason taught me the pink ones are farm raised and the white are spawned in the lake. Fresh fish is so good. After dinner, we went back to the lake for more fishing... except for me... it was more picture-taking. :)Lily was the first to catch a fish this time and Jason followed her with one. Lily cast her line and reeled it in all by herself! When all was said and done, her pole was broken, but we don't know if it was like that before catching the fish.

Day 3: Monday July 2nd

Jason, Ryan and James woke up early Monday morning to go fishing at Molas Lake which was only about 6 miles up the mountain. James was the only one that caugh a fish then. Later that day, we all went to the Old Hundred Mine. We went on a little train deal down into the mine and one of the miners demonstrated how it's done and explained a lot about the process. My mom asked him, "Why would anyone want to work that hard?!" I am pretty sure I am so glad I don't have to do that. It is hard and dirty and I'm sure it takes a major toll on your body. It was pretty wet inside so we had to wear the yellow rain jackets and hard hats just in case. Confession: The only picture we had of our little family with the hard hats on was BLURY, so I talked Jason into going back on Thursday to retake a picture... he he he, that's when you know you are obsessed with pictures. Pictures just help me remember much better...HA! Look at Lucy's expression, it's hilarious.Okay, I don't know what this is called, but I know there is a term for it when you make a 'V' with your middle and pointer fingers and swipe them across your face with the back of your hands up against your face. Lily panning for gold after the tour.Kathryn and her girls being a single mom... :)After the mine, Ryan, Kathryn, Jason and I went for a little adventure up the mountain our house faced in Ryan's Pathfinder. This is looking at part of Silverton, pictures can't really portray the beauty.If you look closely, Jason is "pinching" our rental house in his fingers. It's a little off because I was closing one eye when I was telling him which way to move.We are THOUSANDS of feet high and instead of enjoying the beauty of the earth, the boys are throwing rocks into a stream... I guess I shouldn't be surprised.Look how high we got!When we got home, my mom was a little stressed out. The twins woke up from their nap from a slamming door and when Lucy cried, it made Clara cry. My mom said she'd NEVER watch all three of them again... until the next day. :)

Later that evening we all went to Molas Lake for some fishing. Ryan and Jason each caught two. Lucy and Elsa really wanted to play on the ground so at some point, they were allowed to crawl around in the dirt, and we all know you can't stop a 1 year old from eating dirt. They make some of the funniest faces!

Kathryn was probably the only one that didn't think I was crazy for how many pictures I took... because she almost always has her camera in her hand too.Have I mentioned I'm obsessed with taking pictures of my SWEET baby that I can't get enough of? I'm not sure what I'm going to do when she grows up... she's already 6 months old.When Clara starts getting tired, she leans to the side. At the lake, I happened to have a camera when she was doing it and took a cute little picture with the lake in the background.