4th of July 2012…A Road Trip, a Wedding, and an Older Kid-Free Vacation!

As I mentioned in the earlier WestPoint post, my cousin Lee got engaged and set his wedding date for 7/7/12. Easy to remember, as it’s also my Dad’s birthday. So, the Wiebehaus loaded up in the car and departed at 6am on 7/3 for the 13 hour trip to Denver. The kids, yet again, did GREAT in the car. Nathan didn’t fuss except for about 5 minutes the whole way there. It was kind of amazing. My aunt and uncle again rented a pool house to allow us to all stay together, which was SO nice. There was one crew at the Littleton house (my aunt and uncle’s house) and then we and another crew stayed at the Ohio house (the street, not the state) near Cherry Creek. This house was POSH. I’m not kidding. We shared the upstairs with my eldest (he’s way older than me) cousin Joe and his wife, my parents, and Ashley (Blair’s girlfriend who was our roomie in Red Hook). We were blessed to be given the master suite since we had the kids. The suite included a sitting room with balcony and wet bar, an ENORMOUS closet (this is where Nathan slept in his pack-n-play), an amazing master bath complete with steam shower and jetted tub with a light that changed colors, and of course a beautiful bedroom with windows all around.

View from our bedroom:

Our bedroom:

The sitting room:

The kitchen (and the old cousin I was talking about):

We basically spent a very lovely 4th of July just hanging out by the pool all day. It was so nice…

Thursday was another pool day, and we spent Friday doing pedicures and then heading out to the rehearsal dinner. The kids went with us, and the girls were cared for by a sitter my aunt had hired. How nice is THAT? Nathan hung with us and was seriously an angel baby – staying up until after 10. The rehearsal dinner was great. It was up in the mountains a bit, and the food was so good. It was kind of in a big barn, and a thunderstorm rolled through in the middle. It was actually really neat and just added to the experience. Here’s a photo of Ashley, my cousin Bonnie and Nathan at the dinner:

The wedding itself on Saturday was also in a barn a bit further into the mountains. For some reason, our sweet baby was MISERABLE the whole way there and through the wedding. He clearly wasn’t feeling good since this is super out of character for him. We get to the wedding, and he’s still screaming…super. My dad offers to take him for a walk. This is a few minutes before the wedding, so I just think he’s going to go to the back for a minute and bring him back to me before it starts. He doesn’t, and I keep looking for them, but the wedding has started, so I’m stuck. It was a beautiful wedding with super cute bridesmaid dresses (short pink chiffon with brown cowboy boots). Here’s a photo I took with my phone that I thought turned out pretty great for a phone pic:

Turns out Dad had taken Nathan to the car and missed the whole wedding! What a great Crouchburger!! I felt really bad, but then again. As long as Dad gets cake at a wedding, he’s happy. Keep in mind that the wedding was on his birthday… Here’s a photo of him and James a little bit later at the reception:

And here’s a sweet photo of the female Wiebes:

The sweet bride Kim and Nathan:

The whole fam:

Here’s a bad mom story for you. Nathan was WIPED, and there were some bedrooms upstairs. I put him to bed in his stroller thinking he can’t get out of it. (I know, I know…) I laid it down flat and it seemed like he’d gone to sleep. James checked on him at one point and he was fine. Then Ashley went to check on him later. He was on the floor playing with a garbage bag. (I KNOW, I KNOW!) Who knows what happened when he actually hit the floor from the stroller. Won’t be doing that again. Lesson learned. :)

We checked out of the Ohio house the next morning and went to Bill and Pen’s for a brunch before driving down to Angel Fire with Nathan. I’ll tell part of the story of this trip in another post, but suffice it to say here that we had such a nice time just the three of us.

We were down there until Wednesday morning, and it was so relaxing. On Tuesday, we went over to Red River and went up the chair lift and hung out on the mountain for a while. Here’s our photo from the top:

Me and Nathan on the chair lift:

Then on Wednesday, we drove 6 hours up to Idaho Springs to go to a great little hot springs resort we know. We did a quick unload and then got BACK in the car to do the 2 hour drive up Mt. Evans to over 14k feet. It’s the highest paved road in North America. Here’s Nathan at the end of that trip. He did SO great:

Our time at Idaho Springs was also fabulous. We swam in the warm mineral pool which Nathan loved, each got massages, went down in their cave baths, and had some great food.

We went back to Denver Friday afternoon and spent some time with Aunt Pen and Uncle Bill before heading home first thing on Saturday. We didn’t get home until midnight, so it was a long day. Again, the kids did great, and we were able to unwind a bit on Sunday before hitting up a new work week. It was a great trip to say the least.

Nathan and Amy go to WestPoint!

We already had a lot going on this summer including my cousin Lee’s wedding in Denver (more on that later), so we couldn’t figure out how we could make his graduation from WestPoint, too. Finally, we decided to use some points we had forgotten about to fly just me and Nathan up to New York for the festivities. James couldn’t go due to some other commitments, so he and the girls stayed behind.

I was a little nervous about travelling by myself with Nathan, but he did awesome. My parents picked us up, and we went back to the hotel to settle in. We shared the hotel room on the WestPoint property with my parents. (This was a whole adventure in itself. I love them, but they crack me up with their quirks. Mom brings her own reading light that clips onto her bed, and Dad doesn’t go anywhere without his manicure kit.)

Friday morning was the cadet parade. It’s basically where the seniors “pass the torch” to the junior class. It was really cool to watch all the pageantry.

 

The graduation itself was also great. Joe Biden was the speaker. It was a neat event for sure. The only drawback, really, was that it was HOT. There was a lot of walking, a lot of baby on me, and a lot of sweat. A LOT. But, thank goodness for showers and washing machines. All of that was handled in short order.

Here’s Nathan sleeping on me at graduation. Sweet love.

On Sunday, we moved from WestPoint to a house up in Red Hook that my aunt and uncle had rented for the family. Nathan and I shared a lofted room there with my other cousin Blair’s girlfriend Ashley. Nathan won her over quickly, so we were good buds. Here’s a photo of Nathan swinging in the yard at that house:

 

Here’s a photo of my dad and aunt being….well, themselves.

Here’s my super cute Memorial Day baby. (That’s Ashley in the background checking her armpit – actually she’s just braiding her hair – and Kim, the fiance of Lee who graduated is actually holding Nathan.)

Me and Nathan in the pool:

Here he is sleeping in the cute little crib they had there:

Here’s the view from the back deck – lovely!

We made homemade ice cream. Nathan was the cutest ingredient:

And these are his sweet feet on the airplane on the way home. He did great, and it was such a great trip. Congratulations, Lee!

1st Annual Rib Throwdown

Ahhh…look what can come from a simple Facebook post. James put a comment about making some ribs one day, and our friend Rene’ commented that her husband Bruno could beat him any day (basically). Thus began the first annual Rib Throwdown. We invited some of our mutual church friends over to be the judges, and it was a super fun event. The kids played in the pool, the adults chatted outside by the grill, and good food was had by all. The voting commenced, and I think you can see who the winner was:

Thanks to Stephen for the fun shirts that say “Winner” and “Loser” on them!

6 years, 4 years and 6 months Photo Shoot

Leah took our photos for our milestones noted above, and as usual I was thrilled with the results. Enjoy!

 

 

  

I’ve Been a Bad Blogger

It’s true. Life has been even more nuts than usual, so… I’m working on getting caught up! Yea! Stay tuned for lots of fun posts in the coming days – QUICK! Before I go back to work!