Trip to EXIT (in Spanish)

...which means "Salida" in Spanish. Above, here is our descent into Chaffee County. Gotta love those gorgeous mountains. My Grammy Brown flew in from Rhode Island to spend some time with us Coloradans for a couple of weeks. She's been staying with my Uncle Tim and Aunt Casey in Salida, so since they have this big festival every year in Salida called FIBark ("First In Boating the Arkansas, river that is), and it happened to be last weekend, the stars aligned so we all packed up our things and drove the 200 miles to Salida. First "road trip" we've taken with the kids, and all things considered they did fairly well! No puking in the mountains, no scream fits, mostly, and Linus even slept some. It was nice to get away a little bit and visit with my family. I have to apologize because I went through all my pictures the last couple of days and I realized I hardly took any pictures of my family. I have a couple of pictures of the kids, a couple of pictures of Craig, and none of my family! What was I thinking? I don't know. But enjoy what I got, I guess!
Linus smiling at me because I'm looking at him. When I turned around, he wasn't as happy, so I spent a lot of time in the car facing backwards- it was amazing that I didn't puke!Chloe chillin' like a villian.


The first night there we had this AMAZING sunset! I got more pictures, but I loved the colors in this one. We didn't do a whole lot of FIBarking, the kids were ready for bed, and honestly a lot of it was just boozin' and cruisin' and so we would rather have been home enjoying this beautiful scene calmly on the back deck of my family's porch.

I have to say that I LOVED Tim and Casey's house! They built it a few years ago and I just loved every nook and corner of it. Here's the back patio, and Craig and Chloe enjoying themselves...

Chloe was tired. I was playing with my lens. Good times.
Craig is embarrased that I posted this picture, but he's so handsome, isn't he? Best darned tootin' husband a little ol' girl like me could get. Hands down. No fibbin'. Love ya, honey.
Oh yeah, the other part of our adventure was that we decided to go camping! After much deliberation, I just wasn't comfortable doing a real camping trip, so Tim and Casey were gracious enough to let us do it in their backyard. Here are our quarters. It was nice and toasty inside and the kids slept great. I even got some sleep, which I don't do much of on camping trips! Maybe that's cause we weren't "really" camping...You can't park your car in the fire lane, but you can park your kayak.
This was a sickening ride at the festival aptly named "The Tornado!" I didn't go on it. Looking at this picture makes me dizzy enough...
The mighty Arkansas.

It was a great trip all in all, I was glad to see my Grammy and glad to spend some time with some family I haven't seen in a while. It'll be nice when the kids are a bit older and we can go back without having to worry about chasing them down every two seconds. Looking forward to our next "Exit"...
Tune in next time.