President's Day weekend: Clayton in Colorado,...sweet hotel for the rest of us

Clayton's obsessed with climbing. Ever since he came home from working at the climbing rock at Camp Browning last summer, he's been on the mountain or in a climbing gym almost daily. He and some of his climbing friends decided it was taking too long for spring to come and that they should drive to Colorado and do some "ice climbing" in Ouray. I'd never heard of the place but I guess it's considered one of the top places to ice climb in the world. Clayton pulled it up on You Tube one day and we were amazed how cool/scary it looked. Here's some of the pix that were taken of his trip over President's Day weekend:

 This was a shot right outside their hotel room

 Cool place huh?

These babies serve as your hands in ice climbing

Here's the gang

 You see that little line going from top to bottom...that's the top rope that they would climb up

 you kind of have to squint to see them climbing in this one

 Clayton hard at it

 Looks pretty cold but fun

 I like this picture of Clayton-he's got a great smile and whenever he's doing something that he wants to do, you'll see this.  He had a great time and everyone got home safe.  The rest of our family decided that Clayton shouldn't have all the fun and we stayed in a hotel in Salt Lake right after church on Sunday.  The kids could hardly sleep the night before because they were so excited to go.  Anybody heard of hotwire.com?  It's my new favorite website when we need to book a hotel.  We got a 4 star hotel for $82 and it was awesome.  The kids loved the lobby area where they had these fancy wood tables with inlaid wood squares that made a checkerboard design...along with the checker pieces that were as big as your hand.  We spent a bit of time there.  In the morning all the kids ate free for breakfast except for Eli since he was over 12.  It was one of those sweet breakfast buffets with one of those cool Belgian Waffle makers (I think Liam had 3 or 4).  We did have a little bit of a mishap while we were there.  Eli brought up his EZ pod which is the device for his growth hormone shots.  Well, it needed to be refrigerated and we thought it would be ok to put it in a double baggie and stick it on some ice for the night.  Bad idea...ice eventually melts.  We woke up to a drowned device which didn't even turn on.  Luckily we called the powers that be and were sent a new one at no charge the next day...whew!  Basically we did a lot of relaxing, hanging out and sitting in the hot tub...you gotta love that.  The next day we cruised up to Park City and hung out for the day.  Liam was beyond excited when we found the shoes that he's been dying to get for spring...for 15 bucks!  We had a great time together and missed Clayton-he had some of his climbing pix already posted on Facebook the same day he arrived so it was cool to keep tabs on him and keep our fingers crossed that he'd make it out of there alive.  Here are a few shots of the hotel where we stayed.  The chairs and table by the big windows are the checkerboard tables-too much fun.  My kids also look forward so much to the vending machines at any hotel we go to-it's one of the highlights of any stay.  We load our pockets with change and head down to the dumb vending machine...whatever floats their boat I guess.

Liam's Blue and Gold Banquet

For the past month or so, Liam's been so excited to go to scouts and we couldn't figure out why.  He told us soon after that the Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet was coming up and they were making "stuff" for the big night. The theme for the night was "Knights of the Roundtable" and was a lot of fun. Liam had made his "knight's costume" complete with helmet, sword & shield which you can see here.  The helmet was awesome-I'm pretty sure he used every choice of fabric, paint, jewels, etc. that were set out when they made them.  He was pretty proud of how it all turned out.  

Here's some of the other cub's get ups

Here is a photo of Liam getting his "Bear" award from the King

...and here's the video clip:

(the rumbling that you hear is the crowd pounding their fists on their tables...customary back then

instead of sissy claps)

After dinner they had professional fencers come to show us their skills-it was cool

and the boys were fascinated.

At the end of the banquet all of the boys came together to say the Scout Motto, raise

their swords in snyc and yelled some macho thing like "Do Your Best!"...then had a mega

sword fight to the death.

Island Park at the Bruse's cabin...

Yep, here it is.  The Bruses cabin in Island Park.  Yeah, I know that Heather's family has a cabin a few miles away that we love dearly.  I'll tell you that it's hard to pass up an invitation with the Bruses to a luxury cabin with a hot tub sitting out on the deck.  We had a great time....

The kids were quick to get right into their swimsuits to enjoy the hot tub.  Here's Camilla (or Milly), Kate, Emmy & Chloe

Look at the difference in the faces of the boys vs. the girls-trying to be tough guys, I guess.

This was by far the most popular attraction on the trip...the hot tub

Both Chloe and Kate want a little sister so bad...Milly will have to do to fill that void-haha.

Sledding time...

This is the best picture ever-Kate and Emmy are tearing down the mountain and hit the jump.  This is like one of those shots that you get at Disneyland.

The whole gang minus Clayton who stayed home with G & G

more great sledding shots...

Liam catching air...

I love that Eli's still cool with hugging his mom...hope that never changes

Chloe looks more scared than excited

This huge mountain of snow is in the parking lot of the LDS church in Island Park-the kids had a blast on it

Liam's boots decided to collect snow on the laces while he was playing in the snow

...and right back to the hot tub

packing it in tight...heading home

stopped by to see Grandma Parker in Blackfoot

A  great winter trip-looking forward to a warm spring trip to California in April!