Wrapping up...

Whew!  It has been another crazy, busy two weeks with lots (and lots) of cleaning, organizing, straightening to get our house ready to sell.  We were heading to Ohio for a family reunion for the weekend and decided that would be perfect time to have the house on the market.  It is kind of amazing how clean the place stays when we aren't home.  We may start living in a tent in the backyard.  Anyway, we left Friday morning and our first showings were that morning.  By the time we landed in Cleveland 5 hours later, we had an offer and by the end of the weekend, we had 4 more offers.  We are now officially "under contract" and don't have to keep the house clean anymore!  Yeah us!  If only it could always be this easy.

So now, we actually had some time to relax and do some fun stuff.  Mom took full advantage of that on Thursday and met a friend at our favorite pizza place, Parry's, for an evening of beer and chocolate pairing.  Only in Colorado would you come across a beer and chocolate pairing and it was tons of fun.  The beer was delicious (except for the cucumber beer which tasted OK but smelled like pickles and made pickle burps 5 hours later) and the chocolate was pretty awesome too.  Mom didn't sleep to well that night after 10 pieces of chocolate and a few beers but it was worth it.

We were all up bright and early Friday morning to catch our flight to Cleveland for a weekend of family fun.  We met up with the Albuquerque Walkers at the airport and all headed to historic Wellington to meet up with the rest of the family.  We met Grandma Walker at Fort's Bar for the Friday night Lake Erie perch fish fry (I think it is world famous).  And as luck would have it, the Wellington Cheese Festival (also world famous) was going on as well.  I dragged everyone over so I could play in the jumping castles and play the one game booth they had.  I managed to win yet another stuffie, so my night was good.  It was kind of a late night for us so we all came back to the hotel and crashed.

Saturday, we were up at the crack of dawn and met several cousins and uncles to run in the Cheese Festival 5K.  We were all so excited- in fact, our family were the first 8 people to sign up.  Sadly for us, it was pouring rain with enormous lightning and thunder so the race was cancelled.  Sadness all around!  But we looked good and that was what really mattered.

It finally cleared up and we were able to head out to Grandma's for lunch and farm exploring.  Mom just loves the big old barn and makes me stand in front of it every time we go back, so here is our mandatory barn shot.

Once the barn was out of the way, I headed down to the crick ( not a creek, it's a crick) with my cousin Cait.  We spent the time making leaf boats for the wild berries to float on.  Mom and dad spent the time trying to remember what poison ivy looks like so we could avoid it.

Meanwhile, back at the house, baby Sophia was keeping Uncle Adam and Mr. Walker busy with her own explorations.  This was her first visit and she seemed quite comfortable with the farm life.  Maybe a future career?

This grandma with the grand kids and great grand kids.  We love this picture.

After lunch, Cait, her brother Jack and I got a special surprise.  Cait's grandpa drives the firetruck for the Wellington Fire Department and we all got to ride in the firetruck for the Cheese Festival Parade!  It was great fun waving to everyone along the parade route.  I even saw Nana, Mr. Walker and Dad.  They weren't lucky enough to get to ride with us and man, they missed out!

After an exhausting and late Saturday, we got up early to take Dad back to the airport on Sunday.  He has already started his job in Tucson and had to get back for that.  Everyone else thinks it was just an excuse to get of the family reunion.  We missed him and talked about him a lot.  We spent most of Sunday hanging out with the extended family, eating tons of food, chatting with relatives, playing corn hole etc.

Monday was yet another crack of dawn day to catch our flight back to Denver.  We finally got home around 1 and spent the rest of the day in a daze from exhaustion.
We had recovered a bit by Tuesday and met my friend Collin, his sister Audrey and their mom at the park for a few hours in the afternoon.

Dad got home on Thursday and we started the "wrapping up" portion of our weekend.  Mom had to work on Friday (and she actually worked kind of hard!) so Dad and I hung out and ran errands.  Friday night we headed over to some friend's house for a bar-b-que.  I love, love, love their two kids AND they have a three month old husky puppy.  I was in heaven.  We finally got to bed about 11 which would have been OK except we had my last swim meet of the year on Saturday and had to be at the pool by 6:45. AM.  Can I just tell you how pleasant I was to be around that morning?  It was awesome!!  I actually swam pretty good for a sleepwalker.
Do you think we were done with our day after the swim meet??  Oh, no.  No way!  After my swim meet, I had my last softball game of the year.  I was kind of a teary eyed mess, so much so that the coach came over to ask mom and dad if I was OK.  They just told him what amazing parents they were- letting their kid stay up all hours of the night and then dragging her out of bed at O'dark thirty.
I did recover nicely for the cupcakes and trophies after the game, if you can imagine that.

 We finally finished our day of sports and mom and dad forced me to take a nap.  Despite the fact that I swore up and down I wasn't tired, I fell asleep as soon as I laid down and slept for two solid hours.  So blissful!
It was a good thing I slept because then we went to our old neighbors house for dinner and I ended up sleeping over.  We all know how much sleep everyone gets at those things.  Mom picked me about 11 and the only thing that kept me going was the fact that I had a birthday party to go to at 1.
I held it together pretty well all day but I am bed at 7 this evening.  Probably more for mom's sake than mine!
Dad is headed to Tucson and mom and I are holding down the fort for 4 more days.  The movers come on Thursday, dad comes back Thursday night and we are saying our official good byes to Denver on Friday.  More adventures ahead!

More Colorado

Mom and I are continuing our summer of adventures in Colorado.  This week, we went for a hike at Castlewood Canyon, about 30 minutes from our house.  We tried this same hike in January 2 years ago without much luck-  turns out July is a much better time to hike if you want to avoid ice and snow.

We started out with great views of Cherry Creek and the waterfalls.

We hiked up to a partially collapsed dam that was built in 1890.  It was washed out by a flood in 1933.

We were able to hike to the top of it and this is me about 1/2 way up,

and this is me all the way at the top.  It was pretty cool- we saw falcons and hawks flying around above us.

On the way back, we stopped to play in the creek for a bit.  It was kind of a hot day by Colorado standards and the water felt really, really good.

At the other end of the trail was an old homestead built by the Lucas family.  I was kind of amazed at how small their house was- not really any room for a big screen T.V. or an x-box!

We rounded out our day by stopping by the Dumb Friends League which is a local animal shelter.  I wanted to donate some of the money I made from our garage sale last week to help take care of the animals.  We spent some time there looking at all the sweet dogs and cats.  We found one we wanted to take home but decided it probably wasn't the best time.  And dad probably wouldn't be too amused to come home and find a new dog sitting on our couch!
All and all, a very good Tuesday.

Wednesday evening, mom and I went with my friend Camryn and her family to the Highlands Ranch Ice Cream Social.  Mom thought it was good, wholesome, small town fun.  I thought it was about the best time ever!!
We got our faces painted (mine is a fire breathing dragon),

 
then the moms let us get BOTH a snow cone AND some ice cream!  Told you it was the best time ever!  We ran around the park, listened to the band, played Frisbee and stayed up waaaaay to late.

On Saturday, we were up at 5:30 AM to head out for my swim meet.  I did not have my greatest showing this week but I had fun and we scored a primo spot under the big shade trees to hang out at all day.  So, it wasn't a complete loss of a day.

Saturday night, I was supposed to spend the night at my friend Olivia's but her parent's had some kind of stomach virus so we had her over here.  (We have our fingers crossed I don't get it!)  We had a great time and got to complete Olivia's bridging to Brownies since she was sick the night the rest of our troop bridged.

Mom put us to bed around 10 and we were both so exhausted that she didn't hear another peep out of us until 7 the next morning.  Mom and dad LOVE these kind of sleep overs- everyone wakes up feeling somewhat rested!  In the morning, I went with Olivia to her Sunday school.  It didn't make much of an impression because I can't remember a dang thing we did.
Mom and dad spent the rest of the weekend getting the house ready to put up for sale.  This is the third weekend of this fun and they are getting a little tired of it all.  The house goes on the market on Thursday so the end is in sight.  Whew!

June in Pictures

Even though there are only three people on the whole planet reading this blog, they are quite vocal about keeping the blog going.  To keep the peace with Mr. Walker, Dad and mostly Nana D, mom will keep blogging, no matter how boring our lives have become.

Since we are so far behind, we will update via pictures for the month of June and try to get back on track for July.

Mom isn't working a whole lot this summer so it means that she and I get to have some fun adventures. We started off at the Denver Botanical Gardens at the beginning of June.  The gardens are absolutely gorgeous and everything was in bloom and so very green.  You will notice that I'm wearing long pants and a jacket.  This is what Denver is like in June- cold.

Then we had my first swim meet.  I didn't do to bad, but I definitely had more fun drawing all over myself with sharpie markers before the meet started.

I'm the first swimmer on the left in this picture.

 
This is my first softball game.  We are the Blue Thunder and we had a pretty good game.  I have some difficulty maintaining my focus but overall, I'm showing some promise.  I'm a decent hitter and my fielding has vastly improved over the last few weeks.

 Then, we celebrated National Doughnut Day with a maple glazed cake doughnut.  It was delicious!  Crispy on the outside, warm and chewy on the inside.

My next adventure with mom was a trip to the Denver Art Museum.  We ended up spending all our time in the Pre-Columbian/Spanish Colonial exhibit.  I was fascinated by everything and they had some fun kid projects for me to do.  We ended up spending 3 hours there (which is an eternity for me) and I didn't get into trouble until the very end when I went through the revolving front door one too many times.

It finally warmed enough here that mom and I headed out for a hike at Lair O' the Bear.  It was beautiful and we had great fun playing in the creek afterward to cool off.

And so now, here we are in July and we will have more to report next week.  Hope that catches everyone up....