One of the great things about the trip is that there is almost never a time where we don’t have something enjoyable to do.  That’s not to say that it’s a requirement to feed a temptation to entitlement.  However, whether it’s simply having a devotional time on the back porch, going for a walk along a stream, or just being together for a picnic meal outside, we’re always overwhelmed with the beauty.  Here are a few shots of various activities, including something as simple as Elizabeth finding some great recipes in the family cookbook of the house in which we stay,

 (Pumpkin Pancakes!)

a yearly Vail pass ride

a record number of disc golf games,  while making sure to watch out for errant throws by Darol (which hit Jonathan’s arm), or another child who whacked Abigail in the head.

A new find this year was the bike course, including lots of jumps, one of which lead to a broken wrist for Benjamin.

Sometimes its fun just wander around in downtown, and to let Chloe visit with the many dogs in the area…or friendly bears…

We couldn’t go through Breckenridge without Chloe recognizing that we were near the gondola (ongola – “here we go”), which was her favorite ride.

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We decided to let everyone (except Daddy, Chloe, Abigail and Levi) do a race in Leadville.  On the unfortunate side, it was one of the most disorganized races we’ve ever seen. On the fortunate side, Darol picked up a couple useful Raffle entries while the others were running.

We got to visit Nancy at her huge lodge on the Blue River, and she took Chloe for about a 30 second 4 – wheel drive.  Several of the younger ones also worked on diverting the flow of the river.  It’s a fun “job”, but not quite sure about the progress level.

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The final big celebration involved the trip to Peak 8, which was framed as a reward for finishing up their “Summer Challenge” of various reading assignments, Scripture memorization, and numerous physical activities.

Great times were had!

One of the best things about being in Colorado is all of the wildlife.  Unfortunately, we didn’t capture many pictures of the wildlife we saw, other than a quick shot of this moose crossing the street in downtown Frisco.

But we did get to also spend some time with a more docile animal, and that being several horse.  Elizabeth is completely in her zone whenever she can be around horses.  Darol and Elizabeth had an opportunity to go horseback riding in Breckenridge.

In addition, we also were able to visit a stable in Keystone one night that had activities for all of the family.  They had hot dogs and hamburgers, movies, lassoing games and lots of horses to pet.

Donna and Jonathan were both able to lasso the target.

Of course, there was yet another attempt or 3 or 7 to get a good family picture.

Pretty close, but I guess not good enough….

For our trip, we decided to be really adventurous and to make the driver there and back in a 15 passenger van.  Our first step was to remove the rear seat from the van, as we would need the cargo space.  So we had to hunt around a bit to find a rental car agency that would rent 15 passenger vans, and one that would allow us to remove that rear seat.  The rear seat weighs about 100 pounds, so removing it is no small task…and getting it back in is a much larger one. The first rental car agency said that it would be $1000 fine for taking out the rear seat.  Ouch.  Fortunately, the next one was much more understanding.

Darol: Could you remove the rear seat for us?

Rental Car Worker:  No, we can’t do that.  But as long as you have the seat in there when you leave her, and it…ahem…falls out, that’s OK.  You can use it that way.  Just make sure you bring it back with the seat back in.

Darol:  I understand!

We launched out on the trip on a Thursday afternoon and stayed the first night at Pops and Mimi’s.  Knocking out that first 2 hours was a huge benefit, as it allowed us to drive all the way to St. Louis the next day.  It would have probably taken about 18 hours that next day if we hadn’t done the first 2 hours, as we would have rush hour in multiple cities.  The children did a great job on the trip out there, though there was a bit of “van fatigue” from time to time.

Admittedly, one of the biggest advantages to this passenger was the high clearance it afforded us on the very, very rough road on the way to/from La Plata Peak.  These picture don’t quite do justice to this small stream crossing that we zipped right over.

One of the more humorous stops on the van ride out to the mountains was a stop at a Whole Foods in Denver.  Chloe, the extrovert, marched right up, made a friend named Maria, and invited her to get into her shopping cart for a “ride”.

We ended covering about 2100 miles each way for the trip.  Our stops were in Kansas City and Denver on the way out, and Wichita and Nashville on the way home.  The children did extremely well, and weren’t insisting that we fly out the next time, so that was a good sign.

It’s always a topic of discussion for us as to whether or not we could possibly have our family picture come from Colorado.  Darol tries over and over to get one that would be acceptable, but Donna generally nixes the options.  Here were some of the attempts.  Admittedly, it is hard to get 8 people not to blink (Chloe),    ,

not to look the other way (Levi)   

not to look too stiff (Darol),

and wacky hair (Levi),

or pouting (Chloe),

But despite those goof-up, there were some great attempts by Elizabeth,

and the younger half,

and Levi,

Darol was proud that he could at least take one picture without goofing it up, so he asked if we could send this one out as the family picture. He was shot down 7-1 on that vote.

Some of the other favorites were the “Chloe, smile like an evil villain” encouragements, which the children somehow taught her, rather than a typical “say cheese…”

So Darol’s goal for the trip in 2015 is absolutely going to be to come up with some family picture for the holiday season that comes from our trip!

One of the big highlights of this year’s trip were the usual assaults on the 14er’s  The first attempt was quite a setback, as Darol, Jonathan, Elizabeth and Benjamin launched out from Frisco at just before 4:00 AM.  They arrived at the trailhead and were started just before 6:00 AM.  Making good time, they were above timberline by 8:30 AM.  However, the weather was questionable all along, and at around 12,000 feet, they regretfully decided to turn back.  They were surrounded by dense fog and cloud cover, and it just didn’t look like things would clear up.  Dejectedly, they descended back down.  This was the second time for failure on La Plata for Jonathan and Darol, who had tried the same mountain 4 years earlier.  Now to the word, “failure”, was it really?  For the Christian, there really is no failure.  Failure has much to do with the way that we view a potential setback.  Because of the hope and victory we have in Christ, there need be no view of failure for the believer.  Hence, Darol encouraged them to give it a shot on another day, and Donna was gracious enough to allow that.  4 days later, they set out again, and this time they tried a different route. This was a more direct route, and the weather couldn’t have been much better at the beginning.

This time, they made the peak at around 11:00 AM, and just before bad weather set in.  Elizabeth was an incredible trooper, as altitude sickness really hit her hard at around 13,500 feet. With 2 false summits, it was all she could do to stay on her feet.  You can also see that we brought along a visitor for this ascent.  Benjamin and Jonathan were trying to win a picture contest hosted by their orthodontist’s office.  Though they didn’t win, I would be surprised if anyone else tried any harder than they did.

The boys must have taken 50-75 pictures of Dr. Hull over the course of the trip!

Here we have a view from the peak.  Pictures just don’t do justice to the view when you are at 14,335 feet, on the 5th tallest mountain in Colorado.

On the way down,Elizabeth was quite nauseated.  Fortunately, once we got down to tree level, she was feeling much better.  Good enough for the required celebration trip to Punky’s in Buena Vista!

Way to go team!

Another reward for completing a 14er is always to see the name of that particular 14er on the list that is posted on the walking bridge going into Breckenridge.

In addition, the whole family gave a shot at climbing Mt. Democrat, a nearby 14er to Frisco that has a very high starting point.  Even Chloe started out in the backpack for this one. In the end, only the boys made the peak on this one, and Levi was able to claim his first 14er at age 5!  The mountain straight way in the background is the one that he tirelessly zipped up.

This peak had one of the best views of so many of the surrounding 14ers.  We were able to see another 20-25 of the other 14ers in the Rockies fro the summit.

At the bottom, we got a shot of each person holding up their current total of peaks completed (22, 11, 5 and 4).

Even though Chloe and Mommy didn’t make it up this time, they still look good in the pictures!

One of the big highlights the last 2 years has been a boat outing with one of the Darol’s best friends from his days at Rhodes, Steven Kerr. Steven again took the children along for a tubing ride on the Wando River and Intracoastal waterway.  The children challenged each other to see he could remain on the tube without taking a plunge.

Another highlight has become the fishing trips under the bridge by the connector.  There were a few ferocious sharks that were taken by the master anglers.

Not exactly enough to make a meal, but they’re all developing some skills and enjoying themselves.

In July of 2014, our baby turned 2!  Chloe appears to be another little lion, like her sister Abigail (even though she is a carbon copy of Elizabeth in looks at that age.  Jonathan had a couple appointments with Master Physical Therapist, Todd Koos, to help him with some Achilles problems he had been experiencing.  Chloe decided to get in on some of the stretches, especially when Jonathan was wincing from pain for some of the stretches.  She jumped onto the table to care for her big brother and to show the tough guy that it really wasn’t all that painful.

Next, we captured Miss Hollywood getting decked out in her shades in preparation for the annual beach trip with the grandparents to the Isle of Palms in Charleston.

Will she be a hat-wearer like Elizabeth was at that age?

June marked a month of firsts.  Levi began his first year of baseball.  He played up as a 5 year old into a 7 year old machine pitch league.  He really improved significantly from the first day of practice, as he went out on the field, “WHERE IN THE WORLD AM I SUPPOSED TO GO?”…something none of our older children would have ever been outgoing enough to ask, to the end of the year where he was one of the better hitters on the field.

After the year completed, Levi was so exhausted that he decided to take a nap – for some reason, he decided to go back to sleeping in a crib.

After cross country finished for Jonathan, he broke down and feasted on the largest Reese’s peanut butter cup in the world along with his friend, Brittian.

Darol and Donna also purchased their first ever truck.  It’s an old 1978 Ford “beater” that they purchased from the famous Dr. Silver.  It has served well so far in taking the children around to do their grass cutting jobs.

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Darol even took a trip back to Memphis for work with Microsoft.  He had an opportunity to go back and visit Rhodes College, where he ran cross country and played baseball.  Here is a shot of the famous Halliburton Tower on the campus

Here is a “glory days” picture of his cross country team.

Donna loves to make a trip over to Laurens whenever possible to see her grandmother, and the children enjoy it as well.  Here are several shots of some of the children with Gram.

Gram is nearing her 100th birthday in about 1 1/2 years.  That will surely be one humongous party in Laurens when that day arrives, Lord willing!

May represented a number of short trips in the Charlotte area.  Benjamin’s PSB Select Team had a tournament on the north side of town one day.  Actually, that was a source of a bit of frustration, as he played on a team hosted in Matthews/Indian Trail, but did not play a single tournament in that areas.  Oh well, we had a good time watching his games.  On this particular day, we needed something to do in between a 4 hour “layover”. So went to the Lazy 5 Ranch.  The youngest children had never been, though the older ones had been many years earlier.  The trip was replete with the opportunity to feed by hand many different animals, including giraffes, zebras, pigs, and various kinds of deer, including many that jumped up against the van with their hoofs.  Well, I guess we wouldn’t have claimed to have a scratch free vehicle, but now our ride is much more in the “Mom My Ride” category.

Donna also took the children over to a strawberry patch one day as well.  We definitely don’t pretend that homeschooling is the best answer for everyone, but this is a fringe benefit of homeschooling in that one can take a field trip at any time of the day and seek to avoid the normal rush of going during a busier time.

Finally, our day trip list wouldn’t be complete without a picture of a Frisbee golf outing at Hornet’s Nest.  At last count, our family has now played 4 courses in Charlotte, 2 in Columbia, and 2 in Colorado.  The favorites at the point are the one in Frisco, CO because of the view, Hornet’s Nest in Charlotte because of the difficulty, and “The Cousin’s Course” in Columbia (not sure why, but maybe just because they get to do it with their cousins, and that’s a good enough answer).