Estes Park, CO

We took a family trip to Estes Park, CO with Ralph, Carole, Catherine and Michael. We rented a cabin by the river, spent much time walking around the cute town of Estes Park, playing outside, eating delicious food and just hanging out. Although now that we're back home, we do see more of our families, but times away like this are so important too. The girls love hanging out with Catherine and Michael and we love seeing the relationship and bonds between our girls and their aunt and uncle grow deeper. Ralph and Carole are so good about initiating a trip together each summer and we love going. Thanks for such a wonderful weekend...late spring snow and all!


Coley and Uncle Mike hanging out while Nonna and Catherine shop for jewelry.


David and Michael helped "Grandma" from Grandma's Cookies carry in all her cookie dough. Their payment was free cookies. These are 2 of the free cookies. They were huge and Coley ate every bite of her cookie. And it totally ruined her lunch.


Hanging out in downtown Estes Park

The next morning we got up and went up to the Rocky Mountain National Park. We were completely surprised by the snow. The higher we drove in elevation, the deeper the snow. The funny thing was, under all that snow was green grass. Snow and all, it was beautiful sight.

David and Mylie took little walk on one of the trails


And Ainsley and I stayed in the car with Miss Coley because she just couldn't stay awake any longer!


She did wake up once we got to the top of the mountain. Barely awake.


Mylie played her harmonica. She didn't realize there was a small crowd of people watching her and she was embarrassed when she finished her song and everyone started clapping.




And once again I stayed in the car with Ainsley. She is still eating every 3 hours, so I felt like I was always in the car feeding her!


There were elk everywhere...much to Ralph's delight.


This beautiful, but creepy, hotel was the inspiration for Stephen King's book "The Shining." David and I ventured out one night and walked through the halls on the hotel...the floors are wooden and creak with every step. Apparently there are some haunted rooms in the hotel...creepy.


David suggested we take the girls for ice cream...I didn't object! There are a lot of ice cream parlors along the main street. Notice the lady smiling in the background...she loved the girls and talked to us the entire time we were eating our ice cream.


We were so excited when the rain and clouds went away. It warmed up just enough to go outside and play.











The cabin had a lot of kids toys and books. The girls typically never sit still long enough for us to read them a book, but they asked David to read them a story before bed.


Our last morning in Estes Park before we headed home.

Our friends Michelle and Ross live in Denver so we met them for lunch on our way back home. We got to Denver earlier than expected, so we stopped at Washington Park to let the girls play. This park is so big and super cool. There were tons and tons of people walking, running, playing volleyball, giving fly fishing lessons...David was in heaven. I like the outdoors a lot (some), but David just thought this park was amazing.






Here are the Whiteaker's. I didn't get a picture of us all together and remembered as we were pulling out of the restaurant parking lot.


Such a great trip! We had never been to Estes Park before so it was fun to get away for a long weekend!