Colorado

Ok, here it finally is - the promised Colorado graduation post! The picture above is me and Stephen with my brother and sisters. We took a picture with my parents and grandparents, who were also there, but for some reason I don't have those pictures on my camera - Mom, send me some pictures!We had a great time in Colorado with my family. Between the outlet mall, the mountains, Estes Park, and a 5 mile hike/rock climb to an awesome lookout, we kept ourselves pretty busy. Oh yeah, and there was a graduation ceremony. Which was fairly short as far as graduation ceremonies go (yeah!) and even had a few comical moments. The best probably being when the dean of the business school, in the middle of his speech, told the graduates to please not make their families miserable by going back home and camping out on the couch because the economy is so bad and they can't find a job. He said it funnier than I just did, but it was pretty great.

Also there was the scare at the beginning of the ceremony when my mom couldn't find my brother's name in the program with the list of graduates. Nope, it wasn't there. She called my brother, who was already lined up waiting to walk into the room, and asked him if he was sure he was going to graduate and if he had any unpaid fines he'd forgotten about. Of course my brother assured her he was actually graduating. While the ceremony was going on, Sara found David's name listed under his middle name instead of his last name, so it was in the L's as David Johnson Lee rather than under the J's as David Lee Johnson. That made my mom feel much better.

So now my brother is a college graduate and headed to Illinois State with the Peace Corp to get his Master's degree. I'm pretty excited for him.

Oh, and I have to mention the 5 mile "easy hike" that David took us on. Let's just say that the "older" participants (namely me, mom, and dad) had to stop, rest, catch our breath and let our leg muscles recover pretty much every 10 minutes. And this was like a 3-4 hour hike. And I don't think we were THAT out of shape... As we got close to the top we were actually climbing the rocks, NOT hiking. But even though it was a lot of work, we had a great time and the view at the top was amazing. Definitely worth it, but definitely more work than we were expecting.

This is not a picture from the hike, but it's still an outdoorsy Colorado picture with my awesome husband in it!

We bought baby clothes at the outlet mall! Here's the soon-to-be grandma and aunts and their baby finds for little baby Webb. Or as Sara decided to call our baby, for little raisin.

Here's Grandma Vicky, me, and Emily at Estes Park.

And here's me at the Wyoming State Capitol! Let me just say that everyone was REALLY excited when I told them that Wyoming was only 30 minutes from where David went to college. Sara could hardly contain herself. And since it's always been a dream of mine to go to Montana, and obviously if you can't go to Montana, then Wyoming is the next best thing, I made sure that we fit a drive up to Wyoming into the weekend. It was great. Pretty much just like I imagined it and once we crossed the state line, we found out that Cheyenne, WY which is the state capitol was only like 10 minutes further. So off to Cheyenne we went.
It was pretty awesome in a western/cowboy/deserted-town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere kind of way. But now I can say I've been to Wyoming! And Sara definitely won't be going back with me any time soon.
All in all, it was a fun, exhausting, successful, family trip to Colorado (and Wyoming!)