The Sloats: Home Sweet Colorado

Greg and I have a whole new backyard to explore this summer! We have stayed really busy. We started out the move by going back to Utah! Wa hoo! We competed in the half marathon we have been looking forward to with my Mom, Aunt Nancy, cousin David, and Uncle Glen. Everybody surpassed their goal! Greg got under 1:30, I got under 2 hours, Glen finished at 1:45 on his first race, and my Mom and Nancy both got under 2:30. I am not sure what David was planning on, but he got right around 2 hours, which is great for a first race! It was fun, and our team name ended up being BL-OAT-US. Yep, what a name huh? It's all of our last names put together-Bluemel, Sloat, Angus. Very original!

There are some more pictures somewhere...I just haven't located them yet! But, here are a few that they just had on the website that you could buy. The last one is actually at the starting line, Greg ran probably the first 1/2- 1 mile with me and then he took off! It was a really fun race, and a fast course so it made you feel like a super hero-especially if it was your first race. I was surprised at how difficult the downhill was on our knees and hips. I think a lot of us got to a point that they were so sore from the steep downhill first part of the race that we hobbled through the rest. Lessons learned-do some downhill training if it is part of your race!

Found the homespun pictures of the half marathon. I am inserting this this segment as I am almost 7 months pregnant. I have to admit, I miss running. It's so hard to do when your prego because you may be sick for a few months, so you get out of the routine. Then you weight more, breath harder, and have some looser joints and muscles. I have taken up biking, tennis, and walking. Sometimes, I like to excuse, but a lot of the time I want to get out with everybody else and run in a race! First in the group....

Coming around the corner!

Beautiful morning.

Go David, bearing his testimony right here. It was starting to get a little hot, so the finish line was a WELCOME sight.

With my sweetheart. This was so much fun!

Wahoo! Here comes Aunt Nancy with a strong finish!

I think she is happy about that...a beautiful run, through a perfect canyon, and a good time. Nice way to start your day.

Run THROUGH the water...

That's it...

Ahh...feels so good.

Oh so good...

Now, I will finish.

We had some great people to greet us at the finish line. I don't have a picture but, among them was also my Grandpa and Grandma Bluemel, and my Dad.

What an amazing day!

Of course we have been exploring the climbing they have in Colorado. It is a mecca for people like Greg and myself. We have so many places to go explore-all within an hour to an hour and a half. We have also gone up to Wyoming, which has a little mecca of it's own in Lander. It has over 2,000 routes within an hour drive of Lander. We only spent a day there, but we had so much fun we are planning a trip back this fall to try and hit the climbing when it isn't quite so hot. It'll bake you while you are on the rock in the sun.

We camped over on Friday night and since there was a fire ban, we had a cold breakfast that morning but it worked out perfect. Greg woke up at 5:50 am and was ready to get going! He was trying to lure me in conscienceness but I just ignored it. Sorry Greg! We got started earlier still, and we had a really good day. We got to climb ALL day, which is something we haven't had a chance to do. Simply because when you don't know the area, you spend a lot of time looking and figuring out where to go climb. In Lander, we met up with some great friends, Sheralee and Casey. They showed us the ropes and Greg and I were in heaven. We climbed until we were so tired, we couldn't drive back home. So, we picked a good restaurant to eat at and set up camp again. We ended up coming back early Sunday morning. Lander has a beautiful large park in the middle of town where they have nice bathrooms, water, and free camping! It was so funny to see how many people set up camp just right there in city park. We were one of them. It was nice to sleep on cozy grass instead of rocks and dirt! Although, I slept way better on the rocks and dirt then I did on the grass...mmmmm. We fell asleep before 9:30 we were so exhausted!

Greg climbing, Casey is belaying.

The area was so pretty!

The idea was to see the "thumbs up" for the beautiful scenery we had driving in the car, but it is hard to see...doesn't really give it justice!

These next pictures are at Rocky Mountain National Park, by Lilly Pond. A very popular stopping place for people to take the short, well groomed, walk around the lake. Again, my pictures don't pay it justice. Someday, we will have a killer camera with amazing photography skills and some editing to put it over the top but until then, we are just practicing! And I need a lot more!

Some of the most breath taking views we saw at this place we went called, Jurassic Park.

You can see both of the cliffs, they go for a while back, you just walk between them and pick your climbs. The problem with this place was, it was very run out with some bad ratings on the climbs because of it. It's just no fun to climb something that has an "X" rating....so a lot of people use traditional gear to make up the difference. Unfortunately, our guide book didn't mention that a lot of the climbs need trad gear to actually make them safe. So, we didn't get to climb even half as much as we wanted. Plus, the rain and wind kicked in. But! Now we know. The views, like I said were amazing. You can't see it because of the camera, but behind Greg in this picture below are rows and rows of mountains. RMNP is HUGE! With mountain peaks as far as you can see, it's amazing.

This was on our way back down, we walked around the lake too! We saw this little wedding, fun idea. Another wedding party was behind it waiting to do the same thing. They had this little ledge, with a split in the trees and you had an amazing view with the lake right in front. Pretty cool! On our way back we stopped at Estes Park, a really neat and busy little town. We couldn't decide where to eat though. And deciding where to get dessert was impossible! They had numerous shops that sold candy, homemade candy, caramel apples, caramel corn, homemade ice cream, etc. As you walked around you had these decadent smells wafting right past your nose! We decided we will become the Estes Park experts...experts in the candy stores! We want to know who does it best and when people come along with us, we want to share our secret with them.
For now, we know at least one good spot that we LOVE. Right up Poudre Canyon, the fires kind of ruined some of the areas for the summer so we look forward to heading back next summer.
Up the rope to some great climbing...

One of my favorite parts of summer is the family reunions. We are really excited that Greg has this great new job, but it is a bummer he has to miss so much of this because of a new job. Next year will be better! Because the training is for the 1st 6 months, it is hard to miss a day because they just keep going. He drove out with my brother, Trevor, and Dad to catch two days of the Bluemel family reunion at Bear Lake. It was a fun time. I didn't get many pictures....darn it! But here is a look at what we did:

-raspberry shakes every day

-tennis every day

-boating, four-wheeling, golfing, climbing, beaches and delightful dinners!

We went to the "Pickeville" Dinner Theater. The grub was perfect and the play was hilarious! Such a fun night.

Golfing was a huge part of the reunion for a lot of the avid golfers. This course was cheap cheap cheap! Such a nice view too, you could golf 9 holes for $13.00 and you had some kind of deal if you golfed so many. Most of the guys got their deal. We had fun going just once, but it was perfect.

Aunt Lori and Uncle Jo

Tyler, Erica, Megan, Uncle Rob

We had two awesome teachers there to help us novice golfers. My Uncle Rob played in college and has been involved with teaching at his local community college, so he was great to have around. He was generous to spend so much time with us helping all of us. It was such a fun afternoon.

Uncle Jo was our teacher throughout the course. Oh how we needed his help, and how ugly it would have been if we had been alone! He gave us lots of tips and instruction.

Grandma Bluemel, always along for the ride and beating most of us in her 70's, I want to be like that!

Random photo insert-makes this more interesting! This is my cousin's beautiful daughter, Sammy. She is loving that hamburger!!!

Megan and Tyler, she is having a little boy right around August 27th. They are calling him Noah Morgan, so excited for them!

This is North Beach, a favorite for the Slaughter family. I joined them on Monday and loved it. The water is shallow really far making it fun and safe for the kids to run around and really play.

Climbing of course! Greg and I went climbing on Saturday with Mishawn and my grandma came to watch. We had trouble finding the area but we were able to find a climb to get on. We had fun and Mishawn did amazing for her first time! I promised all the lovely ladies in the picture below that I would take them climbing too. Greg and I thought we had the place figured out on the way home by finding this bridge...it is the landmark mentioned in the guide book. So, when we got there, I was so excited to take all these potential climbers out on their first outing. But, this bridge lead to nowhere but some cabins. Boo...we looked, we asked, we hiked, we searched, no climbing wall! But, we had a pretty drive, a good chat, and a great hike.

A while back, I decided to carry on the fun activity we had with my mom's family in 2011. We had about 15 family members run or walk a 5K on the 4th of July. Bear Lake had a little freedom run too..both races to raise money for cancer. So, I got a little group together to go run. Unfortunately, most decided not to come but we still had a good little turn out. The race course was unbelievably hard! The times were poor, mine being 2 1/2 minutes worse then my worse 5K ever. Not fun to pay money and do poorly but at least it was a good cause. Greg finished first with his natural lightening speed! Nobody was even close to him.

Getting all registered....

I loved these "tutus for tatas" outfits and family. They had a young mother in their family die just a couple weeks ago. It was touching to hear them talk about her and to see them there to support the cause.