We got going a bit late, almost ten-thirty. The drive from Provo to Denver is eight solid hours, but it's a beautiful drive, as we found out today. The first part of the drive is through eastern Utah. Beautiful, like always. For the longest time there was absolutely nothing to see except, of course, the beautiful hills and vales of eastern Utah. The first two thirds of Colorado was like that as well.

And then it got good.

Colorado is famous for its mountainous mountains, and we experienced the majesty of feeling puny under the glare of evergreens.
And yes, it is majestic.
The drive is not an especially pleasant one for someone who gets carsick easily, but the view out of the window makes up for it. I-70 follows the colorado river through Colorado, through some pretty steep canyons.

One of these canyons leaves the road perched precariously in two levels, one going each way, with the Colorado running deep and slowly in between the two walls of rock covered in pine trees. This is the road that leads up to the highest elevation tunnel in the whole entire United States. Whoopydoo. It was beautiful, if slightly sickening because of the constant twisting and abrupt turning of the road.

Another part of the drive that struck us especially was one part when we were again following the Colorado and came across a hilly section before we hit the real mountains. As you should all know, there have been wildfires raging across Colorado and Utah and all those other states. We came across this stretch of road where we were probably within twenty miles at max of the fire. The whole air smelled, tasted, felt, and etc.d like smoke. gross, I know, but the cool part was seeing the way that the light filtered through the smoke-laden air, turning the world not only hazy but also pink and orange. We got some pretty radd photos of the air and the black and orange smoke clouds against the clear blue sky with puffy white clouds. Also, the river was changed as well: the light filtered first through the layers upon layers of smoke, and then through the muddy and slow-moving water to the bottom, but the water was turned purplish pinkish orangish muddish color. It was... ...spectacular.

Love you guys (I hope. there aren't any creepers reading this, right?)
See y'all in Kansas. Yay.

PS: 200 homes in Colorado Springs were lost to the fire, and 350 in some other city that I've already forgotten the name to. Scary.
 These are actually in backwards order, so the first are the mountains around Denver, and the last the mountains down at the end of the lake by the wind turbines at the opening of the canyon.

 Colorado reminded me of Oregon, all the green since no deciduous trees over some line and they're all evergreen.

 The smoke:

 I wasn't able to snap a photo of the river, but the smoke was pretty intense. You can't quite tell here how the whole state was smoggy.

Our Song

Brother's kicking

Sister hits

Baby brother turns and spits

Little sister's screaming, we -

We are a happy family!

(ha ha you said wewe!)

Mom is yelling

Dad is peeved

All the children have to leave

It's a wonder they don't see

We are a happy family!

We've been in the car too long

We made up this stupid song

We're all tired and have to pee

We are a happy family! 

Park City, June

 Mom had to work up in Park City for two weeks, and started to (gasp) miss our chaos. So she invited us up to stay with her for a weekend, kind like she is. At first, she only invited Rae and me, before the rest of the Burnsy Bunch came up to join us. For dinner we went to Vinto and got delicious pizza, and mom and Rae shared honey flavored gelato.

 For dinner as a family, after Rae went back home, we ate Mexican. Mexicans really don't do ribs, we discovered; although they do do ice cream sundaes.

California, April 2012

 This year when we went to California we brought Mairen Polo along with us - a good friend of mine and of Anna's as well. The drive was beautiful, as always, when you got over the fact that Anna was screaming in the back seat or the front seat or wherever she was. Other than that, it was an uneventful drive... but we got a flat tire a five minutes out from Baker and had to stop on the side of the road to fix it. That was exciting, and then we got shave ice and sat doing nothing for an hour.

On the way to aunt Karen and uncle Verl's we stopped at a little Mexican place right off the road. The bright yellow seats were a shock, and everyone was happy to be finally eating something. Granny's bright floral shirt fit right in with the bright theme of the restaurant.

While on the pier, there was a seal sighting of a mama and a baby seal beneath the pier! That turned out to be the deciding factor for Mairen, who loves seals but hates water since she can't swim. We got her to come out to the end with us, after much cellphoning back from the boardwalk to her mother, who was at the grocery store. The basic idea of the conversation:
Mairen:(To her shopping mother:) Mom, they're making me go out onto the pier! (to Emma:) They're laughing at me!
Emma: I am too.
Mairen:(To her laughing mother and sister:) Mom, Emma's laughing at me... no, I wanted   you to forbid me from going out on the pier!

Some of you might recognize these photos; we went to the tide pools our last day there. They were some of the best I have ever seen in my trips there. We saw many, many purple spiky sea urchins, some fish, tons of starfish, and, as always, sea anemones. It was a cloudy day, like much of our stay.

At the lifeguard station, Adam, Anna, and Sam had a performance to show us. Yay, lifeguards, saving people! Anna refused to jump off the deck afterwards like the 'men' did, and instead opted for the ladder.

We'll be back in August!

FEBRUARY 2012

JEFF:
AS WE'VE DONE SOME RECENT YEARS, WE USED THE CAMERA TO RECORD A VIDEO of the KIDDOS SINGING YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY. HOPEFULLY WE CAN ALL DO IT IN PERSON SOMEDAY! I'VE HEARD BETTER RENDITIONS OF THE SONG BEFORE, BUT NOT WITH THE ADDED BONUS OF A SCOOTER for a STAGE PROP and SAM MAKING HIP-HOP GESTURES AT THE END. (ALSO, FORGIVE THE YANKEES HAT -- HE IS YOUNG AND WILL LEARN IN TIME THAT THE YANKEES SUCK AND THE RED SOX RULE.) SO DOING ANYTHING FUN FOR YOUR BDAY?

JANUARY 2012

Smart kid update: last night, Sam started to do the "eenie-meenie-miney-mo" thing to choose between his two toothbrushes for the nightly teethbrush. Anna cut him off about two seconds into it, pointed at one toothbrush, and said: "It's that one." When I asked her how she knew already, she said that she just took a minute to figure it out once: whichever of two things you start the "eenie-meenie" thing with, that is the one that you'll eventually pick after you eliminate the other one. And how come I never thought of that before?