Still Catchin' Up: Lakes and Mountains

While there are so many things I love about living in Colorado, we are a little lacking in the awesome giant lake department. Or maybe there are lots of lakes out here, but we just don't know anyone with a boat. Or maybe we're too busy climbing mountains and skiing to think about searching for a lake or friends with boats. Whatever the case, we don't get to enjoy the whole lake experience unless we head out to Kansas or Oklahoma to visit family. Which is exactly what we did a while back.

Matt's family had a big end-of-summer reunion/get-together thing back in August at Grand Lake in Oklahoma. After a late, Friday night flight and a crazy couple-hour drive, Matt and I snuck into the rental house after everyone was asleep. Despite our late arrival, we were up the next morning and ready to get out on the lake.

Matt's dad was our captain, and our nieces were the tubing/boating experts who showed us (me, really) how it was done!

Papa driving and Bria and Lexie zooming along.

Despite my mild fear of dying a watery death, I even got out and gave the tubing thing a try. After falling off almost immediately (I guess it wasn't my fault, but I still felt pretty stupid), I got back on and had a blast zooming around the lake - a little more slowly than the girls zoomed.

Mildly terrified, but excited!

Then it was Matt's turn. Growing up in a state with lakes and such, Matt had done the boating and water sport thing way more than me. Even though he hadn't been water skiing in years, he picked it back up immediately.

In the water and then out of the water. Just like that.

Whee!

Crazy hair!

After the girls had another go on the kneeboard:

We were tired and ready for lunch. But it wasn't long before we were back in the water, this time it was the pool.

Playing and relaxing.

And of course, a weekend with this part of Matt's family is not complete without Dark Tower!

I spent most of the game acting out little scenes with the game pieces and taking pictures of them.

As usual, the best part of weekends with family is getting to catch up with people we don't get to see enough. There was plenty of visiting during our delicious dinner.

Cooking dinner and chatting.

Sadly, we were headed back to the airport pretty early the next day.

After a quick toe-dip in the pool!

While the trip was too short, it was great to see family. We're already looking forward to Christmas, when we're planning to see the other side of Matt's family in Arkansas!

After getting home, we got back into the Colorado swing of things and did some mountainy things. We headed back up Bear Peak a few weeks back, and it pretty much kicked our butts this time. I guess we had not done enough hiking to really "condition" ourselves this year. But we're pretty awesome, so we made it!

On the long and kinda boring beginning part.

Getting closer to the top. You can see the peak in the middle pic.

We made it! Beautiful!

Lots of people at the summit.

The last time we did this hike, it was extremely foggy, so the view wasn't great. This time is was clear and beautiful! And we had an extra cool bonus of having our own little fly-over.

A small plane flew right by the summit. It was a little frightening and totally awesome.

We were a little tired after the hike, but it was nice to get out since we haven't hiked much this year. And while I loved being on the lake (can we make that a yearly thing?), there's still something about the fresh, mountain air.

On top of a mountain. Which is cool.