First hike of the summer!

Last Saturday we had beautiful weather! We decided to take advantage of that and take our first hike of the summer. We went to Mount Falcon Park - located just a little west of Denver. A man name John Walker owned this land in the early 1900's and built his enormous home here. He was quite the entrepreneur and also started construction on an ambitious building that was intended to be a summer White House for the Presidents of the United States. Unfortunately a few years later his home was struck by lighting and burned down - and construction on the summer White House never got past the foundation and a marble cornerstone marking the project. On the hike you get to see the remains of his stone home and the remains of what was going to be the summer White House. With the great weather we also got a beautiful view of Denver and Red Rocks park below.

Isaac did great on the hike. We were a little worried that he wouldn't fit in the backpack this year - but he did and had a great time looking around, touching all the trees that he could, and hollering out "hi!" to all the other passing hikers. We had a picnic lunch when we got back to the trailhead and Isaac even found his own stick that we had to take back with us.

Daddy's Little Helper

Last weekend we actually stayed home for the entire weekend and got some things done around the house. Isaac is turning into quite the little helper - he helped daddy put some tools together in the garage (maybe he has been watching too much Handy Manny...) Every time we go into the garage he goes straight for where John has stored the brooms and snow shovels. These are his newest toys - he can sweep the garage floor and shovel the imaginary snow for quite a while!

Babies! Babies!

Last weekend we made the long drive back to Kansas for a short visit. We finally got to meet Finley - Isaac's new cousin! He was very interested in her - we just had to make sure that he was "gentle" with her. She is such a sweet little baby - she likes to be held, but that was fine with us! We also got to take part in a baby shower for my friend Kristin. I was so excited to see her since she lives so far away and we haven't seen her since Isaac was a tiny baby. She and her husband Shawn are expecting their first baby at the end of July and we couldn't be happier for them. (I just hope that Isaac's rowdiness didn't make them nervous to be parents! :-)

I'm sure that Isaac will be embarassed about this some day...

...but he thought it was pretty funny at the time. We had him all stripped down and ready for his bath - (You can even see that he has his earplugs in already - something we have to do because of the tubes in his ears) and then he ran into his room, grabbed his favorite book of the week (10 little ladybugs) and hopped into his chair. Luckily the book is covering all the important parts, or I wouldn't have been able to post this! Oh well - at least he loves to read!

Isaac & Mommy

This is in Monteriggioni, an old Italian city built high on an hill and surrounded by a huge city wall. Only a hundred people or so still live here within the city walls. This is the old well in the center of the town.

Carousel

In Florence, Isaac got to ride his first carousel...we had to ride it 3 times because he loved it so much!

John on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence

Coconut anyone?

I just thought this was funny....for 1 euro you can get a nice fresh slice of coconut.

Here birdy birdy...

Isaac & John feeding the pigeons in Florence.

Mama Mia!!!

Isaac at the Piazza Del Campo in Siena.

The Duomo in Siena

Time for pizza!

Apparently, you can't have pizza until 9:10.......

Vino

La Croce, one of the wineries we visited. You'll see the black rooster on the sign, this is the symbol for the Chianti Classico region of Italy and we saw these roosters (or as the italians call it "del gallo nero") everywhere!

Romitorio di Serelle

This is a photo of us at the farmhouse apartment we stayed at with one of the managers, Roberto.

Villa Carlotta

This is a view from the gardens at Villa Carlotta on Lake Como - we visited at the perfect time of year, everything was in bloom!

Lake View

As promised, I finally got some time to upload some more photos. As soon as I get a little more time, I'll upload a bunch more to my kodakgallery and send that link out. It's not an easy task, since between both cameras we have literally hundreds of photos from our trip! Here are John and Isaac at Lake Como, Italy.