Colorado

So besides London and the wedding of course, my trip to Colorado was probably my favorite event of the summer! It was the first time I got to see Laren in over 3 months and it was beyond wonderful! We headed to his hometown Manassa, CO for their 24th of July celebration and spent the weekend enjoying time with family and all of the different activities. Friday and Saturday morning consisted of watching the town parade. Laren had told me all about their giant, amazing floats, but I had thought "yea, we had some pretty cool floats in our town homecoming parade too..." Oh no, these floats were waay better than any float we ever came up with!! It was fun to see all of the different ones and let me tell you I was most definitely impressed.

Seahorse float = awesome. I love the bright colors and the giant seahorses! 

This was probably my favorite float. I absolutely love it!! The giant chicken is amazing and the little chicks on the back are just so cute!

This float still blows my mind. That is the most fantastic fake tree I have ever seen. It truly is a work of art! All of the branches are real tree branches that were wired in to the middle and covered with copper colored tin foil. All of the flowers are tissue paper flowers that were glued on. Awesome, I know!

Alice in Wonderland float.

There were a lot more floats, but these were the best ones I got photos of. My mother-in-law had a really great as well, but my photos of it were blurry :( 

I love visiting my husbands family because it reminds me so much of being with my own family. Everyone gets along so well and every time together is always a fun time! His grandma's house is the central point for family gatherings and so we headed back there for lunch everyday and usually ended up there at the end of the night.

One of Laren's cousins. This is one of my favorite pictures - he is so cute!

Another little cousin

 Main Street

Demolition derby

It was actually pretty fun to watch, until a car caught on fire!! 

Rodeo with his cousin (right) and a friend

My only good picture of the barrel races

We also hit up the motocross races. I some of the kids were so little, but were really good! 

Fun to watch, but definitely not a sport I want my kids doing!! 

We also spent some time on the ranch which is one of my favorite places. It is so beautiful and peaceful, most definitely the country environment that I love!

Even if I get at least ankle deep in mud!! ( we got a little stuck back in April)

Just waiting for his uncle to come pick us up.. whoops!

This time around was much dryer and we didn't go looking for any mud holes! 

We found an old pvc pipe and something ( i'm not sure what it was) and decided we go shooting instead. Laren did a pretty good job of shooting it to pieces ( literally)!

I hit a couple times... give or take :) No, I actually did hit the target a few times.

Then we hopped in the car and went for a drive on the country roads.

There were wild sunflowers everywhere. I loved these ones growing on the side of the road. 

Sunday we headed to the mountains and hiked up to "Rough Creek Falls" It was a gorgeous hike and felt so nice compared to how hot it was in the valley!

It was most definitely the best way to reunite with the love of my life! Being in London was so hard, because there were so many things I wanted to share with him! It was so beyond wonderful to spend the weekend with him and see each other before the wedding!!