The Great Outdoors

We love fall in Colorado!  In September I took Sarah and Whitney on a ward daddy daughter campout.  I'd rather do just about anything than go camping, but Sarah and Whitney wanted to go so badly.  I finally decided that I love my girls more than I hate camping, so we went up to Red Feather Lakes.  We brought up a lot of fun food to eat and tried to make the tent as comfortable as possible.  We were fortunate to have beautiful weather, and went on a fun hike the next day with some of the other dads and their daughters.

Our campsite at Red Feather Lakes

Hiking through the aspens as they're starting to change colors

In October we took advantage of a few days off school for Fall break and spent them in Rocky Mountain National Park.  Again we were blessed with fantastic weather and gorgeous scenery.   We stayed at a home in Estes Park that had a nice creek running behind it in the backyard.  Almost exactly two years ago, that tiny creek became a raging river that destroyed homes and washed out roads.  Fortunately the house we stayed in didn't sustain any damage in the flood, but we could see the signs that the area is still recovering, such as newly built roads and areas where plants and grass had been reseeded.  The kids loved playing in the creek behind the house, which fortunately was only a few inches deep when we were there.

Scenic Vista

One of our kids favorite things about these trips is playing in the water, such as here at the Alluvial Fan

Their other favorite thing is climbing on the rocks

Hardy adventurers

Sprague Lake.  It was a flat trail so we could take the jogging stroller with Michael. 
The reflection of the mountains and sky on the lake was breathtaking.

Spencer is thrilled that he learned to ride a bike a few weeks ago.  The poor guy had to choose between a pink hand-me-down bike from his sisters, or a boy bike that was too big we recently got at a garage sale.  Unaware of Spencer's plight, a friend of ours had a bike their boy had outgrown and offered it to us.  It was just the right size for Spencer.  We took the pedals off for him to practice, and after a few days when he got the hang of coasting on it, we put the pedals back on and he mastered pedaling.  He still hasn't mastered staying out of the middle of the road and away from incoming traffic.  Sigh.  But he's proud to be able to ride his bike to school with his sisters now rather than ride his scooter.

Michael is still making incredible strides.  He went in for an annual eye exam a week ago.  The last three times he did this he ended up needing eye surgery to pull his eyes straight again.  This time his eyes were perfect, no surgery needed!

He's talking more and is becoming easier to understand.  He still really struggles with J's and Q's, but other sounds we thought he'd never be able to make (such as B's) he does great now.  He read the scripture in Primary at church for the first time today and people could understand him pretty well.  He even has a small speaking part in the Primary program in sacrament meeting coming up in a few weeks, which would have been impossible only a few short months ago.

He cruises around furniture a lot, and even can take a step or two now without holding on to anything before he falls.  Also, he's becoming a much better eater.  For a long time all he'd drink is milk, and maybe he'd eat some bread and cheese.  That was basically his diet for a long long time.  It's slowly gotten better, but not by much.  This year his preschool is requiring (they call it "strongly encouraging") all families to pay for school lunch for the kids so they can work with them on trying new foods.  It's really expensive so we didn't want to do it at first, but decided we'd try it for a month.  The teachers require the kids to take at least one bite of everything on their plate.  It's amazing to see the magic they've worked on Michael.  He's eating all kinds of foods now that he wouldn't have touched before, or would have immediately spit out.

Another amazing miracle is that he's grown 2 inches in the last six months.  At his last meeting with his doctors, they told us he's deficient in growth hormone and would need daily hormone shots.  We were told we didn't need to start immediately, so we opted to hold off for now.  Seeing him grow that much, which is on par with his other siblings, is really great, and we're hoping we can continue to postpone having to give him daily shots for as long as possible!