October birthdays, Halloween and stuff

It seems as though October and so far into November have been quite busy.

Shannon and Brian bought tickets to the Broadway show Hamilton.

Brian ended up going on a business trip, so Shannon asked me if I would like to go with her.

YES.

I have to admit that I didn't know anything about these forefathers.

I've challenged myself to read up on it. If I would have known the history, I would probably have enjoyed it more. I can say that the singing and dancing were excellent.

I'm very glad I got to go with Shannon. We ended up sitting by two other families from church.

That was fun.

We had very good seats. We sat in front of the railing to the next section so we had extra leg room

 and a perfect view of the stage.

We are obviously sitting just below the next tier. I wanted to take a picture of the balconies on the side so you could maybe get a feel for how close to the stage we were.

So - I finally decided to have my hearing tested. I really didn't expect anything to become of it, 

BUT here I am. I can't hear the high tones like M's voice and most women in a conversation.

It's not a horrible thing, but it's one more thing to have to bother with that comes with age.

Clara had her 6th birthday in October. She had nine friends over for a princess, pizza and a movie.

It looked very successful and Corinne was able to be home from travel to be there.

Halloween was celebrated very well in the Scott Daly and Corinne Thornton homes. Here at the 

Drees/Daly compound it seemed pretty low key.

Jess made these wonderful costumes for her boys. 

Evan has been very excited to learn to whistle - thus he is Steamboat Willie.

For some reason Graham wanted to be a pickle. He makes a pretty cute one.

Evan celebrated his 8th birthday a few days ago. Jess always decorates up a storm. 

Corinne's family really went the extra mile for this year. 

Each one looks so good and cute!

There is a new bowling alley that just opened at the Southlands Mall. These two got to bowl. I'm excited to go check it out. Hopefully my knee can handle that now. 

Henry celebrated his 11th birthday this year. He accidently ended up with two birthday presents from us. I had forgotten I had already delivered the gift the visit before our last one. 

AND he was thrilled with both. 

 

August and September 2024 Activities

 Marissa and Fred planted flowers at the end of June. This is Marissa's map for planting.

Now everything is laid out as the map outlined.

I finally took some photos of her blossoms at the end of September. I was probably about a week late because some of the blossoms were starting to shrivel up. The flowers have really been beautiful.

One evening Fred and I were driving out to Parker for something.....I don't remember. This cloud formation in the sky was something I have never seen before. I thought it was a beautiful sight.

Shannon and Brian went to New York for a few days for a work trip Brian had. We had grandchild duty. It was the best long weekend for me. I had a new purpose to get up each day. I feel like I did a good job at spoiling the kids. I always try to serve food at dinner that they will like. We had spaghetti one night and hot dogs another. Oh and let's not forget Cold Stone. 

On Saturday we took them to Elitch Gardens in Denver.

Your typical amusement park with rides. 

This is the one of the two rides I went on. It was fun. No problems.

The second ride was the Tilt a Whirl. I used to love it as a kid.

I got to scream and had fun, but at the end I realized how jumbled my brain felt. 

I was done after that. Fred and I are very particular when choosing a ride anymore.

His stomach doesn't like it and my neck doesn't like jerking or jarring.

Sad days indeed.

Both of the kids went on this ride. 

Blake is in the top pod in the green tee shirt facing the ground.

We ate at the food court. Blake got pulled pork nachos.

Fred got a pulled pork lunch. Marissa and I shared a chicken strip basket.

The picture I took of us the camera was set on live so it's all wiggly.

I didn't post that. We had a really good time.

The next outing was with Shannon and her family. Brian is always good to drive us all in his 4Runner.

It's nice to have to someone else drive and mess with the parking. 

We all went super early because Marissa's school choir was participating in singing the National Athem at the Rockies Game. I guess she is at the front way over at the right. 

Rockies played against the Dodgers. It wasn't pretty.

13-2 - We left at the 7th inning.

This year we decided it was time to take a roadtrip. We were accomplishing three things at once.

Fred has wanted to go the Rocky Mountain National Park. 

I wanted to go see Estes Park, a cute tourist town right outside the Rocky Mountain National Park 

AND we wanted to go see the fall leaves.

We think we were late this year. Almost all of the tree leaves were yellow. 

I caught a little bit of red here.

We did see some beautiful sights. The weather was perfect. 

We drove around for about an hour. We drove almost to the top.  That was at 11,716 ft. 

I quit looking down at about 9,000. I didn't like it. 

We saw a cluster of cluster of elk along the rode, but I couldn't get my camera out in time. 

We saw this one as we were driving out of Estes Park on our way home.

The drive ended up taking longer than expected. There were several points along the way under construction. We stopped at Smokin' Dave's BBQ. It was really delicious!! 

Of course, my favorite part of the day. 

We hope to go earlier next year and hopefully catch some red and orange leaves too.

A quick trip to Utah

Fred and I made a quick spur of the moment trip to Utah.

His cousin Lynda passed away. These are Tom Daly's four daughters. 

From left to right

Sandra, SuzAnn, Lynda, Ardis

They have each been so friendly and accepting from the moment I met them at the first Daly Family Reunion at Panguitch Lake. I'm just now making the effort to put the name with the person. 

It was a very nice service and felt good to be among the Daly Family.

 At the gravesite, Sharlotte (Fred's sister), Candace (Fred's cousin Jim's wife) and me. Three old ladies.

After the service we met up with Ben and the kids at the Hill Air Force Museum. 

Corinne was out of the country this weekend traveling for work.

The kids have all been to this museum multiple times. Henry and Spencer didn't have a very happy look on their faces. But they were all troopers.

I enjoyed seeing Fred and all the Thornton boys checking things out.

Spencer was happy to entertain Clara. 

He really is sincere about playing with her, but it's usually a very annoying type

 of play that causes lots of screeching from Clara. 

We picked the coolest looking jet for a picture of Fred.

These two were very enthusiastic at the beginning to show us around.

Garrett is a really good big brother.

We should have tried to have someone take a picture of all of us.

It was so stinkin' hot. Ick.

After the museum, we took the family to Costa Vida for dinner and then back to the house for games.

Garrett had just returned from a trip to Disneyland with a bunch of his friends.

He was giving us a rundown on his fancy lightsabar. His prize souvineer.It was very cool.

Henry and Clara introduced me to Dinasaur Monopoly.

I actually enjoyed playing it with them.

All the men played the real Monopoly game in the kitchen.

It was a fast trip, but we did enjoy our time with family. We did meet up with my brother Craig and his wife Lynette. I really need to get a picture of us the next time we are together.