Colorado Springs

We had a wonderful family vacation! Thanks so much to Grandma Joje and Pa for taking us to Colorado Springs! We stayed at the Broadmoor Hotel which was just lovely--with a great pool, camp for the big kids, and lots of good restaurants. We had some really fun excursions while we were there, too.  Brandon ran up Pikes Peak in very speedy time, then took the cog train back down, we took the kids horseback riding, we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo where we fed giraffes and elephants, the adults went rock climbing and the boys went fly fishing.  Tons of fun was had by all! We have tons of pictures from Colorado! I just included pictures of the various excursions here.  I promise Grandma Joje and Bryant were with us on this trip! :)

 There's a web cam at the top of Pikes Peak that takes a picture every minute.  Brandon called me when he made it to the top and I captured his picture on the web cam!

 Excited to ride horses!

 Miles up on his horse named "Cowboy." We found out later that Cowboy was 33 years old!!

 Bennett is excited to be riding a horse named "Tinker." 

 Off they go!

I bet they haven't had many caped super hero cowboys!

 Bennett wanted to pet every horse after we were finished.

 Feeding the giraffes at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was so cool!

 Miles got the biggest kick out of feeding them!

 Love Miles's face in this one!

 Giraffes have the longest tongues!

 Photo bomb!

 We just happened to walk by the elephants in the 1/2 hour when they let you feed them.  Totally an added bonus that we weren't expecting!

 Bennett LOVED the water slides at the hotel!

 Miles was swimming like a fish too! He got over pretty quickly the fact that he wasn't tall enough to do the slides yet.

 The hotel had a fun restaurant and bowling alley.  Meredith, Chris, Brandon and I had fun eating, bowling and consuming "adult milkshakes" one night.

 Rock climbing was such a fun adventure! We have so many awesome pictures it was hard to choose what to include in this blog!

 Our rock climbing experience was in the Garden of the Gods which has beautiful red rocks.  The clouds were ominous all day, but we stayed dry!

 Our guides at the top setting up the ropes.  We were all thinking, "Are we really going to climb this thing??"

Up first was "Team Janosky."

After that went "Team Grimmig." 

 Go Mere!

 Dad even made it about half way up!

 I'm scaling the rock

 Brandon getting a start at another climb too.

 Our guide Mario and Dad helping us figure out where to step next

Me repelling down after I reached the top.

 The guys on their fly fishing adventure

Success!

 Miles saying he had a great trip!