The Alpine Slide

This was a new one for me. I never even thought about what the ski resorts were like in the summer, but big shocker they found some ways to make money. One was the Alpine slide. Its pretty fun. There are these slides that resemble water slides going down the mountain and using a sled you slide down. The sleds have been modified slightly though. They have breaks on them. But you have to pull up to keep the breaks off. So its fairly easy to apply them. I wanted to race people down, but I must have picked the unbeatable sled both times, because I could not be beat. We also got to ride up to the top of the hill on the ski lift. Those are fun, but they strike me as a little unsafe, being so high off the ground with only a bar that those who want can put in front of them. But I think I'm the only one who noticed that. Maybe I do have a tiny fear of heights. Its actually the crash at the bottom I most want to avoid.

This is Hannah's Vampire face. She could totally be in the Twilight movie with this look.

The slide.

Our host. They are such an awesome family. Thanks for letting us tag along. It was the best party up there ever. You guys are great!

We like to pose with the skiing and snowboarder posters. We can be cool too.

Oh how I miss the snow. This bus reminds me of Park City. Breckenridge is quite similar to it. I think it might be cooler then Park City though. There's a stand in town where they sell crepes and those definitely beat anything I've seen in Park City. I like that Park City is a bit closer to people though. And the outlet mall is pretty awesome. Either way we had a rockin' great time!

Fat Cats Bowling with our Families

I convinced everyone that bowling was the way to go. Of course it doesn't really take much work. Suzie and Ryan would probably go bowling in a snowstorm and my sister Val would walk 3 miles to see the black lights. (Just kidding, I just wanted to show how eager you already were to go bowling.) The big story of the evening was when my mom who I don't think even remembers the last time she bowled trashed our whole team. It was so fun. I really wish the bowling alley here in the Bahamas would put in some cool lighting and better music. But its still bowling so we'll live.

The arcade of games attached included this dragon punch, which was so awesome. What ya gotta do is 1st pull down the punching bag, 2nd take aim and hit it as hard as you can. I took some videos of this, but silly me I forgot about the fact that if you turn the camera sideways videos can't be turned later. so they're all sideways. Steve on his 1st try was just barely off making a new record. My brother inlaw on his last try beat the score. It was just a fun random night.

Lets not forget the new arcade game guitar hero!!!

Breckinridge Bike Ride

This was so fun. Last winter I came up here with Dave and Ashley's family to snowboard for the 1st time. (Sorry to Steve for having to teach me. I'm a very annoying student.) This summer Breckinridge is so beautiful and the perfect climate to play at. We rode bikes around this lake. and Steve took some footage of everyone else riding while he one handedly tried to catch everyone. This was really such a fun 2 days.

Its interesting when instead of cannibalism he turns to eating his own foot. We have a video of this also.

The Lake Hike

Steve wanted to show me a place where he used to love to rock climb so we decided to hike. It was a pretty nice hike. I've decided that Colorado is so very beautiful if you go to the right places. Denise and Philip's family came up so they could fish on the lake so we had Ammon and Audrey hike up with us.

I swear these kids are mountain goats. They are such good hikers and they never whine. I think its actually cause they never get tired. They have the most energy I've ever seen in kids. It was fun taking them along.

STEVE: I love Daisies. (for future notice :)

We found this really cool shelter up there. If we had to stay overnight for some reason. I call this shelter. Must of been indians up here!

Another Steve face.

Ok so you saw all the good stuff about the hike. Now for one of the reasons I'm slowly loosing my nerves. We went down into the gully with a fair amount of climbing, but there wasn't a super clear way up. So we decided that we would climb up some boulders. They were probably 10-11 feet high. Steve helped me and the kids up then as he climbed up the craziness begins. So apparently you can't trust a solid rock when you see one. the rock his top hand had grabbed was solidly part of the boulder and as soon as his weight was on it, it came off and landed on his other hand which he just had to keep holding on to the boulder with so he didn't crash and burn on the rocks below. So now Steve has a gash in his hand and he's stuck below the boulders which we have no easy way of getting back to. To sum up he almost passed out and for a bit he couldn't hear everything around him correctly. We had to wait about 10 minutes for him to be able to stand. This whole time I've kinda had a mild break down of worry. So we wait and finally he's well enough to try and climb up. It was quite nerve breaking for me. I hate when things like this happen. Luckily it turned out all right. We had to go into town anyway so I drove and we got some super glue and glued his finger together. His finger bled that entire day. It was so deep he said he could see the nerve. A little deeper and it may have cut it. That would have been really bad. Even after the super glue blood bubbled through. I'm glad its over though. I think we may wait a bit before we rock climb again. can't even trust the rock. Luckily Steve now has his fingered un-swelled and useful again. I think his guitar playing rehab was quite helpful.

Good Ol' Island Creativity

This is a sign we found at Port Lucaya for one of the souvenir shops. Silly eh!

It always entertains us find things that didn't quite pan out. Of course things like that happen all the time in the US but for some reason its so much funnier to find it here. My favorite is when they didn't quite get the grammar right. That was more a problem in Dominica. Of course most of the locals were so hard to understand between the mumbling and the accent that you wouldn't know if they were speaking english, but the signs are really what said it all. The vehicles there all seem to feature some sort of random saying on the window. I think more than half made no sense. But Steve and my favorite was the bus that said "To Much to Mention". I wonder why they mentioned that at all. It was a definite waste of their money, but I'll leave them to their entertainment cause its better than drugs. Of course the same is true of so many things that it makes that argument quite weak. Any way here's a beautiful sunset. we can never quite get the colors to show as vivid as they are but it is so beautiful I can't help but show it off.

Our First Hurricane Warning

The above is the picture on the web of Hurricane Bill. Pretty impressive for our first hurricane. I hope it isn't as destructive as it is impressive.

So we found out that Hurricane Bill is headed up towards Bermuda and we are just prayin at this point that it doesn't interfere with our plans to go home on Saturday. Sadly thats the point of the storm that will most likely effect us. We are supposed to have thunder storms all week. Anyway the news says that in 36 hours Hurricane Bill should be a class 4 major hurricane. We are just gonna hope that all it does is give us some huge waves to go play in. On the map our island is the highest north next to the Florida panhandle (as I've read its called in a trillion weather forecasts. Just want to be accurate!)

Any way remember us and all the other islanders in your prayers! And most likely we'll all get to our vacations and other destinations safely and on time. I hate to be late. (No really I hate tardiness. Why can't people just be on time. Its not that hard. And it is so so rude to keep people waiting especially if you knew you were going to be late and didn't even call.) Sorry thats my rant for this post. I've been getting annoyed about that quite a bit lately. and now that its out in the universe maybe I can get over it and people will start being on time.

By the way, for those of you who didn't know. Steve and I are going home for 2 weeks. 1 in Colorado and one in Utah. And then for good measure I think I might just stay in Utah for another week or 2. It'll be fun to see friends again. and breaking up the semester is always good. So for those of you who happen to be where we're headed see ya soon! So excited to get there.