Living in Munchkinland

  I applied for and received a grant to throw another block party this year. So I did. I booked a bouncy castle and a Kona Ice truck and arranged to pick up many pounds of pulled pork. I created and sent out a sign up genius to the 'hood and we planned to screen an outdoor movie. I invited everyone and sent out reminders and ran to Costco. I emailed people and begged for help. Very few people RSVP'd. I invited all my friends. The day arrived and it was HOT and SMOKY. The fires from California and Oregon had almost blotted out the sun. We considered cancelling, but it would have been so difficult. So we threw the party. It was...okay. There were not a ton of people there, but it cooled down enough to be comfortable and a breeze came up. The food was good and thanks to many of our friends we had a good crowd. I had a good time visiting with people and the kids had a BLAST. So that was a win. But I was disappointed that so few neighbors came out. And the weather was not great. We ...

  We came back to Denver after Taos for one more week of summer. Every day we tried to do something fun and "summer special". Sam was SO nervous about starting high school. We went to the pool, got ice cream at our favorite ice cream place, Heaven, went to a Defy trampoline park twice, visited Snobahn.  Davis had bike practice. And a high school mountain bike team meeting. Another bike race. We grilled and walked the dogs and spent time outside. 

 We went to Taos for the last week of July as is our tradition. There was no cooking camp this year, but there was a LOT of fun! We drove down with three additional boys. We took Davis's friend Alex and his brother Aidan, as well as Sam's friend James. We also brought all three dogs and five bikes. We met the Rileys down there where they stayed for the first half of the week in their rig, Gus. We had 8 kids for maximum fun. We built a potato cannon, and shot many potatoes. The kids (except for James, Sam and Emma) went to Angel Fire twice to ride downhill. They all (except for Emma) rode the new Taos Green Chili Flow trail (while Tanya and Emma and I hiked Williams Lake- so muddy and green!). We all hiked Gavilon trail and picked wild strawberries. I drove through a terrible rain storm to get the kids in Angel fire and almost washed away. We played lots of ping pong. The kids shot a POV nerf war and played many games of oli, oli oxenfree. We had sandwiches from Taos Cow (the br...

  When we got home from the Tyler Place, Martha was staying at our house and watching our puppies. Soon Clark joined her. The kids were so happy to be with their grandparents and so were we! We had some nice visits. After the reunion, they took us out for a very nice double date/double anniversary dinner at Rioja. I love that place SO much! We had delicious food and really enjoyed being together.