Big Cedar 2017

Big Cedar!  

What a fun place to take the family.  Especially when the weather cooperates!

We all enjoyed the lazy river.  It's my favorite.

Kayaking was lots of fun.

This was the last smile from Gus on the go-karts.  He was not a fan.

Everyone always has a good time eating ice cream!

This is our first time playing shuffleboard at Big Cedar.  I'm sure Catherine will make sure it's not our last.

Another first was fishing

and bumper cars!

Amber spends a lot of time catching the smaller ones as they come down the slide.

Of course we had to putt putt.  It's a giant fish after all!

Eclipse Party

I am months behind on my blogging so I'm going to attempt to catch up!  

In August we had an eclipse party at our farm.  Now it's not actually a farm but we are at a loss as to how to refer to it.  So for now it's a farm!  We invited some family and friends and had a great time.  It was very hot and humid.  But, hey!  It's August in Missouri.

The zipline was a big hit.  They kids rode it all day.

 If you notice the strange color of this picture you can tell that the sun has started disappearing.

Time to set our chairs up for the big show.

Animals of New Mexico

We saw lots of wildlife on our trip.  This guy was hanging out in The Great Sand Dunes Camping area.

There was a whole village of Prairie Dogs by our hotel.

This one has has his mouth open.  He was making all sorts of noise.  I think he was warning the rest of them to hide because I was watching them.

This mountain goat was hard to spot.  He was on the rocks on the side of the Rio Grand River.

A herd(?) of antelope were alongside the road.

Tent Rocks and Earthship

The following are some pictures of Tent Rocks near Santa Fe that Steve hiked. Outside of Taos there is a subdivision of sorts called Earthship.  The houses are all made of recycled material.  It was pretty interesting to see.  The houses that I'm showing are made of bottles. Like soda and beer!

New Mexico

Steve and I took a trip to New Mexico.  We've been to Albuquerque many times but never north of there.  This time we went to Santa Fe and Taos.  Charlie was very excited to stay in a hotel.  He packed his bag and was ready to go!

First stop was Liberal KS.  They claim to be where Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz had her house.

We met some of our friends who just recently moved to New Mexico.  They all hiked Tent Rocks.  Charlie and I stayed at the ranger station waiting for them.  No dogs allowed!  

Charlie played a little poker while in Dodge City.

This was in Eagles Nest, NM.   A very pretty small mountain town.

Our friends Dave and Andrea are presently living in their families mountain cabin while building their house.  They  have hummingbirds that swarm the feeders and will sit on your hand.  Incredible!

Across the street from their cabin is a hill that we hiked and hidden back behind all the trees is an old church.

We visited the Rio Grand Gorge Bridge.  It was beautiful and extremely windy! I couldn't believe how high above the gorge the bridge was.

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New Vacation Spot

Steve and I got the bright idea to buy some property.  Oh, my!  What were we thinking?  We bought 16 acres in New Florence next door to my cousin.  The property came with a house!  We promptly tore it down!

It also came with a shed.  Some of it was laying on the ground.

Steve finished tearing up the sub floor.

We got electric!  Yeah!!!

Steve got a new toy.  He is thoroughly enjoying it.

We have a pond that we drained.  It  needs to be re dug due to silt and we want to make it wider.  Each of the grandkids took a turn using the excavator.  Here is Michael, Jr.

Bye bye pond water.

This is a small portion of the garbage that the previous owners left us and what we have so far pulled out of the fields.

We rented a dumpster and filled it with all of the garbage piling up.