Our Favorite Family Spot!

This summer we were lucky enough to vacation in Estes Park, Colorado!!  My unbelievable and amazing parents made this all possible!!  Thank you so much, Mom and Dad!!!  You have no idea how much it meant to us!! They were dead set on having our first vacation as a family, now that Betsy and I are both married, at our favorite place in the entire world.  Betsy and I pretty much grew up spending summers in Estes Park.  My first trip out there I was only 1 1/2 years old and it was with the entire Temple family.  I was very young and don't remember any of this trip, but looking at these photos makes me so teary eyed.  I'm just so glad that my parents took these.  My grandma passed away when I was six so these pictures mean a lot to me.

This is my Grandma Temple on our hike to Alberta Falls, which is still our favorite hike to go on when we go out there!

My dad is close with his brothers and that made things a lot more fun when I was little!! We spent a lot of time with my Uncle Rick's family.  Other than my Dad and I, my Grandma and Uncle Rick are pictured and my cousins, Lynn, Erin, and Ryan!

As you can see, I was obsessed with the chipmunks very early on!

I'm not much of a fisherman today, but at least I can say my Dad tried.

Alberta Falls with my mom!! Look at that hair; gotta love the 80's! : )

Downtown Estes Park with my grandparents; we have so many photos at this bench through the years.  I was already obnoxious at an early age.  I absolutely love this photo, though since I have so few with both of them and me.

Dad was always super fun!

We loved to go horse back riding!!

After that first trip, we were hooked!!  Here's some more of our favorite photos from other years we spent there!

Our good ol' station wagon heading out west.

A little taller this time and now I have a sister to take photos with in front of this sign!

Another picture at the bench. Downtown Estes is one of my favorite parts.

We went to a wild west show and dinner. It was REALLY hot out apparently; we're both so red!! I really love Betsy's acid wash jeans!

Next to Big Thompson River.

We use to only camp when we went to Estes and we loved that! We had matching pajamas!! haha.

I believe I was seven here. My glasses are awesome. This was next to one of our campsites.

We took the train to Durango a lot, too. My mom's cousin lives in Estes so we always hung out with their family when we went out there.  My jeans are tight-rolled! So cool!!

Well, here's where things start getting real embarrassing and we take a turn for the worse. We started getting into this habit of buying a souvenir t-shirt from Colorado, this was my choice that year-it matched my super cool boxers.  Check out those awesome boots, too.  Bets, your socks perfectly match your shorts; mom is so funny for doing that to you!!

We obviously thought we were too cool to hike around Bear Lake.  Our hair is absolutely RIDICULOUS!

My senior year we went on choir tour to Colorado!! I had to include this one with my best friend ever, Amberino!

This year I believe was at least the 9th or 10th time I've been out there.  Neither Alex nor Matt had been to Colorado so we knew we had to bring them!! We've had countless memories in Estes, and we couldn't wait to show them around and share this amazing place with them.  I think we said "this one time when we were here..." at least four hundred times during the entire vacation.  They were both probably so annoyed with my family, but they seemed to absorb Estes like we did and ended up loving it just as much as we'd hoped for!  Hopefully we'll have many many more family memories there with our own kids and they'll grow to love it just as we did.  I can't wait to share that with them someday... : )