Is there anything better than being with family? We made a trip back to Wisconsin to hang out with family for more than a week. There will be lots of photo updates because you just can’t help yourself from snapping away on the camera when there is such cuteness around.

Chillin’ with some great friends on July 4th weekend. Finally getting around to posting these photos.

Last night brought a good dinner with friends and a lot of rain….so much in fact, that between the lightning and thunder and tornado watches, the town decided to postpone the fireworks show till tonight. Since we weren’t geared up for a display tonight – no friends to drink the night away with and Ezra fast asleep – Ahna and I resorted to finding a different way to watch the show.

We packed up our camera, chairs, and each other, left Ezra behind sleeping in his room….and walked upstairs. All of the way up 16 steps and into the playroom. Our concerns about leaving Ezra to sleep while we watched the fireworks were quickly put to rest when we realized that we were (as the crow flies) 7 feet and 2 sheets of drywall away.

The town’s display this year was “a low-flying fireworks show” launched from a park just across the interstate from the house. As you can see from the pictures, Ahna and I actually had a great seat for the presentation (and now hope that they launch from that site as long as we live at this house), and remarkably Ezra slept through the entire 25 minutes.

The three of us ventured downtown to the Denver Aquarium this morning for some fish fun. Ezra has always liked looking at the fish when we see tanks at different places, so we figured a journey to the mothership was in order. It’s a pretty decent aquarium – nothing like Baltimore or Atlanta – but it’ll do for being thousands of miles from any coral reef. There is one significant drawback to this place: it’s expensive. Ezra was free because he is 2, but Ahna and I were each $15…then they nickel-and-dime you for every little thing else (parking was $7). The overall question is always whether the expense was worth it, and basically it was: you can’t ever put a price on watching your son explore and explore and explore with a smile on his face the whole time. I’m just not sure that we’ll do it again anytime soon. 🙂

A few pictures from a couple of major projects that finished this past week. We finally got our backyard completed…..with a place for a future elevated garden. We also recently stumbled upon a free outdoor ‘house’ of sorts for Ezra, and it will soon be making it’s first appearance out back. They say that we will have to wait two weeks to get on the new sod – that’s gonna be tough. However, most importantly, does the completion of the backyard mean that there is a chance for the ski lift chair to finally be used?

We were in the Portland area to go to a friend’s wedding (yea Tori!), and just before heading up to the Mt. Hood neighborhood, we jetted downtown to the Rose Garden. Oh, prior to that we went into the downtown business district for a quick stop at Powell’s (love it) and to grab some food from some street vendors. They have the most amazing street food selection I have ever seen: in one block….Greek, Italian, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Southern, American…and I’m sure that I am forgetting something. Back to the Rose Garden: I had a fisheye lens with me on the trip – more on that in another post – so a lot of the photos posted below are using that lens; partly to experiment, and partly to have fun since I don’t carry one most days. It was a beautiful day to be hanging out, luckily we were there in the morning since the rain predictably hit in the afternoon.

Don’t think that I made specific mention on the blog, but a few months back I joined the Colorado Urban Search And Rescue FEMA Task Force (CO-TF1). I was able to get on the team as a Logistics Specialist, and that required a lot of training – culminating in a week long course in Las Vegas…thus the mouse-tracking postings. We did take one opportunity to go to Fremont Street, and one opportunity to go to the Strip, but for the most part, it was not the ‘normal’ trip to Las Vegas. At the end of the week, we were tasked with setting up an entire Base Of Operations for a deployed Task Force of 80 people (an integral part of our job)…photos below.