Happy Birthday Aunt Dian!

Okay so I've been a lazy butt I know. It has taken me longer to do this next post than I had planned but here it is finally! These are all pictures from my Aunt Dian's 60th Birthday party almost two weeks ago that my cousins planned for her, she didn't know that there would be more than her kids and grandkids there. It was fun to just walk right up to her, say hi and see her reaction! I was so happy to take Dave and the boys down to Denver to see our family, it's been almost two years since I last saw most of them at Chantal's wedding! Hopefully we'll be able to start seeing them more often since we are pretty close by. We all had a good time and the boys made some new friends. ;) They have a friend who is a photographer and she was there taking pictures and had her kids with her. Well, needless to say Brendan and her oldest daughter, Elly got along sensationally so much so that Elly has been saying Brendan is her boyfriend and he is invited to her birthday party in mid August! How cute is that? They are only 5 so I am not worried, I just think it's adorable. And they all love Anginet (Elly's mom) so I am looking forward to getting to know her better through facebook and being at the birthday party. And if you are wondering why there are no pics of Dave, well there were pics of us taken but with other people's cameras.


Uncle Mike and Aunt Dian's six kids in order of birth from left to right:

Lani, Jennifer, Krissie, Sean, Gina and Chad

Me with Aunt Dian and then me with Seany! Sorry Sean couldn't help it. ;)

Left pic: Uncle Joe and Chad

Right pic: Krissie

L. to R. Tara P. (Sean's girlfriend), Chantal, Aunt Dian and Uncle Joe and also

Lani in the second pic

L. pic: Chantal, Jen and me

R. pic: Gina and her Mom Dian dancin together

L. pic: Mindy, Cedric and Chad

R. pic: me and Gina

Krissie was trying to get the kids to help her sing the itsy bitsy spider

Carter was loving the punching bag! We need one of those too. ;) The

little girl is Katy (I think) Lani's granddaughter

L. pic: Elly, Brendan and Cedric

R. pic: Elly and Brendan

Anginet has a really cute one of them I need to get!

L. pic: Devin (Lani's grandson)

R. pic: Violet (Krissie's daughter)

Getting Back in the Groove!

Hi All! Well so far our first day with Dave gone to work we are doing good. The boys and I have already run about 7 errands or so in 90 minutes and I am starting to remember what it's like for Dave to have a job again! I'm even contemplating bringing them to the grocery store with me later or tomorrow morning but think I might be crazy to since I haven't done that very often and in a LONG time. I really enjoy going by myself but may have to wait on that until they are in school again if I want to avoid going on evenings or the weekend! Oh well, we'll see how the day goes. These boys need to get back to the store more often again so they can remember how they are supposed to act in public, we've been having issues with that lately.
I want to tell you all thank you for checking our blog out. Thank You! I notice that more of you have been keeping up with us now that I've opened up the invites and I am so happy about that. Now that means I need to be a little more dilligent about posting. So, I wanted to write a quick note and let you know that I will be putting up pics soon to share what we've been doing. Gosh, I think I have pics from the 4th, Kansas (which we went just yesterday and Tues.), also my Aunt's birthday we went to in Denver last Saturday! So many things I want to share but it will take me a little time especially now that Dave is working again (SO THANKFUL!) and I don't feel right being on the computer for lengthy periods until the boys are in school again. So, us McCall's hope you are having a splendid, beautiful and safe summer! We love you all!

Aaaahhhhhh! Back to The Land of The Working!

Yay!!! I cannot contain my excitement, relief and happiness! Dave is officially employed again and will be going back to work at First National Bank after having left there over 4 years ago! His position is a Credit Analyst and would have been his next step if he had stayed at the bank, so I believe evenly more strongly now even though it was hard at the time that there really was a good reason for him not getting his previous job at the bank back. Along with all the hard work Dave has done job hunting we also needed to wait and be patient for this better position to come along. We are all extremely excited, thankful and happy for this news! Mainly of course because he is employed again but I also have some little reasons for the happiness of him going back to the bank. We will get to enjoy him having bank holidays as well as having good insurance again! This is such a big relief for us especially in the economy today and we still have other friends and family looking for new and/or better work which we want to let you know that our good thoughts, blessings and prayers are always with you! We genuinely hope you are all doing well and thank you for your wonderful wishes and prayers for Dave too!

There Really are Bears in Rocky Dave...There Are, There Are!

Here are the best pics we have from our camping trip this last Monday and Tuesday night! Thanks again Mel and Joyce for your help, we wouldn't have been able to go without you! The first night was the most exhausting for me, not getting good sleep the night before and then setting up. The very reason I look so tired but a good feeling tired. :)

The second day was easily our best and most exciting day! We had a good walk around Sprague Lake after eating breakfast there, we like to get up super early to go animal sightseeing! Tuesday was the day it paid off the greatest because after we left Sprague and headed back down the mountain towards the valley we were very fortunate to see our first bear in Rocky after looking for the 11+ years that Dave and I have been together!!! The pics below are of the lake and right after those are our BEAR! It's still amazing to us that we finally got to see a bear and I'm sure Dave is glad that I will no longer be skeptical that we will find one. I can't even believe I'm the one who spotted him, poor Dave thought I was seeing a rock at first but once it clicked how crazy I was going and shaking and then he spotted it, he knew that at least that craziness was warranted!

A deer right by the road and this pic was taken without using the zoom!

The one on the right is of Hallet Peak and Flattop Mountain

Chipmunk and one of a few duck families we saw around the lake.

Boys throwing rocks to scare the fishes and I hate spiders yet couldn't help taking its picture.

Carter and I waiting for Dave and Brendan to be done in the bathroom so we could drive on somewhere else. They had perfect timing or we may not have been able to see this cute black bear after our visit to the lake!

Here he is our beautiful first bear sighting in Rocky!

Below, these pictures are of the west side of the park and why Dave was the exhausted one the second night since he drove a lot that day. We were hoping to see one of our moose which live on the west side, we barely missed a baby according to some rangers we saw on the road. But that's okay since we've seen them before and got to see a BEAR! Okay, I am still very excited about that, can you tell?! ;) Sadly our visit to the west side brought us close to tears, okay maybe not Dave so much as me. As you can tell a LOT of the trees are brown and red as they have been taken over by the pine beetle and are killing a great number of pines very fast. According to the ranger talk/skit we went to the second night thankfully there is hope and the park will eventually become a more Aspen dominant park again drastically changing its landscape for our kids and grandkids! We just hope we are fortunate enough to have long lives and are able to see this beautiful change. The next pics are of Timber Creek Campground which has been shut down so that they can chop down all the affected trees and this was the most disheartening for us to see since it was by far the best campground in our opinion. This was the first place we brought Brendan to camp when he was 18 months old and also the place we chose to camp one night when we didn't have the kiddos almost two years ago.

These pictures below are of our trip in Sept. '07 when the boys spent a weekend with Nana and Papo. I put them up for you to compare what it looked like and how dense it was almost two years ago and help you see why we are so sad this is happening. We had the most southern spot in the campground and as you can see with the picture of Dave how far the walk was to our former white van and how dense this place really was! We will truly miss this campground!

So all in all even with some annoying whining from the boys on occasion especially the last morning, we all enjoyed ourselves greatly! Thank goodness we all love being outdoors!