Durango!

Last weekend I finally made it to the South-East corner of the state to the Durango area. Steph's parents live down there, along with her brother Jeff and his family. There's a new kid in that family that Steph hadn't met yet so a trip was overdue. We took the new CR-V that we got Steph a couple weeks ago and drove the 6 1/2 hours across the mountains with Arlo and the kids all in tow. It was a nice weekend...the drive was stressful at times, as 6 1/2 hours in an enclosed space with little bundles of energy will inevitably be, but another fun adventure w/ the family.

So Steph's parents live off the grid down there...they have a bunch of land with some horses, and we saw deer and tons of jackrabbits running around the property. It's fairly isolated, but they have all of the nifty new stuff that makes it quite livable. A huge solar panel array on a pole charges batteries than run everything in the house...Kathy (Steph's mom) said they'd run out of power only 3 times in the years they've had the system in place. They have high-speed internet via satellite, cell phones work out there and it's really comfy actually. Steph said the house was improving dramatically every time she went down there...as of last weekend they had just installed beautiful hardwood flooring. Selected pics from the weekend-

Alpine Sliding at Purgatory

One of the more amusing discoveries of the weekend is that K1 LOVES cutting out weeds. There were sticker/pricker bushes (whatever you want to call them) all over the front of the house, so Steph bought him a trimmer and SpongeBob gloves and he spent HOURS hacking away at them. (The lack of clothing was his choice as well. Cooler that way. And I don't know what that is on his head here.)

Of course Photo Ops are necessary. Me and K2 on Gma's front porch:And finally, Gma Kathy w/ all the cousins: