To the mountains of Colorado

From St. George we drove in a caravan with my mom through the beautiful deserts of Utah and the gorgeous mountains of Colorado to my brother Nate's home. He lives up in the mountains where we often joke that the only way to reach him is through old fashion smoke signals. He lives across the street from a healthy river with a spectacular view of Scraggy Mountain.

Ol' Scraggy

He and his girlfriend live in a small home with so much resourcefulness built into it that we marvelled at both their ingenuity and simplicity. They have three huge labs that entertained the girls all day.

Their uncle Nate is a little different compared to what they are used to. They loved him after about 5 minutes of checking him out from the safety of the inside our van. He provided all sorts of new experiences, and was their wrestling and rough house punching bag for hours on end. His girlfriend Kim is an incredible chef! We ate like royalty breakfast, lunch and dinner! She can make a masterpiece out of nothing...seriously, a culinary artist. None of us had met her before and we all loved her on our first encounter. She is hard-working, industrious, artistic in the kitchen and on canvas, natural, and wonderfully content with what she has.

The front yard. Nate brought out his BB guns, set up some cans and everyone practiced their shot. My mom's brother Brett Garn and his wife Cindy showed up on this particular afternoon. They were in Colorado touring around and heard we were there. What a fun surprise.

Kim had several hummingbird feeders that were always well-attended. Tennie was hoping one would land on her finger...they got pretty close!

We went to the only little cafe in the nearest town of Deckers, Colorado.

My brother is loved by everyone on the mountain. A large picture of him hangs in the little general store...a funny Christmas card picture from a few years ago.

He just finished this beautiful water feature in Deckers. This is where his artistic genius shines!

Nate took Tennie on a uni-loader ride...she loved the wheelie!

Nate bought the girls a helicopter that shoots up 100 feet. None of us were quite strong enough to get it to go so whenever someone gave it a try the rest of us went running to avoid injury.

The hill next to Nate's house had beautiful views of the river and valley. Here are Geoff and Tennie on a little explore.

Nate loaded us and some tubes in the truck. The girls loved the lawlessness of riding in the back...

We choose a calm stretch of the river, and it was pretty fun after our feet and rear ends were numb...

The highlight was the spontaneous decision Nate and Kim made to get married while we were there. In 24 hours they pulled together a beautiful, front yard wedding with lanterns and candles and wild flowers. They had a generous amount of food, and a large gathering of mountain friends and family to celebrate with them. A pastor named Spike married them. Adele and Ceci were the flower girls (with some leftover flowers after their march, Ceci simply dumped the basket at their feet) and Tennie held the rings. It was a casual, spirited and memorable event.


We loved getting a peek into their happy lives in the mountains. And they might be sorry they ever entertained us so well...we'll be back as often as possible!