Pancakes, Parades and Pikes Peak

We had a very eventful 4th of July this year, full of excitement and fun!

The day started out with a church pancake breakfast. The Sunday School was in charge of the breakfast this year, and since Gerald currently serves as the Sunday School president, he played a big part in planning and organizing the event. It was a huge hit, I think, and I thought Gerald looked great behind that griddle. :)

The breakfast was held at Civic Green Park, and the kiddos has a blast playing on the park and wading in the stream.

The parade went by a few minutes after our breakfast was finished, and we ran to watch the parade. I still need to write about my mom's visit here, but this was the last day of her week-long visit to us here in Denver. We had so much fun with her! Here she is enjoying the parade with Katelee.

Oh, and I have to show you the 4th of July hairdo Katelee sported. Can you tell it's a star? LOVED it!

After the parade, we headed for Pikes Peak. We had chosen to ride the cog railroad to the top of Pikes Peak as part of our fun day! Pikes Peak is a 14110 foot tall peak about an hour south of Denver - it's the tallest eastern-most mountain in the U.S. ;) If you know me well at all, you know I'm terrified of heights, so this was well out of my comfort zone. But I faced my fears and it was well worth it!

Gerald and Katelee on the train, before we left the station.

Mom and I. These four seats were facing each other, which I thought was really fun!

Katelee was excited about the train ride up the mountain!

Watching out the window as we got going . . .

This is a cog-railway, so it pulls us up the mountain like a huge gear. Like a rollercoaster.

It was a beautiful day and the scenery was stunning.

This is NOT the view from the top, just one of the many gorgeous views as we were climbing. Can you see how slanted the horizon looks? That's how steep we were climbing at that moment. It was even a steeper slant at other times. Yeah, that kinda freaked me out. :)

Made it to the top!

The views from the top were breathtaking. We could see five states: Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

Fun fact: It was a trip to Pike's Peak that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write the words to America the Beautiful. In fact, it was originally published as a poem called Pikes Peak. We thought that was a fun thing to learn about on the 4th of July! ;)

After our fun trip mountain trip, we grabbed a pizza and returned to Civic Green Park where we enjoyed a live band performance. Gerald and Katelee even joined in the crowd of dancers - Katelee was having a FABULOUS time!

Before we knew it, it was getting dark and time for the fireworks to start. We had good seats only a block from the site where they were setting them off.

We had to get a picture of the girls in their red shirts.

The fireworks were fun - here is Katelee enjoying the show.

And then it was home to crash.

What a fun 4th of July!