The Garden of the Gods,

The next place we visited was " The Garden of the Gods" This place is a bautiful public park located near Colorado Springs that is visited by locals and turists. This is a valley near the base of Pikes Peak known since the mid-19th century as the Garden of the Gods. It is a garden not of flowers, but of red rock. It has 20 rock formations, 8 miles of both paved and unpaved trails, free nature presentations at the visitor center and naturalist-led walks, picnic areas, scenic drives, horseback riding trails, road biking trails. It is a very family oriented place to visit with lots of things to do. But what we liked the most is that is FREE!

Following are a few of the pictures we took while walking the tails of this park. There are pave trails and hiking trails. Since it was raining some on and off, we only did pave trails. This is a unique and beautiful place to come, walk, observe nature and relax. The rocks are beautiful! We really liked this place.

The Manitou Springs Cliff Dwellings

We started our Colorado vacation driving to Colorado Springs from Denver. We enjoyed visiting The Manitou Spring Cliff Dwellings. Here we learned how the Anasazi Indians lived centuries ago. Today this group of people are know as "The Ancient ones". This preserve town was first open to the public in 1907 and represents some of the architecture of the Anasazi culture, Indians of the the Southwest during the great Pueblo period from 1100 to 1300 A.D.


Little after we arrived, it started raining so we visited the museum first. The museum was kind of neat because part of it is in the rock so the exhibits are in caves. Pretty cool! The exhibits where well presented.

Gordon enjoying the museum exhibits

Me, inside the museum next to a collection of pottery






When the rain stoped we visited the dwellings

Having fun inside the dwellings

There was information to read about each dwelling and each room

Gordon's netAward at GiEN

Gordon and Sean were honored with an award at this years GiEN(Global Internet Evangelist Networking) conference July 11, 2008. They were awarded, "For pioneering involvement in the application of technology and networking for Seventh-day Adventist mission, including the foundering and establishment of Three Angels' Global Networking, TAGnet." Sean was not present, but his award will be sent to his home in Texas. It was a surprise! Gordon or I had no idea this was going to happened. I am very proud of the him:-)

Recognition and award being presented to Gordon by Ray Dabrowski, communication director of the General Conference



Mr. Thomas and Violet Zapara, supporters and sponsors of TAGnet were also honored and given a netAward. "For visionary support and for empowering others to use technology for the mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church."

Here is a close up of the award. It is heavy, made out of real crystal. It reads the following;

Presented to

Sean Carney &
Gordon Harty

For pioneering involvement in the application of technology and networking for Seventh-day Adventist mission, including the establishment of Three Angels' Global Networking, TAGnet

July 2008
GiEN Forum
Denver, Colorado

Nova and Allan's Wedding

Our friend Allan got married this weekend. He and his now wife Nova dated for five years and engaged for a year just like Gordon and I. We have not met anyone else that dated as long as we did and was engaged for a year like we did until Allan and Nova. They and us understand how it can happened and it's worth the wait! They are such a sweet couple. They will live happily ever after:-)

Bride and groom

The unity candle

The kiss!

Listening to the songs for them

The happy newlyweds!

Nova and Allan and us at the reception

4th of July 2008

This 4th of July we decide to stay home and work in our backyard and our garage.

The garage took a week of cleaning, opening boxes, sorting, organizing and throwing things away.
But it wasn't until we put some straight three hours today that we got it to completion and our garage was ready to also fit our cars in.

Garage clean and organized. Nice and clear for cars to fit in.
Here is Gordon's car getting ready to come in.

Both cars are in!
This is a big deal.
I have not been able to park my car in the garage for over more than a year.

We also worked on our backyard today.
Our backyard has been dirt since we moved in. It was not until a month and a half ago that we put grass in. We have bought some decorative plants for our patio area three weeks ago but had not had time to plant them. We needed to plant them before we go on our two weeks trip to Colorado.

First we placed the plants where we wanted them

Gordon worked hard in the 100F hot weather planting the plants.
He also put in an irrigation dripping system that works with a timer that water the plants every day.

The plants look good


Our vegetable garden is doing great this year.
Plants are growing very fast.

Herbs are growing

Bean plants are flowering.
Look carefully to see the tiny little pink flowers



Squash is flowering


This is our first squash harvest this year!

Beautiful Flowers

Flowers from Matt and Hedie's yard. Can't believe Heidi just cut them and gave them to me.
They stayed nice and fresh all week. Thanks Heidi :-)

At La Jolla with Matt and Heidi

Went to La Jolla with Matt and Hedie. Ended up at a beautiful spot. Decided to hike down the cliff to the beach.

After going down this cliff was the beach

walking the beach a little

Going back up the cliff was a workout. Here is Heidi resting a little half way up.

Heidi, Matt and Gordon enjoying the sunset

There were lots of seals