Colorado Vacation
Hi Everyone!
Just back from a couple weeks in Colorado...it was glorious.
Don't know how I got so lucky, but the kids did really well both ways on our 8-ish hour road trip. I was by myself (my husband stayed behind to work), and wasn't sure how it was going to go. Going we left really early with the kids straight from the bed to the car seat. We stopped at the border for a diaper change and to get dressed.
The way we went was NM, into CO, into UT and then back into CO. In Utah near Moab is Wilson Arch, where we stopped and did a little hike. We also stopped at Milt's in Moab for lunch and milkshakes.
Grammy has a big, beautiful garden and the kids helped lots of mornings, with watering, weeding, shoveling compost into a bucket, etc.
One afternoon, Grammy made them chocolate pudding to eat and finger paint on the counter with, after which they went straight to tubs of water in the backyard. :)
The kids have been doing faces lately, like "funny face:"
And "moose face" with moose horns:
And this:
My dad and I took the dogs on hikes after dinner a number of times:
Lots of mornings we went out at about, occasionally ending with naps beginning in the car seats on the way home:
The weather was a bit unpredictable, really warm at the beginning and end, cold and windy and rainy in the middle. The kids got little gifts most every day, and the day when their gift was sand toys we did a picnic at the river. Windy, windy, windy, but we made the best of it:
Lots of afternoons out on the lawn:
One day, we went down to the train station to see the once-a-day passenger train arrive and depart...what a thrill for the kids...the world is such a cool and exciting place when you're two...
And one Saturday we went with Papa to the kite festival. Of course it was the one day all trip with no wind, but we had fun eating ice cream and there was a fire truck and a great playground:
With the kids in the garden, and me on the lawn:
Mother's Day weekend my brother Ben came over. He flew loop-de-loop balsa-wood model airplanes with the kids (he threw them, they pounced on them when they landed and brought them back for him to throw again), and Saturday night we had a campfire and smores, which the kids, needless to say, loved:
One morning, we went to the co-op in Fruita to look at the baby chicks. There were baby ducks and geese too:
Another day, the Botanical Gardens, including the butterfly room, and outside where there was this really cool life-sized bear sculpture:
We buried our dog Dexter's ashes, too, in a garden that my mom has for my brother Luke who died. The kids helped, and it was nice...it feels right for Dexter to be with Luke...
I took the first week off, worked the second just a few hours a day while my mom and dad watched the kids. One day, they made chocolate chip cookies from scratch:
One of our last mornings there we went a farm that a friend of my mom's owns...so fun to see all the animals...and she gave us eggs for lunch warm from the nest:
And the firehouse, which my dad arranged...the firemen could not have been nicer. (We brought them the homemade chocolate chip cookies, too...it's so good for the kids to give to others...)
And the kids had so much fun in the driveway in the "racecar" (as they call it) that belongs to their Papa:
And the cows across the street...every day the cows...
We did other things too (my mom worked hard to plan the funnest trip ever), like an evening out to watch acrobats me and my mom, my dad babysitting and introducing the kids to Winnie the Pooh ("Pooh likes honey," Luke told me yesterday as I was making him peanut butter and honey for lunch); twice to the library for story time; Enstrom's candy factory for ice cream (Zo chose raspberry, Luke Toffee Lovers) and we watched them making toffee, it was so cool; making pinecone-and-peanut-butter-and-birdseed bird feeders, a bunny out the window, making collages with flour-and-water paste; lots of reading of library books and playing with Grammy's teddies; a trip to my favorite kids used clothing store where my mom watched the kids while I got to pick out an outfit for each of them; meeting friends at the park a couple times and out to dinner with my best friend in town; playing the piano (and Luke put up blank pieces of paper as his sheet music...too cute); card games with my parents; Season 6 of Mad Men with my dad; Facetime with Daddy (I always miss my husband from the first day when I travel without him).
My parents made us feel so welcome and set everything up to be so comfortable. Two weeks flew by.
Can't wait to do it again!
XOXO
