Friday, October 16, 2009

Our Stay-cation

This week our family enjoyed our very own "Stay-cation." It was perfect because we've only been here a year, and were able to visit some of the local museums and beauties. Karl had taken a week off work for us to go south to Texas for his Texas momma's birthday, but at the last minute we decided not to, because no one in our family has been feeling tip top the last few weeks, and with the whole swine flu thing going around, we figured we'd be better off not compromising our immune systems any further than they already were.
So, Sunday night Karl and I sat down with our lap tops and searched for "things to do in Denver" and chose our favorite options. We decided on the Butterfly Pavilion, which is a year round exhibit that features hundreds of butterflies from around the world, for Monday. On Tuesday we went to North Pole, CO and visited Santa at his house, and rode all the rides (which were of the round and round fair kind). When we got there, we were the fourth car in the lot, and when we left hours later, there were still only twelve cars there, so needless to say, we had a great day walking onto rides. On Wednesday, we visited the Museum of Nature and Science, which is SUPER cool. They have a really neat space exhibit where the boys launched metal ball bearings into sand to make craters, and then were able to watch it backwards and forwards in slow motion. They also played with "mars" sand, watched the shuttle launch on a huge screen, created their own stars and watched their birth, life and death, watched an experiment on vacuums and so much more. And that's just a section of the first of three floors of this museum! We had a great time there. On Thursday we kind of took the day off, we went into Denver though to check out some craigslist items, and then went home. Today, we took family photos, none of which I'm really happy about, but they're alright. We traveled up through Sedalia, around Morrison and the Red Rocks area, through the mountains about and exited through Indian Hills. Then we went to this cool corn maze, which in all honesty sounds like much more fun than it is, at least with my aged children, and an already full week of fun things, but all in all we had a great week. Tomorrow we might try some redo's on the family pics, but tomorrow night Karl's taking me to see Wicked, so that should be pretty awesome. I assume I'll be blogging a bit more now that it's not summer. Summer was great, the weather was wonderful and we were able to travel a bit. It was really awesome experiencing the transition between summer and fall. One day I had zucchini's, tomatoes and sunflowers growing in my yard, and within days they'd frozen and died. We went from green, green, green, to various shades of gold, red, and bronze almost overnight, and right on cue! We love it here!

My little pupas











Violet was attempting to say "cheese" in this one


Happiness is obviously linked to chocolate chip cookies




I think I like this one the best, but the lighting isn't really good in any of them



I like this one too, except for Violet not looking in the right direction




The little boogers. Violet wouldn't stay, and They couldn't all make nice faces at the same time













These are the corn maze pics





This is the cutest little old school house I have EVER seen!

4 comments:

Holly & Matt said...

I love all the family pictures! All the babies are so grown up. The boys are so handsome and Violet is such a beauty. She's a little ham for the camera too! You and Karl look great of course too. Miss and love you all!!!

joelandbecca said...

I love the family pictures! Those are all so fun....and that corn maze looks pretty cool, even if it wasn't super advenurous, it is a great back drop. Staycations can be so fun. It is amazing the stuff we often have around us that we take for granted.

Someone was talking to me the other day about Colorado and I said you were there (well, I said my cousin)...is it weird that I know nothing about the state!? Even after living next to it for years and driving through it a few times!

Sorry that was a crazy long comment

Rachel Wattson said...

cute pics. I see what you are saying about the lighting though. The pictures you took on the rock with the kids would be a good spot to try for better lighting or going later in the day for the fence shot. Good luck on round two:)

Holly & Matt said...

When I first posted my comment I hadn't finished reading your post. But I did now- what a fun week! I bet the kids were in heaven doing all those fun things. Also, I really do love the family pictures. I read that you weren't very happy with them, but honestly, I loved them all. I like the one with everyone's hands on their hips and that even Violet is doing it. So cute! I hope you had fun seeing WICKED! I'm sure you did. Also, I HAVE to tell you all about how James loves his Aunt Ivy blanket. It's literally his favorite thing in the world. Ok longest comment ever..