But we just got back from the mountains of Colorado yesterday. Oh, yes. The heat made me almost forget. The mountains. So beautiful. So green. So shady. So cool. So NOT like Kansas! I remember now... it's all coming back to me...
DAY 1
We packed up the kids and just about everything else we could fit into the van and drove all day Sunday. Tanner was deeply troubled by our traveling on a Sunday, so he made sure we brought scriptures and Sunday-appropriate media, and we even brought enough food that we didn't have to stop at any restaurants. In the future we'll make more concentrated efforts to avoid traveling on a Sunday.
We arrived at our lovely little cabin (two bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, and a kitchen), unpacked our stuff, and took a walk around the lake. There was a cool breeze and we didn't even feel the urge to jump into the lake and drown ourselves because of the extreme heat. Because there was no extreme heat! :D
The kids all slept in one bedroom. There was a full-sized bed and I turned the bedding 90 degrees so the three oldest kids could all sleep in a row, and Hannah slept in her pack-n-play. It worked wonderfully. And Rob and I got the rest of the cabin to ourselves. Let me tell you, a cabin with two rooms and a kitchen is ever so much better than a little hotel room with two beds. And, rudely enough, I didn't take a picture of the kids in their bed. So let's move along.
DAY 2
On Monday we went to the North Pole. It had Santa's Workshop and Christmas music playing throughout the park, but mostly it was just an amusement park with lots of rides. It wasn't crowded and so we just rode and rode and rode all sorts of crazy rides until Tanner and I got nauseated. On the same ride. I don't know if it was the ride, or the time of day, but man, it was sickening. Kind of a sailboat thing that whizzes around in the air in big circles and you can move the sail left or right to make the boat swing out more and go all crazy. Halfway through the ride Tanner just let go of the sail and looked down at the floor while his face turned whiter and whiter. So he was ready to go home after that. Kevin and Amy had a blast.
Hannah got to ride sevral rides too, but I'm not sure she liked them overly much.
And it had the highest Ferris wheel in the world! So there!DAY 3
The next day we went to a dinosaur museum. Ever since visiting the Dino museum at Thanksgiving Point in Utah I've been disappointed in Dinosaur museums. This one was no exception. But we got a great family picture of a T-Rex about to eat us. I'd have to scan it to get it on here, so I'll just let you imagine its aweseomeness.
That evening we went to the Garden of the Gods.
We got a family picture at the Visitor's Center (which for some reason is very, very far away from the actual "Garden" but gives a lovely view for family pictures) and then drove to the head of the trail to the Garden of the Gods. This was the boys' favorite place on the whole vacation. And, ironically, it was one of the two free places we went to. Go figure. There were great places for kids to scramble around on the rocks. Tanner discovered that he absolutely loves rock climbing. Look at that boy!
And another family picture, because we're just so cute:
DAY 4
The next day was Zoo day. The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, the world's only zoo to claim to be the World's Only Zoo on the Side of a Mountain. Lots of steep walking. We were clever enough, however, to take the bus up to the top and then walk down. We enjoyed feeding the budgies, watching the hippos eat whole watermelons, seeing the monkeys swing on command; and Rob got a kick out of the naked mole rats. For me the most memorable part was the snack break where this little fellow came and begged:
Before we got involved in giving him his desired snackage, a zoo-keeper drove by and said "I hope you're not feeding that little guy. They can get pretty aggressive and they might bite." So instead of finding the chipmunk adorable and friendly, my kids chose to be terrified beyond all reason. Amy cried, and the boys stood up on the bench and shrieked while the chipmunk and their amused parents looked on in awe.That evening we went to the Cave of the Winds. I'm not sure about the "Winds" part, but it was certainly a cave. It was very tourist-friendly; we had to sign up for the easiest tour because of our sheer abundance of toddlers. Hannah enjoyed some of it:
but quickly became disenchanted with tons and tons of rock overhead. She wanted to be carried. She wanted to walk. No, she definitely wanted to be held. No, no, she wanted to be down. She wanted to cry. We had been told beforehand that if our children became obnoxious (actual word used) we'd be asked to leave, but we'd get our money back. I was hoping that we'd be asked to leave so we'd get our money back, but no such luck. I had to carry Hannah through the cave and try to keep her shrieks to a minimum. Tanner and Kevin were scared, and Amy was too. Rob, however, enjoyed it immensely, so it was worth it.DAY 5
We asked the kids what they wanted to do on our last day in Colorado. Of the ones capable of speech, the vote was unanimous: the Garden of the Gods! So we went again and did some real hiking and climbing and scrambling. It was jolly good fun! And free!
While we were waiting for Rob to take Amy way back to the trail head to go to the bathroom (because OF COURSE she wouldn't go when we had the opportunity) Hannah discovered her deep and abiding love for dirt. She and the boys were clambering around in a shady little clump of trees and Hannah just loved digging her little hands into the dirt and feeling it and throwing it and tasting it. I had to squeeze in and pull her out when she decided to lie down on her tummy and just start eating the mud like a puppy.Later that day we hiked up to a waterfall that was within walking distance of our cabin. It was cold outside. Seconds after we locked the front door it started to rain. There was surround-sound thunder ripping through the sky from horizon to horizon. It was muddy and the rocks got slippery and we got a little bit lost. Man, it was great! This was for Rob and me the absolute best part of our vacation. It was just a little waterfall with no public parking (hence the need to walk from our cabin) and we didn't encounter anybody our whole way up. It was too dangerous for Hannah to walk so I had to carry her and try to navigate my ofttimes clumsy self over the jagged, slick rocks. Scary! But it wasn't hot outside, and I loved it. Rob was happy to be hiking again. Not something to which Kansas really lends itself.
DAY 6The drive home.
Boo.
Other highlights from our trip:
Tanner lost a tooth! He decided he wanted money to buy something from Colorado, so he yanked it out as we were driving. Naturally the tooth got lost inside the seat, and no amount of searching yielded the tooth, but he got his dollar (after he reminded his mother the next morning that the Tooth Fairy forgot to come) and spent it on a spiky shell. Why they sell shells in Colorado I don't fully understand, but people buy them.
We got to eat in our cabin! I absolutely love eating out, so this isn't really a "highlight" for me, but we saved a grundle by being able to do our own food. And Hannah loved not having a high chair.
Man, it was a really, really awesome vacation. It was wonderful to get away from everything for almost a whole week and just be us, the Crazy Chases, with no demands or meetings or phone calls or schedules or appointments. No ulterior motives, no agendas. Just fun. And boy did we have fun.
Thanks for reading!
I'm done now.
