A Little Retro

Way behind on personal things as always…

So, real quick:

March – a big highlight was going to Butterfly Pavilion.  And, Elizabeth ALMOST held Rosie (the tarantula)…heck, she got a lot closer than I did!

(see March’s Album)

April – Easter, of course, was the big event.  Elizabeth did awesome dyeing Easter Eggs, and hunting for them in our back yard.

(see April Album)

May – a long weekend in Estes Park/Rocky Mountain National Park was wonderful.  Two new awesome sightings on this visit – a Bobcat!!!  And, two owls in a tree.  We also saw a moose in the woods on the drive home.  Can’t complain about those sightings!  No picture of the bobcat, I was making sure he didn’t run our way as I was carrying Elizabeth at the time.  He was climbing down out of a tree after harassing some crows and their nest, and then he took off running zigzagging back and forth due to hikers on both ends of the trail.  He was BIG, too!  I’d guess 65+ pounds.  Didn’t know they got big.

(see May Album)

June – not a whole lot this month.  Elizabeth got a new used 3-in-1 bike (tricycle and big wheel in one).  So she is learning to pedal now.  She’ll be ready for a two-wheeler very soon.  She also has been asking for a dog.  Often.  We keep telling her all the work involved in taking care of a dog…so you’ll see a photo of her taking her dog, Roscoe, out for a walk to go potty before school.  She’s trying to show us how responsible she is!

(see June Album)

July – fun, fun, fun.  We took Elizabeth down to Colorado Springs for the 4th of July weekend.  We did the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and got to feed the giraffes and ride a tram.  We climbed the rocks at Garden of the Gods.  And, we went to the North Pole to visit Santa and ride all (and literally, almost ALL) of the amusement rides.  I didn’t remember these rides being so nauseating.  Oh, how things change as we get older.  She loved it.  Only once complaining how her belly hurt :0

(see July Album)

August – another great month.  I took Elizabeth to the Lookout Mountain Nature Center for a Toddler-Talk on Snakes.  She loved it!  If you look closely at the pictures, she’ll get really close to the “bag”, then she’ll be towards the back when she sees how big it is, and then she is back up front in a jiffy petting the big Bull Snake!

We spent an afternoon up in Boulder one day, hiking Pioneer Park and biking along the Boulder Creek Trail.  She is so fast on her Strider that we’ve been having to run to keep up with her.  It’s great, I’m finally getting exercise again!

We flew to Avalon, NJ to spend a long weekend with the Thomas family.  I thought I took a picture of our rental car…the Chevy Spark, called “Sparkplug” for how small it was.  Just one skinny row of seats bigger than the Smart Car.  I don’t think it should be legal for car rental companies to rent such things!  We couldn’t even put our stroller in the so-called “trunk” (barely a hatchback) because our umbrella stroller couldn’t fit across the width of the vehicle in the back.  Even Elizabeth kept asking why Mom Mom had such a funny little car (she didn’t understand ‘rental’).  She’d crack up that the car bounced so much from the bumps in the road that her thumb kept falling out of her mouth!  ha!  Needless to say it was great seeing my family for a night, and Andy’s at the beach.

We also got to take Elizabeth camping for the first time.  A friend was cancelling on a cabin at the KOA in Cripple Creek on Labor Day weekend and we took her reservation.  We were actually off for the three-day weekend, and didn’t plan ahead for camping.  So lucky.  We had been wanting to go tent-camping all summer…purchased new gear and had the tent up to air out and make sure we had all the parts.  Hopefully we’ll still go tent camping before the snow comes.  So Elizabeth’s firsts that weekend included:  camping in a cabin, sleeping in the top bunk of a bunk bed, campfire, smores, and jiffy pop.  She got a second ride on a steam locomotive.  She fell asleep during the ride, though, she was so tired.  But she was still happy.

(see August Album)

I keep hoping to be better and more timely with my posts.  But I’m just going to have to start accepting my new lifestyle soon!  Ha!