Swimsuits, Snow, and Denver Zoo

September

Larissa sent me these cute pictures of Theia and Hattie playing car wash - they washed Theia's crazy coupe car! :) What a good idea, right?! This was right before Matt and the kids headed to Minnesota. 

On Labor day, I did a big shopping trip to bolster my wardrobe with dress clothes. It was an incredibly smoky day in Colorado; there were several fires burning on the front range and it was so, so smoky. I spent the day shopping in Colorado Springs, Castle Rock, and even IKEA on the south side of Denver. Everything was hazy and tinged pink. It was kinda gross. Well, that night the weather was supposed to change pretty drastically, so when I got home from a full day of shopping, I spent a few minutes winterizing the house. Who knew I would be doing that?! Matt walked me through a few steps so the sprinklers wouldn't freeze, and I got it all done. Good thing because we probably got six inches of snow! It was a heavy, wet snow and broke a lot of branches around town. I even had the first fire of the season in the wood stove! Admittedly, it was nice and cozy to have a fire again. It seemed a bit of a quick change to go from hot and smoky to heavy and wet snow... typical Colorado weather! 

We have been having Matt's seasonal crew over for dinner about every other week this summer, and this was the last dinner together before Dave (second from the right) took a different job and moved. It has been nice to get to know Matt's team this year. Jordan (far right) has been living with us during the week since June since he lives in Pagosa Springs now. He's easy to have around and it works out just fine since all of our kids sleep downstairs in Hattie's room during the summer. It's too hot upstairs! Jordan persevered and slept upstairs in Charlie's room all summer - what a good sport. Brandon (next to Matt) will be around quite a bit longer since he is a grad student at Western and will still be working part time and taking classes at the same time. I think it was a successful and easy summer for Matt with this crew of self-starter and capable guys. 

Strangely, the MVCKS open house had to be rescheduled due to snow (!) in September. So crazy! It worked out well for us personally since the kids would have missed it due to being in Minnesota. This way, we got to attend! Due to COVID, it was a really neat farmer's market-style open house where each teacher had student work displayed outside the classrooms as well as a table with other information and goodies for the kids. The school was split into three groups according to last names, and because the last half of the alphabet is released the latest (3:30 for the first third, 3:40 for the second, and 3:50 for the last third of the alphabet according to last names), we got to stay and do the open house first. I really liked the style of the open house and hope they keep it like this in future years! Each classroom still had a little scavenger hunt/check list of things to do during the open house; find student work, show parents the classroom wish list, get a goodie bag, etc. We spent about 10 minutes at each classroom, preschool included, and we didn't have to fight crowds of people! 

Getting teeth cleaned at the dentist for everybody, myself included!

Playtime at the park! Matt brought the kids down to the park so we could eat a picnic lunch together one Friday while I was working. 

We have had a gift certificate to Pizza Madness for several months, and we finally used it one weekend night. It was a special treat! We walked downtown for a bit after we ate and found this cute Royal Gorge window painting. I think it's supposed to be an instragramable, picture-worthy spot to advertise downtown Canon. It worked - I took a picture of the kids!

On Sunday, the 27th, Matt arranged for us to go to the Denver Zoo with one of his coworkers who is a big donor to the zoo. Carol Dawson met us there and got us a behind-the-scenes tour of predator alley. We saw the lions from about five feet away! A few zoo employees gave us the tour and told us a lot of interesting facts about the animals. We saw lions, African wild dogs, and hyenas up close and pretty personal. It was so cool! Charlie said, "I'm going to remember this forever." He's probably right with his memory! :) Carol even got us tickets to the sting ray touch pool and coupons for cups of sting ray food. We spent probably 6 hours at the zoo, which was impressive considering it was a chilly 45ish degrees that day! COVID has forced the zoo to do a timed entry to avoid big crowds and it was delightfully quiet at the zoo while we were there. The whole zoo was also one-way traffic so the paths were labeled with arrows pointing you where to go next. (IKEA style!! ;) We were able to see whatever we wanted and didn't have to stand behind people and peer between heads. We watched the sea lions for a while and reminisced about seeing sea lions along the Oregon coast. We even caught two of the elephants crossing a big bridge from one area of their exhibit to another. We brought lunch and picnicked during a rare moment when the sun peeked out. Carol hung out with us for maybe the first hourish of our time at the zoo before she headed out. It was a really, really nice family outing. 

Oh! Along the way, we looked for Lego sculptures. Carol's name was on one so we had to find that one, but we found several other really neat sculptures. They were all labeled with the number of Legos used to construct the animal. Whoa!