Welcome to Denver, Colorado

We spent two weeks just north of Denver at the St Vrain State Park. It was a scenic spot right at the edge of a lake which is home to bald eagles, and snow-capped mountains in the distance....and then the mosquitos! My kids have never seen a mosquito before and let me tell you, ignorance really is bliss when it comes to these bugs, which my kids now call "skeetos".

Beautiful sunset from my kitchen window!

One of our very best friends lives near Denver. Her 3 yr old was due on the exact same day as Asher and Journey and her newest addition is now 7 months old. The kids haven't seen each other in nearly two years, but they seemed like they have always been together.

Watching a movie together

If you're wondering, yes we brought our bounce house on the road with us! 

Very few places have room to put it up, so we took it to their house to play! 

We all went to the Denver zoo together. I was extremely impressed with their bat exhibit. There had to be at least a hundred small bats and they were in a dark cave-like enclosure with one light so that you could watch thru the glass as they fluttered around and hung upside down. We had been pointing out bats to the kids lately, but they had never seen one that close before and were having a hard time understanding how they sleep upside down, so this was a perfect display for them to see.

Journey had kept saying that the elephant is what she was most looking forward to, so when we found out we could watch a training session with the elephant, I was pretty excited for her. We watched as they coaxed him to lift his feet so they could check him from a distance and finally into swimming.

Apparently it rains just a little bit almost every afternoon in the Denver area. While at the zoo, the rain came towards the end of our visit and actually felt great, however the kids were pretty upset about getting wet, not used to rain, living in Vegas. Fast forward a few days when the temp dropped and I told Asher we need to rush into the store to avoid the rain. He said "no hurry, Ashey loooove rain!" I just love him.

OK back to the zoo, so while everyone else was running for the exit, we continued our visit and I was surprised to see that the rain really stirred the animals up and we saw so much activity and interaction that we would have missed otherwise. Like these feisty zebras that we watched running around and wrestling each other for 10 minutes.

 Other favorites: The Paradise Tanager, "mangos" and a chameleon 

Oh and Asher liked the rainforest room so much that he said we should 

paint Daddy's truck like the rainforest. That would be a good surprise someday!

Of course we rode the carousel and Journey picked the zebra.

They had so much fun, that even after 7 hours we had to drag them out!