We went to Denver!

We finally made it to Denver to visit my sister and her family! Jared and the kids hadn't been there for about 5 years and we'd wanted to go for so long. We drove, which is always difficult but it ended up not being too terrible. We had a great time and since they only have one sweet little one year old girl, we completely took over and messed up their nice, clean house. We did a lot of relaxing, wrestling with Eric (mostly just the kids did that), and playing around the house. Hannah is taking piano lessons (which I think is so cool) and she played her little beginner piano songs while Lily danced and twirled around.Here are Lily and Cate in the bath. She's such a sweet little girl, we love her. We went to Belleview Park, it has a nice little stream to play in, a tiny train, fun stuff like that. We had a good, relaxing time. One thing we knew we wanted to do was go to the Denver Zoo. Lily loves her little stuffed Okapi so much. We saw a picture of a baby Okapi in a book from the library and it said it was at the Denver Zoo, so Lily was excited about it for a long time. We got there and the baby has grown up, but she loved it anyway. (Side note in case you don't know, an Okapi is an animal from the jungles of Africa that has stripes on it's haunches like a zebra, but a long neck and tongue like a giraffe.) Annie and Cate rode in the stroller together. Cate liked Annie, it was sweet.We went on a hike at nearby Roxborough State Park which is absolutely beautiful. We didn't get there until late, after a delicious pizza dinner, so it was just a quick evening walk. We saw tons of deer, including bucks and fawns, which are almost domesticated. We saw bats, foxes, an owl almost flew in the truck window while driving, and Jared caught a toad. Here are the kids, with Lily acting girly for the camera, she wasn't actually scared. We went to a water fountain park. We had a great time. We kept planning stuff but then cancelling it due to babies sleeping and we were all just too tired. We had a great time anyway.

One thing I really wanted to do was a mine tour. On our way home we stopped at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. It's a little mining town place at the top of a mountain. You get to ride a gondola to the top, then once you're up there there's all kinds of fun stuff to do. Jack was a little spooked on the gondola. Here is Jared and Jack playing one of those shooting games with really creepy animatronic miners. We rode this awesome mountain roller coaster/ slide thing. It was fun and a little scary but Lily loved it. Normally she'd be really scared of that kind of thing, it was great. I can't wait until she's older and a little more brave so we can do stuff like this all the time. Bad news was that by the time the cave tour (it wasn't a mine, it was a cave, cool enough) was set to start, Annie was freaking out. She's normally such a dream baby that it was kind of a big deal for her to be crying so hard. We ended up having to get a refund and we were all pretty disappointed. Oh well, it was a long week.

The best part was just being able to spend time with the family, we love them and miss them so much. We loved it and can't wait to go again.