Cowboy Country

It’s funny how Coloradans consider themselves “western.” I mean, I suppose if you were from Boston, they’d be pretty far to the west, but we had to travel 1100 miles east to get there. Just a thought. \par
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OK, now that that random thought is out of the way, perhaps a little summary of our Colorado trip would be in order.\par
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Overall, the trip was great! As I predicted, the boys had an absolute ball with all of the activities – almost too many activities to list! Even the adults had a\’c2\~splendid time, I know, in spite of the difficulties inherent in traveling half way across the country with two little kids and a 3 month old infant. We spent the first 3 days in Arvada, and then travelled to the mountains to stay at Grandpa Lew’s cabin (Grandma Phyllis also has one, so I have to specify which one I’m talking about!) for the remainder of the trip before returning to fly out of Denver.\par
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What did the boys get to do? It was a big week for vehicles – first a plane, then grandpa’s “spiffy van” with automatic doors, then the beloved ATV on which Grandpa Lew took them for many, many rides – with the boys squealing with delight the whole way. It wasn’t all outdoors, though. While we were in the Denver area for the first few days we went to a butterfly museum, Denver’s Natural History Museum, and out to eat at Casa Bonita, a fabulous restaurant with an actual waterfall in the middle of it and a stage where goofy skits and diving exhibitions are enacted all evening. It’s fabulous in terms of the decor and the entertainment, and the kid appeal is 100% – the food, however is rather atrocious. (You can’t have everything) The boys also went swimming, went on Grandpa’s lake on a paddleboat, went fishing, and actually caught 3 fish (the one that they threw back being the biggest one of all, of course). And I can’t neglect to mention the weiner and marshmallow roast we had at the cabin on the last night of our stay – on a particularly windy evening. It was the sort of weiner roast where you snarf down your hotdog as fast as you can as the wind blows your hair in your face and you try to keep it out of your mouth without getting ketchup and mustard all over your cheeks. Even those without long hair ate their dogs in record time! Also, Grandpa especially wanted me to mention how the sprinklers came on, just as he had started to light the fire and set up the card table for the event. It was lots of fun anyway, and we all enjoyed the hot dogs and especially the marshmallows.\par
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Although the kids enjoyment was a primary focus, we adults had a good time, as well. In addition to enjoying watching the boys have fun, I enjoyed my two swimming trips and we also enjoyed all of Phyllis’s good food – every meal she trotted out enough food to feed an army – and all of it good! In the evenings we played Mexican train, a dominoes game, a couple of times and we liked it so much we played it ourselves when we got home! We also had some good relaxation time, reading or visiting with my grandparents. When we spent an afternoon with some of Grandpa Lew’s friends at their ranch house in the mountains Michael and I were both amused to discover that seniors are just as avid in their match-making for their single friends as their counterparts in highschool\’c2\~- possibly even more so! Who would’ve thunk it?\par
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Spending so much time with Phyllis was especially good for me – it was enlightening, and sometimes surprising, to see life from the other end – from a time when your child-raising years are a distant memory rather than the entire forseeable future. I came home with a lot of food for thought, and some extra motivation to make this short child-rearing time really count – after all, it may seem like it’ll last forever, but apparently it doesn’t, and sooner or later it’s gone. Of course, I absolutely will make mistakes that I’ll regret in later years, and some of those I won’t realize until later, but I sure can think of some things that I do now that I know I’ll regret later, so I’ll work on those. It was also inspiring to hear her life’s story and see how life kept throwing her curve balls and she just kept playing.\’c2\~ Perspective is always a good thing to gain!\par
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Of course, a vacation would not be complete without it’s major or minor difficulties. Fortunately, all of ours were fairly minor, althought they didn’t necessarily seem so at the time. The number one worst time in Colorado was when Ezra woke up crying for me from his room at the top of the cabin. Michael went to check on him and came back with a wailing toddler with a majorly bloody nose. Aaahhh! Trying to get him to keep a kleenex on his nose and calm down wasn’t fun, and neither was trying to quietly clean up the blood spots on the carpet at 1:00 at night. If I’d gone to bed at decent hour instead of staying up too late reading, and if Monica hadn’t chosen that particular night to wake up numerous times (she slept well most of the rest of the trip), it wouldn’t have been quite such a big deal, but as it was, it was quite memorable. The airplane trip home also was rather unpleasant. We had 4 seats, but the plane had only 3 seats on each side, so one of us had to sit on the other side of the aisle. We didn’t want Judah chattering at strangers for the whole trip, and Ezra had to be in a window seat because of his safety seat, so that left just one place for an adult. Believe me, I would’ve been happy to let Michael sit between the two boys, but I also wasn’t real comfortable with the thought of trying to keep the baby quiet (i.e. nursing) next to two strangers, so, yes, I sat between the two boys all the way home. In retrospect, I should’ve traded Michael places once I saw that he was sitting next to two agreeable women, but I didn’t think to, until Monica was finally asleep (yes, she was fussy), and I didn’t want to get up and wake her. So there I was, trying to calm and quiet\’c2\~an unhappy baby and stay on top of two fidgety little boys for the entire trip, without even being able to see out of the window most of the time (my favorite part of flying)!\’c2\~Still, 2.5 hours of stress is much better than a 24 hour car trip, so I can’t complain. Too much.\par
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So that was it – the first major family vacation we’ve ever taken with children! It was challenging, and tiring, but generally enjoyable and very\’c2\~definitely worth it. I’m glad we made the trip, and I’m thankful to\’c2\~Grandpa Lew and Phyllis for being\’c2\~willing to invite our chaos into their lives for 6 days, feed us, entertain us, and ferry us around everywhere in their “spiffy car!”