kickin' back

despite all the running around and seeing and doing, we're also doing a bit of lounging as well. fluffy beds with soft sheets and lots of pillows make for good cartoon watching. the baby in the zipper pajamas, mountain of pillows and little crossed feet was just too much. i had to grab the camera.

denver nature and science museum

day two of living the city life took us to the Denver Nature and Science Museum, which is right next door to the zoo and a short, easy drive from the hotel. the girls love all things dinosaur related, so the fact that there is a life size t.rex skeleton meant that we really needed to go check it out ourselves! it's a pretty great museum in general and there were alot of neat exhibits to see, including a space exhibit that would make Pop Pop very proud ;)

aside from the awesome Discovery Room (anyone want to dig for fossils and learn how animals walk by demonstrating it on stage?), the biggest hits were either the massive dinosaur skeletons or the various animal displays. unfortunately by the time we had hung out in the Discovery Room and were ready to explore some more, the entire museum was packed with school kids. i think i'd recommend not taking small children to this museum during the school week as it was just too crowded and chaotic to really enjoy and navigate. we briefly checked out the space exhibit before heading out of the chaos and back to the hotel for a well-deserved nap. overall it was still great and the girls enjoyed themselves, but next time i think we'll save our visit for a quite saturday morning instead!

on a related note, asami and dave have done the smart thing and actually purchased memberships to the zoo, museum, and the butterfly pavillion. i say smart because not only does it make great economic sense (entrance gets pricey for a family, even once) but it also lets them visit as much as they want, without the pressure of feeling like they need to see every last corner of the place to get their money's worth. because they can, asami takes the kids to these places once a week or so and they stay as little or as long as they like. a very great bonus (especially for us!) is that they get free guest passes too, and have generously shared them with us on this trip. we are so very grateful... thanks guys :)

city mice

since sleeping in a hotel room with two little ones entails lots of lights out time in the early evening (i.e. when they're crashed out but we're not), i thought i'd take advantage of the quiet to do a little blog updating. this is the first time i've actually been on the computer since we left (gasp!) and have enjoyed the brief hiatus. i cruised through an amazing book i'd been meaning to read and have really loved hanging out in near silence while the girls sleep and phil is working or attending conference stuff. but i figure the grandparents are going into blog withdrawal by this point and we have been awfully busy doing fun things, so a blog post was somewhat overdue.

we've spent the last two days being city mice, enjoying all the pleasures that this metropolis has to offer. we're also lucky enough to have some good friends here in town and have had a great time hanging out with them as well. skyler and isa have known each other since the womb and we miss having them in lander, so it's been really great to be able to hang out with them here in their (relatively) new hometown!

yesterday we went to the zoo, which we've been meaning to do for years now. it's usually either too wintery or 100 degrees when we're around and it's just never happened. so the zoo was first on our list this trip. it certainly did not disappoint either! we all had a great time, despite the somewhat cold, rainy weather and two very tired children from the previous day's travel. even with all those things, it was still worthwhile and we all loved it. isa insists that her favorite animals were the "mean girl monkeys with long white hair" and sylvi loved the pigmy marmosets (aka: da wittlest baby monkeys). to no one's surprise, mommy loved the giraffes and could have spent all day watching them-- there was even a new baby to see as well! double bonus.

so that was day one in the big city. more on day two coming soon...

trip prep

it's snowing this morning, which is pretty odd considering how amazingly warm it's been for the last few days. so we're hanging out, looking out the window and hoping it goes away quickly. isa and sylvi are determined to go out and play... but me? i could be fine right here with my cup of coffee and my slippers! but there is packing to be done, including cleaning out the car and all those other pre-roadtrip tasks. judging by the amount of crushed goldfish and string cheese wrappers strewn about the van... we have alot to do.

so the trip prep is underway in earnest, and we're all itching to get going. isa has been pouring over a map of constellations and seems to have a freakish ability to identify and locate them on the summer and winter night sky pages (nerd alert!). sylvi keeps putting her hiking shoes in the duffle bag with all their clothes, just so we don't accidentally leave them behind. phil has been finding and organizing all the gear that got dumped in the garage when we moved-- no small task. as for me, i think i've been actively packing for about a week now... two kids for two weeks, including a week in the backcountry and a week in the city, makes for alot of crap to pack!

speaking of cities, we have some fun stuff planned for the (almost) week in denver too, including a trip to the Denver Zoo and the Nature and Science Museum. we're also stopping in Glenwood Springs on the way west to soak in the hot springs and check out the caves. assuming all goes as planned, we're going to head up through Salt Lake on the way back and enjoy some more big city living there for a night or two.

ahhh, vacation.

ballet 102

yesterday was parent's day at ballet and we were so excited to watch isa and her class! we've missed a few clases lately due to illness and what not, but i was really surprised at how well all of the kiddos did. it's pretty amazing to see how much they've learned since this time last year. last april, it was like watching Mrs. Tricia try to herd cats but now they seem really know what is going on and follow her directions really well! they are learning their positions too and can answer what comes next in their routine at a given time. pretty impressive and really, really cute! isa is still infatuated with seeing herself in the mirror and we cracked up more than once as she became entranced looking at herself and making her "serious ballerina" face as she danced by. priceless.

spring field trip

 

we're supposed to hit 60 degrees here today *gasp* and we decided to celebrate with a little morning field trip to the local nursery. the idea of roaming around the greenhouses hadn't occured to me recently, so we were glad rene thought of it and invited us along. the kids had a blast checking out all the little baby plants, watching them be transferred from one tray to the next, playing hide and seek, and so on. when the sun came out in full force, we had to either shed some layers of get out of the greenhouses. three cheers for warm sun and heat that didn't come from a wood stove!

p.s. blogger is changing things around (again) and i am not a fan, so far! so my apologies in advance if the pictures aren't coming up very clear or not at all. why fix what's not broken, blogger?

on swimming (or not)...

we decided to go for a session of "school year" swim lessons to mix things up about, and to give us a good reason to get out of the house at this point in the winter/spring. we normally do several sessions in the summer, but wanted to give it a try without the usual summer pool craziness. i have to say, the results have been mixed at best. partly because it's still cold/flu season around here (i.e. lots of missed lessons and who knows what kind of germs floating around that pool) and also because it's a different teacher and dynamic compared to summer. good thing it's so cheap, so we don't feel like we're eating too much cash if we miss a week or if a certain two year old refuses to go near the water.

not surprisingly, isa has been gung-ho since day one and is really improving on her swimming skills. she can swim the length of the hot tub on her own and can swim the same distance in the big pool solo too. it should be a fun summer for her as she gets better and better swimming on her own.

sylvi hasn't enjoyed the same enthusiasm, which was a pretty big surprise after how much she enjoyed her last (big kid) session over the summer. we're not sure if it's the class size or the teacher or what, but she wants nothing to do with it! my hunch is that she isn't too keen on this teacher, who can be pretty gruff and not exactly gentle when it comes to getting reluctant kids into the pool. ok, it's no longer really a hunch as sylvi said very emphatically today, "i really don't like that lady!" as we left the pool. but despite the effort and the drama, we are still insisting that she suit up and atleast try, even if it ends in the now predictable shower of tears. and truth be told, mommy is pretty glad that wednesday is the last day of swimming til summer rolls around!