Colorado Vacation Part 1

With Big Boy's accident, needless to say, we had a rough start to our trip. We were all exhausted but we arrived in Colorado during the early evening so we were able to go to a popular pizza place and then head up to the cabin. When we go to Colorado we stay in my family's cabin in Green Mountain Falls, right outside of Colorado Springs. It is a beautiful little mountain community that I have gone to pretty much every summer since I was a baby, my dad's family has owned it since the 50s.

Our first morning we walked down to breakfast at The Little Pantry. It's the only restaurant left in Green Mountain Falls and not much has changed about it since I first went there when I was about 9 months old. Our vacation is full of tradition- I love to do all the things with my kids that I did when I was little. A scenic walk down to breakfast was always a great way to start the morning.


Big Boy is always game for a giant pancake, especially one with whipped cream. Guess how easy it was to clean a cup of syrup out of his cuts??? Sissy, my little weinie eater, had cereal this day. What's wrong with that child? It wasn't our last breakfast trip, though, and she did indulge in our of their giant cinnamon roles as well.


Right by the breakfast place is a pond and a gazebo and a wonderful playground. The scenery always takes my breathe away.




There she is! Home Sweet Home aka The Sleepy Seven (named for my grandparents and their 5 kids) aka The Cabin


After breakfast we took a LONG hike up to the falls, in the mountains behind the cabin. Now, it was beautiful, and interesting, and scenic, and all that. But with a 4 yo and 2 yo, it was slow moving. I was pretty slow myself! It was quite a workout. We only made it to the first falls, which were small but the kids enjoyed it. I did too but I was constantly keeping an eye out for a mountain lion wanting to eat my little ones.





Later that day we headed to Woodland Park, another larger beautiful mountain town just 5 minutes up the road. Pat and I are obsessed with it, we would love to live there. Everything about it is so...Colorado. They have all the modern conviences and yet they have strict building codes so everything is authentic. The McDonalds, the Sonic- they don't look like fast food. They look like cabins.
We hit a fun park there, the kids had a great time exploring and it was really amazing. It was really cool wood play with all sorts of peaks, towers, and other stuff. In an effort to keep it low key the first day we took the kids to Shrek and had a great time.







The next day we headed to Buckskin Joe's, an authentic Colorado Frontier Town. It is an amusement park of sorts, but all of the buildings are authentic buildings from the early to mid 1800s. The buildings had all been taken down piece by piece and put back together in this location. It was a pretty fun place. There is a lot of history behind it. In the mid 1900s it was used not as a theme park but as a set for Hollywood movies. Many movies and commercials were shot there, including some John Wayne films.






Update on Big Boy: This was Day 3 of injury. It definitely slowed him down, I could tell he was in pain. We had to keep him on almost constant pain medication or he would get really cranky. At this point the bruising got really bad- small bruises appeared all over his body. Even on weird places like his fingertips! The injured side of his face became very yellowish- it made him look a little deformed, it just wasn't right.


This is the "mayor" of BJ's. Here, he happened to be in his barn eating. However, he has no restraints and just walks freely throughout the town. We saw him everywhere. We were also warned that he will walk up to anyone and try to find candy in pockets or purses.




Unfortunately on this trip both the kids discovered guns, what they looked like and what to do with them.


BJs is located right next to the Royal Gorge so we took the train out there to get a good view. You can't see it very well, but above it is the highest suspension bridge over water in the world. As a kid we would whitewater raft around the canyon.


On the train:



The train was a little rickety and freaky but the view was amazing.









The next day we hit the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, one of our fave places! It is one of two mountain zoos in the country and it is breathtaking. It has over 800 animals including more than 30 endangered species. It is known for the natural environments it creates for the animals and it has the largest captive giraffe herd in the world.

And the giraffe exhibit is exquisite. You get so close to those giraffes! You can feed them, pet them, kiss them- whatever!









The kids got to pet a baby wallaby. It's parents actually roam free in a large section of the zoo.






The kids couldn't get enough of the friendly chipmunks. They would even let you touch them.


Pony rides! I was disappointed when booking things for our trip that the kids were considered too young for real horseback riding. We settled for this, but the kids had a blast.










Both kids got to pick treats from the gift shop. Big Boy picked out a 5 foot long snake, which I don't have a picture of. Sissy picked out a replica of the zoo's newest exhibit- the NAKED MOLE RAT. In person, these things were adorable. We watched them for forever, they are the neatest animals to watch. (sorry, none of my pics turned out) Sissy fell in love and picked a sparkly pink gifaffe necklace and a little naked mole rat toy, which she named Molly.




Back at the cabin at the park, Molly in hand.



More to come!

Big Boy's accident

Memorial Day weekend my dad's side of the family was having a family reunion in Western KS at my dad's farm and we decided to go by on our way to vacation in Colorado. I should preface this entire story with a little background, but not too much because it is all very personal.

I have been estranged from my dad for a couple of years now. And I thought long and hard about using the word estranged, because it seemed so harsh and dramatic to me. I looked it up in the dictionary and found the definition.
estrange: to make hostile, unsympathetic, or indifferent; alienate. To remove from an accustomed set of associations. Verb refers to a disruption of a bond of love, friendship, or loyalty. Two persons whose harmonious relationship has been replaced by hostility or indifference.

And yes, that is our relationship in a nutshell. I see my dad occasionally but have not seen his family since all of this began about 5 years ago when my parents divorced after 30 years of marriage. So a family reunion around people I hadn't seen in years and a visit to my father I had to share with them was not something I was looking forward to. Needless to say I was on edge, as I had been for weeks about it, and not feeling so great. So there is a lot of emotion behind this day and this post, just so you are warned...

The afternoon began well. That side of our family have been a part of my life since I was born so I know them all very well and it was nice to see them. We have several four-wheelers at the farm (pictured below) and I spent several hours taking my kids out on it riding around.


After dinner Pat and I were going to take Big Boy out together. Sissy wanted to ride with some of her cousins on the Gator so I walked accross the grass to get her situated while Pat and T got on. I was sitting Sissy down when I heard my sister SCREAM my name, and it was filled with terror. I turned around and saw the four-wheeler several feet from where I had left it and my child wrapped up, feet not touching the ground, in a barbed wire fence.

Things get really blurry here. I obviously ran as fast as I could to him and by that time Pat had reached him. I'm pretty sure I yanked him out of Pat's arms and I could see the blood, which seemed everywhere. His shirt was ripped in several places. I sat down right there on the ground and held him while we both cried. I have never heard T cry like that. I felt like I was having a heart attack, or something worse. I could not breathe. I'm not sure how I sat there before someone had us walk inside the cabin.

When we got inside the cabin we were able to look at T more closely. He looked awful to me. His nose was bleeding and there just seemed to be blood all over his face. As we look back, it was not actually blood all over his face- it did not wash off. It was just the raw, scratched skin. He had several bad barbs- the worst being on his hand and back of his head. The one on his hand was ripped open- you could see the inside of it. I was BEYOND hysterical at this point. I was screaming at everything, I was so mad I had let him ride that vehicle. I was so mad that I wasn't on it with him.

Well two of my aunts are nurses so luckily they were there to look at the wounds. It was agreed that he could probably use some stitches, however they thought that it would be more traumatic for him to get the stitches than for us to watch the cuts and see how it went. After we decided there were no internal injuries or anything life threatening, I got more of the story. I had not even noticed in all the craziness that Pat was pretty badly injured too. While T's wounds were deep and short, Pat had long, deep scratches on his arms and chest. Apparently after they got on the four-wheeler, at the exact second Pat was putting it in gear, T pushed the "gas" button (just an easily reachable button right in front of him) and they jerked forward and went THROUGH the barbed wire fence. And I mean, the wire broke. Pat went one way still on the vehicle and T was completely seperated from him going the other way.

I can only think of one other time when I felt like this- when Sissy was 2 she had a febrile seizure and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. There is literally NO FEELING IN THE WORLD like when your child is hurt. I can't even describe it, but I know a lot of you know the exact feeling I mean. It is a horrific terror that I would imagine is similar to being shot in the leg. Okay, maybe not, but that is how I felt. I was completely numb. Even after I knew he would be okay I still felt a huge depression.

It was not a pleasant evening to follow. We needed to go get the supplies to care for him. Well since we were out in the country we had to drive 45 minutes into a town with an open Wal-Mart. I went in (and this was a site to see- I had my "family reunion" shirt on and it was covered in blood) and bought literally every first aid supply they had. I didn't even have any Motrin on me so I bought EVERYTHING. Well, unfortunately our hotel was another 30 minutes in the opposite direction. My poor tired (and injured) children watched Toy Story in the car as we drove our almost hour and a half for supplies.

When we got back to the hotel my aunts had advised us to bathe him and clean the wounds. Thank goodness T likes showers- we were able to coax him in with Pat. They were in there for a long time and Pat was able to, very softly, clean him up. We were both shocked, like I mentioned before, that no blood was wiping off- his skin was just scratched so bad.

I have a lot of guilt and hurt feelings about that day. I felt like the whole thing was my fault. I felt like I was not understood- like my hysteria was unwarrented. But I don't dwell on that for long. Sure, some of me was a little dramatic. But when it comes to my children I will always give myself a pass. It was the worst feeling I have ever felt. Since we've been home we have actually learned that 2 young people in the Wichita area have died in the last month due to a barbed wire fence injury- one driving a golf cart through it and the other a similar vehicle. The image of my child dangling in that fence will never leave my brain, but we are so lucky. We are so lucky that our child made it through it, without even a trip to the ER. We thank God for protecting our Baby Boy.

The next morning after it happened, I left the Band Aids on, it was so gross:


You can see how red his face was, and if you look close you can see other scratches-he had one right above his eye. You'll notice, too, that it wraps back around his head where one of the worst cuts was.


What a trooper:


This is him 3 days later. I had to really be persuaded to go on to Colorado- I wanted to just come home. But we went on, had a wonderful time, and I loved seeing my Big Boy so happy.

Ahh, it's back

After several weeks, my wonderful husband has restored our computer back to life. When it crashed before vacation I was convinced we would have to get a new computer- ours is over 5 years old! But my husband keeps it perfectly updated, fast, and running smoothly and he brought it back to life this week and it is running just fine. He is still working on putting a lot of stuff back on it- old pics and programs and such, but as long as I can upload photos and use the Internet I am a happy camper!

Some pics and recent events since "the crash"-

We had a nice Father's Day. The kids let us sleep in and then I made some breakfast while the guest of honor mowed the lawn. Fun, huh? During breakfast we decided to hit Toy Story 3 and the kids COULD NOT be happier. We prepped by dressing in Toy Story clothing, collecting Woody and Jessie, and-for Sissy- she insisted on "one braid w/ a bow" like Jessie.






We caught the early show so lunch was, of course, 2 large buckets of popcorn. The movie was great. The kids sat completely still through the whole movie and enjoyed every second of it. I thought it was adorable!




And you can probably imagine what our Halloween costumes are for this year- I will have a little Woody and Jessie! (although I hate characters, so I like to say "cowboy and cowgirl") We have already started planning- we bought cowboy hats in Colorado (banished to the closet until after October!) and we are material hunting for the outfits. Sissy demands that she look exactly like Jessie, I will be lucky if I don't have to dye her hair red.

After the movie the kids went down for naps and I got to go out and run errands- it felt more like Mother's Day, I was getting so much done! I combed Wichita for sale Toy Story toys for Big Boy's upcoming birthday. After naps we headed to my in-laws for dinner. It was a pretty relaxing day.


The weekend before I had an amazing night out with my best friends from high school. It has been years since I'd seen them but it is so neat how nothing really changes. And as you grow older you have even more in common and more to talk about. Several of my girlfriends live in town with their own kids so now we have been able to get our kids together, too! (sorry for the picture overkill, putting a lot on for family who know these girls and for these girls to see)




Back then, graduating from Andover: (we got everybody but 3 in this pic back for our "reunion")












We also had our favorite visitors, my bff Annie and her daughter K, down for a few days. The weather didn't cooperate for the pool like we'd planned but we were able to just relax and chat and let the kids play.


I love baby K and still maintain that she is the happiest, friendliest little one I've ever met in my life. I "worked" on some stuff with her and Annie called me a couple days later to report she was saying "momma" now! Next time I'll work on "Alyssa"...





So those are our moments lately. Sissy is in her second week of Vacation Bible School this week. Nothing better than VBS, it's free and she enjoys her time w/ friends! We've been swimming way too much so we are taking a few days off. The kids' skin is turning dark and their hair is turning white! If any of our friends here in Wichita wants to come swimming with us one day let me know! I had Sissy enrolled in swim lessons the next couple weeks but I back out, we'd rather see our friends!

Hitting the potty training thing with Big Boy HARD. It is so difficult- he is not motivated whatsoever by treats like Sissy was. The worst part is that some days he does perfectly and I swear he is officially potty trained and then the next he has an accident EVERY TIME and I feel back to square one! It makes it really hard to plan. I never know whether he will be using the toilet or peeing his pants 10 times when I wake up in the morning. We are visiting toilets everywhere these days- restaurants, Quik Trips, Target, Bible School! Most of these places have toilets that flush themselves and really loud hand dryers and Big Boy is very into that!

MIA

Sorry readers, been MIA for awhile and will remain away from my computer probably. We had a 10 day vacation, which was a really long time to be gone, and then when we got back one of my bff's (shut up, I know that sounds like I'm 15) from college called and came to stay for a couple days with her little one while her husband worked down here.

Despite all this I would have probably had my 6,000 vacation pictures already up except for the fact that the night before we left our computer crashed. We are trying to recover everything now and then it will be in the shop for awhile. We have an old laptop plugged in that works...sometimes.

So I've been reading my fellow blogs when I can and not commenting, sorry, my computer time is very limited. But maybe it's a good thing- you get to go one more week without seeing my vacation pics! :) And before you hear about- duh duh duh- T's big accident our first day away and while I'm the worst parent ever. Here's a tip- do not let your 2 year olds drive four-wheelers. How's that for a teaser??