Roxborough State Park

I really wanted to get some pictures of Olivia with the wildflowers that Colorado is famous for. Unfortunately, the "best" wildflowers (according to the locals) are in Crested Butted or Ouray, which are 4-5 hours from our house. Considering the Mount Evans debacle, I thought we should look for wildflowers closer to home!

Roxborough State Park is only 10ish minutes south of Highlands Ranch. I read about a few trails that were known for wildflowers, so we set off.

Side note: anyone that knows anything about taking pictures, knows that the middle of the day is the worst time for pictures. Sunset is the best, with early morning a close second. The middle of the day casts shadows, meaning you sometimes have to use your flash, which can lead to overexposure. I know all of this, but still decided to go in the middle of the day. Why? The middle of the day is the time you are least likely to see snakes. Considering the amount of rattlesnake warning signs in the park, I decided a few overexposed pictures were better than nothing! No way would I go any other time!





Not too many wildflowers, but the red rocks were beautiful!







Of course, I had to mess with a few in LightRoom!





Olivia and I got back today after a quick trip to visit Michael. It's hard living in a hotel room! He's been working pretty hard the past few weeks.
We also made it to Aiden's 2nd birthday party, which was great! Imagine, we can actually make it to birthday parties and holidays now. Awesome!

Mount Evans Adventure

You might wonder why there's an axe leaning against my car. I'll get to that shortly.

In my quest to "do all the fun things in Colorado before we move to Tennessee," I decided to make a trip to Mount Evans. Mount Evans is the highest paved road in North America and is only open Memorial Day - Labor Day. We made a trip to the bottom of the mountain last Fall and got some cute pictures of Olivia at Echo Lake (You can read about it here). She wasn't up to the last 14 miles last year, so we didn't make it to the summit. Yesterday, I showed her some pictures of mountain goats and asked if she wanted to go see where they lived. Needless to say, she was very excited!
I snapped a few pictures in our backyard before we left:







Side note- I have a 30 day trial of Lightroom 3 (photo editor) and I LOVE it, hence the more edited photos.

Anyway, we left relatively early (10ish in the morning), since we have been having massive thunderstorms every afternoon this week. We had a great drive to the bottom of the mountain, listening to Olivia's favorite kid CD. We turned onto the road leading to the summit and started watching for mountain goats. The scenery was gorgeous.



Finally at the 13th mile, we spotted a herd of mountain goats:



Olivia was thrilled and demanded to get out of the car to get a better look. Most of the cars were pulled off the road, so we joined them. What she didn't realize is how cold it would be at 14000 feet in elevation. I put her coat on, but she refused to walk and wanted to be carried. A nice woman saw me struggling to juggle her and take a picture and offered to get take a shot of us together:



Baby goats:



We continued up to the summit:



Olivia was not thrilled with the wind or 40 degree temperature:



Here's a shot of the road we were on:



We ate the lunch I packed in the car at the summit, then headed down the mountain. Here's where it gets interesting.
We were 5 miles from the top when Olivia tells me she has to go potty. There's a lake with restrooms and a scenic view right at mile 9, so we pulled over there. I got out of the car and went to get Olivia. I decide to leave my purse in the car, so with the back door open, I lock the car and unbuckle her. She had taken her shoes off, so we got those back on and she tells me she wants to go see the water. Thinking it would be another place for a good picture, I decide to get the camera out. By this point, I'm burning up and decide to take my coat off. I throw it in the backseat and close the locked door WITH THE KEYS IN MY COAT. I realized it immediately. We rushed through the restroom and I started looking for a park ranger. No sign of one. There was a group there working on a conservation project and had a radio. They tried to radio a park ranger, but couldn't get a signal. Panicking, I asked the first person I saw to tell the park rangers at the bottom of the mountain what had happened. By this point Olivia and I both were in tears. The man I asked was with his wife and adult daughter and they offered to drive us the 9 miles to the park rangers.
We get to the rangers and they call a locksmith who informs me it will be a minimum of $350, probably closer to $400 and it would take him at least 3 hours to get there. Frustrated, I ask the park rangers if they have any kind of tools and they said they did and there just so happened to be a few park rangers at the lake where our car is (wish they would have been there earlier!). Once again we caught a ride 9 miles up the mountain to our car. A park ranger worked about 20 minutes, trying to use a wire to unlock the door. By this point, it had been 3 hours. Thunder was booming and the first drops of rain were falling when he said he thought we better just break the window.

Thus, the axe.



The park ranger helping us was so nice, taking his time to duct tape the window before he smashed it with an axe (ha!), then cleaning up the glass and duct taping it again for our drive home. This will be funny one day, right?!
In the end, breaking the window WAS less than calling the locksmith. The window is $190. So with the $10 entry fee to the Mountain, our Mount Evans trip was around $200.



Thus concludes our Mount Evans adventure. Getting the window fixed Wednesday. :)

Girls Time

Olivia and I are holding steady at our house in CO, although she asks me every day; "Where's Daddy?" Michael did find a rental house for us (barely!). Our official move dates are August 1st (pack) and August 2nd (load). I'm trying to get a little birthday/going away party together for Olivia the weekend before we leave.
We went and visited her friends at Ms. Lindsay's house today and then she played with Liza, Landon, Beckham, Adam, and Natalie at our house. Sarah and Robyn arranged a little going away outing for us, which was so sweet! Sarah found 2 babysitters (there were 6 kids!) and then they treated me to a pedicure and 90 minutes of kid-free time. Nice! I don't think we'll ever be able to replace our awesome neighbors!

We're still on our quest to do all the fun things in Colorado one more time. Tomorrow we're driving to Mount Evans for a picnic and to hopefully spot some mountain goats. Today, I asked Olivia where she would like to go that's fun and she said; "Ummmm, the beach." OK, try again- "Where in CO?" "Ummmm, the bank." The people that work at the bank always make a fuss over her and give her a sucker!
We headed to Yogurt Your Way tonight after dinner (whoever invented self serve yogurt with toppings is a genius). I had french braided her hair into pigtails early this morning and one came out while she was napping. We also got some new hairbows in the mail, which she loved and was pretty insistent on wearing her red cowboy boots. This was the result:



Oh, well. The matchy-match baby days are over!

Here are 2 from July 4th. She cracks herself up!

Country roads, take me home...

We left our house at 7:00pm Tuesday night. We arrived in Greeneville at 5:00pm Thursday. Here's the rundown of what happened in between: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:

Olivia fell asleep around 8:00pm the first night and slept the next 9 hours. I woke her up twice to go potty at assorted restrooms in Kansas, but she always went right back to sleep. Talk about lucky! The dogs decided they had to pee about 10 times that night, but overall not too bad. We decided to stop in Kansas City around 5:00am Denver time and slept about 5 hours before taking off again.

The Bad:

The second day was harder. The dogs were getting more and more annoying. Imagine a 120 pound lab with gas. Ugh. We had to roll down the windows every 10 minutes to air the car out. Yes, I did just tell you about our dogs gas- and we're not even to the ugly part yet, ha! We were going to try and push through until we got all the way to Greeneville, but hit some traffic and decided to stop in Paducah, KY.

The Ugly:

Only a 6 hour drive the last day, but man was it rough! Although I had given both dogs a bath before leaving, they were still shedding like crazy. There was probably 5 pounds of dog hair in the car. Every time we opened the door or window, it would swirl around us. Now, when you travel with large dogs, there's no stopping at decent restaurants along the way. It's fast food or nothing. So, imagine eating fast food with dog hair swirling around you, while said dog is drooling on your shoulder. Told you it was ugly. Ever wonder what a bored almost 3 year old does after 24 hours in a car seat? Let me show you:




That lasted the last 2 hours of the trip, although the happy screams became mad screams with "LET ME OUT" thrown in a time or two. If you're keeping up, that's 10 hours of driving Tuesday night, 10 hours Wednesday, and 6 hours Thursday. Yes, it took us 26 hours, which beat our old record of 24 hours, ha!

Now for the pictures! Here's what our car looked like:



We dropped my car off at the airport, so Olivia and I have a ride home Tuesday, which is how I got that picture. We didn't have room for anything but us and the dogs inside the car, so our luggage ended up on the roof and back hitch of the car.

Olivia fast asleep with the dogs looking on- probably hour 2 of the trip:



What is it with us and snakes? The very first gas station we stopped at in Kansas had this slithering around the gas pumps:



I had just got the dogs back in the car when Michael spotted it. Nice.

We had a hard time finding a hotel room the 2nd night. We finally ended up at a sketchy Days Inn. So sketchy, that Olivia decided the TV needed a good cleaning and used Bodine as a step stool:



When we finally got to Michael's parents house, she literally ran wild for about 20 minutes. Then she spotted the riding lawn mower and insisted that Daddy take her for a ride:



The best part about the trip? It's finished and we don't ever have to do it again! The moving company is towing my car, luckily. What's really funny is we can't get Olivia to get in the car now. We've been mostly laying around recovering today and I've asked her several times if she wanted to go somewhere. She always says "No, you go and I stay here." Ha! Probably afraid we'll strap her in for another 26 hours!
Michael and I leave tomorrow to hopefully decide on a house! Fingers crossed!