We went to an awesome water park (Splash) in Golden this week. Golden is west of Denver, right at the foothills of the Rockies. It's about 20 minutes from our house. We went with Kacy and Avry (Avry is the baby I keep during the week and Kacy is her mom). This water park is very (little) kid friendly. Almost all of it is the zero depth entry, so Olivia was able to sit and splash to her hearts content.
There was even a baby slide, that was about a foot long. It was so tiny! No pictures of it- too busy trying to coax Olivia down by herself (yeah, right). How fun does this place look?
The best part? It was only $9.00 to get in! Here's a quick video of Olivia- she loves watching other kids and I even got a wave!
I started taking pictures of Olivia with this Pooh when she was a week old. She started out so small, we wanted something to measure how much she's grown. The problem was when to actually stop taking the pictures. I was originally going to stop at 10 weeks, but she was still pretty small, so I kept going and now here we are at 46 weeks! Crazy, but I'm going to put them all in an album for her. I hope she'll like looking back on them one day. Unfortunately (for me), it takes much more time to get a picture of her looking at the camera and not playing with Pooh, or trying to eat the paper. See?
Oh well, only 6 more of these picture! :) Notice the bruise on the side of her face in the last picture? Seriously, how do you keep a baby that's crawling and cruising everywhere from getting bruised? I've seriously considered a crash helmet...
You can imagine how hard it was to take this picture. First, there's the grass and mulch to play with (and eat), not to mention the new bright letters she had never seen before. I took about 50 pictures and this is the only one with her eyes open and looking at the camera. The funny look on her face is a bonus!
Thanks for all the birthday wishes (and gifts)!! Birthdays are fun, but I'm fine staying this age (29) for a loooooong time! :) We went to my friend Molly's wedding Saturday. I worked with her last year and she is a wonderful person. Their wedding was beautiful! Naturally, I didn't have my "good" camera:
Their reception was held at a golf course a little south of where we live. It was my first time there and I had no idea how pretty it was!
I'm trying to figure out if I can take Olivia's pictures there, or if it's private. It was just gorgeous.
We went to the pool again this week, where I was very diligent about re-applying sunscreen to Livi, but forgot about myself. I've got nice red shoulders to show for it! The sun is very intense here, but we don't have much humidity (like in TN)!
The pool closest to our house has a zero depth entry and she loves to sit and splash in the water. She also likes to hold my hands and walk around and around (and around and around). This was the first time she had worn this swimsuit and I didn't realize it was a little big. Every time we started walking, her bottoms would fall to her ankles. She got a few laughs and I finally took them off.
They had a "hot air balloon" ride at My Gym this week (on the zip line). She loved it!
She woke up grumpy from a nap last week, but a little ice cream from Daddy stopped the tears...
Busy girl we have here! We've had a pretty quiet week. She seems to be eating better, so hopefully the scales will show that in July! She has changed so much the past month or so. She is very good at mimicking:
She tries to boss the dogs around- they don't seem to mind! If we have the back door open, she expects them to stand there and look at her. If they don't, she bangs on the door:
We've had some crazy weather here, lately. We've been under a tornado watch/warning almost every afternoon for a week. And we've had lots of hail:
This was taken not far from our house. This tornado didn't touch down, but one did not far from here and damaged a large outdoor mall.
Hopefully, this won't last much longer! Some pictures from the week- we did make it to Monkey Bizness this week (twice!). The first time we went, there weren't any "big" kids, so Olivia got to crawl around outside the baby area- she loved it!
Tired of waiting on the dogs:
Playing:
She loves trying to climb the stairs:
See her teeth?
Still chewing on everything!
She started dancing recently:
This was kind of a random post! I've been busy planning Olivia's b-day party, even though I don't want her to turn 1! I can't believe it's less than 2 months away...
Hold on, this is going to be a long post! We've had a busy, exciting week. Olivia's Mamaw and Papaw (Michael's parents) visited this week. While they were here, we traveled to Glenwood Springs, which is about 2.5 hours west of Denver. We also hit Aspen on the way back. More on that later! We picked them up at the airport Monday and spent the evening at home. Olivia did pretty well, letting them hold her and playing with them. We left Tuesday morning for our adventure. Now, if you don't live in Colorado, you aren't aware of the rapidly changing weather. It was in the high 70's Monday and in the low 50's when we left Tuesday and pretty much stayed there the entire drive, along with some rain. Olivia had a cough and runny nose, which we blamed on allergies. She did pretty well on the drive. We got to our hotel and took her to the indoor waterpark (waterpark is stretching it, but she liked it) for an hour or two, then went to dinner. Meals are a toss up with her right now. Sometimes she's fine, sometimes we have to take turns taking her outside. During this meal, we had outside time. :) I love to travel and research wherever we're going for fun, interesting things to do. Glenwood Springs is most well known for the hot springs, but I also found out Doc Holliday (you know, he was in the shoot out at the OK Corral in Arizona with Wyatt Earp? A few movies about him, too.) died there and is buried in the local cemetary. We asked around and got directions. The trail was closed for construction, but gave directions to the back entrance. We followed the directions and came across 2 locals walking their dogs. They told us it was an easy walk, maybe a quarter of a mile. Great! We got out and started on a slightly inclined path. The elevation isn't much higher than Denver, but we were all a little winded when we rounded a corner and saw this:
Call me crazy, but that's waaaaay more than a quarter of a mile and I don't call straight uphill "an easy walk." Geez. However, we decided to press on, since we had made it that far. We were all winded (except for Olivia, who was riding snugly in her Hotsling) and started walking 10 steps, resting 10 minutes. There were some nice views.
We finally make it to the top and find this:
I'm glad we went, but it was comical to read this after our hike! Locals say there was a flood and many markers were washed away, so they're not sure which grave is Doc's. Oh, well!
On the way down:
We decided we deserved ice cream after that hike and I found a new idea to get weight on Olivia:
The next day (Wednesday), we headed up to Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. You have to ride this tram to get there:
Pretty neat to have an amusement park built on top of a mountain! Pretty views at the top, too:
We went on a cave tour, which was really neat. Livi did good, except for wanting to touch all the rocks, after the guide specifically asked us not to... whoops. Waiting for the tour:
In the caverns:
This is part of the tour. It's called Exclamation Point.
There are a few more rides at the park, but a storm was rolling in, so we headed back down the mountain. We let Olivia rest for a little bit, while we waited for the storm to pass, then we headed over to the hot springs.
The springs have been visited by many famous people over the years. The Ute Indians that discovered the springs, believed they had healing powers. The current pools were built in the early 1900's and refinished in the 1950's. There are 2 pools- a "therapy" pool that is kept around 104 degrees and the regular pool that is kept at 90 degrees. The springs are piped directly into the pools. They are the biggest hot springs pools in the world, at 2 blocks long. It was amazing! If I haven't convinced you of how relaxing the hot springs are, take this picture for example:
That's Olivia. Asleep. In the pool. She stayed like that for at least 30 minutes, maybe longer. The water was very salty tasting, which she discovered when she woke up and contentedly sucked on her fingers. After the springs, we grabbed a quick meal and headed in for the night. The next day (Thursday), we checked out of our hotel and headed south to Aspen. Aspen is 45 miles south of Glenwood Springs, which means it's also 45 miles off Interstate 70 (the main interstate through CO). Since we were only going to be there a few hours, I looked up the one thing most people would recommend to see (gotta love Trip Advisor!). Many people recommended the tour of the Rich and Famous, where you drive by all the famous people's houses, but at $90/person, we nixed that idea. Maroon Bells was a close second. It's the most photographed area of the Rocky Mountains, for good reason. It's not far from downtown Aspen, so we headed there first. This is the sign at the gate to the park:
Once again, a storm was blowing in, so it was windy and we didn't have very good lighting for pictures, but it was still breathtaking:
Love the different colors in the water:
Just a beautiful, peaceful place. The lake was formed by glaciers. The water was crystal clear! More pics:
This is what Maroon Bells looks like on a sunny spring day:
We next wandered around downtown Aspen and ate lunch:
Olivia was feeling a little under the weather, so we decided to head home. Now, I mentioned before that Aspen is 45 miles from the interstate. If we wanted to drive interstate the whole way home, we would have to back track to Glenwood Springs. OR, we could continue on Highway 82 through Independence Pass, which is only open Memorial Day through Labor Day and is supposed to be one of the scariest roads in Colorado. Guess what we did? Yep, not big on back-tracking here! The road really wasn't that bad. Either that or we've been on the road to Pike's Peak so many times that we're immune. It does climb pretty high in elevation and crosses the Continental Divide:
Wasn't prepared for snow when I got dressed that morning!
Nice views, again:
Colorado is a beautiful state! There was plenty of snow on the road:
We made it home safe and sound! Olivia still sounded bad to me the next morning, so we took her to the doctor. He listened to her chest and asked about her symptoms. Turns out she has croup! Poor baby. She's feeling better, we just have to watch, because it can turn into a sinus infection pretty quickly. He went ahead and checked her iron levels and they were normal! The supplement is working. The weight is another issue. 13 lbs, 11 ounces. She's up 1 ounce since her 9 month appointment (a month ago). Since her iron was normal, he pushed back her appointment on June 19th to July 10th to give me a little more time to get some weight on her. She absolutely refuses a bottle and will only drink water out of a sippy. I'm thinking he might put her on whole milk a little early, but we'll see. I just don't think she's going to gain the pound and a half he wants her to by July 10th. It was our company's last day, so we headed to the zoo for a little while (are you noticing a trend here? We have a membership to the zoo, so I get in free and I can bring a guest for free. If you visit us, there's a good chance you'll go to the zoo. Livi loves it!). So, that was our exciting week! She's feeling much better now. Is there anything cuter than a baby in a halter top?
She's getting really fast at crawling!
One more thing! Olivia's Pappy (my dad) is in the hospital. If you could send him some good thoughts and prayers, I'd appreciate it!
Hope you're having a good week! Told you this was going to be a long post! :)
