Pictures from Denver

Here are some other pictures from our trip to Colorado.

Charlie sleeping during our layover at the Chicago airport. Our 3 1/2 hour layover in Chicago wasn't so bad thanks to the children's play area they have set up, sponsored by the Children's Museum of Chicago. The play area has an aviation theme: a play plane with a cockpit, cabin and storage area, large foam blocks for luggage, large storage crates for the kids to crawl through, a control tower with a phone that connects with the cockpit of the plane, and a play helicopter with propellers that move when someone pedals the stationary bike in the helicopter cockpit. Coulson had a blast!Coulson posing for a picture at the Denver Zoo. A pretty good zoo with a large variety of animals and several animals I had never seen before (okapis and tapirs and some others). I feel pretty spoiled by the NC Zoo and its vast habitats for the animals, so I have a high standard when it comes to zoos. Oh, and one of my favorite parts: In the bathroom, instead of piping in music through the speakers, they piped in weird facts about animal excrement, so I learned about termite flatulence and rhino dung.

Coulson and Charlie dressing up as firemen at the Children's Museum of Denver. I've been to 3 children's museums and I think this one is the best so far. They had a mini-sized basketball court (and of course Charlie loved that!) and a section to build things with tools and trash (Coulson made a helicopter) and puppets and an oversized tree where the kids can climb through and pretend they are the squirrels that live there.

Of course we had to go hiking too, we were in Colorado after all. Since we didn't bring along a backpack for Charlie to ride in (we are light travellers, often leaving things at home that would have been very helpful just because we don't want to lug it all over the country) so we had to find a place that was super easy. Alderfer/Three Sisters park in Evergreen was the recommendation that fit our family best from Fun Colorado Hikes and it was great. We went twice. The first day we did a super easy hike and found a large rock formation that was perfect for the boys to climb around on (i.e. not steep enough to make me freak out if they walked more than a few feet from me.) The second time we took a more adventurous hike to a beautiful scenic vista. Casey's brother and sister-in-law joined us for the second hike.


I wanted so badly to get a nice family photo at this scenic spot, but this was the best one we could get....Well, at least Casey looks good.