The Magic Tree House

Things have been a bit crazy here lately so I am bit slow on finishing our vacation story.  In fact I am so slow that we already have been to Kansas (The Farm) and back during the Thanksgiving Holiday.  I am so slow that I have not posted Carly’s birthday or Jonathan’s 1st birthday pictures.  We have so much to share, but such little time to get it all together.  Anyways, back to the story.

After our visit with my Aunt Lucille, we drove onto Kansas to Clark’s grandparents farm.  The last time the kids were at the farm (in the summertime), Carly helped her Great Grandpa plant some squash seeds and he was so proud to show her the fruit of her labors. 

As you can see those squashes are HUGE.  It was so fun to try to pick them up.  I couldn’t believe how big they were. 

And of course before we went in for the night, the kids had to take a ride on the “fun truck”.

We had fun that evening visiting with family and the kids were real excited that we were staying another day at the farm before we headed home. 

Hopefully I won’t take as long to get day 11 up next

We stayed the night at my Aunt Lucille’s.  Carly and Ethan shared the couch and when we went to bed their heads were on the opposite sides of the couch, but upon waking this is what I found and thought it was so cute. It was Carly who moved.  She is such a snuggler.

Then we all got up and Aunt Lucille out did herself again making us a wonderful breakfast.  The kids even got to have root beer floats in the morning.

Here are some pictures of Aunt Lucille with Jonathan.

Another cute one of Josephine with Jonathan. 

Group shot.

We had so much fun visiting and the kids really enjoyed themselves too.  We hope to visit again soon

After our afternoon drive in the mountains we decided it was time to head on to Pueblo to visit my Aunt Lucille and family that I have not seen in a long time and who has not had a chance to meet our children.

We were greeted so warmly and had a wonderful time out on the back patio chatting and watching the kids play with bubbles and running around.  It was just beautiful there.

Here is Carly blowing bubbles.       

Aunt Josephine holding Jonathan. 

Later we went inside for my Aunt’s Spaghetti and Meatballs dinner.  It was delicious!  Then she gave a birthday party for all the kids birthdays this year.  It was so cute and the kids had fun seeing their names on the cake and eating it of course.

It was so much fun for us to see and visit with my family, we can’t wait to go back again!

We didn’t get very many pictures this night, but have more to come the next morning on the next blog post to come.

After our visit to the Garden of the Gods we had some time to spare before we drove to Pueblo to visit family.  We decided to take a drive so the kids could take a nap.  Clark found a mountain that had a road that goes around it with two tunnels and we thought that should be a neat drive.  Little did I know that it was one of those little scary roads where the edge of the road is really close to where you are driving.  So a bit scary but it was beautiful.  We really enjoyed the drive and 3 out 4 kids fell asleep.  Oddly, the one who really needed the sleep didn’t fall asleep.

Beautiful scenery on our drive.

Below is the town of Manitou Springs and the building is the Broadmoor Hotel.

A picture of us about to enter a rocky tunnel and neat pic of a tree. 

A black squirrel. We have never seen one of those before.  Also, you can see what the edge of the road looked like.

At our highest point.

Here are some pictures of our kids dressed up for Halloween.  I really did not put a lot of thought or effort in their costumes this year.  Maybe next year we will have a family theme.

Ethan was a Snow Clone Trooper, Carly was Snow White, Gavin was Gavin (he did not want to wear his Thomas Costume), and Jonathan was a monkey.

Here is Jonathan being so cute.  He didn’t mind wearing his costume at all.

Carly was such a pretty Snow White.  She enjoyed me putting makeup on her. 

Ethan was interesting in his costume.  Do you see the two pieces of paper on the side of his helmet?  Don’t even ask why those are there because I still can’t figure out why he insisted they had to be on the helmet.  It didn’t make sense to me.  Oh well, he can look back on this picture someday and think how silly he looked

Cute pictures of Carly and Gavin.   

These are the best group pictures we could get.  Carly is always the one who has to hold Jonathan, she is Jonathan’s second mommy.  You can see in the second picture how nurturing she is.  The boys hanging out and passing out candy in our trunk for our church trunk-or-treat.  

We all slept in a bit from our adventurous day before.  We had breakfast and I took the kids swimming while Jonathan took a nap.  This indoor pool was a little chilly, but the hot tub made up for it.  The kids and I went back to the hotel room and we all got ready to leave the hotel and to go visit The Garden of the Gods.  Carly proceeded to throw a huge tantrum about the warm clothes I picked out for her (because it was cold outside) and Clark already took the luggage to the car so it was too late to change.  I am pretty sure if anyone was asleep around us they weren’t anymore.  Eventually we made it to the car and we were really getting tired of packing and repacking the car by now.  Finally on our way to the Garden of the Gods.  We started our hiking around there at the Garden, but Carly was still in a bad mood from the hotel, so I sat with her and Jonathan in the car until Clark returned with his hike with Ethan and Gavin.  He got some cute pictures of the boys.

The Kissing Camels

The boys goofing around.  Ethan is wearing one of Clark’s long sleeved shirts because we left his jacket in Utah.

After the boys came back we drove around in the car around the Garden and finally saw our first wildlife of the whole trip.  We were shocked that we hadn’t seen more wildlife considering all the places we have been.  Maybe our children are too loud so they know to stay clear from us

Then we made one more stop in the Garden of the Gods.  Clark and Ethan got out for some pictures.

Ethan standing by Balanced Rock and trying to push it over.

Hiding under the rock.

He looks so grown up in these pictures.

Pretending he is surfing.

Our overall impression of the Garden of the Gods was it was a neat place, but it didn’t compare to the sights we saw at Arches National Park in Utah.  The Garden is worth going to if you are visiting Colorado Springs.

Well, did we make it?

This picture is of us heading back to the car.  We did not make it to the lake :(  We were all getting pretty tired.  Clark and I easily could have made the hike, but not the kids.  The final straw was when we stopped to talk to someone on their way down and he told us we haven’t even reached the HALF way mark!  It was already 2pm and if we chose to go on it would be after 5pm before we made it back to the car probably.  It was getting colder the higher we went up and it would get dark quicker in the mountains, so we chose to turn around.  It was so hard, Clark and I really wanted to finish the hike.  We plan on going back in a couple of years to finish it.

Here is what we missed.

On our way back to the car we came across this praying mantis (pregnant).  

Carly wanted to step on it.  See her foot.  She is big into killing bugs.

The praying mantis tried to defend itself.  Pretty creepy looking.

We arrived back to the car tired, especially our quadriceps, but excited about everything we saw and did.  After finally finding our way back on the highway in the right direction, which is tricky there, we were able to start back on our drive to Colorado Springs.  We only took a 2-3hr detour

We were enjoying the scenery very much as we climbed higher and higher in altitude.  It even started to snow and the kids were so excited.  Everything was going great until Clark looked down at the gas gauge and he realized we forgot to fill up with gas at our stop earlier in the trip.  The gauge said we had 12 miles left till empty.  I am not sure how accurate that is, but either way, we were in the middle of nowhere climbing up a mountain and it was snowing and below 40 degrees outside.  I started crying and freaking out inside.  We just passed Veil by 10miles, but there are no turn a rounds and I was frantically trying to pull a map up on Clark’s phone to see if we were coming upon a town, but it didn’t look like it and the signal was not that great on the phone.  We said a prayer and kept driving slowly trying not to exert the car too much going up hill.  We suddenly reached the top of the mountain and started going downhill which was a little relief, but no town in sight yet.  We came around a bend and luckily there was a town with an exit and one gas station.  Thank you Conoco for saving us!

Here are some other pictures while we were at the gas station.  It was pretty chilly out, but the kids were able to touch some snow.

Our day is still not over and we had to drive quite a bit more before we reached Colorado Springs I think around 9pm or 10pm.  When we arrived at our hotel I went to check in and they said, sorry you don’t have a reservation, only to find out that we were at the wrong location, we had to go back another 20miles to the other hotel location.  I will have to blame this on my Dad and Clark.  My dad said we were at the hotel by the airport and Clark never double checked the address on the reservations to see we were not at that hotel.  We finally made it to the hotel and crashed.  So, that is the end to one crazy day, but it was fun and one of our favorite days.

That’s right, Gavin is no longer addicted to his pacifier.  We finally broke that addiction by accident.  Last weekend we went to Grandma J’s home and when we arrived we could not find his pacifier in the car, we looked everywhere.  So, we said oh well and lets just go with it and see if we can break his habit this weekend.  It worked well and overall he has done just fine.  I think he has a harder time falling asleep, but that was to be expected.  When we came back home we made sure to find all other pacifiers and throw them out so he wouldn’t find them.  Sure enough when we were cleaning out the car we found the pacifier that we thought we left at home and the next morning Gavin also found a lost pacifier that we had not seen yet and I just took it from him and he didn’t seem to care at all.  It’s been a week now and I think he is doing well.

Other great news for Gavin is he has finally made the connection of using the toilet.  We still have a long road ahead of us with his potty training because I have come to find out he will hold his pee for a very, very, very long time in order to avoid the toilet.  He will hold it all in till we put a pull up on him for a nap or even bedtime, so that part is frustrating and changing poopy underwear is one of the worst jobs of motherhood, he still has that part to master too However, I am very proud of him because this is a big step for him.  I thought Gavin would be as easy as Ethan was to potty train, but I should have known better and realized how every kid is so different.

I will try to write part 2 of vacation trip tomorrow, I am heading to bed early tonight.

We got up early to leave this day and were in the car shortly after 6am.  We were driving to Colorado Springs and hoped to arrive there around 5pm the latest so the kids could go swimming and we could enjoy a nice dinner.  It was so neat to drive through Utah on HWY 6 towards Price, UT.  As we went through this pass between the mountains, the sun was just coming up and it was beautiful.  We got a kick of watching our temperature thermometer in the car dip below freezing as we went through this area and the how the temperature would change very quickly and often. 

When it got close to lunchtime we were near Glenwood Springs, CO.  If you have never had the pleasure of driving on I-70 on the west side of the mountain range, you definitely need to go sometime, it was just so beautiful.  Well Clark looked up on his phone a place for us to stop and have lunch and do a little walking to stretch our legs.  We stopped at Hanging Lake just outside of Glenwood and this is before you hit the big tunnels.  We really didn’t know anything about this place at all.  We started walking down this big paved sidewalk along the river and thought well this is beautiful, but where is the lake?

Here is the river.

We are just starting out on our walk and taking in the pretty scenery.  Gavin didn’t make it very far before he wanted to be carried.

As we were walking this guy came walking by us and he was geared to go hiking and for photography and he stopped and asked us if we knew which way the lake was, and we told him we didn’t know.  This was our first clue that the lake was pretty neat to see.  Well we kept walking the same way we were already headed and that guy went back to see if he could find a map.  We walked just a little bit further and we found a trailhead to the Hanging Lake.  It was so beautiful as we came upon this trailhead.  There was this beautiful stream coming down from the mountain and it was so peaceful sounding.

We talked to a few people to ask them about the hike to see how long it was and was it worth doing.  We got the impression that it was around 30min hike and so we said lets go for it.  It is exactly the hiking and climbing Ethan has been wanting to do the whole time on the trip and the scenery was just breathtaking.  We had to leave the stroller at the base of the hike because this was no easy path, it was rough steep climbing, but a clear trail.  So we took turns carrying Jonathan (silly me left the baby carrier in the car, didn’t know we were going on a long hike). There were lots of people coming up and down and they all said it is so worth the hike, keep going, so that was encouraging us too. We had to start to carry Gavin also, so things were getting interesting.

Here are some pictures along our hike.  We took lots of breaks

Well do you think we made it to the lake?  You will have to wait till I post again to find out and for those who already know don’t spoil it for the rest

We are going to take a break in our scheduled programming of family vacation days :)  Requests are wanted for some other events that have transpired since then and evidently I am not blogging fast enough…haha.

Last we week went to The Elgin Christmas Tree Farm for their fun pumpkin patch.  They do hay rides, crazy maze, decorate pumpkins, see farm animals and other fun things for the kids.

The day before we went it was very humid and 90 degrees, but by the next day it was in the 50’s and chilly outside.  Perfect fall day, but a bit cold because I realize my family does not have any decent coats to wear.

My mom was able to come help me with all the kids and we traveled with our fellow homeschool friends to the farm.  Sadly, our friends car had a flat tire when we arrived at the farm, luckily everything worked out great getting home and we still had a great time too! 

Here are a few pictures from our day.

Kids getting ready to go on the hay ride.

Carly and her friend J.  Aren’t they so cute?

Ethan with his friend T.  Handsome boys growing up so fast.

Gavin with his friend P.  I love their hats.  Gavin’s is from a Thomas the Train costume.

Me and Jonathan snuggling.  He loved the hay ride.

My mom who looks like she is freezing on the hay ride.  She had lots of fun with the kids and was a big help.

All the kids sitting on the pumpkins.

Cutie Gavin!

It was fun this year to have the three older kids really enjoy the experience.  We look forward to going back again next year!