This time of year always flies by. It's been nearly a month since my last post! Anyway, for Thanksgiving we headed to Denver to celebrate with family. The kids were so excited for the journey. We decided to do the 10+ hours over two days, so that we could take our time and drive during daylight for safer conditions. Most of the roads were clear, but there were patches of ice and it was frigid, so I'm glad we did that. Wyoming is a pretty desolate, but beautiful drive.
Most of the trip was just about covering distance, but we did pull over for a brewery pitstop in Ft. Collins at Odell Brewing Company. It felt great to be out of the car, and the kids had a blast dancing on the patio stage while we had some refreshments.
We had so much fun, in fact, that we stuck around until the next brewery tour. Milestone: kids' first brewery tour! Haha! The safety glasses were way too big, but they seemed to enjoy smelling/tasting the raw materials and seeing the bottling operations.
Soon after, we arrived at Aunt Loni and Uncle Lampe's house and convened with Oma and Papa, too. The next morning we took the dogs for a brisk walk to the duck pond and a fun playground across the street.
Later that morning, we all headed to the Children's Museum. Luckily, only half of Denver had the same idea! We started out at the fire engine...
but quickly moved on to the bubble room, where there were all sorts of bubble-making devices, including one your could stand inside as you made a giant rectangular bubble around yourself.
The market was also a big hit. Hadley enjoyed food shopping with Aunt Loni, while Owen preferred to bake some apples in the brick oven.
One of their favorite exhibits was the rocket launch. The kids were starting to design their own, but I pointed out all of the used rockets at the bottom of the chamber. That's H's head sticking through the retrieval window! They got pretty savvy about reusing them and loved the pneumatic launch buttons.
And next door was a wind tunnel where they could test out different wing shapes.
By the time we made it outside, H was pretty "hangry" and needed to have a snack inside. But Owen braved the chilly temps and found a huge sandpit (he could have stayed here for hours!),
drove an apple truck on the farm,
and sailed down the zip line a few times with a huge grin on his face.
Speaking of family, we had lots of good quality family time on Thanksgiving!
The meal itself was delicious and bountiful. I didn't get any pictures of it, so you'll just have to take my word. (Hadley helped to tear the bread for stuffing.)
Of course, there were also cut-out cookies to be made, a family tradition. They were delicious, even if the shortcut dough didn't really stay true to the cookie cutters. We iced and ate them anyway!
I also have to mention that Owen has a thing for Jeeps, and Uncle Lampe was gracious enough to take Owen for a spin around the block in his. Made his day!
Oh, let's not forget about the dogs! The kids loved them, especially Tex, who was so patient and calm. Hadley enjoyed giving them orders, sigh... And Emma and Owen played a long game of chase one night.
We really enjoyed our visit! Hopefully it's not our last, and maybe the next one can be made in one long travel day instead of two. :)
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