Vacation #1 - Colorado and Uncle Phil

Now that we've been home for three days, I think we've mostly recovered from vacation and gotten back into a normal groove.  It's so fun to go, but it's such a great feeling to get home, too!  To start out, we left a little after noon on Thursday June 28th and drove to Council Bluffs, IA for the night.  Greg had booked our hotel on Hotwire.com to get a good deal, and it turned out to be the Holiday Inn that was attached to the Ameristar Casino.  The river was REALLY flooding next to it, and they had even evacuated the first floor of the parking deck.  Our hotel room was on the second floor, but the river looked pretty close!  All of the hotel workers said there was no danger to the hotel patrons...regardless, I was glad to leave. :)

Even if the water WAS supposed to be here, I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be that high!

The kids did really well traveling, for which I was SO thankful!  The next morning we got up and going in decent time and drove the rest of the way to Denver, CO to visit my brother Phil (Obviously this is Mary writing, not Greg!).  We got there mid-afternoon, and the kids were immediately enthralled with this view out Phil's patio door: 

Trains!  They never got tired of them!  I never got tired of the mountains in the background. :)

That night we went to Red Lobster for supper and were treated to the MOST GORGEOUS sunset over the mountains.  This picture cannot even begin to do it justice.

On Saturday morning, the kids got up and ate their cereal... (Uncle Phil did a super job buying the kids' favorite foods.) :)

...put on their hats and shades....

...and got to actually ride a train!  We drove up into the mountains and rode on the Georgetown Loop railroad.

The scenery was beautiful; the train ride was fun!

By the time we got back to the van from the train depot, it was lunchtime.  Greg really wanted to drive up Mt. Evans, the highest paved road in North America.  We decided to drive for just a little bit and see how the kids did...they had snacked, so we thought maybe they would be okay if lunch was late.  Not too long down the road, this was what our back seat looked like:

And this is what the seat beside me looked like:

Isn't she just so CUTE?!?!? :D

Sooo, on to Mt. Evans we drove!  The road was pretty amazing...once we got up the mountain a bit, we had steep drop offs and sheer rock faces beside us.  Once we were up past the treeline, we had gigantic snow banks by us, too!  Here are just a few pictures...once again, they don't even begin to capture the beauty we saw.  I wasn't able to fully appreciate it since the altitude was affecting me (headache, extreme fatigue even though I was just sitting in the van, shortness of breath).  I was a little frustrated since I've been to the Rockies four times and never been affected before!  Oh, well...it made me thankful for pictures so I could enjoy it later.

The kids were cold....I think with windchill it was supposed to feel like 37 degrees up there!

On the way back down the mountain we stopped at this lake so Greg could get some pictures.

Just gorgeous.

We ended up eating lunch/supper at a place called Tommyknockers, a brewery in Idaho Springs, CO.  They also make three different kids of soda:  Root beer, Strawberry Creme, and Almond Creme (basically a really good cream soda).  Of course we bought some to bring home, and I'm sad to say they're almost all gone. :(  We ended the evening by going to a park with an empty baseball diamond to let the kids run off some energy and then going back to Phil's aparment for ice cream and bedtime.

In addition to the altitude symptoms, my eye had started bothering me on Saturday.  It was red by afternoon, and by that evening it was pretty swollen.  It looked bad enough that Tirzah and I stayed home from church on Sunday, which I was pretty bummed about.  As it turned out, I enjoyed the quiet hours I had, and was much more excited to see the kids when they got back. :)  Sunday evening my eye was looking a little better and we went to downtown Denver for the light show, concert, and fireworks.

Tirzah giving her Daddy quite the look...Nora had a matching shirt, but we didn't get any good pics of them together.

We got to the park way before sunset, so Greg and I pulled out our secret weapons for making our kids behave:  the iPods!  We got plenty of looks and several comments as Max and Nora glued their attention to the little screens.  But...it worked!  They sat for the couple of hours or however long it was until dark and were very good. :)

I don't know what this building was, but they had lights all around in front of it that changed colors as the orchestra played.

On Monday morning, we rode the light rail to the Downtown Aquarium.  The kids were thrilled to ride another train!

Max absolutely LOVED the shark tank...he did NOT want to leave!

It was a very cool aquarium, and the kids loved it as well as the adults!  For lunch we ate in their restaurant.  The decor was pretty neat:

But the food is what really impressed us!  The aquarium is actually privately owned by Landry's Restaurants, so the food was good quality and great tasting...much, much better than the 'food court' fare we were expecting.

The light rail stop was a decent walk from the aquarium, and the excitement combined with the heat just did Nora in...

We got back to Phil's apartment and the kids all took terrific naps.  I was so glad they did since it gave me and Greg time to actually hang out and talk with Phil!  Every other night we were so tired out we all just went to bed. :)  Once the kids got up, they played with Uncle Phil one last time.

We ate supper and pie at a Village Inn, then dropped Phil off at his apartment and headed towards Kansas City.  We wanted to get as far as we could Monday night so we could have less driving the next day.  We ended up driving for three hours and stopped at 12:30 AM Kansas City time.  Of course, Max and Nora both slept some in the van and were wide awake at the hotel....I remember having to tell them at 2:15 to GO TO SLEEP!

We loved getting to be with you, Philip, and just today Max was looking at a book that had a scene of some kids at the beach.  He was naming people, "This Max, this is Daddy, this is Nora, this is Mommy...and this is Uncle Phil giving me ice cream!"  He will not soon forget this part of vacation. :)  We love you and thanks for putting up with us!!!