Happy (very late) Halloween!

Halloween fell during my fall break, as it often does, so I had the day off.  The kids also had the day off...apparently their school just couldn't deal with the idea of having school on Halloween so they scheduled a teacher work day.  The Girl opted to spend her day shadowing at a high school near our church, so that left The Boy and I to entertain ourselves (and everyone else).


Our festivities started the night before--with The Boy demonstrating what they did at their classroom party ("hello, Mr. Ghost"), carving pumpkins, and making stuff out of the pumpkin parts (spicy pumpkin seeds and real pumpkin pasties).

Halloween morning The Boy and I visited Target to pick up misc stuff (like mac and cheese for dinner and Halloween clearance--no good clearance--boo!) and to stalk all the toys (he had me take about 30 photos to use to write his "I want" list for Christmas and his birthday).

We had lunch at Chick Fil A with some friends and then headed to downtown for Trick or Treat Street.  It takes a lot less time than it used to...I told my friend, T, that it used to be like a death march...taking hours to get through one street.  This year we were done in about an hour...benefit of kids who can walk!













We returned home to meet up with The Girl and Mr. IM--shadow day was successful--and had Halloween mac and cheese and mummy dogs for dinner while The Girl and her friend primped and got ready to go out.  The original plan was for the middle school girls to take their brothers, but one of the boys (not The Boy) wanted his dad to go along, so the girls struck off on their own while the dads took the boys and I passed out candy at home (about 50 kids came by, including my kids and their friends.  Twice.).  Liberty had to hang out in her kennel because she can't be trusted to behave.

Happy Late Halloween!

Dinosaurs, Golden, and grumpy kids

I actually have visited Dinosaur Ridge before... but realized that the kids have never gone!  Mr. Ranch rides his bike and runs this path and nearby, so he knew the lay of the land, so a couple weeks ago when Grandude visited, we thought this would be a fun day trip.

 Off we go!

 This might be when The Girl started chanting "This is boring, let's go to the museum where it is air conditioned".

 I want to live here...just saying.  I'm intrigued by who lives there, too--I counted at least 8 mailboxes in this youtube video--be warned, it made me a little dizzy!

 Dinosaur footprint #1

 Girl in footprint

 A whole bunch of dinosaur footprints!

 Red Rocks in background

 Grumpy Boy pointing to cool rock

 Grumpy Girl avoiding us

 Happier Boy, pretending to be a dinosaur

 Happier Girl posing with Dinosaur Boy.  After this we made everyone happy by driving into Golden for lunch.  We originally planned to go to into Morrison, but it looked like there was probably an event at Red Rocks, so we drove on.  We ended up having a nice little lunch at the Old Capital Grill and going for a walk through downtown.  We ended up by the river and Mr. Ranch and The Girl ventured down below to test the water temperature while The Boy, Grandude and I hung out on the bridge and people watched.  There were a lot of kayakers and tubers--fun to watch!

The Girl, happy, probably because she is wearing her birthday gift (backpack) from Grandude, The Boy, melting down because he is hot and tired.

We were slightly bummed to see that the slide from the park was closed--wouldn't that be a wet surprise? 

 By the end of the day, after being fed and watered, our grumpy children were happy and reported that the trip was a success.  

Mother's Day in a winter wonderland

Saturday we went on a lovely hike with the Cub Scouts (more on that later) and then came home to prepare for a spring storm.  Hard to believe, but up to 20 inches of snow was predicted for the Denver area by Monday morning.  I was kind of skeptical that we really would have snow, but I'm not taking any chances with my tiny plants.

The tarp covers the lettuce, spinach, and asparagus quite nicely (the peas and radishes haven't come up yet)

The various buckets cover up the plants in the side yard--lilac bushes, hostas, and a couple others we weren't sure were hardy enough to handle a snow storm.

Sure enough, Sunday morning brought a dusting of snow/sleet.

The kids helped make a mother's day breakfast--I'd be a little worried if Alice was looking at me like that...

But it didn't keep The Girl from her task of chopping strawberries!



Creepy cat...

Yummy--crepes!

Tigger wanted some, too!

As the day went on, we had a little more than a sprinkling...in fact, the last time I checked, despite the melting, we had almost four inches on parts of the patio.

Mr. Ranch went out a couple times to brush snow off the apple tree--we were a little worried about the branches holding up to a few inches of heavy snow.  He also spent an hour or so in the garage putting snow tires back on his car--it's not accumulating too much on the roads, but enough that snow tires may be useful tomorrow morning!

It seems like every time I look out we have more snow--reminds me of the May snow storm in "The Long Winter" (Wilder) book--just when they thought winter was over, they had one more storm.  Hopefully, this is it for us!  The moisture is great though--add some sunshine, and this yard should go nuts!