Colorado 2015 | Day Five

Saturday | August 1

{A day of exploring downtown Windsor and Old Town Fort Collins}

I'll start this post about our day on vacation the exact same way as every other day: Porter waking up in the middle of the night. Sigh. This time he is up at 3 am and gets a bottle. Then he either never goes back to sleep or he wakes up for a second time at 4:30 and I give him another small bottle because WTF? Cecelia comes in to our bedroom at 6:15 but somehow we convince her to go back to bed until her 7:00 Tot Clock time. She goes upstairs with Nate, Truman stops by my bed at 7:20 and  then goes up, too. Porter is awake at 7:35 and so I cannot lounge in bed any longer, we head upstairs together to get this show on the road.

Breakfast is had, and the guys are playing the game 'Rush Hour' which must be one from my childhood. 







Then once everyone is fed and dressed the whole crew drives to downtown Windsor for Nana Bea's for some coffees, ice cream samples, and a sneaky toy treat by my mom for the kids. It was an old fashioned ice cream parlor/gift shop that was adorable and the iced coffees were fantastic.








Once the kids connived my parents to get them a small toy, we headed out of the shop and down towards a playground that was near a sandy beach/big pond (I think they call it a 'lake' in Colorado) ;) The playground had swings so Cecelia was an automatic fan. It was incredibly hot and the sun was intense, no shade available, so we didn't last too long. Still had a good time swinging, sliding, and throwing rocks into the pond (er, lake). 










We got back home around 11:00 and made an early lunch for the children, playing Truman's new 'Tip It' game he selected from Nana Bea's. It was pretty fun actually, I'm getting more excited about family board games and friendly competition with the children (will never let them win though, nope).


After that it was nap time for the two littles, and Nate and I wanted to eat in Old Town this day. We headed out and went to Backcountry Delicatessen based on several stellar reviews online and it did not disappoint. I mean, I could eat a sandwich every single meal of my life and never get sick of them (and I do basically eat one every day for lunch). But 'fancy' sandwiches are my FAVE and this was yummy.



We walked around downtown a bit, bought a few souvenirs for us and for our parents (Old Town Spice Shop for new rubs for the in-laws, then Kilwins for the most amazing fudge and other chocolate treats for my parents). We had to hit up Mary's Mountain Cookies for a gigantic lump of sugary goodness and I'm not sure why we split one, because I could have totally done the deed on my own. Nate wanted to stop by Odell Brewing Company for a beer and we were SHOCKED to see that the back patio was freaking packed. We didn't even remember there being a patio last time we came here (and did the tour) but apparently the nicer weather and a weekend meant that everyone and their mom wanted to be outside day drinking some of the best craft beer;) The line took forever just to order a brew and I was kind of being a party pooper about it but Nate held steady. And it was worth it because the atmosphere outside WAS really fun. I had a Wilson Wit and Nate discovered his new favorite beer, the Nitro Cutthroat Porter. Yes, we love the name especially;)






We headed back home after stopping to buy a teensy bit of beer for the remainder of our trip (vacation evenings!) and we were excited to see the kiddos when we arrived. Both Porter and Cecelia napped for 2.5 hours and all three were playing in the bathtub when we reunited. We played, Porter crawled and mom started dinner after giving P a bottle next to sleeping dollie.


We set up a 750 piece puzzle, as it's a tradition for us to finish a puzzle when we visit my parents. Somehow we didn't even attempt after set up but oh well.




Then my dad, Cecelia (and a dollie), Porter and I went for a quick walk outside with the stroller. Cecelia goes on and on about how Dollie is both a boy and a girl and one cannot argue with CC. Cuteness overload.






BBQ burgers for dinner at 5:30, outside on the patio. Porter totally gagged on a chip and it put a slight damper on the feel of a relaxing dinner with children (hahahaha) but it was still quite enjoyable to eat outside.


We all cleaned up and then Nate, my dad, and Truman decided to play a quick nine holes before bedtime. This was a very very big deal as it was Truman's first time playing on an actual golf course. The fact that he did this not only with Nate but also with my dad pretty much made their years, it was that awesome for them. Nate was initially worried that T would be bored and too tired to really care but he surprised them and loved it. They had Truman play with them and he surprised the dude by how well he did, especially his short game. I loved seeing how proud they all were of Truman when they came home later. One of those times when I can see how much Nate loves being a dad, specifically being a dad to a kid that loves golf. His dream!





Also, Nate got a picture of the BEST sunset we saw. Not sure where I was this night, totally missed this one.



While the big guys were playing golf, Mom and I took the two little ones to the playground again. Cecelia was particularly obsessed with the stone dragon there and the fact that wood chips kept getting in his nose. She was cleaning out his nostrils often saying, 'Don't get any more boogers!' when we left. Also, she wanted me to tell every single rabbit we saw that, 'It's okay, don't be afraid of us.'




We got back home around 7:00 and put Porter to bed immediately. We had some quality time with Cecelia as I cleaned the kitchen and we gave her a small snack, then we did her bedtime. I have noted that she kept asking me, 'How long until I am fifty-one?' Because fifty-one is her go-to number for everything.

The guys got home around 8:45 and filled us in on the milestone of three generations golfing together. Then Truman went to bed and my parents, Nate and I rented the movie Wild. I had seen it in the theatre and thought we'd all enjoy the pretty scenery, forgetting about the many X-rated scenes and foul language. Even at 34 years old it's still awkward to watch R rated movies with my parents! But it's a great movie and we all really liked it, scandalous parts aside. We all retired after the movie around 11:00. 

Another day down on vacation! 

Colorado 2015 | Day Four

Friday | July 31

{Nails, Brewery tours, and eating out for dinner}

Porter cries at 4am and he's soaking wet, peed through his diaper, pajamas, crib sheets, etc. Boo-hiss, this hasn't happened in a long time and I'm zombie-style changing his diaper, searching for a new onesie or something to pass for pajamas, and throw down a blanket over the wet crib sheet because I don't know where the extra bedding is at my mom's house. Also: exhausted. I have become a major pansy with night time wakings, considering I endured much much worse for many years with the other kids. I also give Porter a bottle after all of this because now is definitely not the time to get strict with crib bottles, man.

Cecelia is crying at 6:15 and I lay with her until 7 in her tiny bed, *not* sleeping, but begging CC to let me. Once their clock turns yellow I send her in to Nate who goes upstairs with her. It should be noted here that sister never quite understood the concept of our bedrooms being downstairs, and the main living space upstairs. She is so used to our house with the bedrooms upstairs she would always, always ask to go 'downstairs' when we were already in my mom's basement in her bedroom. Same for when we were upstairs at the kitchen or family room; she would always say 'we need to go upstairs to play in the playroom.' Ah, child. A difficult concept,  I suppose.

Porter is up at 7:45 and I hear mom and Cecelia come down (or is it 'up'?) to get him. I finally catapult myself out of bed after that but I'm still tired and super parched. OMG this dry air is insanity, zero humidity means we are all waking with chapped lips, dry noses and throats, and red eyes. 

Breakfast with the family, I shower, and finally Truman wakes up at 9! Sleepy head is having an excellent time on vacation, I think. The three girls of our group went to the nail salon at 9:30, because it's usually a tradition for mom and I to get manis/pedis when we are together. We can't always make this happen but we have announced it IS happening now and Cecelia loves tagging along. The dudes stay at home and my dad, my brother and Truman go to the driving range while Nate deals with Porter-fights-a-nap. He texts to say that Porter's bottle leaked all over him and P is really displeased with life in general. Fun times, glad I'm in getting my toes fancied and not maneuvering a mad baby right now!



Mom and I get our pedicures, and Cecelia sits on my lap and picks out blue, orange, and sparkle nail polish for her manicure. Mom and I then get regular manicures instead of our favorite gel variety to let our nails rest a bit, but this was a big mistake because we both smudged the polish within seconds of walking out of the salon. Oops. CC was especially adorable during our chick date and very well behaved. We all head next door to get a few crucial groceries, such as La Croix (I am a total goner with this stuff all of a sudden) and sister makes me pick Lime as a flavor to try. I know it's very unlikely that I will enjoy this flavor and Cecelia loves to taste my 'sparkle water', but I don't think she'll love it anyway. But the 'green water' is a must, apparently, so I get it and am not a big fan but whatever. Not sure why I feel the need to include this detail of the day but I really do love La Croix and want one after typing this post. 

Sweet nail, right?


Snacks when we returned home, a classic GoGo creation.



We got back to the house, ate a quick lunch and then me and the big guys went to New Belgium for our favorite brewery tour. The tickets for the tours sell out two months in advance and we totally forgot to check until the week before our trip, and they were all gone. But then Nate kept randomly checking back on the site and found four tickets for Friday at noon, so he swiped those immediately. SCORE. Seriously, if you are going to Fort Collins and you even remotely like beer you should do this tour. It's 90 minutes long, is FREE, the tour guides are extremely personable and FUN, and the company itself is top notch. They are really into leaving the smallest possible carbon footprint, the employees all get a vintage New Belgium bicycle for their one year work anniversary, and the climate is all about having a ball and enjoying life. Also the beer is phenomenal and they give you about 5 smallish glasses through the tour. Yes, five. You even get to pull your own from the tap to begin the tour and we had two different beers right off the bat this way. Our tour guide this time kept calling the glasses 'sippy cups' but there is nothing infantile about the amount of beer one can consume during the tour. After much education about the hops, kegs, sour beers and wine barrels, canning and bottling processes,  and the differences in their many beers you get to slide down a spiral metal slide to end your tour. So yeah, it's pretty freaking fantastic and this is obviously not biased or sponsored or affiliated in any way, I just get very amped up about this brewery tour! Maybe the numerous beers fog my opinions towards the obvious but brewery tours are fun. My notes from the tour: 'so so awesome'. Ha! Also, I say that my favorite beer is either Slow Ride IPA or Fat Tire, which is shocking because I'm positive I've had their most popular beer before (Fat Tire) and didn't like it. But in the past year my tastes have majorly changed and I am not as into wheat/sweet beers. But I freaking love IPAs and hoppy (?) beer now. Nate is very proud of me I think;)














After our tour Nate bought a tee shirt because he is a sucker for purchasing memorabilia after a fun experience like that. My brother bought the same one and I tried to find a shirt I'd actually wear but (shocker) I didn't think any of them would really look right on me/short and boxy. Then dad left around 1:30 to go home and help mom with the children who might be waking from their naps shortly. Built-in babysitters are the best!

Nate, Michael and I then decided we should go to Fort Collins Brewery for our second tour of the day, this one wasn't a place we tried two years ago on our last CO trip. It's a much smaller brewery and isn't quite as national yet, so we knew the tour wouldn't compare to New Belgium but it was still informative and interesting (no free beer during this one).  We each bought a beer after the short 15 minute tour and sat at the bar to enjoy and chat. This might be my favorite part of this day just because we could just sit and chill with my brother who I don't see nearly enough. My favorite beer here was one of their smaller batch ones, the Blackberry Basil Wheat. Nate and Michael did not approve of this one, FYI and since Nate was our driver he stopped drinking beer and changed to water. Someone has to be responsible I guess!

Selfie of me is after the second tour when I was a wee bit tipsy :/


Then we went to Old Towne for coffee at The Bean Cycle. This was our favorite of the numerous coffee shops we tried last time and it didn't disappoint this round either, but I sort of nursed my iced latte because my beer buzz was hitting hard by now. We drove home, reunited with kids, and got plenty of hugs and smiles from the goobers. 

Next it was time for dinner and we drove to at Pablos Pizza for the main event. Taking three small children to a restaurant is always such fun (sarcasm) but it's certainly more enjoyable with four adults to assist in the chaos! Mom and dad love Pablos for their fantastic gluten free crust and it's quite kid friendly and delicious, everyone ate a ton of pizza and behaved shockingly well for eating out on vacation. 



We had to say goodbye to Mike after diner, as he was driving to Colorado Springs for a final night before moving back to Missouri. He's been in Colorado getting his masters until now, when he moves onto the next chapter of getting his PhD in Social/Personality Psychology (I think that is the right term) from Mizzou. I mean, if you know my brother you are aware that he wasn't the most academic in high school and now he's mister scholar! So proud of him, obviously, crazy to think he is moving back to mid-Missouri and my parents are now in Colorado. 

Also, Truman is obsessed with Michael's cat, Margo. Mom had texted me this picture earlier in the day. And then Michael had to leave, wahhhhh.



The kids were sad to see Uncle Michael go but we quickly whisked them to Spooners for frozen yogurt which was a great distraction. And tasty! The kids loved the gigantic gummy sharks we let them get as a topping and I'm not sure they could even finish their entire cups. Porter is an ice cream hound (and pizza, too, for that matter) and had no problem 'sharing' my fro-yo. 




We headed back home, the kids all got a bath, and I put Porter down. Then while mom was reading to the big kids Nate and I walked to watch sunset. 



It never gets old and I know we were such tourists staring at the mountains and orange sky, but come on! We continued to discuss all of the inspiring house paint colors on this walk and I found my favorite, taking a sneaky picture (really awkward if this is your house, sorry!).

Perfect grays!

Love these flowers so much, they were everywhere in Colorado. I can't remember what mom called them.

Home at 8:30 and we did our part of Truman and Cecelia's bedtime. Once they were down Mom, Dad, Nate and I watched Catching Fire. We realized we had all seen it before and apparently I missed the fact that the next movie is already out on DVD, too. Stopped the movie at 10:45 because we were all dozing off/ready to have nightmares from the intensity of this movie. And then I stayed up until 11:45 to finish my book (Gone Girl) and knew I'd have even more nightmares!  Nothing like ending a nice, peaceful day on vacation with lots of MURDER on the mind, right?

Colorado 2015 | Day Three

Thursday | July 30th

{Hiking in the mountains}

I wake up to Porter crying at 4 am and come dangerously close to going into his room, but I'm not really sure what I should do. Luckily he falls back to sleep before I have to decide. I forgot that the power had flickered the night before and so the kids' Tot Clock was yellow at some obscene hour. We hear them talking very loudly at 6:15am and I could NOT deal, Nate fixed their clock and then laid with them on the couch downstairs to keep them from going upstairs too early. At 7 am he let them go upstairs with my parents and we followed shortly. Yawn, vacation sleep is tough with three littles, huh?

Porter is fussing a bit but doesn't seem to actually be awake, so we start breakfast without him. Nate and I have our baked oatmeal outside on the patio, the kids are eating with my parents. I hear mom ask them, 'So what do you guys want to do today?' Cecelia answers, 'Sing happy songs! And share, have fun, and sit at the table while we are eating.' HA!

At 7:45 Porter was up for real, so I got him and dressed him for the day, setting him up for breakfast with my dad.


I made egg sandwiches for Nate and I and we started getting ready for our hike on Horsetooth Mountain---a place we hiked twice last time we visited Colorado. I would link to my old posts here but I get very angry about the fact that somehow over 1000 of my photos on Flickr were deleted by some stupid app on my phone (apparently). So a lot of my CO trip pictures are just missing in the blog posts along with some others from that time of the year. I can feel my blood pressure rising just typing about this, but thankfully I do still have the images on my external hard drive. BUT STILL, so not cool Flickr, even though they say it's not their fault. 

There are two trails, one that goes all the way to the top of the rock and is pretty steep but amazing views once you get there. And the other trail is a lot flatter but has a beautiful water fall on the path, we did that one last time with my brother and this year we just wanted to do the steep rock trail for some exercise/scenic views/good old fashioned Colorado fun. I mean, I didn't bring my nice camera and my selfie stick for nothing! Let's get some top-of-the-world shots! (Okay, fine, old post from Horsetooth Rock and old post from Horsetooth Falls).

We left the house at 8:45 and arrived at the base of the trails at 9:30. We knew it would be a 2.6 mile hike to the top of the rock and I remember it being pretty easy and not too terrifying. Turns out that hiking in the blistering July sun is a lot harder than late October because there were a few times I had to stop and catch my breath and started worrying about passing out from the thin air. Seriously, altitude is no joke! A few times we saw other hikers coming back down the mountain, like a mom with a teeny tiny baby in a Bjorn and a group of tween girls and I felt a renewed sense of confidence in my ability to not die on this trail. If they can do it, I surely could pull through!! But dude, it was hot and hard to breathe and really freaking steep at times! At the very tippy top of the rock we sat and soaked in our surroundings at 7300 ft elevation. It took us about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to the top and it was oh, so worth it.

We have to get to the top of *that* thing?? This was probably at the last 0.3 miles and I can't believe I didn't take a picture before now. Oh wait, yes I can. I thought I might be dying before this.


See the 'horse tooth' behind us?


Pictures never do this view justice though. Happy that some random  shirtless New York bros were sharing the top of the rock with us, and since they asked us to get their (very muscle-y) picture I asked for a return favor. Also, selfie stick with and without video, an apple and a Clif bar were had. I had already chugged my entire 25 oz water bottle and Nate joked with me about not stealing his (I have issues with drinking a TON of water and like to sneak his stash of H20 sometimes). 


Itty bitty clouds in the distance are my fave.


Panoramic

Again, doesn't do it justice at all. Nate likes to take pictures sometimes, too.


Got the selfie stick, no worries.


No Nate. This is NOT the vision I had for this image. At all. The worst, can't even see the mountains.


We hung out on the top of the mountain from about 10:45-11:15 and then headed back down. So much easier walking down the trails but it was kind of difficult when the gravel would slip under foot and I think my legs were even more sore from our descent than our climb! We got to the bottom in an hour, so we refilled our water bottles and hopped in the car at 12:15. We were home at 12:45.

We ate lunch (starving!) and played with the kids a bit but Nate, my dad and my brother all left by 1:00 for their tee time. That was exactly when I put both Porter and Cecelia down for their naps and then took the best shower of my life, who knew your ankles could turn into one giant dust magnet while hiking? Porter fought this nap until around 2pm when he finally gave in, my mom went for a walk while I read some of my book in the recliner. And then, oops, I passed out and took an amazing hour-long nap. I cannot remember the last time I napped but it was probably on maternity leave and it was glorious. (There are several notes in my phone about this time of day being so awesome with the shower and the nap and the resting, so it must have been a really great nap). I made mom and I iced coffees and we chatted a bit, and watched HGTV while Truman was on the iPad for his quiet time. 






Finally at 4:15 we decided to wake Cecelia from her 3+ hour nap. Porter woke up at 4:30 which meant he took two 2.5 hour naps this day. NICE. We all played in the backyard with silly string (a classic GoGo activity, the messier the better) and I took lots of pictures of the madness. We also played in the basement and I got a kick out of really noticing all of the old toys from my childhood, watching my kids play with little bits of my memories.















We made dinner (crockpot southwestern chicken on nachos!) and then the guys returned home around 6:15, so we could all eat together. Then Mike and Nate began playing backyard football with Truman. My mom kept one of the old Nerf footballs and they just don't make them like this anymore, Nate was obsessed with this ball and they played for what seems like hours (and we also asked to bring the ball home with us). I also got a few pictures with my brother and I with the kids, and then one of 'the original four' plus the kids. 

Has an 'owie', don't 'cha know?


Uncle Mike love.


Family part one.


Family part two.


<3


Can throw a spiral better than his mom.


We put Porter to bed at 7:45 and the big kids at 8:45. The sunset happened in between those two bedtimes and I got a few more pictures by sneaking outside to catch the final glimpse of the sun. 




Next I have 'beer, Jimmy Fallon, and bed at 10:45' written on my phone. Should have really typed this all out sooner as my memory is already fading!