September 2022: Part I - Missouri Trip and Allison's birthday

In September the kids had a 4 day weekend off school for Labor day, so we took a quick trip over to Missouri to visit their Anderson cousins. This was a rest stop in Kansas that had some taxidermied specimens of the local animals. 

We stopped for gas at a different rest stop that had a playground with animal statues. It was a little run down, and it was far too hot to go down the slides, but it was still a nice play break for the kids.

Later that evening we stopped for dinner at a Thai restaurant. We were worried the kids wouldn't find anything they were willing to eat, but Allison ended up really liking rice noodles in spicy peanut sauce while Tyler enjoyed the Coconut chicken (which was essentially chicken tenders with shredded coconut in and on the breading. We made it to Emily's around 8pm and let the kids play for a couple hours before heading to bed.

The next day I took Allison, Marry, and Bonnie to Deanna Rose Children's Farm. Here they are mining for gems and pretending to milk a cow.

Their favorite activity was bottle feeding the baby goats. When the bottles ran out of milk the goats tried eating their shirts.

Here we are on the wagon ride driven by Clydesdale horses. The girls enjoyed petting their noses beforehand and posing with the cut outs. 

Here they are taking a walk in the little nature forest.

They also enjoyed water pumping and feeding the big goats, who also tried to eat the girls' shirts when they'd run out of feed.

At home they dog piled on Uncle Oscar!

Uncle and Auntie got in some good smiles from baby Millie!

Since Bonnie's birthday was in late July, Mary's was in mid August, and Allison's was just a week away, we had a triple birthday party with cakes and presents for all three of them that evening. Clark enjoyed blowing out a trick candle repeatedly as Emily was prepping the cakes. 

After the cake and presents the kids watched "Rise of Gru." Allison didn't want to stay up late, so I put her down and fell asleep with her.

Here's a cute baby, and here's a preying mantis on their deck because Oscar likes taking pictures of bugs.

On Sunday evening we remembered it was our Root Beer Float day (the day Oscar and I met and got to know each other over Root Beer floats). Emily made us root beer with some root beer extract and club soda and gave us the last of her small container of premium vanilla ice cream. It was just enough for the two of us.

On Monday morning we took the big kids to play mini golf on a dinosaur themed course. There were also unique obstacles on the course, like a zipline, pinball, and beer pong.

The kids posed with some dinosaurs before we said our goodbyes and started our long drive home. Allison has such a great dinosaur roar and roar face.

We had planned to take Allison to the "Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience" the Saturday before her birthday, but it's primarily outdoor and the weather was cold for September - cloudy with spritzy rain all day and around 48 degrees. It was like Washington winter came for a brief visit. Instead we took the kids to the Pikes Peak Children's Museum and then out to dinner at Applebee's. I didn't get any pictures at the museum, but there was an art room and Tyler wanted to make the origami on his shirt, so I took a picture of it for him. There was a boy celebrating a birthday at the museum at the same time we were there, and they had extra birthday cupcakes, which they shared with us too. 

On Sunday, Allison's actual birthday, Tyler's did his first musical number in church. We played duets of "I Feel My Savior's Love" and "I Am a Child of God." I was terrified for him! I worried he'd get nervous, make a bunch of mistakes, and that he'd never want to perform in public again. Turns out my fears were baseless. He went up there super confident, and even though he did make a few mistakes, he recovered from them easily. We recorded this at home just after getting back from church (sans pedal. The pedals on this digital piano stopped working after we moved).

After church we let Allison open her gifts and sang Happy Birthday to her (she also sang to herself, which was super cute!) She'd picked this little rainbow cake slice at the store for her birthday, but I didn't think it was enough for all of us and also picked up a half red velvet pudding cake. 

Allison is really into Legos and building her own dinosaurs. She and Tyler got right to work putting these dinosaurs together the next day.

The next weekend was gorgeous, so we took Allison out to the Royal Gorge dinosaur experience like we'd originally planned. She was exactly 48 inches, which made her just the right height to play on both the adults ropes course and the little kids' ropes course. The small course was the first thing she wanted to do. Before we knew where she'd gone after leaving the gift shop where we'd bought our passes, she already had her gear on and was ready to go.

After that we took the Wild Walk around to see the animatronic dinosaurs. There used to be an animatronic T rex here until an electrical issue caused it to burst into flames a few years ago. Now they've replaced it with a non animatronic T-Rex and put the skeleton of the old one in a different portion of the park. The original one was right next to the ropes course, which could have easily damaged it but surprisingly did not. Allison's favorite dinosaur is the T Rex, which was apparently first discovered in Golden, CO.

I often call Allison my Allie Allosaurus. The Allosaurus was first disovered right in Cañon City, CO where we were! We were surprised to learn many well known American dinosaurs were first discovered in or near Colorado. The stegosaurus was first found in Morrison CO, and Ankylosaurus was first discovered in Denver. I think moving here will only increase Allison's love of dinosaurs!

Here are the kids and me with the towering Brachiosaurus. The first brachiosaurus skull was also discovered right here in Cañon City. At first scientists thought it was a brontosaurus until many decades later when they realized they were two different species.

Here's dilophosaurus, first found in Tuba City, AZ. In Jurassic park it has a frill and spits venom, but there's no evidence for that in the fossil record. 

The Parasauralophus was first found in Billings, MT but has also been found in Utah, New Mexico, and other areas close to CO.

Allison LOVED seeing the Triceratops with her babies! Triceratops was first discovered near Denver.

These small dinosaurs are not babies. They are meat eating Deinonychus dinosaurs first found near Billings, MT. Iguanadon, what the kids are standing next to, was first discovered in our beautiful Garden of the Gods park. Its scientific name actually means Garden of the Gods.

Pachycephalosaurus was discovered in Lance Creek, WY

After finishing the Wild Walk we had fun on the big ropes course (no photos since we couldn't have our phones while we were up on the course).

We then went inside to see fossil replicas and Allison played in the kids' playroom. A guide there told us there were real Ankylosaurus footprints on a side road we could take on our way back into the main part of the city.

So of course we went up the road and saw them! It was very narrow, one way only, but at least it was paved. And the footprints were awesome!

We got some beautiful views and some fun family pictures as a nice bonus for coming up to see the footprints. Oscar always wants us to look towards the sun since the lighting is better, but then the kids never look at the camera and even Oscar and I clearly look strained. 

We took in one last view then stopped for pizza, pasta, and root beer at a local pizzeria. The service was a bit slow (it was surprisingly busy for 3:00pm), but the food was excellent, as evidenced by Allison's messy pasta face.

September was a gorgeous month with lovely views back home, the kids jumping on the trampoline nearly every day, and some people already decorating for Halloween.

Here are the kids participating in the school fun run. A friend from the ward was there during Tyler's run, and she took a few pictures of both of us when they invited parents to run the last few laps with their kids. 

They were both victorious, though Allison's water bottle got mixed up with another girl's and I felt bad we'd been drinking her refreshing, ice cold water while she had Allison's lukewarm water. I didn't realize it until I saw the other girl grabbed Allison's bottle from the table. I rushed over to Allison and found that sure enough they had identical bottles, though Allison's name was written on the underside. I hadn't realized there were two of the same at the table or I would have made sure to look for the name underneath. Thankfully the other girls' mom was super chill and just laughed it off.