August and September 2023

On my first day back in Colorado, there was a pretty strong hail storm. The weather cleared up nicely later, though. Oscar took a lot of nice pictures as he went on runs around the neighborhood, and he added some nice lighting to our paver pathway.

On the weekend, Oscar took Tyler on a hike at Homestead Park.

Oscar was doing a planks challenge that month, which the kids would often do with him. Allison's was more more like a downward dog, but it was fun to see them all working out together. Oscar also made excellent homemade bread.

We cancelled our YMCA membership in mid-August since we don't use it much when the kids are in school, but we still had a voucher for a free parents' night out. Oscar and I meant to hike at a park nearby, but a storm was rolling in, so we followed the clear skies and ended up at Fountain Regional Park. Oscar thought the "no dumping" sign was funny.

The next day started off super stormy, but it cleared up enough for me to take the kids to the Black Forest Festival. A little rain still came down while we were there, but it wasn't too bad. 

The first thing was did was get in line for the pony rides. Tyler will be too big next year, so I told him to enjoy it now while he could. They also played games for prizes, went to the petting zoo, got some llama balloons, and posed with the llamas while holding their balloons. I won an extra cupcake at the cake walk, and all of the cupcakes were super tasty. I remember a yummy Smore cupcake and a strawberry cheesecake cupcake. 

I got in some good kid cuddles, worked hard on the piano piece "God Be with You til we Meet Again," and  Allison was  excited about everything arriving for her upcoming birthday party. She was told she could dress as Princess Peach as long as that was also her Halloween costume.

Tyler got a haircut, but he didn't have it cut short enough to not need to comb his hair. He learned how to do it and combed his hair regularly for the next several months, but decided to go shorter on his next cut so he wouldn't have to comb it so much. 

We ordered a ladder toss game, which got the kids spending a lot of time outside playing with it.

Here are some pictures of our local wildlife and salamanders. These salamanders usually stay hidden, but the vast amount of rain we had brought them out. 

The kids had a Friday off, so we went to Elitch's with Oscar. Unfortunately a lot of the water slides were closed.

Oscar and I went for a hike on another Parents' Night Out thanks to another free voucher. 

We got some organization for Allison's Legos, the kids tried calamari again for the first time in several years while I was at an RS social, and the activity girls did a progressive dinner on their bikes and scooters. Our house was the second spot, and Allison borrowed a scooter from Kinzie. The area we lived in Washington was not bike friendly at all. It just terrified me to see kids on bikes with narrow streets and no sidewalk and people flying down our little town home complex way too fast. She did have a little scooter that an older girl had handed down to her when she outgrew it, but then Allison outgrew it too around when we were moving, so we didn't bring it with us. Allison really struggled with the larger scooter at first in the church parking lot. I ended up putting the scooter in the car and driving her to the first stop. After she'd eaten her watermelon I told her to go practice on the sidewalk and she started getting used to it. She didn't master it by any means, but at least she was having some fun. She rode it all the way to our house and was the last one there in spite of leaving before everyone else.

Tyler did well with rocket launching at primary activity fathers and sons' day. He'd also gone roller skating that day at Allison's friend Emmy's birthday party.

Cute kitties!

In late August we took a trip down to the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience. We'd come last year and purchased an annual pass since it was less than the cost of going twice. We figured we should go a 2nd time to make it worth the cost we'd paid. The kids, especially Allison, liked roaring with the dinosaurs. 

The kids rocked the ropes course this trip! They both did more and harder obstacles than they were willing to try last year.

We went to Texas Roadhouse on the way back where Allison enjoyed riding on the saddle in the lobby. Later that week I went hiking with my friend Erica and Oscar ran the Labor Day Liftoff race. Tyler looks so sweet when he falls asleep reading.

On Labor Day we took a Zoo Trip with friends. All of them loved watching the snakes.

They also had fun in the alligator play area.

We got to see the wolves, which I'd only seen once before, and we got great views of the snow leopard, who I'd only seen twice before.

Here was our prep work for Allison's party. I spent a ton of time making Yoshi eggs for the egg hunt, yoshi egg water balloons for battling the koopalings, buying and putting up decorations, and putting together question mark boxes.

The cake had been a giant labor of love on Oscar's part. He started it on Friday evening, making a vanilla cake with peach glaze between the layers from scratch. He also experimented with a strawberry box cake mixed with strawberry peach jello (similar to a lemon-jello cake but switching out the flavor to strawberry peach). The scratch cake was definitely tastier, and his glaze made of peach preserves and fresh white peaches was top notch. He also made a peach buttercream frosting, which is a lot from him since he personally hates frosting. The attempt was to make a Princess Peach cake with a Princess Peach doll in the middle and the cake made to look like an extension of her dress (google "Barbie doll cake" for an example). While the cake tasted amazing, structurally it was not as sound as he would have liked. It leaned significantly overnight, making it look more like one of those pink hills in the Dr Seuss books. 

We celebrated Allison's birthday Saturday the 9th with a huge house party (huge for us at least)! Typically we've done destination birthdays, so this was Allison's first birthday party with friends. There were 30+ kids plus several adults and they all had a ton of Princess Peach/Mario themed fun!

When everyone arrived we had several different areas inside for them to play while we waited for everyone to get there so we could do the Yoshi egg hunt (I'd bought white Easter eggs online and used various colored sharpies to draw dots on them). Down in the basement we had MarioKart on the Switch, on the main floor we had Super Mario Bros Wii along with make your own Yoshi egg and sticker Mario character crafts, on the top floor we had the Mario movie playing and the kids' rooms available with Legos and other toys, and in the upstairs office we'd made a balloon room with fans in each corner. The balloon room was super popular and took me maybe 10 minutes to set up plus blowing up and tying the balloons (just had to get the computer and other important stuff into the closet so the kids didn't knock into them). As kids arrived we tried organizing them into groups by sticker (group Boo, group Mario, group Peach, etc) so we could keep them organized once we started all the mini games. I wanted to make sure everyone got an equal chance to play each game and do each activity and earn similar amounts of coins to redeem for prizes. In the end that was all for naught since some kids were having so much fun inside that they didn't want to play any of the outdoor games, or they wanted to go back and forth between indoor and outdoor fun. In hindsight I wouldn't have tried to organize who was doing what when and just let them all do whatever they felt like doing. We had more than enough to do and plenty of space and food and cake for that large of a group, but I should have known that I couldn't structure that many kiddos of various ages, and I stressed too much about how I was going to manage them. Lesson learned! Kids just want to have fun.

Once we had everyone but a few who said they'd be coming late, we had the Yoshi egg hunt. It was a hot 83 degree day, so I bought candy I didn't think would melt, but apparently Hi-chews, gummy bears, and tootsie rolls do melt to some extent. In spite of that it was still very successful. Because there were so many kids I had to give them a limit of 8 eggs, which I thought would be really disappointing for them, but as far as I could tell they all respected the limit and still had plenty of fun. I had extra candy and told them to dump out their eggs and return them so we could do another hunt later, and a couple other adults helped repack the eggs, but then we got so busy doing the other activities we never did do the other hunt and I still had them packed and ready.

After that we let them play all the mini-games. We had water balloons that they were throwing at the fence trying to hit laminated pictures of Bowser and the koopalings. I'd bought 100 white water balloons and colored dots on them to turn them into Yoshi eggs. This along with filling and tying them took me several hours. This I wouldn't do again and would just do the quick fill/instant tie options in the future. However, these balloons ended up being incredibly durable. It took a lot to get them to break, so the 3 balloon per kid limit didn't end up being a problem since they each got multiple attempts with each balloon. This game was wildly popular! They even damaged the fence a little bit, but Oscar went back and fixed it pretty easily. He also tossed back a few balloons that had been tossed over.

Additionally we had a game using a click and toss toy to get balls in buckets with pictures of Bowser and the Koopalings on them, and ladder toss with Bowser and other enemy stickers on the ladders. These were fun, but not quite as popular as the other games. The kids also really enjoyed bouncing on the trampoline to hit question mark boxes, even though the boxes were empty. They're meant to be containers for party favors, so they were relatively inexpensive to buy, and Oscar strung them up on several strings. I was surprised by how popular this was considering how hot it was outside, but the kids were constantly taking turns on it the rest of the day. The boxes came flat in a package without directions, and as I was folding them together Tyler asked if he could help me. I'm so glad he did since apparently I was doing the bottom part wrong. Tyler does origami and folds paper airplanes easily, both of which I'm terrible at, so he figured out how they worked immediately and fixed mine too.

Inside we had Mario Bingo, which was enjoyed by those who did it but difficult to keep track of since I only had 10 different cards. I tried laminating them and having the kids use dry erase markers, but in hindsight I should have just given them beans or buttons or something since erasing was confusing for some kids. We also had pin the jewel on Princess Peach, but by then we'd given up all semblance of order and they were all having so much fun doing what they were doing that no one cared about it. So now I have an extra activity for a future birthday party.

Oscar had been trying to order pizza and fix the Switch downstairs and monitor games, so everyone was getting hungry and thirsty and we still didn't have food almost two hours in. He ran into multiple technical difficulties trying to order as much pizza as we needed on the app and found it best to order from two different places. In the meantime I got kids Princess Peach floats (Fanta strawberry with Strawberry and/or vanilla ice cream). This was very well received, and I wish I'd bought more Soda since we ran out. Thankfully I always have a supply of drink pouches for my own kids (I buy them whenever I see sales) so that and ice water from the fridge dispenser kept everyone satiated. I also took kids upstairs in groups and let them redeem their coins for prizes. Some kids got way too many coins and some didn't get any coins, so instead of having prices I just asked them to pick a few and let them know if I thought it was too much. Finally food arrived and everyone filled their bellies before Allison opened presents.

We then cut the cake. That morning I'd bought Rice Crispies so Oscar could make Rice Crispy treats and reinforce the cake's structure better. We cut off the piece that was leaning too much, placed figurines of Princess Peach, Daisy, and Rosalina on it, then added and frosted the rice crispy treats to even out the main cake before placing the larger Peach figure on top. We had a TON of leftover cake bits from the shavings Oscar made to shape the cake, so he put it in a pan and turned it into a peach cake cobbler.

Here's Allison playing with some of her new gifts later that day.  

On Monday, which was Allison's actual birthday, Erica and I hiked up 7 Falls while the kids were at school. They have these cute painted squirrels as you first go in.

We hiked up all 224 steps up to the top.

We had a little break in this area where they have a viewing platform. 

Erica got some pictures of me climbing.

We hiked around at the top of the mountain as well, but there's not a whole lot up there. They have ziplining platforms, but we couldn't go into those areas without a guide. 

There's also an area where you can take an elevator up the mountain to a full view of the falls. You can't see the whole thing from any point on the stairs we hiked or at the base, but you can see it all from this lookout. 

We lucked out getting there when it wasn't raining. We wanted to go this day since there'd been a TON of rain the previous day, which made the falls look great. It was clear in the morning while we hiked, but by the time we caught our shuttle to get back to the parking lot, it was coming down pretty hard. We timed it perfectly.

That evening Allison opened gifts from us and auntie Malia. Allison's birthday is September 11th, and in school she's heard about planes crashing into the twin towers on her birthday, but she didn't realize it wasn't accidental. I had to explain to her that those planes were taken down intentionally by terrorists. 

Mom and dad came on Wednesday evening to be there for Allison's baptism. I booked them a super cheap flight in case dad couldn't make it and we had to cancel the flights. His health had been failing for a long time, so there was definitely a good chance they wouldn't arrive. Fortunately they were able to make it, but it would end up being dad's last trip. He passed away less than two months after returning.

Allison ended up having a shared baptism with another girl since there was a lot of other things going on in the building, and they wanted the girls to share the same water. We took these pictures to have a nice 8X10 photo of her at the baptism. 

During her baptism service, Tyler played "When I Am Baptized" while Allison sang. I stayed behind her to sing softly nearby just to keep her on track with the accompaniment. They both did a really nice job. 

Afterwards we took photos with family and grandparents.

After the service Allison opened baptism and birthday gifts from grandparents. Marcus and Martha had William's wedding to prepare for, so they started their drive home early the next morning. My parents stayed until Tuesday morning since flights were much cheaper then.

On Monday we took the kids swimming while mom and dad watched. Normally mom would swim with the kids, but she started feeling unwell on Friday and didn't ever fully recover during the trip. Allison was thrilled she passed the swim test and can now swim anywhere in either pool.

The next morning I dropped mom and dad off at the airport and hiked up to Castle Rock on the way back.