Camping at Long Draw

We spent last weekend camping with my parents - the first time in over 20 years for me, and the first time ever for Joker and the girls.  What a blast!  It was such a wonderful way to relax and spend time together!  We all loved it, and we're already looking forward to our next camping trip.

Boppie picked the location: a wonderful campground on Long Draw Reservoir, over an hour up the stunning Poudre Canyon.  We lucked into a perfect site with a beautiful view, privacy and superb spots for both tents.  The only drawback was the 200 yard hike down the hill, which we shlepped our stuff up and down each night for bear-proofing. 

The Bug could not have enjoyed fishing more.  She even picked out her own fly: a giant black ant with two pink spots.  She learned how to cast out, and never wanted to quit.  The adults' best luck was just before dusk on the canoe - we floated out and were catching a rainbow trout on practically every cast when we hit out limit.  Trout for dinner, and again for breakfast, which is my personal fave.

The reservoir itself is below the Never Summer Range, which true to its name still has snow caps.  In the mornings, the water was perfectly still, even in the inlet where we camped.  The first morning it frosted, and a captivating mist rose from the lake. 

The girls loved throwing rocks in the lake, hanging out by the campfire and sleeping in tents.  They had so much fun the entire time, and the grown-ups did, too.  I predict many more camping weekends in our future!

Butterflies and dinosaurs

Since we are new to living in the Denver area and I'm home with the girls full time (for now), we are trying to see some of our local sites.  Joker is even able to take the week off so that we can adventure together - yesterday we visited with family, today we went to the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver, tomorrow we're taking the narrow gauge railroad between Georgetown and Silver Plume, and we're going camping this weekend with my parents.  I hope to have lots of pictures to share from our Colorado fun week!

The Butterfly Pavilion is pretty amazing.  The first rooms are filled with tanks that house spiders (including an entire "tarantula tower"), scorpions (some that glow in the dark), beetles, walking sticks, millipedes, a beehive, roaches and more.  Creepy.  But pretty cool.  Then you enter the rainforest environment, which is the main attraction.  Here, thousands of butterflies are flitting and sitting and eating... they're all over the place, all sizes and colors.  Total wow.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the girls to the Morrison Natural History Museum.  It's basically in our back yard, and the Bug has recently become very interested in dinosaurs.  The museum is tiny, but has some amazing fossils and casts - the first Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus (which was still a Brontosaurus when I was a kid) discovered in Colorado, T-Rex, Pteranodon, mammoth, saber tooth cat and more.  The highlight for the girls, though, was the fossil dig pit outside, where kids can find real fossils in the sand. 

Dam Ducky Derby

Evergreen, our new town, is a very family-friendly place with loads of activities.  Among other things there is a summer evening concert series, art and music festivals every couple of weekends, a farmer's market right downtown.  And today was the Dam Ducky Derby, something totally foreign to us.  A fundraiser for a great local program for special needs kids and their families, 7,000 rubber ducks were sold for $5 a piece.  These ducks were then released at the Evergreen Dam, and floated down Bear Creek to a chute and finish line on the other end of town.  I haven't yet gotten the call to tell us that one of our ducks won, but I'm pretty much banking on it.

Garden of the Gods

On Sunday afternoon we went on a quintessential Colorado outing to the Garden of the Gods, a public park located just outside of Colorado Springs.  With the kids in tow, hard core hiking isn't possible, so we are keen on identifying places that qualify as "a walk" but are still fun for the grown-ups.  Garden of the Gods fits the bill perfectly: incredible natural beauty that is completely accessible to everyone!

Typical Colorado, the weather rolled in as we got to the farthest-away point.  We got totally and completely drenched.  Luckily, it was a warm-ish downpour, and everyone was more or less amused.

 After the rain, the clouds begin to thin out...

...and we ended the day with clear, blue skies.

Sorry, Harry, but you were wrong about that

Maybe you noticed it, but the final Harry Potter movie was released this month.  In the run-up to this blockbuster event, there were myriad behind the scenes, character overviews, plot reviews and uncountable conversations with friends.  Anyway, during one marathon of HP extras, I kept hearing one of the most memorable quotes of the first film.  When Hagrid tells Harry that he's a wizard, Harry replies, "But I'm just Harry."  As Hagrid's reply indicates, nothing could be farther from the truth.

I was drawn into the wizarding world in late 2000, when a group of friends selected Sorcerer's Stone for a book club read.  I flew through that one and the two subsequent books, catching up with the books' release dates.  Joker and I stood in line at midnight for one of them; we've bought two copies of every one of them so that neither had to be second to read it.

The books excited generations of readers.  Kids who hadn't picked up a book before were now voraciously tearing through thousands of pages.  From my middle-school cousins to an octogenarian great aunt, hundreds of people I knew ranged from casual readers to completely obsessed. 

Then the movies came out.  Casting of the kids was perfect, but the secondary and tertiary characters... wow.  Talk about a who's who of British actors!  Major stars from screen and stage were called in to portray Harry's friends and foes, and they all brought their A games. 

I took my own magic wand (a replica of Hermione's, if you're wondering) to see the final film.  It was amazing.  I cried from the get-go.  Like, from the first time I saw the first trailer until the end of the movie over a year later.  But it had nothing on the sobbing that happened when I read of Sirius's death, or that of Dumbledore.  I cried when I finished the last book (and the last movie) because I knew I'd miss my friends.  The Harry Potter series is so much more than just a bunch of movies and books.  It really is magic.

This must be the place

We are finally settled - more or less - in our new house in Evergreen, which is a small town about half an hour west of Denver.  It smells like the mountains, looks like the mountains, feels like the mountains so it can probably be considered to be a mountain town.  Our view is of the mountains and the big, wide Colorado sky, and we have hummingbirds and deer and elk right in our yard on a daily basis.  We finally have internet connectivity, which means I can return focus to two heretofore ignored pursuits: blogging and looking for a job.

Back to parenting for now, but I have a few posts waiting in the wings... stay tuned; my online yet unemployed self has much wit and wisdom to share!

Doing the limbo

I found blogging to be difficult while housewifing, but it had nothing on the challenge of blogging without a computer.  Apologies for the major delay!  Since my new computer arrived today, here's hoping I can keep up a more regular schedule.

So it looks like this whole moving thing is really happening!  The girls and I (along with Sirius and Buffy) have spent the past week at my parents' house.  We flew out last Wednesday and our stuff left on the moving truck on Friday.  Joker stayed behind to coordinate work on the condo before we rent it out, and barring any further delays he'll be joining us Saturday night.  I'm planning to pick up our cars tomorrow (with the valuable assistance of the parentals and my sister), and based on the last update, the movers will be delivering our belongings to the new house on Friday. 

Packing was an intense multi-week effort.  I labelled the boxes with as much detail on contents as possible, in the hopes that it makes the unpacking phase as smooth as possible.  I've had a week to basically hang out with the girls and my parents, but beginning tomorrow I'm back on my game.  It'll be a very busy July 4 weekend, but it's going to feel so great to be in our own house with Joker... can't wait!