Home Sweet Home: Denver trip part 1

Home at last! Vacations are fun…but exhausting….and this has been a very exhausting summer. Noah has spent more time in other places, rooms, cribs, pack-n-plays than his own crib at home, that’s for sure. We just got back from our big trip out to Denver where we spent a week of quality family time with Stacy, Aaron, Shannon, Alyssa and Nicholas. The girls are growing into young ladies way too fast and Nicholas is talking up a storm and always does so in 3rd person which is adorable (he narrates everything he does “Nick sits down”, “Nick play with Noah”, Nick be quiet!”) Aunt Stacy properly spoiled her *favorite* nephew so Noah loved every minute of that. She introduced him to popcorn which is now his food of first choice for every meal. When she brought each bag out of the microwave he would squeal and clap his hands and rush to sit on her lap and share her bowl. She also introduced him to cheetos…boy was he a mess after that!

We are still so sad that they moved away from Atlanta but we loved seeing their new home in Denver which is beautiful. As usual, Noah was fine when we left home but ended up sick for much of the vacation. Luckily Aunt Stacy’s pediatrician was able to see Noah right away. I told David that Cigna may want to drop us from their insurance since we see more clinics, hospitals and urgent cares out of state while traveling than in network at home! Despite Noah being a little under the weather, we managed to get in a lot of fun family outings including going to the county fair, playing in the sand at the “beach” at the Reservoir which is a lovely walk from their home, shopping at the mall, going to the awesome kiddie pool in their neighborhood, going to the playground and lots of fun playtime at home. The kids played games, dress up, make believe, built tents and were amazing at keeping Noah entertained. Noah was thrilled to learn how to “play” Aunt Stacy’s piano and we of course think he has natural talent .

I have a lot of blogging to do to catch up on this entire trip so here is the first installment of pictures and I will post more later. There were so many good pictures from our awesome week out there so I narrowed it down to my favorites to share. Here are the highlights...


Noah discovered that watermelon tastes much better this way instead of cut up into bite sized pieces. I couldn't get enough watermelon while pregnant for Noah so I guess some of the cravings wore off on him.



Our very first day there, the afternoon rainstorm produced this amazing double rainbow visible from the back deck. The picture does not do it justice. It was one of the most exquisite sites I've ever seen.




Alyssa and Shannon giving Aunt Cristie a complete makeover complete with purple glitter. I even got a new hairdo and a massage and they didn't even charge me. I'm going back to "that" salon for sure.



Carousels and ice cream cones. What more could a kid want? Nick sure does love his ice cream...that's for sure. The most I've ever heard him cry was the night we made ice cream sundaes and Stacy wouldn't let him have a third serving right before bed...he took matters into his own hand and pulled over a large basket to the counter, turned it over and used it to climb up so he could reach the ice cream. Such motivation.




At first David and I were bummed that we paid $14 each to get into the fair for the sole purpose of giving Noah a fun time only to discover that the carousel was the ONLY ride he was old enough to go on...but then we went to the petting zoo and soon realized seeing how much fun the boys had in there was well worth the money. Nick was obsessed with pulling on the tails of all the animals (and hugging their rear ends for some reason) but my favorite part was when Noah and Alyssa were crouched down petting a goat and after petting the goat's head for a while, Noah just naturally reached over and started petting Alyssa's head....I couldn't stop laughing.




The boys had tons of fun at the fair.




Really not even sure what to write as a caption for this picture...




The Reservoir is a short walk from the house and it has a lovely beach, a playground and concession stands. The water is FREEZING though but the kids didn't seem to mind. Nicholas has perfected the art of playing in the sand, water and mud. He was as happy as could be in his mud hole.




Family fun at the beach. Noah was much happier in the sand and water on this vacation than earlier this summer. He didn't seem to notice that the water was frigidly cold. Mommy wouldn't even get in up to her ankles it was so cold.




Poor Noah. He was so exhausted from our day at the "beach" that he couldn't keep his eyes open on the way home in the "bike stroller" so he used Nicholas as a pillow.