King Tut

My Mom, Dad, Abby, Jim and I went to see the Franklin Institutes King Tut exhibit today. Abby is an ancient history buff- especially when it comes to Egypt.



It was very crowded and Unfortunately- no cameras were allowed in the main exhibit. So although I can not show you exactly what we saw- you can see a glimpse of Abby's reaction in this picture:



This was a model of Egyptian life that was displayed in one of the foyers She was enthralled from the moment she realized what we came to see.



She read every word of every description. She was so small she was able to get to the front of every exhibit to get a close up look. We caught her examining the backs of most exhibits- totally taking in everything there was to see.



I know she loved it- you wanna know why? As she kissed me goodnight today I got the biggest hug and she whispered in my ear "you're the best mom ever- thanks for taking me to see Tut" Those kind of hugs don't come along every day.

I'm thinking my "cool meter" went up a notch today. :)

Colorado Trip: Day Two

Part One:

I was startled during the night by what I first thought was a rooster- but the noise was not like any rooster I have ever heard and turned into a howl. It turned out to be a couple of coyotes. Yup. They were welcoming us- how cool is that.

I did go right back to sleep, but the sad thing is it wasn't very long before I was up again. My body was still on PA time and since 7 am is sleeping in for me- my body's alarm clock woke me at 7- which was really 5 am in Colorado time. It was upsetting at first but then I realized what being up early meant. I got to watch the sunrise over Lake Grandby. Our bedroom had a view of the Lake with the mountains in the back ground and it was beautiful.



Anyway, Jim gets up and we start getting ready for the day! Today is very exciting- it's wedding day! Once of the perks of staying in a B&B is you don't have to worry about food in the morning. Right after we got ready to start the day- we had a breakfast of Southwest Egg Burritos and all I can say was Yummo! :)

After all we're done- we head down to the wedding site to have a quick wedding run through. It's still pretty chilly out- but it's getting warmer as we go along. All in all the weather is turning out to be beautiful for an outdoor ceremony. Check out the backdrop they picked out for the wedding... It's gorgeous.




And so once the rehearsing was over everyone split up and went their own ways to get ready. Jim and I went to get the rings and the marriage certificate from Jeremy and then we had some time to kill before we needed to get back and start getting ready.

So we hung out down town and walked around- shopping too. We ate at an outdoor restaurant and we each tried something different that what we would normally get when we go out. Jim got a tuna steak burger and I got a Japanese Noodle Salad.

After lunch we head back the the B&B where we chilled out and started to get ready for the wedding.




More to come later. :)

Happy Birthday Abby

Our "baby" is 10 years old !

I asked what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday. I should not have been a bit shocked when she asked for cheese cake. Since I am not talented enough to make one from scratch, we picked brownie cheesecake from the store. :)



Anyway, it's onward and upwards... Middle school starts in less than a week! YIKES!

Colorado Trip: Day One

Day One:

We stayed with Wendi and Jim the night before our flight left. At 4 am we woke up and made our way to the airport parking. Since we were coming and going at such odd hours we decided to park our car at one of the airport parking lots- That was my first experience using a valet. Interesting.

We head through security and then we had breakfast while we were waiting for our boarding time. I found it amusing that the only place open was the pizza joint and they were serving bagels... Somehow I just expected them to have a breakfast pizza or something along those lines... It's not so funny now, but I guess when it's 5 am and your suffering from lack of sleep, stuff like that seems funny.

Anyway- we finally get to board the plane and I just about panicked. I don't do so well in tight spaces and as we were heading to our seats, I felt the minor panic starting to rear it's ugly head when I realized how small the plane was. (I had visions in my mind of the plane to be huge- like the plane in flight plan)

Once we got to our seats, it wasn't that bad... Kinda like riding on a big bus. We hit some pretty nasty turbulence over Ohio and again over Iowa. That was interesting. But the landing was smooth and we could not get over how uncrowded the airport was... DIA was quite literally surrounded by farms. Just our first indication that Denver is not like the big cities in the east.

So, I will admit- I was too excited to sleep on the plane. I probably could have used a nap and since I didn't get one, I was a bit cranky. We started driving the scenic route to Grand Lake. It was all well and good until we missed an exit we drove on for about a half hour in the wrong direction. Matters were made worse, b/c our rental car did not have a working cig Lighter and so we could not charge my phone to call to see if we were going the right way or not. I had a minor melt down in the car that day. I blame the lack of sleep- but that night I decided I was not going to waste any more of my vacation in a hissy fit, so i made myself be more flexible.

So we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park. It was amazing. We started out in the back and worked our way to the top of the mountain in about 4 hours. I wish we would have had more time- we could have spent all day there. The roads were amazing. You are driving and you have a pretty good view of the mountain. Then the road U-turns on itself and *bam* you are hit with the same mountain, only a completely different view. It was amazing. No words or pictures could ever describe how completely amazing these mountains were. we live on a Mountain. We drive through the Appalation Range. The Rockies made the mountains we were used to seeing look like a bump.

So, now we are done with the Driving tour and we head to Grand Lake for the rehearsal dinner. There was a minor detail. The Street we were looking for wasn't marked and we were completely lost in a one road town- and no cell phone to boot. I kind of lost it here again (I still blame the lack of sleep/time change) We eventually found our way. We went to the park- had a delish veggie lasagna. Now that we were able to relax and get some food in our tummies all was right with the world again.





After the dinner we went to check in at the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at. All I can say is Wowsers. We had a view of lake Grandby from our bedroom window. Again, the bad luck was following us and there was an issue with the breaker in our room. The owner put in an emergency call to an electrician to fix the problem. So we used it as a wonderful excuse to go out and party with everyone else who was made it in for the wedding. I use the term *party* lightly. We were up at Four AM (our time) and it was already Eight thirty at night when we left again (for us it felt like going out at 10:30- something we NEVER do... We're usually in bed asleep by then!)




So we head back into town and meet up with all the folks at the Bar. A band started to play and we decided that we were going to fall asleep if we stayed at the tables any longer.

So we took a stroll down by the lake. It was completely dark, and if you looked up there were more stars out then I had ever seen before. It was amazing how many layers and layers of stars are missing... Be it from being too close to the city or possibly the altitude. It was very a very romantic walk and as we held hands and headed back to our B&B I couldn't think of a better way to end the day. :)

More to come later!

ETA: I did not edit any pictures yet...

Rocky Mountain National Park Slide Show

Since we have 350 pictures of the Park alone, I pulled out my favorites and made a slide show of them.

You must visit the site to see the show. :)

xoxo

Jen

Pictures:

It might be a while till I get to post the pictures.

I'm organizing and labeling all the pictures while they are still fresh in my mind and then I will be editing them when I'm done. It's definately taking longer than I thought it would and then I have Abby's birthday video to work on. So until then, check out Postcards From Neville to see Neville's fun in The Rocky Mountains...

Uncle Jer and Abby's dance

Thought ya'll might enjoy this one until I get the rest of the pictures organized and edited. :)


The picture is of Abby before the wedding, and the video is Abby's dance with Uncle Jer at the wedding. Email people you must visit the blog to see it- it won't come through to your mail box. :)

We're back!

I'll be posting pictures from our trip as soon as we are all rested up. The overnight flight + jet lag has got us all needing to rest. :)

Hershey Park Happy!

We got back from Hershey park yesterday... We had all intentions of staying for the fireworks. However after walking the park in the hot sunny weather we were all pretty tired, it just didn't happen.

This was both Abby and Caleb's first amusement park adventure outside of Knoebles Grove, which is more of a park for young families. You should have seen their faces when they saw all the coasters and how much bigger it was. It was all for Jim's company picnic. We had the tickets and lunch on them. :)

Abby rode Great Bear... Her first steel looping and corkscrewing coaster. She LOVED it.




Caleb was at an awkward age. He's too old to want to ride the kiddy rides, but he was an inch or less under from being able to ride a lot of the older rides. We still can't figure out how he was able to ride this:


Yet he was not allowed to ride in the bumper cars with Jim or even ride the swings!


He was pretty bummed, but took it well. Next year there won't be that issue anymore and he can ride to his hearts content

Anyway, the kids are coaster fanatics, just like their mom and dad. We had so much fun. Caleb loves the thrill and didn't bat an eyelash when the first ride we went on was the front seat of the super dooper looper.

Lilly hates rides. We took her to Knoebles with us last year and she told us on the way home that if we go again, we are supposed to take her to someones house to play instead. So she missed out on Hershey Park, but had an exciting weekend with Nanny and Pappy instead. I think we all had more fun that way. :)



Oh, and Thank you Kathy for helping us out with Gimli! We really do appreciate it very much. :)



*** Pictures were ones I got off the net... We didn't take our camera for fear of it being soaked in the rapids, or jostled and broken on the coasters.... The one of the super dooper looper is actually quite old, as the park has really built up around it. :)