Motorcycle trip and River Rafting!!

First things first, Dan had been wanting to take Cade on a motorcycle trip. The original plan was to take a 4 day weekend and go to Mount Rushmore. It's only 8 hours from us, so if you split it up it's not a terribly long trip on a motorcycle. But as it got closer to when they were supposed to go things just weren't quite lining up for a long trip. We decided instead to book our rafting trip that we got off of Groupon, and then have Cade and Dan take their motorcycle trip down to the rafting site and we'd meet them there the next day. It was only 90 minutes away so it was the perfect beautiful drive and the campsite was minutes away from the rafting site. Here are the pics dan took of his time with Cade!

We really try to have experiences with our kids that will turn into memories, not just buy things. I know they had a great time together and it will be something they'll both remember!


And.... Another bucket list item crossed off for 2015!

We have been wanting to go river rafting for awhile now. Anytime we were traveling we'd pass the river rafters and say, "That's looks like fun! We should do that some time."

Well we finally did.

But as a preface, I have to admit that I was really really nervous. See, it rained HARD the entire month of May. Not just passing afternoon storms, but all day rain. Colorado had wildfires the first two years we were here, then last year we got what they called the 100 year rains. But then what are these called? Not sure, just torrential and non-stop.  This meant a few things: There's still lots of snow on the mountains, and the river levels were record high. The few days leading up to our scheduled rafting trip several people died in the Arkansas River-- the river we were going to be rafting in. Scary!  The company we were rafting with told us that last year the highest the river got to was 4800 cubic feet per second (CFS), and that was only for a few hours. When we got there the river was almost at 5400 CFS and had been there for days, with still 100% snow pack, meaning over the next few weeks it would only get faster and higher. Ack!

I asked them if they honestly thought our boys would be safe, and they promised a modified route and felt extremely confident that the boys would be fine. Dan felt good about it and I trusted his gut. I mean, I'd never even done this before so I was nervous anyways.

Let me tell you, it was fast, it was cold, there were class II and III rapids, but we had SO much fun! The boys were laughing and truly enjoying themselves the entire time!

Pictures!

Yes, we rafted under that bridge!

duck!!!

I love the look on the boys' faces on that one. Here's a close-up!

We will definitely do this again! If you're in the area, check out Rock N Row rafting. They were GREAT with the kids, knowledgeable, helped us feel safe and have fun. Their prices and service were awesome!

Loving our summer so far! :)

Zoo camp!

I decided to enroll the boys in their first ever summer camp! There are lots of choices and most are way too expensive to even consider, but I ended up choosing a week long camp at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo! I love our zoo. It's very interactive, you can see the animals up close and it's nestled in the mountains.

And there were some pictures from the camp counselors!

They were able to have several animal interactions every day, do zoo hikes, play fun games, earn prizes and privileges like having their face painted, ride the carousel, play at the playground and ride the sky ride. I think they had fun and I was able to get some things done around the house. Lots of organizing and de-cluttering has happened since summer began! Yay!

Before and After of the boy's art corner: (thanks IKEA!)

They'd outgrown that teeny tiny table and bookshelf

They love it!

Garage clean-up including moving our shoes from the laundry room to the garage!

Dan built some new shelves in the garage and we cleaned her up real good!

We really have no good landing place for shoes and coats so I tried buckets for each family member, but that didn't work very well either. Let's see if our new solution works this time!

Dinosaur Resource Center

I've been trying to document our summer fun! There were several places I wanted to go this summer with the boys. Up in Woodland Park is the Dinosaur Resource Center. I had a buy one get one free coupon so we made the trip up!

I will say that it isn't very big, and there isn't a ton to do, but Cade has hit a huge dinosaur phase and he enjoyed reading and learning what there was to learn. Then, of course, they were enthralled with the gift shop which was nearly as big as the museum. Ugh!

In the hands on area they created their own species of dinosaur

cade was excited to see a godzilla poster there :)

Megaladon!

After the museum we hit a McD's drive through and went to this fun wood playground just up the street from the McD's. Fun day!! :)