Hot Hot Colorado Vacation 2012 Pt. 4: Partyin' Like It's The Fourth Of July

Our most accurate family photo EVER

Now back to some more positive Colorado news...more vacation photos!

Due to all the wildfires, the Fourth of July came and went without much fanfare in Colorado this year. No fireworks whatsoever were allowed...not even things like sparklers and ash snakes. Bummer! So it was up to us to make our own fun. And what says "fun" like Casa Bonita?!?!

Oh, yeah. This place again. We skipped out on this fine dining establishment at last year's visit to Colorado, because I can't make Casa Bonita a yearly event...my stomach just can't take that kind of abuse any more. However, I thought Aurora was old enough to appreciate it, so we tried it again the day before Independence Day. Plus, we managed to drag Nathan along this time....MWAHAHAHAAAAA! (my evil laugh is because Nathan is not Casa Bonita's biggest fan)

Nathan is contemplating "ending it all" by leaping off this bridge behind Casa Bonita's waterfall

He pulled through, though...we all survived without any permanent emotional scarring. Well, except for maybe Aurora, who wept tears of terror when we took her through Black Bart's cave...for the third time!

 MWAHAHAAAA! (this evil laugh is for the joy I get at terrifying my young children while introducing them to a seminal part of my youth)

The girls always love watching the cliff divers, and the Wild West show...both of which involve people falling very far into a swimming pool

 In a way, Casa Bonita feels as if it will be the same yesterday, today, and forever. Those cliff divers are always diving; the cave rooms are always dripping; the wishing well is always gross & dirty; the arcades are always swarming with excited kids; the sopapillas are always delicious (thankfully!) However, there was one surprise for us at Casa Bonita this year...

...Aurora loved the food! No kidding, she ate half of Grandma Nash's meal, and she ate up all my beans & rice! She was just packing it in. Hmmm...chalk it up to an unsophisticated palate, perhaps (or perhaps she hadn't had enough breakfast!). Celeste & Lorelai, by contrast, scarcely ate a thing, but that was because they were too anxious to go exploring the restaurant. They had lots of fun, and Nathan and I managed to choke down our food and enjoy watching the kids enjoy themselves, so it was a "win" for the family.

That night, we ate at a much nicer (if smaller) restaurant: it was a pizza restaurant/bar named Finocci's in the Denver Tech Center; we dined with Nathan's brother Ryan, his wife Judy, and their son Cousin Cameron, who is a very adorable, sweet boy. (I am ashamed to admit I didn't get any pictures of Ryan, Judy or Cameron. My brain was elsewhere. No offense meant, guys! We love you!) Ryan's best college buddy worked there, so he got us a couple of sweet deals (especially a towering Oreo sundae for dessert--yum!).
Another fun thing about the restaurant was that before our meals were brought out, a little ball of pizza dough was given to each of the kids to play with. Sort of like Play-Do, only actually edible. At least that's what Aurora thought; she ate quite a bit of her dough-ball after she got bored playing with it. Yuck. Oh well, no harm done.

Afterwards, we went out bowling with Ryan's family. The kids loved bowling, even if they really didn't get what was going on besides rolling a heavy ball down a looooong wooden lane towards a bunch of pins that occasionally reset themselves (and I do mean occasionally; our lanes experienced several technical difficulties). Ryan spanked us all pretty hard in the bowling department, but we got the games for free (thanks to an online coupon Ryan alerted us to beforehand). So, win or lose (and believe me, we lost), we were still grateful to Ryan, Judy, and Cameron for a night that was both fun and quite affordable!

The next day was July Fourth, also known to some as Independence Day. We started out our morning with the annual Meadowood Ward Fourth of July pancake breakfast, held in a local Aurora park. The girls got to play with some other kids on a large playground, eat their weight in pancakes, and then watch from the sidelines as the party degenerated into a water fight...also an annual tradition (one that my kids were not that thrilled about, so they watched from the sidelines!)

After that, we decided that we'd had so much fun with Ryan and Judy the night before that we hooked up again for the Fourth! Judy suggested we have a picnic lunch (which they brought in full--really, they spoiled us like crazy on this trip! It was KFC, which normally I dislike, but which I love to eat on the Fourth of July for some reason). We ate at a relatively new park in Centennial, Colorado (just south of Aurora). It was crowded, but that's because it was awesome. Here are a few pictures of the location:

View of the length of the park, looking east

HUGE splash pad, and it was very cute too

Lorelai took a break from splashing to climb around on this rope ladder...

...but she kept coming back to the splash pad, waiting for the water buckets to spill over.

She *almost* got soaked!

Nathan, being the community planner he is, kept wandering all around the park and snapping pictures. He loved the design and layout of the whole area! There were also some "trivia questions" related to conservation and nature written into the concrete at various locations throughout the park. It was a sneaky way to get kids to learn about stuff! We didn't stay too long (being a new park, it didn't have a whole lot of shade yet, and it was a very hot, sunny day), but we went to a frozen yogurt store afterwards to cool off. All five of us had a really nice time, and we look forward to revisiting this park again on a future Colorado trip! (though maybe not on the Fourth of July--it was pretty busy that day!)

Cute Celeste with cute Cousin Heidi and their cute, glowy-eyed cat

Afterwards, we quickly dropped by Grant & Molly's house (Nate's 2nd-oldest brother, his wife, and their six kids: Liam, Hayden, Lawson, Heidi, Luke, and Frankie!). Grant was out of town visiting a friend, so Molly was busy doing work from their trophy/engraving shop all week. Hopefully our timing will be a little better next trip, and we can catch everyone all together.

Then came the evening...time for FIREWORKS! Oh, wait...illegal. Well, my parents weren't going to completely give up on Independence Day celebrating. We didn't get to set off any fireworks, but they still had lots of "poppers" for the kids...

They also had several boxes of the tiny gunpowder-filled "Pop-Its" that explode when you throw them on the sidewalk. My girls loved them. They threw more...and more...and more...until my parent's backyard looked something like this:

Aurora especially enjoyed the little noisemakers; in fact, she kept running back and forth across the "war zone" pictured here, jumping constantly around the whole back porch, making sure they'd all been "popped." Those cute little bare feet are pretty tough!

She never holds still for the pictures...

And thus came and went our busy, fun, firework-free Fourth of July. I hope next year we'll be able to set off a few fountains. Other than that, I have no complaints!