Hot Hot Colorado Vacation 2012 Pt. 6: Our Freaky (Final) Friday in CO

Our last Friday in Colorado was a busy one, and it had its share of chills and thrills. Some were of the "ooh, deliciously creepy" type. Others were much more immediate and frightening. But, one thing at a time...

Lunchtime for lizards!!

First, the "fun creepy" stuff. We took the kids to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as we do almost every time we're in Colorado. On this occasion, the museum had a special exhibit entitled "Lizards and Snakes." It was a celebration of our scaly brethren, and it featured a few dozen live animals. It felt more like a zoo than a museum that day!

Behold the mighty gecko and his sticky fingers! Lorelai loves geckos, because they are her school mascot!

Nathan admiring a python

The museum had a couple of gila monsters on display; here, a keeper is feeding them dead baby mice. Gross! (and awesome!)

During one kids' activity, the kids were all pretending to move along the ground like snakes (well, sort of like snakes)

WAAAAUGH! Nate's near-death encounter with a huge rubber snake

The girls didn't seem as bothered by the monstrosity. They saw it as a comfy place to rest!

Before leaving this fun exhibit, we all posed for a picture with a giant boa constrictor, so that the memory of our day with reptiles will live with us always...

We love this picture; it's pretty awesome to look like we're characters on a 50s B-movie poster! I love that everyone looks terrified except Aurora, who is loving the camera as always!

As usual, though, one exhibit wasn't enough to satisfy our museum cravings. We also went and checked out the prehistoric life exhibit...

The girls are terrified as they contemplate their physical insignificance when weighed against the mighty dinosaurs

...and the space hall/planetarium, where Celeste got her hands good and dirty doing an experiment designed to teach about water erosion.

We also did something new as a family this year: we took in an IMAX show. I went to several of these movies as a kid, and thought the kids would be impressed by the HUGE screen. They were amazed, indeed. Plus, our show was in 3D, so the girls were doubly pleased to be wearing the huge glasses. Our feature was called "To The Arctic"; it began with a snowy landscape, complete with 3D snowflakes. The girls were constantly reaching out, trying to "grab" the 3D stuff they saw and loudly talking about how awesome the movie was. So funny! (Probably not too funny for the people sitting near us, though, so we did our best to keep them quiet throughout the movie) We will probably take them to another IMAX show again sometime; it was a great way to cap off our visit to the museum this year.

Okay, now to explain the "actually terrifying" scary part of the day. Thankfully, it's a very small part! After resting up from our museum trip, we drove into the foothills to visit Nathan's sister Kelli, her husband Taryn, and their four cute little boys. Kelli and Taryn have a large house that sits on several wooded acres, and it takes our breath away every time we visit. They provided a large dinner for us, then showed off some of the improvements they've made to their home since we last visited, including this lovely wooden deck!

Nathan with our nephew Myles--he's Lorelai's age

The girls had lots of fun climbing the hills in the backyard, checking out the view, swinging on the swings by the garage, and playing with their cousins. Lorelai also borrowed her cousin Myles's bike, and was zipping around the property. However, at one point, she turned onto the driveway leading up to the house...

...and started speeding downhill. As you can see, this is a pretty long, rough, steep driveway, and Lorelai was going pretty fast. She rarely rides her bike on hills (she usually drives on our flat street), so she quickly lost control. Here's what the bottom of this hill looks like:

Nice view--but that DROP...

Kelli's driveway has two 90-degree turns as it heads up the hill towards her house. At the corner of the highest 90-degree turn is this 30-foot drop-off, which is not only directly adjacent to a busy highway, but which has some metal rebar sticking up out of the ground at the bottom. And Lorelai was speeding on a bike towards this drop-off, out of control, with nothing but a few wooden posts to break her fall.

Nathan and I both took off down the hill after her, screaming for her to crash the bike, or at least to leap off of it. Still, the whole thing felt like it was in slow motion; I realized deep inside that if something awful were to happen, I wouldn't be in time to stop it. I guess Lorelai was being watched over on that day. With just feet to spare, she managed to slow her momentum enough to tip over and "crash" the bike. She was shaking, wide-eyed, and scraped up, but luckily, that was the extent of the damage. Nathan and I were unhurt physically, but we will be having nightmares about those few scary seconds for a long time to come!

Lorelai wiped out at approximately the spot where the large white rock is sitting...too close for comfort!

Lorelai, being the resilient girl she is, didn't take too long to recover from her brush with disaster. She was kind of tense for a while, but by the end of our trip, she was climbing up that same huge hill--using a rope--with her cousin Braiden. She loved climbing the hill so much, she barely wanted to stop for dinner! I guess her inner daredevil wasn't totally quashed.

Look at that kid climb!

After that, our evening went well. We got to see most of Nathan's siblings who made it up at some point during the trip (sorry, again, that I didn't get many family pictures...I was either contemplating my child's doom, or chatting with people I don't see often. My bad!). It was a nice conclusion to our lovely Colorado vacation. I am not sure when we will next make it back...but this particular trip has given us lots of trip ideas to try for next time! I am also very grateful for my parents, Ray & Lori Nash, for letting us stay in their home for so long (and almost destroying it with our mess), and being generally awesome parents and grandparents. We're glad were able to see all of Nathan's siblings; we had fun together and enjoyed catching up. Hopefully we will see more of them later in the year. Now, it's time to start blogging about Arizona once again, and wrap up our summer!

Hot Hot Colorado Vacation 2012 Pt. 5: In Which We Visit Blake Street, Home Of The Rockies

Tucson, Arizona, is a pretty big town--more than half a million people call it home (and I'm including our little suburb of Sahuarita in that tally). Denver, Colorado, where I hail from, is a bigger town (600,000+, with over two and a half million in the total metropolitan area). Besides the numbers, though, Denver has always felt like a much bigger city to me...and a big reason for that is their proliferation of professional sports teams.

Denver has pro sports teams in all of the Big Four (football, basketball, baseball, hockey), as well as a pro soccer team, many college teams, and many other club or semi-pro teams. And people are generally nuts over most to all of them. Tucson, in comparison, isn't much of a sports town at all. Sure, there is a dedicated minority who are big fans of the University of Arizona Wildcat teams (mostly men's basketball and football), but the rest? Eh...nobody seems to notice or care. Major League Baseball spring training used to have a presence in town...until low ticket sales meant the teams took their business elsewhere. The minor league teams who are here barely cause a ripple. And...that's about it!

Pro sports followings here in Tucson are almost always imported...people who move to Arizona generally bring their fandoms with them (lots of Packers/Steelers/Bears fans in the retirement communities, for example). Nobody seems to care about the Cardinals or the Diamondbacks or the Suns (or heaven forbid, the Coyotes...pro hockey is a poor fit in our part of the country) since those teams are way up there in Phoenix, you know?

So it's refreshing to take a trip back to Colorado once in a while, where pro sports fans are plentiful, and sports teams have a strong following! Even though I haven't lived full-time in Colorado for years, I still keep an eye on their sports teams every season, cheering them on from afar. I am a huge Broncos fan, for example, but while I was growing up, I was able to see lots of Denver Nuggets games, too. I also caught a single, glorious Avalanche games. Some of my more enjoyable spectator experiences, however, were at several Colorado Rockies games, played in beautiful Coors Field downtown on Blake Street.

Nathan and I thought it would be fun to take the girls downtown and have a tour of the Colorado Rockies' home ballpark. And to make it even more enjoyable, we thought we'd take the light-rail train all the way downtown from Aurora (the Nine Mile station is only a few miles from my parent's house). We saw the whole day as a fun opportunity to explore the city and get a little walking in as well.

The girls, as we suspected, were very excited to take a ride on the train. They were overjoyed and grinned for ear to ear the whole way downtown--probably to the amusement of the other passengers. If we ever do this again, I wonder if the novelty will wear off? In any case, it was fun to watch them take it all in!

The girls are amazed at the "big blue bear" sculpture, which is peering into the windows of the Denver Convention Center

Once we got downtown, we walked several blocks down the 16th Street Mall, another downtown Denver landmark. Basically, it's a long pedestrian mall with hundreds of shops and restaurants. It also occasionally has some avant garde sculpture or paint spring up from nowhere...

...like these oddly painted steel buffalo.

The girls were a little tired by the time we got to the ballpark, but they had some time to sit and rest before we went inside. It turned out to be a pretty hot day (the story of our vacation this year!), but luckily a large portion of the tour was indoors. Yay for air conditioning!

Here are some of the highlights:

From up in the nosebleeds...still, a beautiful view

The girls were impressed at the size of the park

This Statue of Liberty was a gift from the New York Yankees; they gave a specially painted Lady Liberty to every MLB team!

Nate and Aurora in one of the corporate suites

A mini-museum dealing with the history of bringing pro baseball to Denver

Rockies-themed Mickey Mouse!

Jerseys of former & current baseball teams in Denver

Aurora and Nathan loving the press box

Kind of hard to see...on the walls inside the press box are several indentations, from stray fly balls that zipped through the windows during games!

The girls inside the visitor's training room

I'm outside the Rockies' home locker room; too bad we weren't allowed in!

The family near home plate (we weren't allowed on the pristine grass; we're standing just on the edge of it)

Nathan in the home team dugout

After bidding Coors Field farewell, we returned to the 16th Street Mall. At this point, we decided to drop by a favorite bookstore of ours: the Tattered Cover Book Store, a multistory, sprawling independent bookstore that's been a Denver staple for years. It's true that you can often buy books cheaper online; however, there's something exciting and magical to Nathan and I about wandering randomly through a bookstore, seeing what surprises might await us on the shelves.

going up the stairs in the Tattered Cover (it's about 4 stories high!)

Lorelai relaxing in the children's reading area

Celeste meeting Babar the elephant, whose wife in the books is also named Celeste! True love!

We let each girl pick out a book for herself; then, we took some time to read, sightsee, browse, and (especially in Aurora's case), rest from all our walking...

Aurora finally succumbed to the heat and exhaustion, and probably won't remember much of the Tattered Cover as a result. Oh well, we'll always have this picture of her to prove that she was there.

After we each selected a book, we got a quick lunch elsewhere along the Mall (a Red Robin-style burger joint), then headed back to the light-rail stop for our journey back to Grandma's house...

Despite the heat of the day, we really had a great time. Maybe next time we're in Colorado, we can take a tour of the Pepsi Center (home of the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche), or even Sports Authority Field at Mile High (aka, Mile High Stadium, where the Denver Broncos play). That would make this pro sports fan one happy lady.

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!

Sending Some Love to Aurora, Colorado

Last Friday morning, something horrible happened. It was June 20th, 2012. The Dark Knight Rises (one of the summer's most anticipated films) was playing in midnight screenings in movie theaters across the country. At one of these theaters, a 24-year-old man (whom I won't dignify by naming) decided to duck out the emergency exit of the theater he was sitting in, shortly after the film began. He propped open the door, returned to his car, and grabbed riot gear and an arsenal of weapons. He then brought those weapons back into the theater with him (via the emergency exit), released some tear gas into the air, and began shooting people. Lots of people.

I can only imagine (though I don't much like to) the chaos, terror, and violence that ensued. These were people who had paid to see a movie they were very excited about. They had expected a fun, exciting, safe evening. Instead, they were shot by a very disturbed individual, and many will never return home again. At this writing, 12 people were killed, and 38 more injured, many of them critically. The shooter was apprehended (surprisingly; often the gunman tries to end his life after such attacks), and is awaiting justice. In the meantime, the community is left heartbroken, confused, and afraid.

The worst part (for me, at least)? This community was Aurora, Colorado...my hometown. The city where I just vacationed a couple of weeks ago. This movie theater (a Century 16) was literally down the street from my high school (Gateway High School), where the shooting victims were taken for treatment. My parents' house (where we played with the kids in the backyard and shared many good times) is barely two miles from this movie theater. The theater shares a parking lot with the Aurora Mall, a place where I spent many hours as a youth hanging out with friends, eating Orange Juliuses, and doing my Christmas shopping. And I've visited this very movie theater several times with friends and family, during my frequent visits back to my home state.

Photo: Karl Gehring, The Denver Post.

Having such a terrifying tragedy occur so close to my childhood home (in a place that has given me many happy memories), has shaken me deeply, and I've spent much of this weekend in a roller-coaster ride of emotion. I've felt fear...fear that someone I knew was at that theater (or someone that my parents knew; they spent much of the morning frantically trying to contact their friends, many of whom they knew were going to see the movie that night). I also felt a new fear of stepping inside a movie theater; Nathan and I had bought tickets to see The Dark Knight Rises the very next night. Suddenly, sitting in a dark, crowded, and vulnerable place didn't feel safe or fun. We spent much of the movie tense and jumpy, remembering what had happened the night before and feeling slightly guilty for enjoying a show when people doing the same activity had been murdered the night before.

I also feel angry...angry at this disgusting crime and the twisted, gruesome mind that came up with it. It angers me that so many families will be consumed with sorrow, debt, loneliness, and despair for who knows how long, when the killer will probably sit comfortably in jail for the rest of his life as our laborious legal system grinds its gears and as Colorado taxpayers provide him with clothing, shelter, and television. It angers me that someone could be so selfish as to rob so many people of so many things, just by one crazy act. It angers me that so many people can get weapons that can exact such deadly force, and that guns and violence are so taken for granted in our society that such massacres, while awful, seem to have a certain grim inevitability to them.

It also makes me sad. Sad for a town I know and love dearly. Sad that so many people should be grieving so hard for something so pointless and arbitrary. Sad that the town will never quite be the same again. Sad that so many innocent people have suffered. The youngest casualty of the night was only six years old...the same age as my daughter Lorelai is now. I will (God willing) get to see my daughter grow, learn, and reach her full potential. The mother of that sweet six-year-old girl will never get to know her daughter that way, and that breaks my heart in a way I never knew was possible before I became a parent.

Sadly, this is not the first shooting tragedy to take place in Colorado. In 1993 (when I was a junior in high school), a disgruntled ex-employee of a nearby Chuck E Cheese came back to the restaurant late one December night with a gun, shooting five people and killing four. Three of the victims were teenagers; one of them was a girl in Nathan's home ward. The sole survivor was the older brother of a boy in my grade at school. One of my friends had been scheduled to work that night; she was emotionally crushed and took months to recover.

Just a few years later, in 1999, two disturbed high-school students burst into their high school (named Columbine, after the Colorado state flower), carrying several guns, and started shooting students and teachers. Ultimately, 13 people were killed, the two gunmen killed themselves, and the community was horror-struck. I was on my mission at the time in Moscow, Russia; however, the news story was big enough that it reached across oceans. I was told of the massacre at Columbine by an investigator, who used it as an example of the wickedness so prevalent and fundamental in the world. Shaken as I was by the news, I found it hard to disagree with her. And now this weekend, Colorado (and Aurora in particular) has another tragedy to add to their already impressive, nationally renowned list.

Photo: The Denver Post, Joe Amon, AP. That building off to the rear-left is the public library. I played in many piano recitals there, and checked out lots of books as well. This is all way too close to home for me.

There have been times this weekend that I wanted to get on the phone with my mom and dad, and encourage them to (finally) sell their house--my childhood home--and move somewhere "safer." Honestly, though, I'm not sure where exactly that would be. I don't know what it is about Colorado that has made it the location of so many evil, vicious acts. I don't know why so many people have died in these tragic shootings so close to my home. Aurora has its problems, to be sure, but it is not a filthy, corrupt hotbed of crime. I have never felt in personal danger at any time there, whether during my growing up, or on subsequent visits. I know for a fact that many beautiful, happy families have been raised in Aurora, and many still live there. I know it is a community full of supportive, brave people. I hear the stories of how men in the theater that night shielded their girlfriends, children, or wives from the hail of bullets, and how several of them died because of their courage. I also hear of the policemen who sprang to action, calming the panicked crowd, apprehending the shooter, and doing everything in their power to defuse the situation.

When I hear those things, I am reminded of the Aurora I once knew well, and that I'd like to think still exists. I look at the picture above, and see the masses of people united in grief and support, and think, "this is my Aurora." I know things will never be the same. In all likelihood, the movie theater will close, just as that Chuck E Cheese ultimately closed all those years ago. The community will be gripped in rage and accusations will be made. Through it all, I hope people will not lose their civility and their courage.

Most of all, I hope people won't give up on Aurora. I had a great time visiting there, just a few weeks ago. I look forward to visiting it again. I love the restaurants, the people, the parks, and the sights. I love my family and friends all over Colorado. I still hope to return to Colorado and live there again someday (probably not any time soon, but I can always dream!). I hope this tragedy will help people draw nearer to each other, watch out for each other, and work together for peace and positive change.

Sorry for the morbid subject matter; I'll soon be back to posting my vacation photos. I hope by showing you some of my photos, you will realize that Aurora is a good place, filled with good people. I am still hurting inside by the news (as are many of my family and friends), but I want them to know (especially my Aurora family) that I love you all. I miss you. I am praying for you all. I hope things get better soon. I hope the victims' families find peace and support. I love you, Aurora (for whom my youngest daughter is named). I can't wait to see you again.