Memorial Day Weekend

Well, this is just about as late as possible that I can get a blog post out and now have to do a double week... oops.  I hope you're all excited for another post tomorrow!  Hopefully that one doesn't take an extra week!

Anyway, this "past week" we spent the weekend in Colorado Springs.  We had some pretty good plans, but then it rained the WHOLE weekend!  There were little bits of each day without rain, but we did not really follow a single plan for any of the days.  We did still get to go to Garden of the Gods and had fun walking around the rock formations.  Here we all are in this... slot?  

Monica has been working on repainting our room, which meant she needed to go to Home Depot.  Fortunately she had a lot of helpers to find all the things she needed!  I think this is the first time Monica has gone out to a store with all of the kids.  This was probably Grayson's first store outing.

We finally patched the giant hole I cut in the wall.  Our shower was leaking within the first year of us living in the house. Likely it was already leaking before we moved in and we were the first to notice (our shower hangs over the side of the house, and I was mowing the lawn and Monica was showering and I saw water dripping out of the house...).  We fixed the issue all those years ago, but never patched the whole until this last week.  Here it is textured, and you can see the new paint color all around it.

We've started working on getting Grayson to bottles.  We're working on this because there are some things Monica can do for her migraines (medicines, etc.) but she can't use them while breastfeeding.  The first few bottles were a little hard, but now that he's familiar he's doing great!

We still love going out to play with the neighbors.  This past week Aurelia saw Winry playing in her Elsa dress with a giraffe and since she was in her Elsa dress too she went in to get her own giraffe!  Twins!

The weather has been nice and we've been enjoying the backyard as well.  Grayson and Brooke did a little wrestling this past week.

On Saturday we headed down to Colorado Springs for the Memorial Day weekend.  Our first stop was Garden of the Gods, and we made it before the rain but it was insane there.  There were cars parked way down the side of the road before the turn in.  We ended up stopping at the visitors center to use the bathroom, and Winry got surprised by this statue as it came around the corner, so we grabbed a picture.

While we were at the visitors center it started to rain a little.  I called the hotel to see if our room would be ready early, so we made the hotel our next stop.  When we got there, some people were out to walk their dogs and let the girls pet them.

We got in the hotel room and quickly changed to go swimming.  We were racing the storm we drove away from.  We got to swim for 15 or 20 minutes before the thunder started, but at least we were able to get in!  The rain was substantial the rest of the day.  We went out to get dinner and tried to stop at a park on the way home, but the rain was still too much and the thunder persisted.  Fortunately we brought the Switch and board games, so we played a little Pokemon Snap to pass the time.

On Sunday we headed to church, and then to a park we drove past on our way there.  The girls had fun running around, and I had to follow along everywhere.  It started sprinkling while we were there, but eventually let up so I'm glad we didn't leave when it started.

Here we are all hiding in this tube!  Monica and Grayson still found us.

Monica took Grayson into the car to nurse him, and while in there they also had some chips!  Grayson loved them.

Before we left, we went over to see the wagons that were at the entrances to the park.  The girls really liked them, and there wasn't a no touching sign so we let them climb on them.

We headed back to the hotel for lunch, and a little after we got back the rain returned with vengeance!  We spent time in our room playing board games and playing the Switch.  Eventually being cooped up in our room got to the kids and they started to lose it.  We had a decent size room too.  It had a near full size kitchen and a separate bedroom, but that didn't change the fact that we were confined to a hotel room.

As the storm worsened, the girls started fighting, and our solution was to get out of our room.  With it being Sunday we didn't really want to go anywhere, so we toured the hotel.  We walked around every level of the hotel and rode every elevator.  We checked out the area where breakfast usually is, etc.  and after a long walk everyone was feeling better!  Here's a view of the hail from our room window.

Fortunately we also brought stuff for Grayson.  He had a blanket and a bunch of toys to play with on the floor.  He was great!  We set up his pack n play in the closet of our room.  I just thought that detail was worth sharing...

Monday morning we woke up and headed straight to Garden of the Gods.  We made it there before 8 am and beat the rain and the crowds.  It was overcast and a little misty the whole time, but we got to see everything and stayed dry.  We all had a great time, and it was nice to get to do one of our plans!  After Garden of the Gods we drove through Old Colorado City and back to the hotel to pack and head back home.

On the way home we stopped at a park in the south part of Parker that the girls have really wanted to go to.  It was a pretty neat park, and it was also empty as rain continued to threaten.  We stopped at Tokyo Joe's for lunch, and then when we got home we changed and went to the rec center to go swimming again.  It's been a long time since we've been there, but it was so much fun!  The girls took back to the water pretty well.  Not as comfortable as before COVID, but Winry even jumped in again!  Afterwards we had a BBQ, and then I got straight to writing this blog post.  There was just so much content it ended up taking... 6 days....

Well, that's all for this week.  Again, I'll try to be a little more punctual next week.  Hopefully I'll be putting out a post again tomorrow.  See ya then!