Family Vacation To Colorado

Back in June, we took a family vacation just after my hubby got back from his fabulous 16 day vaca with the Army! Okay, so he really didn't have any fun and would rather have been at home, but that's besides the point. It was nice having a chance to get out of the house and go somewhere as a family, although Christopher pointed out it could have been at a more convenient time frame than it was. He wanted to stay home and recover from AT. So here is the scoop on our trip. I'll post pictures up later.

Our family vacation was an adventure in ways we could not have foreseen nor do I think we would have necessarily chosen, but we did have fun and it was well worth some of the hitches to be there together. The reason we chose to go to Colorado for this particular vacation was because my Aunt Kimmy was getting remarried and we were actually invited to be at this wedding (We weren't invited to the first one nor did we even meet the creep she was married to, no loss there.) So, Christopher and I decided well if we were going to drive the nine plus hours to this wedding we were going to turn it into a full out vacation and go see some of the sights. We had been to Denver a few years back and gone to the most amazing aquarium there, and our kids love fish. So, we decided that definitely had to be in and in doing my research of the area found that the Denver Zoo was really cool, as well as the Children's museum.

So, we got a late start the night we left, but we luckily have family in Grand Junction who had offered up their guest bedroom to us for the night before we headed to Denver. But what should have only taken 3 1/2 to 4 hours ended up being a 7 hour drive. Aidan got really sick about the time we hit Price, forcing us to stop and clean up vomit. Add in the fact that nothing is open after midnight there, yeah for us. So, our drive was full of stops for him to keep being sick and we finally arrived in Grand Junction as the sun was coming up around 5am. I had been hoping to be leaving from here at that time, oh well. We got a few hours of sleep, dealt with some more throw up and headed on our way just after noon.

Aidan seemed to be doing better after that, I think he threw up because he'd been drinking the pedialyte too fast, but try telling a two year old that. We made a few stops on the way, but we still made pretty good time and arrived in Denver around 5pm. The next trick was to find the Aquarium which was going to be our first stop of the night. It was a little tricky maneuvering through town since there was a baseball game going on, but when we finally found the aquarium it meant that it was pretty dead. The kids loved the fish and if we could have moved in I think they would have been in heaven. I'm not so sure if I would want to live there, but its certainly fun to visit. So, if you ever find yourself in Denver go see the aquarium its a must!

Next we made our way to Colorado Springs and checked into our hotel for the night. Chris brought us some dinner and we crashed for the night. It had been a long day and we were all exhausted. When we woke up the next morning, my Mom called to inform me that the big BBQ was starting at noon and they wanted to do the kids birthday party after that. I was like uhm, we had plans to go back to Denver this morning and go to the Children's Museum. We finagled things and we headed to Denver again. The Children's Museum is even better than the one in Salt Lake, I mean this thing was huge and in the like three hours we were there we still didn't see everything. I was sad that we didn't. :( It didn't help that I got sick while we were there and didn't really get to enjoy as much of the museum as I wanted. It had a Firetruck room, which Aislynn liked. Aidan was still waking up and was being really clingy. The room we spent the most time in was the under four room, which had a little village in it where they could 'cook,' care for dolls, garden, weigh things, go down tree root slides, cross carpet bridges over carpet rivers. It was a really cute room and my kids had so much fun in that room. Aidan also liked the train room where you could put together the railroad line and play with the trains and that's only a few of the many rooms. So worth what we spent.

We bought a cake for the kids birthday on the way back and headed to my Grandfather's place to do the birthday party. My Grandfather had never met my kids before so it was a real treat to see them all together, it was too bad that we didn't have more time with them. We sang to Aidan & Aislynn let them attempt to blow out the candles with help. Then they opened some presents from Chris & I. We just spent about an hour together, before everyone headed back to there respective places of residence since the wedding was the next day.

The wedding was very interesting, since my aunt wanted it to be done at noon on Summer Solstice. I got to be one of the 9 girls who gave her away since I was her oldest niece. Yeah, fun. I was wearing a new red dress, which is so not my color. I got to protect my family later against a really bratty woman, who was my aunt's friend and was treating my family horribly and I made sure my aunt knew there was a problem before I punched that problem in the face! I was pissed! Don't mess with my family!

Anyway, the rest of the wedding stuff was really boring and not worth describing. Afterwards, we went to see some Cliff Dwellings and that was really cool. We got lots of pictures of those and Aidan wanted to run all over the place in there, but we were mean and wouldn't let him. (The signs said that he wasn't supposed to.) The next day was when we started to make our way home. We went to the Denver Zoo, which is 80 acres and that's huge. If you want an idea of how big that is, if you have been to the Hogle Zoo that is 40 acres, so this other zoo was two of those combined. It took us like five hours to get through and we still had to skip over things. Alot of there building exhibits didn't allow strollers and so we didn't find it necessary to go in them. We all had fun.

After the zoo, we made our way to Grand Junction. It took us a little longer than it did before because I was once again sick and we had to stop a couple of times for me, but we made it there by midnight this time and we slept in til about 8 or 9.  We made the last stretch of our drive home and got back in time for Christopher to go to work. We were all exhausted, but we had a lot of fun on our trip. I can't wait to see where we decide to go next!