Life on Arbor: Colorado Trip!

Since I'm not working this year, we have some flexibility (although less cashflow!) to take vacations. Teachers have such a nice schedule with breaks, but you can only take vacations when everyone else in the world is taking vacations and it makes it pretty expensive. So since we aren't held to specific dates anymore, we checked for when flights to Denver were cheapest around Labor Day and booked the trip to visit my cousin, Leah, and her family! They were in Wisconsin this spring and summer but since all their family is in Wisconsin it's hard to get much time with them. We were excited to go and have them all to ourselves. :) They have a son, Isaac, who is 3.5 (about a year older than Ben), and a daughter, Emma, who is 3 days older than Eleanor!

We had flown with Eleanor when she was only a couple months old to Florida, but she was easy then because she just pretty much slept. We were nervous for how she'd do on the plane being a rowdy 8 month old who likes to move around a lot. We packed lots of puffs and agreed to just take turns. But really it was okay. The flight was at 12:30 which was both kids' nap times, but unfortunately neither really napped (Eleanor napped 30 minutes). Ben was entertained with snacks and playing with each toy I packed for about 5 seconds (thankfully I packed a lot), and Eleanor "talked" to the old man across the aisle almost the whole way. I was exhausted though, and it was only a 2.5 hour flight!

Our time in Colorado was fun, although I think we were all tired most of the time. Unfortunately Bennett had major sleeping troubles there! Which is weird because we visit Green Bay and Oostburg often enough that he sleeps in pack-n-plays a lot, but he just did not sleep well in Colorado. The first day he woke up at 5:15 Wisconsin time, which is only 4:15am Colorado time. Yikes. The second day he woke at 3am, then 4:30am, and finally 5:30am for the day. Oy. Factor in Eleanor eating twice a night and that makes for not much sleep. Also the kids' napping schedules really were all off - with Eleanor sleeping 7am-8:30ish, then Emma at 9ish, and everyone again around noon.... But we were able to get out of the house around 10am each day and did some fun local excursions! Not quite the long hikes up mountains to find hidden lakes we did pre-kids on our visits, but still some fun stuff.

We visited the Denver Zoo, which has many of the same animals as Milwaukee, but the enclosures are much larger/nicer and overall the animals look healthier. I think the zoo is maybe newer, or it felt like that anyway. Bennett mostly just loved running around and hanging on things. It was pretty cool when a monkey climbed a vine right over our heads!!! Another cool thing is they had a special Lego thing going on...and lots of animals were made out of thousands of legos throughout the zoo! Super cool!

On Friday we walked along Pearl Street, which I just loved. It was nice out and not too crowded since it was a week day. There are plenty of fun things for the kids along the way and it's just nice walking around. We found a really yummy cupcake shop and shared a bourbon salted caramel chocolate cupcake and a red velvet whoopee pie. Mmmmm.

Saturday we attempted a hike with the kids. I think we walked about 2 hours and that was just under two miles. But Bennett and Isaac both wanted to walk most of the way which included MANY stops to look at grasshoppers (Isaac), sticks, rocks (Bennett), pinecones, flowers..... We had a hiking backpack along for Bennett but I think he only sat in it for the first 10 minutes. Eleanor happily relaxed in the bjorn with Brad (and Emma in her carrier with Ben). Both boys had moments of sitting down in the middle of the path and refusing to continue. Lol - it was different than our hiking pre-kids for sure. After the hike we went to the Boulder Farmer's market for lunch which was delicious but it was SO HOT and sunny so we ate quickly and headed home for naps. Bennett and Eleanor go down for naps every day in Wisconsin around 12-12:30ish, but because we were out and about in Colorado every day naps ended up being around 2/3pm. Thankfully they readjusted to their normal times once we were home no problem!

One major glitch in the weekend was that Bennett and Isaac did not always get along. We weren't really expecting this, since the few times we'd seen them they got along great. But as the weekend went on, we had to referee their play more and more. Isaac kept getting frustrated with Bennett, and Bennett seemed to be egging him on (sometimes purposefully, sometimes not). I think their age difference was part of the problem...they just play differently. Isaac likes to do lots of pretend play, and Ben just pretty much likes to run and jump and throw things. :) So that made things a little more stressful on the adults, with giving lots of talks and timeouts. They did have lots of fun times too though! Thankfully Eleanor and Emma got along great! :) Haha - they just liked looking at each other and touching each other's faces.