iPhone shattered.

For the first time since we brought two little souls into our lives, we decided to take a "family getaway" to celebrate our oldest going to Kindergarten next week.  I know!  Kindergarten!  I'm sure lots of experienced parents out there are rolling their eyes and asking what the big deal is, but for us, it's very big!  And we needed to celebrate it.  We decided to stay in-state and go somewhere that I've been DYING to I go to for a long time - Glenwood Springs, CO.  The drive has always been a little daunting for us, but we decided to go with it.  The girls could watch a movie (or two!) on the iPad along with having a few snacks to go with.  Needless to say, they did AWESOME.  They even napped, which was unexpected.  We hit a few of the big ticket items in Glenwood Springs, one of which was the Glenwood Cavern Adventure Park that is accessible by taking a gondola/tram up a mountain to a little theme park.  Unfortunately for Littlest One, lots of things were aged 3+, so she and I spent a lot of time eating ice cream and playing in the dirt.  The bigger one had a great time!

At this adventure park, there's lots of trails up and down the mountain to get to various attractions.  We were all walking up to one of the them, when we heard "DADDY HEWP!!"  When I looked back, sweet baby girl had managed to slip and was half under a plastic fence with her leg going down the mountain.  I got over to her and helped her up, but as I stood up, my phone fell and landed on the ground, face down.  I knew it was trouble as soon as I saw it land.  When I picked it up, it was completely shatter.  Ugh.  The good news:  the phone is completely functional.  Just shattered.  So after a fair amount of web searching since the incident I decided to just have the screen replaced...I know, voiding any potential opportunity to have Apple work on it for me, but much cheaper then getting a replacement phone!  And with my contract up in December, there's a slight possibility of getting a new iPhone 6...although I'm not completely sold on that idea yet either.  Anyhoo, here in about 15 minutes I'm hoping that my phone will be back to new and be working great.  Update:  It's working great!  I'm thrilled!!!

The rest of the weekend was loads of fun; we spent a lot of time swimming in the hot springs pool, taking naps, and eating (my favorite).  The girls had a BALL swimming as much as they could...even the 2 year old, although she gets tired faster.  It was a little bit of a hike over to the pools from our hotel (Hotel Denver), but both of the girls did great.  Speaking of, Hotel Denver is AWESOME.  Granted, it's old, and has some features of an old hotel, but it was clean, quiet, and the hotel staff was awesome.  The best part was that we could buy discounted hot spring passes, and they'd let us borrow huge white towels and would throw in a bottle of water for each of us too.

We pretty much enjoyed all of the restaurant that we ate at, with the exception of the Brew Pub right at the Hotel Denver.  While they were super convenient (and you can wait for your table in your room, with beers, and they'll call you when the table is ready!), the items that we ordered weren't fantastic, and the service for us was SLOW.  Which blows my mind a little, since there were tables that got sat AFTER us, that got to order, eat, and leave before us!  So maybe it was just our server that wasn't paying attention.  We were certainly making enough noise, you would think they'd want to get us out of there as fast as possible!  Other restaurants that we dined at included Juicy Lucy's - AMAZING, and a Cajun restaurant, which was also very good, and a nice change of pace, that didn't skimp on quality or service.  We rounded out the weekend with a stop at Beau Jo's for pizza in Idaho Springs, CO.

Now we ramp up for school to start next week.  Which is thrilling but scary, and fun all at the same time.  I better take my tissues along..might be a long teary walk home for me!

Hold my legs.

Now now, you might be thinking this could easily wander down to the land of hospitals and baby delivery, but trust me, it won't, and my apologies to anyone that wasn't thinking that prior, and now is.

So we just returned on Sunday from a FABULOUS trip to Montana to see my family.  We left on a Tuesday night spent a night in Capser, WY, drove to Bozeman, MT and stayed with a good friend of mine from college - who I think I've mentioned previously in a post about having a preterm baby.  Anyhoo, we hadn't gotten to meet her littlest one (who, might I add, is ADORABLE and so smiley!), and she was gracious enough to host us for the night, it worked out great.  We got up the next day, and started our route to Flathead Lake - specifically my Great Uncle's (he's not just Great - but actually my Grandpa's brother) place at Flathead that we've enjoyed going to for 24 years.  Next year, will be our 25th year at "the Lake", I suggested we needed to celebrate with a champagne toast and some cake.  Who can pass up cake?!  Maybe he'd let us shower him with some gifts - I'm thinking in the form of new sofa-beds in all the cabins!  ha ha!

Wait wait - maybe I should explain a little more.  His 'place' on flathead isn't just a little bit of shore front - it's like, 500 METERS or something like that of shore front.  He has 5 cabins not including his own house which also provides sleeping accommodations for at least I dunno - 10 more people sleeping on mattresses and sleeping bags.  Not to mention ample grass space for tents, motor-homes, campers and people who like to sleep out under the stars.  Growing up, my cousins and I did just that - there was always a tent for us to sleep in, but sometimes we'd go rogue and sleep out under the stars.  It was heaven. Here's a picture:

That was taken in 2007, and it's bigger than that - but that's apparently all I could fit into the picture at the time.  Let me tell you, the whole family loves it there, and my Uncle graciously invites us back every year.  We usually spend the weekend boating, swimming, visiting, eating, and napping.  It's great to have a family that enjoys spending that kind of time with each other!

Matt and I have't been since 2008.  We had Miss Muffet the end of May in 2009, and didn't feel like hauling a 6 week old baby up to MT.  Then in 2010 we opted to go to a cousin's wedding the end of June so again, didn't think we could make the trip.  But finally 2011 and we got to go!  And it did NOT disappoint!  My brother and a friend of his have purchased a boat together, so he brought that over from Seattle and was our captain for the weekend, we did tons of water skiing, wake-boarding, tubing, you name it.  Another cousin of mine owns a 'SeaDoo' so we got to play on that, and yet another cousin rents a SeaDoo every year so there was that to play on too!  We have a potluck dinner on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and usually the main meat course is provided where all the families help contribute with a salad or dessert.  And of course, when the sun finally starts to set, we get to light up a fire, roast marshmallows, and hang out and visit.  Ahem, with keg beer.

Normally I'm right down there with the best of them, but this year was harder - I have a little one who likes to get up at the crack of dawn - so it was really hard for me to stay up until 3 am like the rest of em.  But I am happy to report that plenty did, and one night, I got up at 4 am go move the child to our bed, when I looked down at the fire to see that it was still blazing 4 feet tall!!  I believe this is the same night that one of my cousins, who shall remain unnamed, was telling everyone around the keg to "Hold my legs!  Hold my legs!" so she could do her version of a "Tap Head", know to everyone else as a Keg Stand.  You go girl, I just hope when I'm 42 I can still do Tap Heads too!  The shocking part is that she could get up in the morning with everyone else, have breakfast and look COMPLETELY normal!  Ugh - I do NOT have that kind of rebound.  I believe she said to her husband at one point of one of the nights "Go to bed -but I'm staying up, I only get to see these people once a year!"  Amen sista.



** EDIT 9/7/2011 ** Come to find out I was wrong about the name of the Keg stand.  Apparently she called them "Tap Hits".  Still awesome.