Durango Day 4

This was pretty much our whole day.  This is what vacation is all about!

And this is the view out one of our windows.  I mean...can you even imagine living here?

Durango Day 2

About a week after we got home from our road trip, we packed up and headed out for a vacation with my parents in Durango.  We had planned on bringing Shea with us, but her parents wouldn't let her go, so she's spending the week in respite again. 

We drove out after work yesterday, and stopped in Raton to sleep.  Then we got up and headed out to Durango this morning.  We thought we were going to be pretty early, but with Reese wanting to use the potty rather than her diaper (good for her, but we were going to wait until after this vacation!), we actually got there much later than we expected.  The cabin is beautiful.  We drove into the neighborhood, I guess that's what you'd call it...it was very remote and the roads were dirt and VERY hilly...I don't think we'd be able to get up to the house in the winter.  Even though the house is only about 1.5 miles from the road, it takes over 5 minutes to get up to it!  There are homes all around, but everyone has a few acres (about 3 probably), and the area has so many rocks, hills, and trees, that it feels quite secluded.  Our family slept upstairs.  Mitch and I got a master bedroom with a huge, king-sized bed, and a bathroom to die for including a large jetted tub.  Our windows overlook a cliff that is right outside the window, so it's very private. 

Since it's the 4th of July, we asked the guy who manage the property were he suggested going out to look at fireworks, and he said that Silverton has the best fireworks in the area.  Reese was pretty much done for the day by the time it got dark, and my mom was pretty tired too, so they stayed back at the cabin while my dad, Mitch, Witten and I all drove out to Silverton to watch the fireworks.  On the way into town, there were cars parked all along the side of the road.  W found a little parking area that seemed to overlook where they would be shooting off the fireworks, so we parked there and climbed up a hill.  We found a nice place to put our blanket, and settled in for the show.  It was so fun watching Witten experience his first fireworks show. 



 

Road Trip Day 8 - The Grand Finale

I've been waiting all week for today.  At some point, I found out that Rainforest Café had a sister restaurant called the T-Rex café.  The only problem with it is that there are only TWO in the entire world!  Luckily, one of them was on our road trip, so we stopped in for an early lunch as soon as they opened.  In fact, we got there about an hour early to parooze the gift shop and let the kids each make a Build A Bear dinosaur.  So.  Cool!  The front was under construction, so it didn't make for the best picture, but you take what you can get!

This huge T-Rex greeted us as soon as we walked in the door. 

Witten chose to make a wooly mammoth. 

He loves it!

Reese is making another kind of dinosaur, but I'm not sure what it's called.  It looks like a T-Rex to me, but that's not it. 

She didn't like standing on the pedal though,

so Witten finished it up for her. 

The bar is a giant octopus. 

We got to sit by the fish tank, our favorite place to sit!

We went to look at this guy while we waited for our food. 

And the kids got dino nuggets of course!



Then they crashed with their new dinosaurs on the long drive home. 

Road Trip Day 7

We're on our way home now, but not before another stop in Chicago.  This time, we're checking out the Field Museum.  I was surprised when we found the parking garage because it's for the museum, the foot ball stadium and one more big event that I can't remember.  Anyway, I'm not used to seeing that.  It was also $25 to park in this place too.

There was an armed forces memorial just outside of the parking garage that the kids enjoyed looking at. 

The museum is beautiful.  I love the architecture.  They were offering many different types of passes, but we only had a couple of hours before we needed to get on the road, so we just bought general admission.  It got us to the two things I wanted to see the most.  

These are just inside the ticket window.  They are so big and beautiful. 

This guy, however, was why we came.  I can't believe that these things really walked on this earth!

These two were my other reason for wanting to come.  I've watched The Ghost and the Darkness countless times, and I've always wanted to see the real lions of Tsavo.  I was surprised by how small they really were.  They were a little bigger than this when they were alive, but not much.  Some of their fur had been destroyed, so they used what they could salvage to fix them back up for the museum.  These were the man-eaters though.  

The kids thought all of the different animals were so cool. 

There was one display that looked like a whole African safari.  I guess I didn't get a picture of that one though. 

After a stop in the gift shop, it was time to head to our next hotel in Kansas City.  We have a big surprise for the kids tomorrow before we finish the trip home!

Road Trip Days 4-6

We decided to spend our time in Wisconsin just hanging out at the water park.  It was a pretty fun place.  The kids absolutely loved it.  It looked like a tree house. 

There was a little kids area with a waterfall and a couple of slides.  The kids always started out in this area before moving on to the slides.  This is also the area we would stay in after we ate. 

The kids LOVED this huge slide.  The took turns going down it with Mitch over and over again.  It emptied out into the lazy river, so we rode around the river when they were done sliding. 

I think Reese may have been the littlest kid to ride this slide.  Luckily, they had these rafts that had a bottom in the front hole that was specifically for smaller kids like her. 

Sweet moment.

This slide brought a lot of attention to our family.  You had to wear a life jacket to go down the slide unless you knew how to swim.  There were kids MUCH older than Witten who were going down in life jackets.  That seemed about right to me.  We were in Wisconsin after all.  I figured most of these kids didn't get as much practice at swimming as our Texas kids got.  I can only assumer that there's not a pool in 30% of the yards there!

People would stop and stare every time Reese went down.  Anytime there was a new life guard on duty, you could tell that they were really tense until they saw her slide down and swim to Mitch.  Then they just enjoyed the show.  We credit this slide for tiring out our children. 

Here's a better picture of the bottom of the raft and Reese just chillin', waiting for her turn on the slide. 

This was one of the cute little slides in the kiddie area.

Our room was pretty nice.  We had a full kitchen and dining room, so we could eat in our room.  We also had a bedroom, so we slept in there, Witten slept on the pull out couch, and Reese slept in the pack and play in the hall closet. 

One of the boys in the room thought that using this hole would be a fun challenge. 

We went into town for some groceries, and bought some popsicles.  We ended up leaving most of them there.  Hopefully the next people enjoyed them. 

This little girl thought that Reese needed a lot of help because she was so little, so she ran around with us for over an hour. 

For Mitch's birthday, we decided to go into the small town nearby and get some donuts.  This store was the only donut store in the area that popped up.  When we got there, they were sold out.  So, we crossed the state border looking for donuts, only to end up right back in the little town eating a locally farmed, that's fancy words for expensive, breakfast. 

Luckily, it was REALLY good!

The hotel had an arcade, so on our last night, we stayed in the pool until it closed at 9pm.  We then headed across the hall to the arcade to spend the cards we got when we checked in.  The kids had a blast, and got to stay up SUPER late!