Jones Family Adventures

Where we are at...

2012-01-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

Behind in the blogging...

Goes without saying. I have a long list of half written posts needing photos, and photo collages needing words. I am working on getting them finished, and have a cunning plan that involves back dating posts (is that possible?) so that (eventually) they will all be posted in the right order, at about the time they happened. Watch this space!

Moving to Ghana...

Yes! Finally we have the official stuff sorted. Since the new school year was just starting when that happened, we decided to let the kids get started, and then move in time for the beginning of the new school year in Ghana. The past couple of months have been busy and at times stressful, getting ready for our move, but we are all excited that the wait is over and we are finally moving. It has been a long year!

Edinburgh, Scotland....

Turns out there was a five week break between the end of American school (for winter break) and the start of the new school year in Ghana (with most people in our new 'village' gone on their home leave at this time). To help fill in some time we decided to get off the plane in London and have been having a bit of an explore, with some time in London, some time in the countryside, and the past few days in Scotland. There has been some pretty awful weather about the place but we have managed to avoid it all. Fingers crossed that good weather luck holds out for a few more days!

And now it is time to go and pack up our bags. After a few days in Edinburgh we are back on the road again tomorrow, with a few days to make our way to the airport. A Welsh detour is the plan!

Green Patrick the Second

2011-10-12T00:21:00.003-06:00

When Campbell was a baby we got him a 'green patrick' dog, just like the red one that Hayden had. He was a little indifferent to it for the next few years (he never really seemed to be fussed with any stuffed animals for more than a few days) but around the time we moved to Denver, green Patrick became a much loved, very good friend to Campbell. So well loved that poor green patrick was starting to look a little worse for wear, and the occasional sneaky swims I gave him in the washing machine were starting to feel more like attempted murder. Thankfully we found a place online where we could order a new green patrick. It had to be sent from Hong Kong, so it took several weeks, and I hadn't told Campbell he was coming, so when the box arrived today addressed to him he really had no idea what it might be.

This is what happens when a boy opens a mystery box and discovers a much loved new green patrick inside:

Happy day!

Time for a Culture Fix!

2011-10-11T07:42:00.055-06:00

One of the things that Hayden is especially enjoying about middle school is that for his music subject (orchestra) he gets to learn the violin again. He had a few months of lessons last year, but was disappointed to have to stop when we thought we were moving. Now he is getting back into it, and I have to say, learning it at school is much easier on the family taxi driver than when he was having twice a week evening lessons last year! One of the things the teacher recommended was that if the children had the opportunity to see an orchestra perform, they should take it (and in fact, they can get 'extra credit' for doing so!) She especially recommended going along to see the high school orchestra perform, as they are one of the best in the state, and it is always very inspiring for children to see other children perform at such a high level. Early last week Hayden came home with the news that there would be a concert this week, and could we go. Not entirely sure what we were headed to, we decided that Bridie and Campbell would stay home with Daddy, and Hayden and I would go to the concert.

It was the first time we had visited the high school, and as soon as we walked into the Fine Arts Theater we were impressed. It was huge, and very professionally set up (and I think probably more impressive than almost all of the other theatres - movie or otherwise, that we had been to before). The fact that it had a name like that (not just 'the Theater') suggested that there was more than one! The stage was most definitely set, and our expectations were high! As it turned out we were not disappointed. We were entertained by not one, but two fantastically talented orchestras, and Hayden came away from the evening feeling very inspired and motivated to practice that violin!

Our culture fix didn't end there! For the past few weeks when the kids get home from school we have been listening to all kinds of music while they eat their after school snack. I was really impressed the other day when Campbell and Bridie both recognised the music - 'hey this is from the Nutcracker!' That got them talking about when we had gone to the ballet, and how much they had enjoyed it, and could we please go to the ballet again? Would you like to go again? YES! Luckily for them we had just had an email from the Colorado Ballet announcing that they were performing Swan Lake, and we decided to go. Peter did joke that since moving to Denver he has seen more ballet than rugby but he kindly indulged us! It was good that we had an idea of what to expect this time, although we should have read the story of Swan Lake before going, as in the beginning it was sometimes a bit difficult to figure out what was happening. We had forgotten about the little 'subtitle' screens that each seat back has (they had been turned off when the ballet started, and we were so engrossed we hadn't even noticed). We remembered during the intermission, so the second part of the performance it was much easier to follow - when we couldn't figure it out ourselves we could cheat and read the subtitles! As with last time, Bridie was especially mesmerized by the performance, and wouldn't have minded bringing home a few of the costumes for her dress up box. The boys also enjoyed it, and the good news for Hayden was that with a live orchestra performing the music, this counted as more extra credit for his orchestra class!

And then we were off home again (to try to find some rugby on the telly!)

Autumn Again

2011-09-30T18:38:00.002-06:00

Autumn officially began at 3.05am last Friday (September 23), but it has to be said, one week in and the temperature has been more summer than autumn. The leaves are changing colour though, and Colorado really does do a beautiful job of autumn. Last weekend we went for a drive in the mountains to see the colours, and stopped for a picnic lunch and some exploring at Echo Lake. It was amazing how many other people had had the same idea. Exploring in the mountains is obviously the thing to do at this time of year!

The boys are pleased that the temperature is still high, because it means the snakes are still out and about. A couple of weeks ago, while Bridie was at a birthday party, we went to the park, and in about the first minute of the snake hunt Hayden had found two little snakes, and he and Campbell spent the next hour being entertained by them. Campbell has always been interested to see the snakes before, but quickly moves back to the playground. This was the first time he had really spent a lot of time holding the snake, and he was rather pleased about it.

The kids have all settled in well to the back to school routine. Bridie is loving being a school girl (and getting to ride the bus!) Having spent a lot of time at the school over the past few years, and knowing lots of the staff already, she wasn't the least bit nervous about it, and insisted on riding the bus to school on the first day. She has her kindergarten (NZ year one) class in the afternoons, and in the morning she goes to the kindy enrichment program. There are two other children from her preschool class that go to the same elementary school. She was very excited on the first day to discover one of them is also in the morning KEP class, but she is in a different afternoon kindy class. This is the same friend who has lived in NZ, spent most of the summer there, 'talks just like Bridie' - according to the kids who don't have hybrid accents, and even look alike - no wonder the other kids (and sometimes teachers) get them mixed up sometimes! Her other preschool friend has the same kindy teacher, but he is in the morning class, with KEP in the afternoon. They do get to see each other at lunch time and recess though (and actually share a cubby for Kindergarten). I think she was a little sad that they weren't all in the same class but has quickly made new friends. She has the same kindy teacher that Campbell had, which she was very happy about. We had been worried that she might be getting tired, but she shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon! We signed her up for the introductory Taekwondo classes that are held each Friday at school (the same introductory course that the boys did) and she is loving it, and looking forward to testing for her yellow belt in a couple of months. Definitely a happy time for Miss Bridie! Campbell is enjoying his second grade class (and has been reunited with some kindy friends back in the same class once more, so is happy about that!) He always has lots to tell and share with us when he gets home. Meanwhile over at Middle School, Hayden has settled in well. The first week or so I think he was a little overwhelmed by the size of the place, and the number of students (1500) but is happy enough about it all now, and has made lots of new friends. His biggest challenge (not a new one!) is keeping himself organised. Not misplacing his ID card would be a good start (thank goodness it is usually in the pocket of yesterdays pants!)

And in other news, it was fitness festival time again. We enjoyed taking part last year, and this year Bridie was excited because she got to join in too. After keeping a record of their physical activity over the summer, and going to school early to walk/run laps of the track in the couple of weeks leading up to the festival day, the kids had easily done their marathon equivalent. We decided this year we would join in the fun of the five km walk/run (last year we had entered the mile event and it was over too soon!) Just quietly, Bridie may have had a little bit of help along the way, but the boys did a great job, running much of it (and dragging Mum along with them!) They were very proud of their medals at the end (but it still seems strange to finish up a fitness festival with a feast of samples from local restaurants - delicious though!)

Smells Like...

2011-09-15T00:26:00.000-06:00

New Zealand!

Although, if I had to describe the smell of New Zealand,

I am not sure that it would have been this.

Nevermind, when we are missing home it is good to know that the smell of a New Zealand Spring is just a spray of air freshener away

(or dish washing liquid, or dish washer powder!)

Canon City and the Royal Gorge

2011-09-06T00:29:00.001-06:00

One of the good things about school starting towards the end of August, is that the first weekend of September is Labor Weekend - and after two weeks of school we were ready for a holiday (!) We decided to make the most of the opportunity, and do some more exploring of southern Colorado.

Our first stop was in Canon City - also known as the prison capital of Colorado. Yes, there are a lot of prisons in the area, of all shapes, sizes and security levels (minimum to supermax). there are nine state and four federal prisons and penitentiaries in the area, including what is considered to be the most secure facility in the federal system. We were not interested in visiting any of them! What we were interested in though, was a visit to the Colorado Prison Museum in Canon City. The first thing we did when we got there was have a picnic lunch in the carpark. The museum is right next door to the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, and I do believe this was our first time ever eating our lunch while being watched by prison guards! Lunch over, it was time to go and check out the museum.

There was a lot of interesting stuff to see including displays showing what life had been like for the inmates, and samples of some of the arts and crafts projects inmates had made (very impressive stuff!) and some slightly scary stuff too (amazing the different weapons and tools that those prisoners could make, and what they had used to make them!) The kids had been given a challenge while they looked around the various exhibits - to discover what the motorbikes were made from, and report back to the ladies at the front desk. Having checked out all the exhibits once, and then twice, and having still not seen any motorbikes let alone discovered what they were made from, we were pleased to finally notice some stairs leading down to a lower level, and even more pleased to then find the display of motorbikes that had been made by prisoners. And what had they been made from? Popsicle sticks, cardboard, wooden swab sticks, leather scraps, paper clips, coloured thread, permanent marker and floor wax! The kids were very impressed (if you enlarge the photo you may be able to see why), and worked as a team to memorize the list of materials used, and report back. They were very pleased with the miniature handcuffs they all got as their reward.

Probably the creepiest thing that we saw was the gas chamber that was out on the lawn at the front of the museum, right beside the entrance gate. This is an actual gas chamber, in which eight people were executed, and even though it of course nolonger functioning (it was moved to this location as part of the museum), it is still not the kind of thing you would want to go into - even if they didn't have the caution tape across the door to keep you out!

On that sombre note, it was time to carry on to our next destination of the day - the Royal Gorge Park. It turned out we weren't the only people to have this idea and we ended up having to park in the overflow park of the overflow park of the main carpark! The walk back wasn't too long though, and the kids were kept entertained looking for shiny rocks along the recently cleared track.

We had heard impressive things about the Royal Gorge, and we had also heard that it was an expensive day out. Right on both counts! The Royal Gorge is an amazing sight, and the engineering feats really are impressive, but all the extra stuff - the mule rides, the petting zoo, the adrenalin adventures, the endless food stall/touristy stuff/random entertainment seems to be all about parting people from their money, and completely detracts from the natural and engineering wonders. Kind of like if they moved Disneyland to the Grand Canyon (but on a smaller scale!) Yuck. We decided to avoid the carnival parts as best we could (and keep at least some of our money in our pockets!)

The first thing we did was ride the incline railway 1500 feet down to the Arkansas River at the canyon floor. Campbell is not so very keen on heights, so was feeling a little nervous, but once we were moving he was fine. I have to say, the crush and balance on the steps waiting to get in and out of the 'carriage' was probably the worst bit - visions of human dominoes!

The incline railway was built in 1931. It travels up and down about five minutes each way, at a 45 degree angle, and is apparently one of the steepest in the world. I think you notice it more too, because the canyon is deep and narrow (only up to 50 feet wide at the bottom). It's a nice smooth ride though, and the way the carriages are set up, you can pretty much only see straight out in front of you (or if you are shorter, probably just the back of the person in the row in front!) so it is kind of like an outdoor elevator!

When we got to the bottom, we admired the view back up to the top of the canyon, and the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge that crosses the canyon (it looked so small from down there!) checked out the river as it rushed by, and then tried to get a photo of the tiny humming birds at the feeders. Wow do they flap their wings fast! (blurry in the photo AND in real life). There isn't really much more to do at the bottom of the gorge, so it wasn't long before we were headed back up in the incline railway.

Back at the top we decided to walk across the bridge. First the facts - it was built in 1929 at a cost of $350,000 (it would cost more than $18 million today) It is apparently one of the highest suspension bridges in the world at 956 feet high (291m), with an amazing view over the canyon and surrounding area. It is 1270 feet long (384m), and 18 feet (5m) wide.

Wide enough for cars and pedestrians, although we thought that while it is technically wide enough for cars and pedestrians, it would have been much nicer to have one or the other, as it was a pain trying to have a nice leisurely stroll and admire the view, and to have to keep getting out of the way of cars. No doubt the drivers were getting annoyed too, with having to slow down when they got stuck behind a group of pedestrians!

While Campbell stuck close to the middle as much as possible, it was good to know that the bridge wouldn't be falling down any time soon. Each cable contains 2100 strands of #9 galvanised wire (weighing 300 ton per cable). The view from the bridge was as impressive as the view up from the canyon floor had been (and what a long way down that was!)

(can you see the blue rafts on the river?)

The kids noticed that some of the gaps between the planks were wider than others, and decided to have a closer look. Momentarily forgetting where he was, even Campbell was excited to look.

And what could they see?

Why, more of those little blue rafts of course!

When we reached the other side of the bridge, we watched a short movie about the history of the area (and of course a generous sprinkling of advertising for all those extra money grabbing activities at the 'park'!) We had planned then to take the aerial tram back across the gorge, but decided the queue was way too long (that was obviously where all those people from all those cars had ended up!) and we walked back across the bridge instead.

After that it was time to head back towards Denver, with just a couple of stops along the way - for a yummy mexican dinner, and (a separate stop!) to have a closer look at a pet cemetery we had noticed on the way down. Sad, but also nice to see a place for all those much loved pets (although we made sure to just have a quick stop and get out of their before it got dark!)

A sprinkle of fun...

2011-08-27T20:11:00.000-06:00

Sometimes,

on a late summer evening

as you walk home after a dinner out

you just have to run through the sprinklers.

Quick Catch Up ( and last of the summer fun)

2011-08-26T09:05:00.003-06:00

It doesn't seem that long ago that we had the summer stretching out before us, and now we are getting back into the school routine. The highlight of the break of course was our visit to New Zealand, but since being back we were kept busy with lots of fun activities including our real (sleep in a tent) camping at the State Park, and also Taekwondo camp for the boys. They had both been really looking forward to this camp (we had originally planned on them going at the beginning of the summer break but unfortunately that session was cancelled, and so they had to wait for the second session at the end of the summer break). We did have to pull Hayden out for a a couple of hours to go and do his registration for Middle School (wow that makes him sound so much older!) but other than that they were there all day every day for the week. They were exhausted at the end of each day, but came home having had so much fun, and were so happy to be able to successfully test for their red belts at the end of the week. Unfortunately we forgot to take the camera (!) so no photos of our boys with their new belts to share. Their new plan is to try to get their high red belts before we move. Nothing like having a deadline!

Not forgetting the school registrations, orientation, buying of school supplies and the start of school this week. And late last week we finally got some good news about our residency/work permit application. It seems we really might be moving soon! More detailed posts about all this stuff to come, but now it is time to go and enjoy the quiet that is three kids in school!

Off to School

2011-08-24T17:47:00.000-06:00

The day Bridie has been waiting for has finally come. Her first day of school. Not preschool, that's old news. She has been longing for the day she could go to the big kids school. As you can see she was feeling pretty happy about it all!

Waiting in line to start her first day:

and home again, with lots of stories to share!

She had a wonderful first day :)

Camping (a great cure for jetlag!)

2011-08-02T17:33:00.000-06:00

The trip back to Denver from New Zealand always seems to hit us much harder than the trip from Denver to NZ. Maybe it is the shock of being back in the mountain air? This trip was not helped by the fact that our flights had been changed by the airline to give us an extra stop over in Las Vegas. I have a photo of poor Campbell (that I decided would be too mean to post!) slumped asleep in a chair, his clothes sprinkled with food crumbs, blood (he had a blood nose on the Auckland-LA flight) and I'm sure a bit of vomit (he had an adverse reaction to LA airport, but thankfully we had our handy zip lock plastic bags close to hand!) looking much the worse for wear. I am sure he is not the first person at the airport in Las Vegas looking like he has had a hard night, and I am sure he won't be the last. (I will be saving that photo for his 21st!) I am sure the rest of us weren't looking much better! We were all very happy to finally arrive back at our apartment, get clean, and go to bed. None of us were really up and out of bed much before lunchtime the next day. It was looking like being a few days before we got back into our routine, but thankfully we had a plan!

After seeing how much fun Hayden had had camping with his friends, and just how well set up the camp ground at the state park was, we had decided to go on a family camping trip. Summer being the busy time of the camping year, the only weekend we had been able to book a site just happened to be the weekend after we got back from New Zealand. So, after our leisurely start to the day, we dragged ourselves off to buy a tent and a couple of other cheap camping essentials ready to go camping the next day (all our much loved camping gear is in storage in NZ - the plan was cheap basics to get us through until we have our own stuff again!)

The camp ground really is very well set up. Each site has a fire area (we cooked over a wood fire but we did see other people had brought their bbqs with them) and a picnic table, we had a tap right next to our site, and the bathroom block was just a couple of minutes walk. We also had a nice big tree to provide us with a bit of shade for much of the day, and it was only about ten minutes walk to get to the dam, for some beach and water fun. Best of all the up with the sun, down with the sun, outside all day approach to camping turned out to be the best possible cure for jetlag (although after the first night Peter did make a quick trip out to Walmart to buy some some sleeping mats for us all!) We had planned to bring the kids bikes too, but they were having so much fun without them we decided not to worry (and saved ourselves two extra trips back to the apartment!)

The kids especially enjoyed the open fire cooking, and all that great outdoors gave them a good appetite. After a yummy cooked breakfast, we would put potatoes to bake in the coals to be ready for our lunch. Then sausages for dinner, and some marshmallows for dessert - yum! Even washing the dishes in a bucket was fun!

The first night we joined a ranger talk to discover all the little wildlife that was living in the water (not to mention provide a feast for the very thirsty mosquitoes that also joined the talk - not quite so much fun!) A few hours later Hayden and I ventured out for a night walk in the hope that we would see the raccoons that apparently visit the rubbish bins at night, or the big owl that lives in the tree. We heard something, but sadly we didn't see anything, so we made plans to look again the following night. It wasn't an entirely bad thing that the next night we were so busy sleeping that we completely missed our night walk!

While we had booked to stay on the Sunday night too, we really only did that so we didn't have to pack up and be gone by lunchtime, and could have access to our camp site Sunday afternoon too. It would have been nice to have one more night, but Peter had work the next day, and with only one car it would have been an early, early start for everyone to get up, pack up the tent site, and get home in time for Peter to get to work on time. Needless to say, camping at the State park is very much on our things we want to do again list!

Our Visit to New Zealand

2011-08-01T16:24:00.000-06:00

Without a doubt, the highlight of our summer break this year was our trip to New Zealand for three weeks in July. It hadn't been all that long since our last visit, but we had decided that the two weeks that the kids get off school over Christmas/New Year was just not quite long enough for a visit (and we didn't want to keep pulling them out of school - it is amazing how much they missed in that week or two they were out last time we went to NZ!) Of course there was also the little matter of not knowing where we would be living come Christmas/New Year! So a US summer holiday (NZ winter) visit it was.

The best part of any trip to NZ is always being 'home' and seeing everyone, and patting the cat, and looking for eels, and walking on the beach, and going down the hill, and just being home! This time though, we decided to spend some time playing tourist as well. Over the past couple of years we have all learned a lot about America, on our travels, and of course at school. The kids didn't know so much (or were forgetting!) about New Zealand, so we had to put that right! First up was teaching them the word kiwiFRUIT! All those visits to Te Puke, and we had never taken the kids to see the Big Kiwifruit, so of course that was on the list. A bonus of that was the yummy food and beverage sampling we got to do!

Next on our list of adventures was a visit to Rotorua. We have visited many times before, but all our most recent geothermal experiences were at Yellowstone, so it was time to remind the kids that NZ did a pretty good job of that too. We headed out to Wai-o-tapu, and decided to do the longest walk (about 3km), which took us past lots of collapsed craters, fumaroles, cold and boiling water and mud, and down to lake Ngakoro for a lovely view to the south. There were a few moments of drizzly weather, but for the most part it stayed dry, and the kids had a great time trying to spot as many colours as they could in the water and rocks (green, orange, white, yellow, black and red, and of course, some more yellow!) We hadn't arrived in time to see the geyser do it's thing (although we hadn't been trying - having seen so many of them erupting all on their own at Yellowstone, we decided we didn't need to see this one again) but the boiling mud that was nearby (the geyser and these mud pools are both outside the main geothermal park area) was definitely worth the stop.

The kids also had some fun remembering that this was where some filming for one of their favourite - what to call it? Fake documentary program? Prehistoric Park, had taken place (we think!) We didn't see any dinosaurs today though, but it's always fun to look (and photoshop the photos when you get home!)

After our visit to Wai-o-tapu, and a picnic lunch, we headed into Rotorua to explore the history of the town. We visited the Rotorua Museum of Art and History that is housed in the beautiful old bathhouse that was once a famous spa. We started off with a temporary exhibit of the artwork of Lynley Dodd's picture books (of Hairy McClary fame). It was really interesting to see the progression of the art from doodled ideas, to colour suggestions, to completed art as we know it from the book, and the kids especially enjoyed seeing it. Next up was the short movie of the history of the area - including Maori mythology, and the eruption of Mount Tarawera (complete with shaking seats during the earthquakes!) that helped the kids understand why the geothermal activity happens in this area. Movie over, we visited the part of the museum that covers the history of the spa. It had first opened in 1908, and made use of the naturally occurring geothermal waters to offer therapeutic treatments (including mud baths - which didn't impress Bridie!) to the visitors. It wasn't the first spa in the area, but it was the first to get major investment from the government, in the hopes of putting Rotorua on the map as a major international tourist destination. The idea was good, but unfortunately the ongoing maintenance costs caused as a result of all that hydrogen sulphide, were huge, (almost from the time the bathhouse was first opened) and as the popularity of bathhouses dropped it became much more of a liability than an asset. The bathhouse hasn't offered treatments since 1966, but I think it is still one of the loveliest buildings in New Zealand, and we enjoyed our visit - from the basement to the rooftop!

Our last stop in Rotorua was a visit to the family pools at the Polynesian Spa, so we could have a nice soak in the warm mineral waters, and experience some of that geothermal activity first hand. We definitely could have stayed there longer!

Another place we decided to visit while we were home was the Alexander Family Farm, where the set for Hobbiton was created, for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Now is when we should probably confess that we hadn't actually seen the LOTR trilogy (gasp!) but something that we had noticed in the US was that when people found out we were from New Zealand, their first question/comment was usually something to do with the movies. We could say that part of it was filmed not far from where we used to live, and then that was about the end of our contribution to the conversation! We had debated whether or not to go on a tour of Hobbiton - it is quite expensive, and not knowing the movies we weren't sure if it would mean anything to us. We had also decided we probably should watch the movies at some point though, to see what all the fuss was about, and had also read that the set at Hobbiton (largely dismantled when filming of the trilogy had ended) had recently been restored to its former glory for the filming of the new movie 'The Hobbit'. Decision made, we headed to Matamata to see what we could see. Now it is at this point that I should explain that I have no photos of Hobbiton to share (I have photos, just not allowed to share them) and I don't think we are even allowed to really say much about it. The first thing we all had to do when we arrived at 'The Shire's Rest' for our tour, was to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that we wouldn't reveal anything to anyone (it is a working film set after all!) under threat of legal action should we breach the agreement.

The tour starts with a short demonstration of sheep shearing (which seems a bit random, but it is a working farm after all) and a chance for the kids to feed some lambs which they loved, and I am pretty sure that those photos are okay to show (along with Campbell being a hobbit, in front of a mural at the Shire's Rest).

What we can say (I hope!) was that we all had a fantastic time on the tour. We did not confess to the tour guide that we hadn't seen the movies already, but even not having seen them, our guide did a wonderful job of explaining things and we never felt like we had no idea what she was on about! I should add here that we have since purchased and watched all three LOTR movies and it was such fun to see things on the screen and say 'we've been there, we saw that, that's that tree where the lady said....' etc It seems that an agreement may have already been reached that when filming of the Hobbit ends the set at Hobbiton will not be dismantled this time, so that it can continue to operate as a tourist attraction. While we still think it is a little expensive, I think we would all recommend taking the tour - if only to learn some of the tricks they used to make the set/movies. Just watch though as you drive up the windy road to the Shire's Rest, because you never know when Peter Jackson might be driving the other direction, cutting the corner as he goes, and requiring you to take some slightly evasive action!

Having given ourselves something to talk about when those inevitable LOTR conversations start, we decided that next we needed a good dose of New Zealand history (to balance out all that American history), and for that we decided to head north, where we had a lovely few days of exploring with Nan and Poppa. We had visited many of these places with Hayden when he was much younger, but he couldn't remember it so had to take our word for it!

One of our first stops was at the public toilets in Kawakawa. Not just any public toilets though, this was at the world famous Hundertwasser designed toilets, and very beautiful they were too (and I am quite sure that this is the first time we have taken photos in a public toilet!)

We stayed in Paihia, and ventured out from there. Our biggest day was a trip to Cape Reinga at the very top of New Zealand (and what a lot of work has been done there since we last visited - with a fancy new entrance area and walkway down to the lighthouse). The kids were excited at the idea that they could see the Pacific Ocean and The Tasman sea meeting, and loved the signpost showing just how far away they were from different parts of the world. Windy day though! We were all excited at the idea of lovely fresh fish and chips from the Mangonui Fish shop for dinner (although were a bit shocked at how much the prices have increased since we last visited!) Thank goodness it was delicious!

Another day we visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and the Maori people back in 1840. It was funny to think that just a few months earlier on Waitangi Day (February 6) we had been sitting watching the Superbowl, and as part of the pre game festivities there had been a reading of the American Declaration of Independence (essentially the ejection of the British Crown by the US, and the exact opposite of our Treaty of Waitangi). Anyway, without getting into the politics of it all, the Treaty is an important part of New Zealand History, and it was interesting to visit the site where it was first signed. Also part of the Treaty Ground is the Treaty House which was built for James Busby and his family, and is one of the oldest houses in New Zealand (and an interesting insight into what life was like for those early British settlers), and also Te Whare Runanga - the beautifully carved meeting house that represents all the different iwi (Maori tribes) of New Zealand. The kids were also especially impressed with the waka (canoes) and loved the carvings on those. Having seen one of the oldest houses in New Zealand, we couldn't miss a visit to the old mission station at Kerikeri to see the old Stone Store (complete with scaffolding - just our luck!) and the neighbouring Kemp House -which was built in 1822 and is New Zealand's oldest building (no scaffolding here - just some children pretending to be rather serious looking pioneers). We also visited Rewa's Village in Kerikeri, which had been a hit with Hayden on our last visit (not that he remembered!) and which all the kids really enjoyed seeing this time. It's a reconstruction of a Pre-European kainga, or maori village, and it was interesting to watch the kids exploring it, and comparing it to to what they know of early Native American settlements. Of course, no visit to Kerikeri would be complete without a stop at the Makana hand made chocolate shop (complete with some samples - yum yum). Needless to say, we left with enough Makana confections to enjoy for the rest of our holiday!

We also made sure to take the ferry over to visit Russell, and learn a little of the history of the area. Being fans of the TV show 'Whale Wars' the boys were especially interested to learn about Russell's history as a whaling town. They were quite shocked to see how little the boats were that the men used to go out in to hunt whales. While in Russell we also visited the Pompallier Mission (another forgotten favourite of Hayden's) and managed to catch the end of a tour. It does have to be said that while this was an interesting place to visit, if you don't get to hear all of what the tour guide has to say it is a bit tricky to figure it all out yourself. If we hadn't been here before I'm not sure we would have known half of what was going on. The kids did get to have a go at running the old printing press after the tour had ended though, and were so pleased to then be able to bring home the picture that they had printed (carried very carefully for the next few days so as not to smudge it while the ink was still drying!)

Having seen so many impressive trees (sequoias and redwoods) on our California trip, we decided to finish up our Northland adventure by showing the kids some of New Zealand's own impressive Kauri trees, and so we headed off to the Waipoua Forest. Now we had had pretty good weather for most of our NZ visit, and so it was a little disappointing that the rain caught up with us today - especially as the worst of it coincided with our stop to see Tane Mahuta - the largest known Kauri tree (or at least the most accessible largest known kauri tree - apparently a bigger one has been found?) Either way, it is a big tree, and it would have been nice to linger a bit to admire it, rather than race around trying to take a photo without drowning the camera in the process!

From there we continued south and stopped at the fascinating Kauri Museum at Matakohe. We could have easily stayed a lot longer at this museum as there is just so much to see. From the amazing displays of kauri gum, and beautiful kauri furniture, to the models of a loggers camp and a kauri dam, and the huge range of equipment used to log and process the kauri timber, and huge slabs of timber (wow these trees get big!) and even a wing dedicated to the pioneers of the district and what life was like back in those early days. I'm not convinced we even saw all that there was to see, but unfortunately closing time was fast approaching and so we had to leave. The nasty weather was back, and so we decided rather than stop in Auckland for the night, we would just push on to Waihi Beach.

And before we knew it, our time in New Zealand was up, and it was time to wave goodbye again. Three weeks passes almost as quickly as two! At least now the kids have seen a bit more of the countryside, and will have a bit more of a balance between what they know about New Zealand, and what they know about the United States. And we are already thinking about where we will go on our next trip to New Zealand!

Off to New Zealand!

2011-07-06T23:30:00.000-06:00

We are off to New Zealand and we cannot wait!

Three weeks of family, friends, and fun.

Fingers crossed for some fine winter weather!

And some uneventful flights :)

Big Foot

2011-07-06T20:47:00.000-06:00

As if the wonderful view, yummy donuts, and smoking brakes weren't enough, early on in our trip up Pikes Peak, Peter spotted a sign that made our Big Foot obsessed boys very, very happy.

We of course had to stop for a closer look, but despite the best Big Foot calling efforts of the boys (big and small!) we did not see any actual Big Foot. (Big Feet?)

Can you see anything peeking out from behind the trees?

So they had to settle for a carved Big Foot statue instead.

They were still pretty pleased about that though.

And Hayden insisted we get a close up of the feet.

Just so you could see how 'big' they are.

Pikes Peak just gets better and better!

A Drive up Pike's Peak

2011-07-06T20:35:00.001-06:00

It has been a couple of years since we visited Pikes Peak, and we decided that it would be the perfect place to revisit as part of Bridie's birthday celebrations. Last time we took the cog railway, but this time we decided to drive up ourselves. We were interested to see how different it would be in the summer compared to our late winter/early spring visit last time, and with two years of altitude training under our belts! The forecast was for good weather (and so clear views), but the chance of showers in the afternoon, and of course at 14,110 feet above sea level, the temperature was expected to be a bit cooler at the summit (we packed our warm jackets just in case!)

With memories of the scary drive up and down Mount Evans still in our minds, we were surprised at just how good the road is. There were definitely some good corners, and not a whole lot of barriers, but for the most part the road was nice and wide, and the view from the passenger window wasn't a vertical drop off, so that is always nice! We were amused to see what must be the compulsory on any mountain road drive, car from Kansas, hugging that center line though!

Every year Pikes Peak hosts the 'Race to the Clouds' - an international hill climb that first started in 1916. In 1994 New Zealander Rod Millen recorded the fastest time (10 minutes 6 seconds) and that record stood until 2007, when 'Monster' Tajima, the current record holder, raced to the top in a time of 10 minutes 1 second. You can go along for a ride with Monster up Pikes Peak on this YouTube clip if you want to!

We were visiting Pikes Peak the weekend before the 2011 hill climb, and there were lots of preparations in place - hay bales and porta-potties galore!

We decided the Dodge was up to the challenge, and were rather pleased with our time of just under an hour. Of course, we had stopped for a three course picnic lunch half way up so you need to take that into account when you compare our time to those professionals! Also important to note, those guys probably don't pay much attention to the road signs:

This is one of the last corners before the summit. Monster takes it at about 70-80ish miles per hour. The Dodge (and her occupants!) were much more comfortable to take it at about a tenth of that speed!

When we reached the summit (14, 110 ft) we worked our way through the list of compulsory things to do. We of course admired the view, we posed for a photo with the summit sign, and then headed indoors to eat donuts. Donuts cooked at altitude are apparently not quite the same as donuts not cooked at such a high altitude. To be honest, I think it is mostly a money making gimmick, but we ate the donuts last time, and we weren't going to pass up the opportunity to eat them again this time!

It was definitely cooler at the top, and we were thankful for our jackets, but it was nothing like the hurts to breathe cold that we experienced last time, and this time no one was feeling the effects of the altitude, so that was good. Around the time that we were thinking about heading back to the car it actually started to snow a little bit. Pretty sure that was the first time we had experienced it snowing in summer! Thankfully it didn't come to much, although we could see some stormy weather headed our way, but the view on the way down was still clear in all directions.

And then we reached the mandatory brake test.

The four miles following the mandatory brake test spot are apparently the steepest on the road, and as a result all cars have to stop so a ranger can check the temperature of the brakes. If brake temperature is higher than 300 degrees Farenheit (149 celcius) you have to park up for a while to let them cool down.

It is probably good to note that just that week the Dodge had been for a service, and with a verdict of shot front brakes, had come home with a shiny new set. They had warned that the brakes may smell a bit hot for a few days. So when we pulled up, and the ranger said the brakes smelled hot we weren't too concerned. But then he said he could see smoke. And told us our brake temperature was 407 degrees (208 C) and we would need to pull over, pop the bonnet, and park up for at least 20 minutes. We may not have had the fastest time up the mountain, but we were literally smoking on the way down!

If only we had thought to bring some marshmellows!

It turned out we had a lot of company though, and there was a continuous stream of cars coming in to cool off. The clouds rolled over, the temperature dropped and we had a few minutes of quite good hail to help with the cooling process. The highest temperature we heard was 558 F. The people were not impressed to hear they had to park up for at least 30 minutes, and in fact, they only lasted about 30 seconds - pulling in briefly at the far end of the row of cars, before quickly backing out and heading off down the road. We were half expecting to see them in a crumpled heap on the side of the road, but luckily for them (and everyone else) they obviously made it down fine.

From there it was an uneventful trip back to Denver, which is probably the best kind of trip!

Bridie's Birthday

2011-07-06T14:44:00.000-06:00

For Miss Bridie, the most exciting thing to happen in recent weeks was of course the occasion of her fifth birthday. She had great plans for a party with her whole class, but we had to point out to her that:

1. all those friends wouldn't fit in our apartment

2. she had already had an outside venue party with all her friends (her 'going away party' when we were supposed to be moving) and one outside venue party a year was all she was going to get.

3. Our table has five chairs. Six if you include the chair from the computer. This last point proved key when it came time to send out the invitations!

Having agreed to downgrade her plans to just a few of her friends, Bridie could hardly wait for the day to come. She was a little sad that her friend Maggie wouldn't be able to make it (because Maggie was going to be in New Zealand!) but so pleased that Zoe, Violet and Jordan and her little sister Rachael could all come.

Originally we had been expecting Peter to be away and the boys to be at camp, but after all those plans changed we were pleased to have them around to act as door men (helping the guests find their way from the visitor parking to our apartment) and direction givers (poor Zoe was rather late arriving after her Grandmother got a little lost). Then they disappeared off to have some fun while the girls had fun making princess crowns, threading beads to make their own jewellery, decorating (and eating!) cookies, and then enjoying a birthday morning tea of cupcakes and pink lemonade. We had bought some plastic picnic wine glasses for the girls to use, and matching 'crystal' plates, and they were so funny with their 'cheers' every time they took a drink (and so excited when we let them take them home with them at the end!)

Bridie had a lovely morning with her friends, and thankfully the sugar high wasn't too bad! The next day the excitement continued when she got to open some more presents. She has been a bit obsessed with her kitchen lately, and so there was a bit of a theme going on with her gifts. She plans to be a 'server' when she grows up, so all this practice should come in handy! After that it was time to get the warm jackets out and go on an adventure, because on the occasion of her fifth birthday, a girl really should view the world from the top of a mountain, right?!

The Sports News

2011-07-04T21:41:00.000-06:00

And now for the sports news!

A few weeks back, Denver hosted a soccer game at Mile High Stadium (@ Invesco Field) between no other than New Zealand and Mexico. We had thought about going along, but it started at 8pm on a school/work night and since Bridie and Campbell are usually asleep or close to it by then, (and since we were pretty sure of what the outcome would be) we decided against it. Hayden on the other hand, was excited to go along with his friend from school, who just happens to be from Mexico. With a big Mexican population in Denver, Hayden was close to being the token Kiwi (although he said he did see a few other people with NZ flags) and he made Federico take a flag too. He had a wonderful time, and learned a few new words in Spanish for the next time he goes to the soccer. Meanwhile we watched it on TV (on one of the Spanish channels) and while we couldn't understand the commentary, we were actually kind of impressed with the game - it wasn't the thumping that we had been expecting!

A few weeks later we took Federico to a baseball game at Coors Field. The Rockies were playing the San Diego Padres (or the 'Dads' as Federico told us) and happily the Rockies won. It was an evening game, and when we first arrived the sun was shining brightly and it was hot (28c at 6pm) but we soon had a beautiful sunset to admire along with the winning baseball, while we ate our peanuts and hotdogs, and assorted other stadium food.

The boys have been keeping busy with their Taekwondo. Just before school finished they had a belt test in a park, followed by a shared picnic lunch. There was a great turn out with lots of people testing, and it was fun (although a little strange too) for the boys to be doing their Taekwondo outside like that. Both boys earned their blue belts, breaking boards in the process, and we are so proud of the progress they have been making.

They have also started going to Taekwondo sparring in the past month, and really seem to enjoy it, although they do get very hot and sweaty with all that padding on! They were supposed to have a Taekwondo camp for the the first week of the school holidays, but unfortunately it was canceled due to low numbers. There is another one in August that the boys will go to instead, so they weren't too disappointed. They are thinking that by the time they finish the camp they may be almost ready to test for their red belts (but we will have to wait and see about that!)

After the Taekwondo camp was canceled, we looked into a Lacrosse camp instead (both boys had really enjoyed learning it at school, and we were hoping a few hours of running around each morning would help to keep them occupied while Peter was away). Unfortunately that camp was canceled too, due to low numbers (being so early in the summer break, the demand for camps is obviously not so great). We were offered the opportunity to transfer to a 'speed and agility' camp instead (same place, and only two hours each morning, instead of three, but also cheaper than the longer camp would have been). Hayden wasn't so keen, but Campbell didn't care what the camp was, as long as he got to run around and have fun. So off he went, 8-10am each morning, to work on improving his running style and balance etc, and generally have a good time. There were only four kids at the camp (including Campbell) so it was close enough to one on one training which was great. The first morning we woke to find it was raining, and the first thing Campbell said was "Yes! I might get to see the Broncos!" Following a moment of confusion I realised he was thinking about last year, when he had gone to a soccer camp at the same place, and we had had to sign permission slips in the case of rain, allowing the kids to ride the Broncos (Denver's professional football team) team bus back to the Broncos indoor training facility, while the Broncos used the bigger indoor facility that happened to also be the kids camp venue. Since it is earlier in the season (pre training camp week), and the NFL are in the middle of a lockout at the moment, I didn't think that was very likely. As it turned out, I was wrong. When we went to pick Campbell up that first day (and then again on the Tuesday and Friday) we found a large group of football players (many/most of them Broncos) training together. One of the days the camp kids were doing pretty much the same drill as the football players (only with a slightly less professional athlete look to them!) Campbell was a pretty happy boy!

As the week had been going by, Hayden had been watching the camp (and joining in a couple of times at the end when we arrived to get Campbell) and he came to the conclusion that he actually did want to do that camp. Luckily for him another one was running the following week so we signed up before he could change his mind. He also had a great time and was really pleased that he went. Unfortunately for me it meant another week of having the kids up and out the door and at the camp venue by 8am. The only days we didn't have to set the alarm clock to be somewhere, were the days the kids all woke up early anyway, of course!

Last Weeks of School, First Weeks of Summer

2011-07-04T16:55:00.000-06:00

We are near enough to a month into the summer school break, and as always are wondering where the time has gone! The last couple of weeks of school were crazy and busy, although I don't think it was quite so bad as the end of the school year in NZ, where not only is it the end of the school year, but also the end of the calender year, and all the activities, and Christmas on top of that. At least we just had the end of school to deal with.

Highlights of those last days for both boys included end of year class parties/iceblocks and the school field day, which involved lots of fun sporty activities and teamwork, and for the older kids, the tug of war challenge. Hayden's class were the Fifth Grade tug of war champions, and very pleased about it they were too!

Because it was their last year at the elementary school, the fifth grade kids also had some other special activities going on. The last weekend before the end of school, the entire grade also had an evening disco themed pool party at one of the neighbourhood pools. The fun included swimming and diving of course, water pistol fights, game playing, pizza eating, candyfloss eating, music playing, and a cool towel for each child to keep, with 'Class of 2018' on it (the year they will graduate High School). We had already spent the morning at Taekwondo with a belt test in the park followed by a picnic lunch (more on that soon), and then Hayden had spent the afternoon downtown with his friend Jake checking out the Chalk Festival (amazing chalk art) so all in all it was a pretty fun day for him, and sugar levels were high!

Meanwhile the rest of us were busy playing in the 'backyard', having a movie night with some neighbours, and then Campbell had a sleepover with a couple of friends (at the friend's apartment, thank goodness for us!)

On the Monday evening (the last full day of school) the Fifth Grade had their Continuation ceremony. It was kind of like a graduation, but without the caps and gowns thank goodness, and featuring baby photos of all those wonderful kids up on the big screen, a musical number by the kids (they sang Natasha Bedingfield's song 'Unwritten' - a good choice for the lyrics but also an added bonus for Hayden, her parents are from NZ!) and then each child being presented with a certificate from their wonderful teachers. Then of course, cake and mingling, but not before an announcement that they were now officially sixth graders, and as a result would not have to go to school the next day (the final morning). Sadly the little camera was not liking the dim lighting so the photo is a little blurry (you will just have to pretend you have had a few celebratory drinks!)

Campbell did have to go to school the next morning, but it was pretty much just fun and games, so he didn't mind.

Meanwhile Miss Bridie is finally enrolled to start Kindergarten (NZ Year 1) in August. It took us a while to get the letter we needed from the corporate housing people, confirming we do actually live here. The lady would 'put it in the mail', it wouldn't arrive, Peter would request she just fax it, or attach a digital signature and email it, and she would 'put it in the mail' instead. She mailed it to us three times. We are yet to receive it even once. At one point she suggested we just have someone else (preferably a female) just sign her name for her. Since she hadn't written anything that wasn't untrue, she didn't have a problem with us forging her signature. She seemed a little surprised that we did, and finally agreed to fax the letter (and then added, since she had now printed it out to fax she may as well put it in the post too. Um... didn't you do that already? More than once?) With letter in hand, along with another one from work, we braved the school district office. To say those ladies could benefit from some hospitality training is an understatement! The world flags decorating the office were a welcoming touch, but didn't distract from the notices reminding you of the legal consequences of providing false information. After looking at the letters we had, and checking with a supervisor in case 'our documents had been falsified' they finally entered a few details in the computer and handed us a piece of paper saying Bridie was enrolled. Whew. Now we wait to find out who her teacher will be. She is hoping for the same teacher that Campbell had, and we were hoping she would be in the morning class (the Kindy classes just go for half a day, so each teacher has a morning class and then an afternoon class). Last week we got a letter saying she will be in the afternoon class. Still deciding what we think about that, and the wait continues to find out who her teacher is. But at least she is enrolled!!

In work news, Peter has just gotten back from two weeks working in his 'other office'. The first couple of days he was there the camp was full, so he stayed in a house down at the village. We were told several months ago that we had been assigned a house, and we don't know if that was the one or not, but we know they all have the same floor plan, so Peter spent an evening counting floor tiles and making a plan for us. The kids were more excited though, to hear about the three lizards ("one each!" said Bridie), and the little yellow frog that he found in the house. Campbell requested that he please keep them there until we move, but that could still be a while. A couple of weeks ago we heard that there had been a setback with our applications (residency/work permit). The simplified version (or at least, what we thing is going on) is that the relevant Government Department believe that the company have reached their quota of expat employees. The company believe that there never was a quota as such (there had been for a blanket visa that was negotiated to facilitate bringing in expats, but the understanding was that they could still bring in employees with individual applications outside of that blanket visa. Or something.) HR feel they have done all they can and have now invited legal counsel and 'Government Relations' to the party. They asked us to please 'keep the faith'. And so the waiting continues, and the lizards were released and the kids are looking forward to catching some different ones if we ever do get to move! A bonus (?) of having still not moved was that we were around to take the call that the kids were due for their last (I think!) immunisation - a follow up to one they had late last year, and a bonus tetanus for Hayden before he starts Middle School, so the kids were excited about that!

In amongst the school and work stuff, and being stabbed with needles, we have been keeping ourselves busy with other stuff. Lots of sporty stuff (a separate post for that is coming), swimming, and playing in the 'backyard' (although bike riding is limited to after hours when the car park has emptied out), walks, picnics, seeing the Cars 2 movie, friends sleeping over (I did NOT expect Bridie and her friend Jordan to last quite so long before finally falling asleep, let alone wake early in the morning!) Tuesday night free concerts in the park (they have grown so much in popularity since our first summer here, and they weren't exactly unpopular then as you may remember!) and lots of reading. All three kids wanted to participate in the Borders Summer Reading Challenge (read ten books and then choose a free book from a selection). The boys were both excited to see that this years free book selection included books they had on their wish lists, and so were extra motivated. They were very pleased to go and hand in their completed forms and get their new books. Campbell is saving his one (Flush, by Carl Hiaasen) for when we go to New Zealand, but Hayden couldn't wait, and had his book (Loser by Jerry Spinelli) finished the next day. Now he is back to reading the book he chose from the Middle School required summer reading list (which thankfully, he is enjoying), and Loser is beside our bed, with a recommendation from him that we should read it too. Meanwhile Bridie didn't entirely understand the free book from a selection idea, and was most upset not to have her choice of any book in the store. She reluctantly settled on 'Judy Moody and Stink and the mad, mad, mad, mad Treasure Hunt' by Megan McDonald. She still wasn't very impressed though, until we started reading, and then she giggled her way through the whole book (and has made plans to bring it to New Zealand and have EVERYONE read it again for her!)

Last weekend Hayden spent a night tent camping in the State Park with some friends, to celebrate friend Jake's birthday. They had a wonderful time playing by the lake, fishing, finding treasure with the metal detector, burning stuff, eating hot dogs and melted marshmellows, burning stuff, and not getting very much sleep. He lots of fun, but was the first one to go to bed on Sunday! For not the first time we have been wishing we had our camping gear with us, and have decided that before school starts again we might have to get a cheap tent and go and do some family camping. But with more sleep, and less burning stuff!

On the topic of State Parks, we went for another visit to Castlewood Canyon State Park just before the school year finished, to do some more exploring. This time we decided to go and check out the old dam ruins, which was a good hike.

We had been expecting to see it all a lot more green than on our last visit, and were surprised to see that the trees were still just getting their leaves, and there was still lots of brown. There was some green grass though, and the poison ivy was coming along nicely (probably to be expected!) As we walked along the track some people walking back towards us warned they had heard a rattlesnake on some rocks near the track just ahead of us. We quietly (and carefully!) continued along the track hoping we might hear it too, but didn't hear a thing. We figured the people who had heard it must have been off the track and getting near the snake for it to have been rattling, and since we weren't interested in that, we would just have to settle for imagining we might have maybe heard something, and seeing the garter snakes in the park down the road from our apartment. We did see a dead porcupine of the road on the way home though, so that was a little out of the ordinary!

And that might be about all - except of course, for Bridie's Birthday! But that deserves a post of it's own too.

Skunks - according to Campbell

2011-07-04T09:14:00.000-06:00

While we have not had the pleasure of seeing, or smelling, a skunk yet, Campbell seems to know all about them, and is happy to share his knowledge...

"Mum, you have to see a skunk for real, they are so cute.

And when they're not farting, they really aren't that bad!"

Good to know.

(I believe that last sentence of his
could be applied to more than just skunks!)

Behind in the blogging (again)

2011-06-26T10:03:00.000-06:00

We are behind in the blogging again. You may have noticed that already. It feels like we have been super busy, but we really don't seem to have a lot to show for it. Camps for the boys (or not, as it turned out) a work trip for Peter, a birthday for Bridie (and all the fun that goes along with that), looking forward to our trip to New Zealand, and hoping that the ash cloud blows away so our flight isn't canceled (like it has been every day this week). Maybe we need to plan something fun to do in Los Angeles just in case we get stranded? Then Murphy's Law can kick in, our flight won't be canceled, and our LA plans will be for nothing (but will Murphy fall for that?!)

Anyway, the plan for this week, as well as Taekwondo, camp, sleepovers etc is to do some blogging catch up, so watch this space! Now we are off to get Hayden after his night of tent camping with friends in the State Park, and the big question is - tired and grumpy now, or tired and grumpy later?!

Pirates and Other Treasures

2011-05-29T14:41:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago we decided to renew our family memberships to the zoo and the Museum of Nature and Science, since it seems we will be here for a while longer! Last weekend we went to the museum to check out the National Geographic exhibit 'Real Pirates' that recently opened. It is about one ship - the Whydah, that started out as a slave ship, was then captured by pirates and used as a pirate ship, and finally was lost off the coast of Cape Cod. The wreck of the Whydah was discovered almost 300 years later, and treasures from the wreck (real pirate treasure!) forms part of the exhibit (sadly - no photos allowed, so you will just have to imagine the treasure chest over flowing with all those irregularly shaped pirate coins).

Because slave ships were built for speed, they were highly prized by pirates, and the Whydah wasn't the only pirate ship to start out as a slave ship. The first part of the exhibit talks about slavery, the people being sold as slaves, the conditions they lived in while being held in the forts waiting for the ship, and then conditions once they were on board the ship. Not very nice. Since these slaves were originating in West Africa it was especially interesting to us. When we read about older children being sold as slaves, and told the kids that Hayden would have been just about old enough to be sold as a slave, and that Campbell was tall enough that he may have been mistaken for an older child, it really brought it home to them. If we ever get to move we might have to visit one of the old forts along the coast (but will be sure to have lots of tissues with us!)

Throughout the exhibit we learned about what life was really like for a pirate (who knew they were such a democratic bunch?!) and busted a few myths - real pirates didn't bury their treasure because they were too busy spending it, so there was also no need for treasure maps. They didn't waste time with plank walking either, they would just throw you overboard. If you lost a leg on the job, you would be paid out the princely sum of 800 pieces of silver, (and it was highly likely that the ships carpenter would get the job of taking off the leg). We learned about the cannons used on a pirate ship, and the kids got to learn how to tie some handy knots. Early in the exhibit they thought the pirate life wouldn't be so bad, but by the end they were thinking maybe it wasn't for them after all. 'Real Pirates' is a traveling exhibit, so if it visits a museum near you it is well worth the visit!

After we had had our fill of pirates, we had to go visit the animals in the dioramas (and show our friend Joanne where to find the little gnomes that are hiding in some of them). It really isn't a visit to the museum without a detour past the dioramas!

Other treasures of the week have included the wonderful end of year musical performances that all three kids have been involved in. First up was Campbell, with a fantastic summer picnic themed show (which coincided with the unusual gray sky, rainy day weather we had been having!) Campbell was especially excited because he was in the group of children that got to play the 'kazoo'. He was a bit upset when it came time for the show and his kazoo wasn't in the box. The spare one he had to use had something missing, so it didn't really work. He had so been looking forward to it, and was so disappointed. We assured him that we hadn't even noticed, and that he had done a great job, but he wasn't entirely convinced. We are thinking we might have to go kazoo shopping (just saw one online for $1.12!) so he can do a repeat performance for us at home.

Bridie's show was next. It was the same performance that Campbell had done when he had been at that preschool and I can still hear him singing those same songs! The performance was about the history of Colorado, and the people that came to live there (cowboys, farmers, miners etc), complete with songs like 'Home on the Range'. I remember we used to sing that when we were at school. Never did I imagine we would one day live in a place where the deer and the antelope played, although the line about the skies not being cloudy all day, usually true, was not so much these past couple of weeks!

The last performance was from Hayden. This year the fifth grade have been learning about the history of blues and jazz, and their show told about the evolution of American music. All the kids did such a wonderful job, and the teacher said it really was the best group of kids he had ever had the pleasure to work with (he taught them music last year too, and some of you have seen the DVD of that show!) Both boys have really enjoyed their music classes, and we are so pleased that the school has dedicated specialist teachers for not just music, but also art, computers and PE. (and also a little pleased that these subjects don't usually set homework!)

Speaking of homework, with just a week left of school for the boys, the end is finally in sight! Campbell had his last official homework on Tuesday - although he still has two speeches to give - first about a National Park site (the hard bit will be choosing which one!) and then plans for the summer, which should be pretty straightforward too. While Hayden has still had homework everyday, it is a bit less than usual, so that makes afternoon time management a bit easier! We have already broken the news to them that they will be having 'at home homework' during the summer break (two and a half months is a long time to not be doing anything, and it is amazing how much they can forget in that time!) but they didn't seem too worried about that, so that is good.

For Hayden, the highlight of this past week was the field trip his grade went on. They had a visit to 'Young Ameritowne' where the kids became the towns population, and they got to have a taste of the 'real world' for the day. They have been preparing for the past few weeks - holding elections for the positions of town mayor, and judge, applying for the different jobs, having interviews, and then of course the wait to find out what job they got (or not, as the case may be!) They developed logos and slogans for their companies, and then designed ads to appear in the town newspaper, and generally got very excited about the upcoming trip. They were all given cheque books and debit cards, and a small starting balance (which they promptly had to use to pay assorted fees!) When the day came they all got a single paycheck and had to make it last. Hayden had a job at the bank (some kind of investment role - not quite sure of the details, but not a teller, as his friend had that job). Throughout the day there were investments that were made, rent that was paid, businesses that failed, prizes purchased and other assorted financial ups and downs, but Hayden seemed pretty pleased when he got home. We shall see if he manages his pocket money any differently now!

Campbell's class have had a fieldtrip too. They went to visit the city 'Maintenance Facility'. I will admit that I was pretty sure that the first grade had drawn the short straw when it came to fieldtrip destination this year, but Campbell was so excited when he came home, and has been busy sharing all kinds of 'city maintenance' information with us ever since! He also had a pile of goodies from the trip which he was very proud of - including a little rubber duck (to remind him of the importance of clean water, and not to pollute it etc), a little blue spruce tree to plant (still trying to figure out where we shall plant that!) and a road sign with his name on. Now when he told us he had a road sign with his name on, I figured he meant a cardboard sign that he had written on himself. Nope. Someone at the city maintenance facility had gone to a lot of trouble to make each child in the first grade an actual little personalised metal sign - just like the road signs in our city. Very impressive, and not such a short straw after all!

In longer term plans news, we heard that our visa/work permit application has been resubmitted. Questions have been asked by the appropriate government department. Answers have been provided by HR/relevant people at work (not us!) And the wait begins again/continues on .....

And the final treasure was a little gem from Campbell. With the end of the school year at Bridie's school comes the need to bring toys home for a good cleaning. One of the toys we chose was a big foam skeleton puzzle. Campbell was especially excited to see that, and couldn't wait to put it together. When it was done he noticed that it was quite similar to him in size, and decided it might be the perfect fit, he just needed to check real quick.

As he lay down next to the skeleton I heard him say
quietly to himself

'this would be much easier if I didn't have my skin on'.

Spotted on the way to school...

2011-05-17T21:36:00.000-06:00

One day last week

the boys got home from school

and told us that

on the bus ride to school

that morning,

they had spotted...

15 prairie dogs

and 3 deer.

Meanwhile,

Bridie has been spotting

lots of different birds, squirrels and baby bunnies

on her (our) walks to and from school.

This city living thing isn't so bad!

Making Plans for the Summer

2011-05-15T22:15:00.000-06:00

The last couple of weeks we have been keeping busy with the usual stuff. Peter got back yesterday from two weeks in Ghana, and while we have no real news about when we might be moving, it seems that we will probably be in Denver for much/all of the fast approaching summer school break. So, as well as the usual stuff, we have been keeping busy making plans on how to survive that fast approaching summer school break!

The first, and most exciting thing we did, was book some flights for a trip to NZ in July. WOO HOO! Peter will probably have to bring some work with him, but he will be able to have a pie for lunch if he wants, so it won't be so bad. We are thinking we might have to have a few days playing tourist too, but might have to see what the weather is like before we make any firm plans. Not really looking forward to the soggy winter weather though!

We went ahead and renewed our (lapsed a couple of months ago) family memberships to the zoo and the museum too. There is a new exhibit at the Museum about real Pirates that the kids should enjoy, and some new babies at the zoo, so that should be good for a fair few visits over the school break. We are thinking a camp or two might be a good idea as well, and the boys are keen to go to the Taekwondo camp again, so might have to look into that.

The weather had been warming up - last weekend it was around 30 degrees celcius, and we spent the afternoon by the pool, but then during the week some stormy weather blew over, and we had a rainy/snowy day, followed by a rainy night, and then rain into the next day too. It is the first time since we moved here that we have had a stretch of rain like that. It cleared up on Friday, but then something happened out east and the same storm got blown back here to give us a cold and rainy weekend. No good for playing outside, but as Hayden says, it's good for making the plants grow! The crazy thing is that the hot weather we had, had people worrying about flooding (they had record snowfall in the mountains this winter and hot weather = snowmelt = flooding), and the the alternative of cold weather brought with it record levels of precipitation. So either way, the plants will be growing a lot!

As the end of the school year approaches all of the kids have been preparing for end of year concerts which should be fun. Hayden's grade got to go on a tour of the middle school (intermediate) this past week. He had visited before (violin lessons were sometimes over there) but got to see a lot more of the school on the tour and seemed very impressed - not least of all because they have two gyms at the middle school - a small gym and a large gym, and the small gym is even bigger than the one at the elementary school apparently, so how big must the large one be?! When his friends were busy completing their enrolment forms a couple of months ago Hayden had been keen to complete his too. He was concerned that if we were still here for Middle School, he might not get his choice of subjects if he enrolled late. We figured it wouldn't do any harm, and are feeling glad about it now. We have decided to go ahead and enroll Bridie for school too (just in case) and are now preparing to do battle with the school district office, to prove we do actually live where we say we do. It was hard enough when we were trying to enroll Campbell, so I can't imagine it will be any easier this time (especially when our apartment lease currently ends in August, just a week or two after the new school year will start). Should be a fun week!

And of course enrolling Bridie for school, means that Bridie's preschool days are fast reaching an end. We are all going to miss the lovely teachers at the preschool, who have made us feel so welcome since we first knocked on the door in February 2009, looking for a school for Campbell. Throughout the year they have been focusing on a new letter of the alphabet each week. They have various activities to do related to that, and then their Friday show and tell item is supposed to start with that letter of the alphabet. Now that they have finished all the letters, Bridie was excited that for show and tell they could bring anything they wanted. Oh the possibilities! Friday came, and Bridie decided to bring.... plastic cheese from her toy kitchen. Alrighty then!

Sadly many of her friends live a distance away and will be headed to other schools, but we know at least a couple of kids from her preschool class have older siblings at 'our school' so she should see a few familiar faces. Of course, she has thought that she belonged there pretty much since we moved here, so if we are still here when the new school year begins, we are not anticipating any problems with Bridie getting settled!

You know, 'just in case' we still happen to be here when the new school year starts!

What's going on blogger?!

2011-05-13T11:28:00.000-06:00

so it seems blogger has been having some problems the past few days and the blogging I had planned to do couldn't get done. Except one post that seems to made it through between the hiccups. Except... now it has gone? Oh well, hopefully blogger will get there stuff together, and it will reappear. I am going to hold off for a bit before writing anymore though, because it will be a pain if that disappears too!

And yay for Friday!

Future Planning over Breakfast...

2011-05-11T08:43:00.000-06:00

Overheard this morning - a conversation between Campbell and Bridie...

'Hey Bridie - when you are in Kindergarten you'll get to go on the bus to school too!'

'I know. And I am going to sit by you so then that girl won't be able to kiss you'

(quick back story - sweet lovable Campbell was being harassed by a girl on the bus who kept trying to kiss him, much to his horror. Not least of all because kissing is strictly against the school, and bus rules.)

'Yeah, but you aren't allowed to kiss my either Bridie, because it's against the rules, and if you kiss me then you will get expended from school. You better not sit with me.'

(meanwhile, Hayden and I are trying not to giggle out loud, and Hayden is whispering 'I love it when Campbell invents new words like 'expended')

'But who will I sit with?'

'You can sit with Hayden'

At which point Hayden explained that he won't be on that bus anymore because he will be at middle school.

'So then who can I sit with?!'

'Okay, you can sit with my friends.'

(She didn't seem convinced, but brightened up when Hayden told her she might have friends of her own who the rode same bus)

Fingers crossed!

Where has April gone?

2011-04-30T20:59:00.001-06:00

Another month down, and still no real news on when we might expect to be moving. We had been hoping this week to have the people whose job is is to manage these applications at least give us a ball park figure of how many more months it might be (not an exact date, and not even an especially accurate guess, but even just a vague idea would be helpful!) The answer was that old standby 'we don't know'. We appreciate that they don't know, but we still think that they must have a better idea than us, seeing as they have been through this process before, and it would be great to have them just say 'plan to be there for y to z more months'. Or something. Especially with the end of the school year (and the start of the school holidays) rapidly approaching!

Anyway, while the waiting continues, we have been keeping busy. This month it was the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. Our local library district hosted some civil war inspired events in celebration, including a reenactment. Having never been to a reenactment before, and with Hayden about to start a Social Studies unit on the Civil War, we decided to go and check it out. We had been expected to see people dressed up and running around pretending to shoot each other, but instead it was people dressed up, and talking about the cavalry and infantry, and demonstrating weapons. We learned that it would not have been good to be a horse in the civil war (big easy targets that they were, the odds of survival were not good if you were a horse) and that by the end of the battle, if you had survived, your hearing probably hadn't. The highlight had to be the cannon demonstration. After explaining the different steps, and having a practice run, the cannon was fired using a quarter charge. What a BANG!! Followed immediately by the sound of all the car alarms in the car park going off. Fantastic! The boys especially enjoyed it, but by then Bridie was not so keen on the noise, and had retreated to the inside of the library to read Princess books with our friend Joanne (where they could still here the cannon go off!)

With our family memberships to the zoo and museum having expired, we are now making the most of the last few months of our Colorado State Parks pass. After our visit to the Castlewood Canyon Park last month, we decided to visit another new to us park - Roxborough State Park. The rocks at this park are from the same formation as those at The Garden of the Gods, and Red Rocks Amphitheater, so we had high expectations. We weren't disappointed either - the view was wonderful. We walked the Fountain Valley Trail which was a nice easy couple of miles. We had borrowed a family backpack that had some notes about things to see along the trail. Campbell was especially interested in that, and proudly carried the backpack all the way. We did see a few other people but for the most part it felt like we had the park to ourselves. Except for when we shared it with some deer of course. In the visitor centre on the 'recently sighted wildlife' board we saw that a bear had been seen in the park just the week before, but despite looking, we didn't see any (the kids make pretty good bear deterrents!) We did see a few wildflowers in amongst the still mostly brown vegetation, and Bridie was pleased to see those. It was another lovely family day in beautiful Colorado. Can you spot the rock that looks like a face (George Washington)?

Speaking of the still mostly brown, Spring seems to have been a bit slower coming this year. There is definitely a lot of green outside, but we are noticing that some of the trees have been a lot slower getting their leaves this year, maybe due to the dry winter we had. I still wonder if some of those still brown trees might have actually died. I guess we will see in the coming weeks. As for the spring weather, it has been as changable as ever. Still lots of snow falling up in the mountains, and even a couple of small sprinkles down here (including last night). Never a lot though, and it doesn't stick around at all. We have had a couple of big thundery storms (so far just at night) but no tornado warnings here yet. The really bad weather seems to be passing right over us, and landing in the southern part of the US (and far to the east of us). They have had hundreds of reported tornadoes over the past couple of weeks, with widespread devastation, and hundreds of people have been killed. It is really scary to see the reports on the news, and incredible to see how an entire house can be reduced to a pile of splinters.

In other news, the kids are all enjoying the last few weeks of school. Bridie has about three weeks left to go, and the boys finish two weeks after that. Still working as hard as ever, but both boys are also looking forward to fun field trips coming up next month. They have also both been learning Lacrosse at school in their Gym/PE class and have really been enjoying that. We have seen the high school kids practicing after school and had thought we should go along one day and watch a game. Unfortunately it looks like we thought of it too late - the season is almost over (of course, because it probably follows the school year). We might need to look to see if there are any Lacrosse summer camps. One of our neighbours did tell us that Denver is the place to see a Lacrosse game though, as it has a big following (unlike Texas, where they are from), so we might have to think about going to see a professional game...

Also wondering if we maybe need to enrol Bridie to start school after holidays, after all? Hayden completed his middle school enrolment a few months back when all his friends were, 'just in case'. We let him, because we figured it would give him more chance to get his choice of subjects 'just in case' (but not actually expecting we might still be here!) and to think, just a few months ago we were completing the paperwork to withdraw them all from school...

In kitchen appliance news, we had bought ourselves a breadmaker for after we move, and finally got around to trying it out (we didn't have time in those hectic weeks before Christmas, and since then had kind of forgotten about it!) It is pretty noisy in the early stages, so I don't think we will be using the timer to make bread ready for breakfast (not until we live in a house where the kitchen is down the hall from the bedrooms anyway!) but it soon smells delicious. The window in the lid was very handy for about three minutes, and then it just fogged over until right before the bread was done. When the fog did clear it revealed a rather sunken in the middle loaf of bread (when reading the instructions, and following them exactly, I had failed to turn the page to read the 'hints for altitude baking' section). Oops. We ate it anyway, and it tasted pretty good, although a little on the sweet side. We might need to make a few changes to the recipe when we next try it. Or perhaps stick to our old favourite made by hand recipes. We did enjoy the best hot cross buns ever at Easter - our first hot cross buns for three years!

Two wonderful dozen of them, all made by us. Yum.

In other kitchen appliance news, our toaster finally died. It has been kind of temperamental for a while now, but it finally reached the point where the only thing that happened when you held the handle down (held it down - it wouldn't stay by itself) was some smoke would come out. Not so great for breakfast. Alas, it turns out the opening in the new (cheap) replacement toaster isn't as wide as the bread we get, so we now need to cut the crusts off the sides of the bread before we can toast it. The replacement toaster did however, come with a handy dandy 'stop' button, to make the toast pop when you decide you cannot wait any longer. It does say in the instruction booklet though that it may take up to a minute for the toast to pop after you push the stop button, so we are not sure how useful it will be. Especially if the toast happens to be burning. Did we mention that it isn't an especially fancy toaster?!

When I was helping out in Campbell's class last week we visited the library. Campbell was looking for a nonfiction book to take home, and was pleased to find one about the 'Boston Tea Party'. I had to laugh when I overheard a conversation he then had with a friend. When the friend saw his book he told Campbell 'that isn't real' to which Campbell replied 'Yes it is' and back and forth it went, until Campbell explained to him what the Boston Tea Party was. Little history buff that he is!

And that kind of leads us to the Royal Wedding. If we didn't know better we would think that the Boston Tea Party, and in fact, the entire American revolutionary war, and subsequent Declaration of Independence, had never happened at all. The wedding has been big news here, and when we woke up yesterday, to catch the tail end of the coverage, we could choose from 12 different TV channels (at a quick count) that were covering it (and that followed on from a week of royal inspired programming on many channels). When I took Bridie to school that morning we discovered we were about the only ones there who hadn't gotten up at 4am to watch it live (we figured it would be just as good when it repeated at 7am, and we would enjoy that extra few hours sleep!) Needless to say though, we have had our fill of Royal Family news for the week. What must it have been like in a Commonwealth country?!

The End of an Era...

2011-04-30T20:15:00.000-06:00

Thanks to the fact that our children are growing up - in particular Miss Bridie, we nolonger need our stroller and our backpack. So we pulled them out of the cupboard and sent them off to Goodwill, making room for some boxes that until then had been stacked up in our bedroom, waiting for the movers. It is nice to have our bedroom back, instead of sleeping in a storage room, but was a little sad too. All three kids have used that backpack (oh the adventures!) and Campbell and Bridie both have ridden a fair few miles in the stroller.

Once upon a time these children were riding in that backpack.

Oh how they have grown!

Graffiti 101

2011-04-28T09:18:00.000-06:00

Graffiti 101

Best not to sign your work (at least not with your real name)

Graffiti 102

Elbow grease and a magic eraser will take care of that!

Here's hoping she got the message!

Still Waiting...

2011-04-13T22:51:00.000-06:00

Yep, we are still waiting for news on our move. Nothing but confusion lately - I don't really understand what the heck is going on! We are feeling a little better about it though, as we have decided that even if our visas come through tomorrow (which won't be happening!) we will let the kids finish up the school year here. If our visas come through before school ends, Peter may just have to move a few weeks before the rest of us. We are also thinking that if they haven't come through by the time school does finish we may have to have a visit to New Zealand to help pass the time (can't make any definite plans on that for a while though, but if we could put in a request for minimal rain in June that would be great!)

The uncertainty of the past couple of months has been so disruptive, especially to the kids, so it makes it a bit easier to feel like we are setting our own timeline. All three kids have some fun stuff coming up over the next couple of months at school, and are all excited that they will now be able to participate in that. Still being here also meant that we got to enjoy Spring Break a couple of weeks ago, with a visit to Florida. It was wonderful to get away and forget about all of this. The heat and humidity was a nice little taster for the kids as to what to expect when we do move (as were all the lizards running about!) and a little taste of Africa (albeit, the Disney version!) renewed enthusiasm for the adventures ahead. Florida pictures and words will be coming to a blog not far from here, asap!

So, there you go. Still waiting. With varying degrees of patience. Don't ask us about Plan B. We don't have one. Making one feels a bit like admitting defeat, and we are not quite ready to do that!

The Waiting Game

2011-04-01T06:05:00.000-06:00

For the past few months we have been playing a waiting game. Some days with more patience than others. We have been preoccupied and distracted and some days just fed up. Blogging has been a bit neglected - the major casualty being our fall break trip to California which has still not been blogged (but since our blog has become as much a record for us as it is a way to share our adventures, it will happen one day!)

As most of you know, it has now been about six months since we decided that this year we would be living and working in Africa. After making the decision, we had about six frantic weeks getting ready. We had to organise our shipment. The house we are moving to is furnished but we were advised to bring lots of stuff, including beds with nice soft mattresses, clothes for the kids to grow into, all the hobby stuff we thought we might need for the next few years, gifts for birthday parties etc, and of course, some food that might not be easily available there. More than once the bank put a hold on our debit card because they thought it had been stolen! It took several weeks and numerous phone calls and visits to the office, but we finally managed to organise a storage space here at the apartment complex and soon had it filled up. We had arranged for the moving company to come and pack up our shipment the week before Christmas, and booked the boys into an art class for that same week to keep them out of the way of the movers.

Meanwhile, we were busy getting the required immunisations, medical checkups, assorted medical tests, and of course dental checkups for the kids (remember Campbell had to get those slightly wiggly teeth pulled because the dentist wanted them out before we left?!) We had to take the boys out of school early for several of these appointments, but we figured we only had a few more weeks left at the school anyway so it would probably be alright. In our free time we were busy trying to see and do as much as we could before we left Denver. We organised 'going away parties' for all three kids and their friends. We wrote the necessary letters needed to withdraw them from their various activities. We had filled out the required paperwork to withdraw the boys from their school, and the school had started to process that. We had booked our one way flights out of Denver to Auckland, so we could have a few weeks in NZ before starting our next adventure.

And then one week before the movers were due to pack up our stuff, we got an email telling us not to let go of our apartment, because our visas may take a little longer than expected to process (there was mention that it might be another six weeks or so). Our apartment lease was only ever until the 31 December, but thankfully it was possible to extend it for another month. So, we canceled the moving company (they could have still packed up our stuff, but it would have just gone into storage somewhere in Denver until our visas were issued), booked some return flights to Denver, and told the schools that they couldn't get rid of us that easily!

After our visit to NZ we got back to Denver and Peter started his new job (out of the Denver office). Hayden had the mad scramble to complete the science fair project that we hadn't been expecting to be around for. Bridie was able to go back to her school, and the boys were able to go back to Taekwondo, but we decided it would be too much of a pain to hire a violin for what might just be a few more weeks, so violin lessons were no more. At Shakespeare club the kids had been given their parts and rehearsals had started, but because we weren't expecting to be around for the performances, Hayden obviously wasn't given a role. Spanish classes were starting at school, and both boys were keen to learn, but it didn't seem worth it when we would be gone in a few weeks. As the end of January approached nobody really knew what was happening with our applications, but we were advised to extend our apartment lease for two more months (to the end of March). Peter went over to work for a couple of weeks, and took an extra bag of stuff to leave there (stuff that we would find useful when we arrived, but wouldn't miss too much if we didn't see it again!) He had been expecting to have to go over again this month, but then HR advised that it might be better not to, so as not to jeopardise our applications. At the beginning of the month we heard a rumour that our visas were through. We thought we would finally be on our way by the end of March. Instead, we had an email last Thursday suggesting it may be another two months. Frustrating!

There have been some silver linings though. We get to have a few more adventures here. We were around to collect the medical bills that insurance didn't cover, that have just turned up in recent weeks, for some of those tests we had back in December (actually the bills turning up wasn't the silver lining, so much as the fact that we now won't have outstanding debt that we didn't know about!) After reluctantly buying new snow boots last year (the old ones were just too small) we were pleased to be able to get a bit more use out of them, as well as get a chance to go sledding again in the backyard (no snow in Denver while we were here in December). We will be here to see the leaves back on the trees (green Denver is much prettier than brown Denver) and as the temperature warms up, packing our suitcases will be easier too - we won't need our warm clothes to wear here, so they can all go in our shipment, instead of our suitcases. More room for other stuff. Baseball season opens today too, so we might even get to go to another game before we leave town!

And lets face it, there is nothing wrong with having a fully stocked supermarket (with more choice than a person actually needs!) just down the road. We will enjoy that while we can!

Happiness is... a boy with an owl pellet!

2011-03-30T20:53:00.002-06:00

For the boys, probably the highlight of visiting Castlewood Canyon, was the discovery of owl pellets for sale for just $1 each. Jackpot! They very patiently waited for three days (a day with no after school activities) before being able to dissect their pellets and discovering what the owls have been eating. Fun times!

The plan is to give the bones a bit of a clean up,

then reassemble them as best they can on some black card.

And possibly frame them.

(and keep them in their room, out of sight from the rest of us!)

But they have to wait for another day for that,

because it was time for us to eat our dinner

(and we needed our dining table back!)

Good to Know...

2011-03-27T16:06:00.000-06:00

We saw this sign while we were exploring Castlewood Canyon State Park.

Not all the green that comes with spring is good.

But it is good to finally know what the bad stuff looks like!

What we have been up to lately...

2011-03-26T13:32:00.000-06:00

Since our trip to Las Vegas Bridie has asked many times if we couldn't please go back? The standard reply to that is 'not today Bridie' and we get on with other stuff instead. Fun stuff like work, and school.

Hayden has had two weeks of the annual CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program) testing. It is the third year that he has had to take these tests, but this year for the first time his grade were tested in Science as well as reading, writing and math(s). We had been expecting to be long gone by the time CSAPs came around, so he wasn't excited about that (although does enjoy the 'eat a big breakfast' homework!) His teacher has assured him that the CSAPS are much harder than the Iowa state version that he will apparently have to take at 'the new school' (if we ever get there!) so hopefully that will make him feel better about possibly having to go through it all over again later in the year. It may not have been the best of planning to go to Las Vegas the weekend before CSAPS started, but we will put that down to forgetting about CSAPS when we booked the flights. Oops. Thankfully Hayden assured us that it had actually been good because it gave him something to write about. Whew!

In other school news, Campbell's class did not have to do any testing (CSAPs start in third grade - yay says Campbell). He is continuing to enjoy school and is making good progress, and has recently discovered that in fact he CAN read chapter books all by himself (he hadn't been so confident that he could do that before). To say he was pleased with himself is an understatement! His class have also been learning about Japan. He really wanted to look at my 'Japanese stuff' (and was disappointed when I reminded him it is all in storage in NZ). Then he wanted me to come and talk to his class, so on the Thursday I went in and talked to them about school in Japan. The next day we woke up to see the news of the earthquake and tsunami. The damage was well away from the area that I lived in, although the oil refinery in Ichihara that was on fire was only about 30 minutes from my school. The news about the nuclear power plant that was damaged is especially scary, and I would not like to be there now. Food imports from Japan have now been banned in the US, and on the west coast stores were apparently selling out of iodine tablets because people were afraid that the nuclear fallout would be blown across the Pacific. Even in Colorado iodine stocks were apparently getting low. One day last week they reported on the news that in Tokyo the atmospheric radiation levels were 23 times the norm (no doubt the situation is worse now though). Then to put it in perspective, they told us that people would need to be exposed to those levels every day for a year, to equal the normal levels of radiation here in Denver. What?! Apparently that is what you get when you live a mile above sea level. Must be time to move!

As for Miss Bridie, she has been partying up a storm with three birthday parties to attend in as many weeks. She is not complaining at all, although her first night time party was a bit of a challenge - she is usually in bed asleep (or close to it) by 7pm, which was when the party started. When it came time for the birthday cupcakes the hostess asked if we could taste the coffee? The look of horror on the faces of all the parents was priceless. A late night and coffee for our kids? Oh the horror!! Thankfully she was quick to reassure us that she had used decaf. So just the overtired to deal with. Whew again!

Bridie has also now been to her first concert! She is a fan of the Disney channel program 'The Imagination Movers' (kind of like the Wiggles, but less annoying!) A couple of weeks ago we turned on the TV so she could watch it, and instead of the usual episode (no doubt due to some tricky regional programming on the part of Disney!) they were showing an Imagination Movers concert. Bridie was so excited! She turned to me with shiny eyes, and said 'I wish one day you or Daddy would take me to see the Imagination Movers concert!' Little did she know that they were performing in Denver that very week. The next day was an 'every second Friday'. While Bridie was at school we managed to get a couple of tickets to the show, and that afternoon she and Daddy headed off to town. We didn't tell her what it was for (just that it was a surprise). When they arrived at the theatre she completely missed seeing all the merchandise, and it wasn't until the usher was showing them to their seats that Peter finally told her what they were there for. She phoned to tell us where she was and was just so excited! Meanwhile the boys had gotten home from school, and when I told them where Bridie was they were so excited for her, which I thought was really lovely. Of course, neither of them had the least bit of interest in going themselves!

When Bridie and Daddy got home she was still so excited, especially when she told us that Smitty had given her a high five. Happy day! Peter was relieved to report that it hadn't been so bad - there had been other Dad's there, and beer, and the movers had even played a bit of Led Zeppelin!

The boys are both still enjoying their Tae Kwon Do, and last weekend were excited to be able join with some of their classmates to do a belt test. They did wonderfully, and are now very proud to have their purple belts.

This also means they now have a new later class time which is making all the difference to our afternoon/evening routine. We now get 1 1/2 hours between the bus drop off and TKD, rather than 30 minutes. Time for homework - and we are all excited about that!

To round out the weekend we decided to visit a 'new to us' state park. Castlewood Canyon State Park is only about 20 minutes away, to the south. It is clearly an extremely popular park, with the carpark looking pretty full, and lots of people walking the trails. In fact it was probably one of the busiest park walks we have been on (even the trails at some of those 'big' national parks weren't as busy as this one was). We chose a pleasant two mile loop that took us down through the canyon, over the creek and back up to the carpark. The kids had a great time spotting rocks that they thought looked like dinosaurs (and then riding the dinosaurs) and Hayden was excited to find a fossil in a rock beside the trail. Watching Bridie jumping from rock to rock, and keeping up with the rest of us (and we certainly weren't slowing our pace for her little legs) without any complaints or requests to be carried, made us really realise how big she is getting. She has grown up so much in the past couple of years!

We are thinking we need to go back in a few weeks to see how different the park looks with a bit of green on the trees (other than the pine trees) and some nice green grass. It will be interesting to see just how different it all looks.

More on our Las Vegas Trip

2011-03-24T15:49:00.000-06:00

Time seems to be flying by again, and it is now two weeks since our weekend in Las Vegas.

It was a last minute decision to go for a long weekend (the boys had two days off school for teacher conferences) Flights were a bit limited and we ended up going on the Thursday night. It is just a short flight (not much over an hour) made even more enjoyable by the fact that the kids were happily entertained (Frontier have seat back TV so the boys were happy, as was Bridie until she fell asleep).

If there was any doubt where we were headed the slot machines that greeted us throughout the busy airport were a reminder. Welcome to Las Vegas! After we got our bags we took a short (crowded) bus ride over to collect our rental car. More slot machines. Lots of people waiting for cars. It was almost midnight local time (1am Colorado time) when we finally got away and headed to our hotel. The airport is just minutes from Las Vegas Boulevard, ('The Strip') where most of the well known casinos and hotels are located, and it has to be said that if there is a good time to be arriving in Las Vegas, it is at night, when the bright lights that are Las Vegas are on full show. After her sleep on the plane Bridie was enjoying the view, but poor Campbell was asleep within minutes of getting in the car, and didn't see a single thing! We had decided to stay at the Circus Circus hotel, that we had heard was especially family friendly. We arrived to find more queues, and it was almost 1am (2am CO time) by the time we got to our room. Needless to say, we were all happy to get to bed!

The next day we had a leisurely start, with a big breakfast before heading out for the day. The boys are all fans of the History Channel show 'Pawn Stars', and the first thing on our list of things to do was go and visit the pawn shop where the show is filmed, which just happens to be in Las Vegas. We shouldn't have been surprised to see a line of people out the door waiting to go in, but we hadn't been expecting that.

Thankfully it didn't take too long before it was our turn to get inside the shop. None of the guys from the show were in the front of the shop when we were there, but it was still interesting to see what was there. Of course most of the stuff was well above the kids $10 budget (by 10 to 100x plus!) but they were excited to see a few things they recognised from the show. The funny thing is that about half of the shop is now filled with souvenir stuff for the show (T Shirts, mugs, magnets etc) rather than pawned stuff, but there is obviously some good money to be made in reality TV!

For the rest of the day we were back on The Strip exploring. It is amazing the lengths and unbelievable expense that the different casinos have gone to to get people in the doors (and part them from their money!) Entire resorts built to fit a theme. It works though - money is pouring into Las Vegas from all over the United States, and overseas too. We saw several big construction projections underway, so although things may have slowed down in the current economic climate, Las Vegas sure hasn't stopped doing its thing! Every now and then it would strike us as kind of obscene - the incredible expense and waste that is Las Vegas. The little card in the hotel bathroom that encouraged us to reuse our towels to 'help preserve natural resources' seemed kind of ironic! Anyway, back to The Strip. We started off at the Luxor - a huge Egyptian pyramid shaped building complete with Sphinx out the front. From there we headed north taking in the sights. Bridie was quite taken with 'Excalibur' with its castle like exterior. Next up was 'New York - New York' - the exterior of the main building is made to look like lots of well known NY buildings (Empire State Building etc) complete with the Statue of Liberty.

From there we passed the Monte Carlo on the way to the Bellagio. Here we decided to wait and watch the famous fountain show in the pond in front of the hotel. It was lovely waiting in the sun, by the water, and listening to the music. All we really needed was a nice fruity drink with an umbrella in it! When the fountain show started it was a little underwhelming, and the kids were very unimpressed.

'Why did you make us wait to see that?!'

When we told them that wasn't really the fountain show, they were a little happier, but it wasn't until it really did start that they decided it wasn't such a bad thing. The fountains are programmed to fit the music that is playing. They go off at different heights and the water shoots in different directions and it really is amazing to see. We weren't convinced the ducks like it quite so much as the people though, as they disappear pretty quickly!

By now the streets were getting more crowded, and a little livelier (clearly drinking a nice long alcoholic beverage in the street is not an offense in Las Vegas!) and our feet were getting a little sore (the block was a lot longer than we had expected). We had been thinking about going to a show, but hadn't decided which of the many, many shows we wanted to see, and after our late night (or rather, early morning!) the night before we decided that dinner and a not so late night might be the best plan.

The next morning we figured it was probably time to take advantage of some of the family friendliness of the hotel, that we had neglected the previous day. Part of the hotel hosted circus acts, and in another part there was 'America's largest indoor theme park'. The only theme park that Bridie and Campbell have been to was Disneyland, a couple of years ago (Hayden has been to a couple here in Denver with friends) so we opted for the 'Adventuredome'. There were lots of rides - some that were aimed at the younger kids, and some more adventurous ones as well. Peter and Hayden rode the big roller coaster that spiraled through the dome (apparently it is the only indoor double loop, double corkscrew roller coaster in the world?) while the rest of us settled for the slightly tamer rides. It was here that we discovered that Bridie is an adrenaline junkie, and Campbell not so much!

When we had had enough of the rides we used some vouchers we had to play some of the carnival games. While we were a little dubious about them initially, they seemed to have an 'everyone's a winner' deal going on, so the kids came away with a stuffed dolphin toy each, and of course, the compulsory fluffy dice (which Bridie insisted we hang from the rear view mirror of our rental car).

After our fun morning it was time to go and do some more exploring. This time we headed about an hour east of the city to check out the Hoover Dam. If you forget for a minute that hydroelectric power is generated at the dam (enough electricity to serve 1.3 million people every year), then coming around a corner to find this view will remind you very quickly!

After passing through a security check point we continued along the road that takes you right across the top of the dam wall. In doing so we found ourselves parking the car in a different state and a different time zone (Arizona/Central Time) and having to walk all the way back to Nevada (an hour behind), for a closer look at the dam. To say it is huge is an understatement. It is HUGE! The concrete wall of the dam is 221.3 metres high and 379.2 metres long at the crest. At the top of the dam wall it is 13.7 metres wide (wide enough for the two lane road, and pedestrian walkways). At the base the wall is 201.2 metres wide. Looking over the side from the top of the wall, the Colorado river is a long way down! On the reservoir side of the dam you can easily see how low the water level is compared to previous years. We did see photos of the dam with the reservoir at capacity, but it is hard to imagine all that water (and even harder to picture it flooding over the spillways at the side of the dam).

Unfortunately Campbell and Bridie were too young to tour the dam, but we were able to take a tour of the powerplant, which was really interesting. Part of the tour had us walking through one of the old diversion tunnels drilled back in the 1930s. We had timed it just right, because when we got to the Nevada powerplant (there are two plants - Nevada and Arizona - one on each side of the river) one of the generators had been lifted out, so the huge magnets could be replaced (maintenance that apparently only takes place once every 25 years). You can click on the photo to make it bigger, and may just be able to make out cars/golf buggies for scale.

After our power plant tour we went to see the exhibits at the visitor center and learned more about how the dam was constructed, and how it all works. The kids especially enjoyed the interactive exhibits that had them generating electricity (and wearing themselves out!)

Then it was time for us to walk back to the future, in Arizona, where we had parked our car, and go check out the new Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (Hoover Dam bypass bridge) that is next to the dam. It only opened in October 2010, and was a welcome dam bypass for the non tourists who were traveling that way (and especially the commercial vehicles that have been banned from driving over the dam since September 2001, and had to make a 75 mile detour instead to get between Las Vegas and Phoenix, Arizona). Much like the Hoover Dam, the new bridge is considered a modern engineering marvel. First we drove over it (Nevada to Arizona, and then back again) and then we decided to walk over it, so we could get a different view of the dam. Not recommended if you have a fear of heights, the kids especially enjoyed it when the trucks honked their horns!

We had a quick stop to admire the view of Lake Mead (the lake that was formed upriver from the dam) but Bridie had fallen asleep so we didn't stay long.

And then we headed back to Las Vegas, and decided that since Campbell still hadn't seen it at night, that we should go and do a bit more exploring along The Strip. This time we parked at 'Treasure Island' and walked south to the Bellagio. We had timed it just right for the 'Sirens of Treasure Island' show that happens on the pirate ships at the front of the hotel/casino, and also the eruption of the volcano outside 'The Mirage', but our timing was a bit off for the fountain show at the Bellagio. We arrived just after one had finished, waited a while for the next one then decided to go have some dinner first, heard it starting as we walking away, and got back in time to see the end. It was even more beautiful at night with the lights added to the music and fountains, but having given up our prime spots we couldn't get any photos that didn't have heads in them (the fountain show is very popular!)

The next morning we had an early start to return our rental car, and get back to the airport. Our flight was a little delayed, because apparently we had too much fuel, and they needed to rearrange the bags to better balance things out (they assured us, as we sat on the tarmac waiting, that no bags would be left behind!) Apart from that it was uneventful, and we have decided that short flights are definitely the way to go (especially when Bridie falls asleep soon after take off), and it wasn't long before we were back in Denver, with the afternoon to recover. And do laundry. Fun!

Spot the Cell Phone Tower

2011-03-23T19:00:00.000-06:00

Here's a little challenge for you.

Can you spot the cell phone tower?

how about now?

Yep, that straight palm tree is a fake.

It is actually a cell phone tower.

That's how they do it Las Vegas!

It's Officially Spring!

2011-03-20T17:35:00.001-06:00

We hadn't realised that Spring was officially due to start today, but watching the news tonight discovered that in fact, as of 5.21pm winter is over! At about 5.22pm Bridie went to the window, looked out, and exclaimed:

'Hey, where are all the leaves?

And the butterflies and bears are supposed to come out!'

Once we had stopped laughing we explained to her that while America may be very precise about the timing of the change of seasons, mother nature isn't quite so exact. She may still have to wait a few days for the leaves and butterflies (and hopefully a lot longer for the bears!)

Spring is in the air!

2011-03-19T17:24:00.000-06:00

Well we had thought our last view of Denver would be a winter one, but the temperature has been warming up here lately, and there is definitely a feeling that spring is on the way. And we are still here. So we may yet get to see the trees with their leaves on again!

Last weekend daylight savings time started again (it was only a few months ago that it ended!) so we are back to being five hours 'ahead' of New Zealand (3pm Friday in Denver is 10 am Saturday in NZ). There seems to be a lot more green grass peeking through the brown, and while there are no leaves on the trees yet, you can tell that it won't be too long (we are checking every day!)

March is usually the snowiest month in Colorado but that hasn't really been the case here in Denver (yet). We did get an overnight sprinkle on Thursday night, but it was really just a dusting and didn't last long. Campbell did wear long pants to school on Friday without protest, but every other day this week he has been in shorts. He really does prefer shorts, and every morning will ask 'is it going to snow today?' (meaning - do I have to wear long pants?) to which I usually reply 'no, but it is still winter' (meaning - yes, you have to wear long pants).

The birds are making a comeback too, after most of them seemed to have disappeared for the winter (except those pesky geese of course, who have been having a fine old time wintering here in Colorado, and pooping everywhere they go - on average once every 12 minutes if you believe the library book!)

Now that the weather is warmer we have been making the most of it and walking to and from Bridie's school again. She has been enjoying it (no bribes necessary!) and chatters non-stop all the way. She has been rewarding us with gems like 'I'm a fan of cowgirls and cowboys' and 'I'm trying to decide if I should get a bunny, a prairie dog, or a squirrel for a pet' and keeping us up to date with all the goings on at school. She insists on choosing the 'shortcut' because she is convinced it is much shorter than the 'longcut'. She cannot believe that the longcut is actually much more direct and shorter than her wander through the parks/walkways/apartment complexes/carparks shortcut. She is such a funny girl!

The other reason we know spring must be on the way is that the pot holes are appearing in the street outside our apartment. Not quite the grand canyon sized pot holes of last spring just yet, but no doubt it is just a matter of time!

Weekend in Las Vegas (by Bridie)

2011-03-15T13:36:00.000-06:00

Two weekends ago we had a long weekend (thanks to some teacher only days at school) and made a last minute decision to go to Las Vegas. Bridie has been really into drawing lately, so we added some paper and pencils to her bag to help keep her entertained. It worked a treat! As a bonus, not only was she happily entertained, but she decided to make a book about the trip. She would draw the picture and then tell us what to write (I might have added a few more coloured pencils if I had known she would be doing this!) Here it is:

This is the cover. We flew Frontier (they have animals painted on the tails of the planes) so she added Cubby (her toy mountain lion) to the tail of the plane, and added some rainbow stripes to make it look pretty!

Page 1 - This is us going to Las Vegas and we are at our hotel (she meant apartment) so we can go to Las Vegas. We didn't really have that many suitcases!

Page 2 - This is us on the plane going to Las Vegas (love those seatback TVs!)

Page 3 - This is us in Las Vegas going to our hotel in the night time (our car was white, but she decided that purple would show up much better!)

Page 4 - This is us at our hotel.

Page 5 - This is me on the choo choo rollercoaster (at this point she had found a complimentary pen, and the coloured pencils were momentarily forgotten)

Page 6 - This is the fountain show.

Page 7 - This is us driving to Hoover Dam (I love that traffic light!)

Page 8 - This is the Hoover Dam

Page 9 - This is us on the plane going back to Denver

The End.

Since we've been back in Denver...

2011-02-28T22:37:00.001-07:00

Since we got back from our trip to New Zealand we have been keeping ourselves busy. After missing a couple of weeks of school the boys had a bit of catching up to do, including Hayden's science fair project (investigating if paper planes would fly further in warmer temperatures - a chilly project that involved us having to turn off the heating and open the door so he could test his theory at lower temperatures. Brrr!

We were also back in Denver in time for the last week of the annual National Western Stock Show, and we went to see the rodeo again - exciting to watch, and painful for at least a few of the riders! Having taken a tumble from Star the pony when we were in New Zealand, Bridie was very reassured to see one of the cowgirls fall off her horse. Afterall, you're not a real cowgirl until you fall off your horse!

Peter spent a couple of weeks in Ghana for work, and while he was enjoying temperatures in the mid to high 30s C, we were a mere 50 degrees lower - in the minus 20s celcius (with windchill on top of that, meaning that it was feeling like -30s celcius. Definitely a bit chilly! School was closed for two days due to the extreme cold weather, and we also had a delayed start one day (when school started an hour later than usual in the hope it would have warmed up a bit for the wait at the bus stop). The leisurely start to the day was fantastic - not so much the 5.30am phone call we got telling us about the delayed start! We found ourselves commenting that the temperature wasn't so bad today (and then discovering that it was a balmy -18 degrees celcius!)

The trouble really came when things started to 'warm up'. As the snow started to melt the roads got a bit slushy (our road, and the entrances to our apartment complex don't really get plowed, so the Dodge got a bit of sideways movement going on a couple of times!) Then of course there were the frozen pipes. All over town (the state/the country!) water pipes that had frozen (and burst) were discovered as they thawed out and the water went everywhere. We got to know this one morning at about 3am, when we were woken by the alarms going off. After checking the hallway for flames/smoke (and not seeing any) we took a minute to gather our warm jackets and the kids blankets off their beds before heading outside to gather with the neighbours. I was so proud of how well the kids did, after such a rude (and quite scary!) awakening.

While we were outside it was funny to hear everyone commenting 'at least it isn't cold tonight'(and discovering when we got back in our apartment about 45 minutes later, that it was -6 celcius, which once upon a time would have been more than cold enough!) Bridie was excited because she got a sticker from a fireman, and a soft toy from the policeman. We discovered a burst pipe had set off the alarm, and while the area by the letterboxes needed some drying out and repair work, the water damage was well away from our apartment, so that was good for us (we took this photo a couple of days later).

Getting back to sleep after the alarm was quite a challenge, and getting up in time for school the next morning was really, really tough. Thank goodness it was a Friday, and we could sleep in the next day. Peter was still in Ghana so he missed all that excitement (and was probably rather pleased about that!)

Also while Peter was away - the Superbowl (final of the football season). We decided to embrace the culture of the host nation, and watch the game (or at least, do what so many other people seem to do, watch the ads during the game). The kids all had ideas about what was traditional super bowl food (and in some cases, what wasn't!) but I managed to convince them that since it was our first time watching (we haven't been able to muster the enthusiasm in previous years!) that we could probably just make up our own new traditions. I did think it was funny that our party food has changed so much - not a sausage roll to be seen!

With our family memberships to the zoo and the museum due to expire, we have been making some last visits there. The kids have all now added 'baby orangutan' to the list of future family pets that they would like (it was VERY cute, but don't hold your breath kids!) We also visited the Wildlife Experience to check out the current exhibit about frogs, and Campbell is now quite keen to get a 'waxy monkey frog' of his own. I think Hayden would happily take all the frogs home! We still have a month left on that membership though, so will just have to settle for another visit or two.

In amongst that we have all had a turn or three at assorted coughs and sniffles, with all three kids missing school for a day or two. When it comes to germs we are just so good at sharing lately!

And that is about all I can think of for the moment!

A conversation with Bridie...

2011-02-27T22:59:00.002-07:00

Mum, Is McDonald's healthy?

No, McDonalds is not healthy.

Well are potatoes healthy?

(thinking I knew where this conversation might be headed
I decided on a pre-emptive strike)

It depends how you cook them.

If you fry them to make potato chips or fries
then they are not healthy.

Is meat healthy?

As long as you don't eat too much of it then meat is healthy.

Well chicken is meat and that's what's in nuggets.

McDonalds still isn't healthy.

Oh.

(and if Hayden didn't already hate McDonalds with a passion,

I would tell him that their oatmeal apparently has

more sugar than a chocolate bar

so that isn't healthy either!)

Lost in Translation...

2011-02-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

I asked Hayden if he would like me to make him

some porridge for breakfast.

His reply:

Don't we have any oatmeal?

But all is not lost

- he ended up having vegemite toast!

Two Wonderful Weeks in New Zealand

2011-02-13T17:13:00.001-07:00

So after we had managed to find some snow for Christmas, it was time to head to NZ for some summer fun! Our trip over did take a little longer than expected though. We arrived in LA to discover our flight to Auckland was delayed due to the bad weather on the East Coast. Bad weather on the East Coast meant our plane was late leaving from there, and the flight crew wouldn't have had the required break time in LA before having to leave for Auckland. Instead of having our six hour wait in LA then leaving around midnight LA time, we would be leaving at 8am the following morning. Thankfully, we soon discovered that we wouldn't have to spend the night at the airport, and that in fact Qantas would put us up in a hotel down the road. We didn't have access to our luggage that had been checked, but at least we got to have a yummy dinner, sleep in real beds, and get a shower before heading back to the airport for our morning flight. The flight to Auckland (which ended up being delayed another hour - after we had all boarded of course) was finally off the ground and went pretty much as expected. Flying through the day meant sleep wasn't really a happening thing (although Campbell and Bridie did get a couple of hours of sleep towards the end of the flight). We watched movies and the kids played with their new Christmas pressies (gifted with airports and airplanes in mind!) and counted down the hours (then minutes!) until we could get off the plane.

Finally we arrived in NZ and the fun could begin. We did discover that arriving in NZ in time for New Years Eve isn't a good idea if you plan to see the New Year in (jet lag and seeing the New Year in are apparently mutually exclusive!) but we did wake briefly to the sound of cheering and fireworks, so Happy New Year! As was the case last year, there seemed to be a water theme in much of what we did on this visit- beaches, boats, lakes, pools and creeks (but no rain this time - yay!) Closely followed by food of course! Since most of you were there with us we won't bother retelling it all, but will share some photos instead. If you click on a collage it should get bigger.

Our two weeks seemed to go by in a flash, and there was so much that we wanted to see and do that we never quite got to. It just wasn't long enough! Of course, we had originally expected to be there longer than two weeks, but last minute return tickets changed those plans! Instead, we were loading up our bags again (and an extra bag of goodies too) and headed back to the airport. We had remembered that we didn't have to take our shoes off at security this time (unlike last year when we became security trend setters!) but of course because we were headed to the US there was an extra round of security to go through, anyway and wouldn't you know it? We were randomly selected for some extra (take your shoes off) checking. Funny how Peter get's 'randomly selected' every single time!! But of course, it wasn't quite that simple. Usually when there are family groups, the person who has been selected randomly for some extra attention has it noted on their boarding pass. None of us had anything on our boarding pass, 'so that must mean we have to check you all'. And that's what we get for being so happy not to have to take our shoes off!

After that everything was smooth sailing. The kids by now are not excited about flying, (which makes it harder for the adults to fake enthusiasm for the adventure), but we didn't have any tantrums or bad behaviour - more resignation about the next 12 hours! Bridie was hoping that our plane would be delayed again, because she wanted to 'eat dinner at that yummy restaurant again'. Instead, when we got to LA we used the passes we had for one of the lounges. Having already spent many (not always healthy!) tedious hours waiting at that airport, and not excited about doing it again, we had gotten the passes with the intention of using them on the 6 hour wait on the way to NZ. Then we ended up in the hotel, and the passes went unused, so we still had them for the return trip. Our flight to Denver was great (I fell asleep before we even left the ground, and I think we all managed to sleep for much of the flight) and it wasn't long before we were back at the apartment and getting unpacked, (and feeling pleased that Monday was a school holiday so we had two days to get back into our routine!)

Our White Christmas in the Mountains

2011-01-29T19:27:00.059-07:00

So we had promised the kids that in 2010 we would have a white Christmas. We figured it could be our only chance, so we better make the most of it. Unfortunately for us, snow wasn't really a happening thing in Denver during December (or November, or October!) and it was looking more and more like being a brown Christmas instead of a white one. Since a brown Christmas wasn't really what we had had in mind, we decided we had better head for the mountains instead (while there had been next to no snow in Denver, up in the mountains there had been plenty). We found a place to stay up in Breckenridge, and on Christmas eve we loaded up the car and hit the road.

We had been a bit worried that the trip might be slow going, with all that holiday traffic also headed for the mountains, but fortunately it wasn't a problem (don't think we even saw a single truck, which is pretty unusual for that stretch of road) and we made good time. When we got to the condo the kids were especially delighted to see it had an actual open fire complete with a real chimney. We have never had a real chimney for Santa to come down before, so this was a big deal. Unfortunately it meant that we weren't able to light a fire that first night, because nobody wanted Santa to get burnt of course! Luckily the fire wasn't needed for heating though!

After we got ourselves settled in, the kids worked on putting our gingerbread house together (we had originally planned to put it together the week before, but some lingering coughs and tummy bugs had put that plan on hold!) and that along with the 'outdoor lights spiral Christmas tree' that we had inherited from a departing neighbour helped to give the place a festive feel.

The next morning the kids were excited to see that the real Chimney had served its true purpose, and Santa had left them a little something.

After our usual big Christmas breakfast, we opened our presents from under the tree - books, books and more books. We had been expecting to have our stuff all packed up before Christmas so had given the kids their presents at Thanksgiving. We had figured that books were easy enough to fit in a suitcase though, so we would have those for Christmas day. I think this may have to become a new tradition because it was lovely to all have something to read, especially on a wintery day. That said, it wasn't too long before we decided that we really did need to get outside and enjoy the snow (the weather was beautiful - clear blue skies and not too cold, but lots of lovely white snow on the ground).

First up we went for a walk to explore Breckenridge a bit, and then when we got back to the condo we decided it was time to break out the kids snow boards. There was a ski run that went right past the condo (just a few metres from the back door) and it was the perfect place for the boys to do their thing.

Hayden had been kind of getting the hang of it last winter, so it didn't take him too long before he was off and down round the corner (then having to hike back up!) Campbell took a little while longer, but was soon feeling more confident too. Best of all, when we decided we had had enough we only had to walk a few steps to get back inside and were soon cozy again, drinking hot chocolate, and enjoying our Christmas goodies!

The next day the boys of course had to do some more snow boarding (although Bridie decided she would just watch from the balcony this time) and then it was time to load our stuff into the car and hit the road. As we were leaving we noticed the one thing that had been missing from our Christmas breakfast:

It was the first time in ten or eleven years that a BBQ hadn't been used to cook up at least part of the feast!

Not far down the road we got to the Frisco Nordic Center, where we planned to try out some snowshoeing. We had hired snowshoes down in Denver, but decided that since this was our first attempt at snowshoeing (and not sure how we would go, especially those of us with shorter legs) we would stick to some nice groomed trails rather than venture out on our own completely. It was a little strange initially, but not hard at all, and we were soon out in what felt like the middle of nowhere, enjoying the beautiful weather and glorious view. Of course, after a while Bridie started to feel a bit tired, and soon Daddy was carrying her, but apart from that we all had a great time (even when we ventured off the trail and got temporarily stuck in the deep snow!) We will definitely be putting that on our list of things to do again. Next up we swapped our snowshoes for the sled (at least the boys did - Bridie wasn't so keen) and had some fun on the super fast sledding hill.

And then it was time to head back down the mountains to Denver. Where there was still no snow, and it was still all brown. We didn't mind though, because all we really had to do was pack our bags and go to New Zealand!

Keeping Busy in December...

2011-01-29T19:03:00.001-07:00

Before we get to Christmas/New Years/2011 adventures, we still have a bit of catch up to do from our very busy December 2010, when we were trying to make the most of what we thought were going to be our last few weeks in Denver.

As well as the usual school and work activities, we had the rounds of 'end of year/winter holidays' activities. All three children had winter parties/concerts at school. Bridie's concert was timed perfectly for an 'every second Friday' so Peter got to come too. She was really pleased because the last concert they did Daddy was in Peru and couldn't come. This time the Pre-K classes joined together and put on a wonderful winter program for us. Bridie was a spider, and did a fantastic job of spinning her web.

We were very impressed with how well the children did, and how many songs they remembered. As a bonus there was even a sprinkle of tiny fluffy snowflakes falling outside, which fitted the winter theme of the program perfectly. Alas it didn't last for long, or stick at all, and it was still very brown outside.

The boys both had their class parties that afternoon. The fifth grade were all together in the cafeteria, with a chocolate fountain, and lots of laughter and energy. They had all been rollerskating in the morning and I think that probably added to the excitement levels. To help them through their sugar high they then went to their classrooms for a version of pass the parcel. Each child had brought a white elephant gift, so at the end they all ended up with something. They were allowed to trade if the gift they ended up with wasn't quite their style (like the boy that got the purse!) They were all still pretty full of (sugar) laughter and energy, so I am sure the teachers were pleased to wave goodbye to them at the end of the day! Meanwhile, down in the first grade things were a lot quieter and calmer. Campbell's class started with some holiday songs (so cute!) and then very industriously completed some winter themed craft activities before making themselves ice cream sundaes. I expected the energy levels to increase when the chocolate sauce came out, but they were all still a lot quieter and calmer than those crazy fifth grade kids!

That week we also had a concert to attend for Beginning Orchestra. Hayden has been learning the violin this school year, and it was the first concert they had had. There were a lot of kids involved, so of course it took a long time to get them all set up (instruments tuned and in their places) and then when it came time for the actual concert it only lasted about five minutes. Since they have only been learning for a few months though, we thought they did a fantastic job, and they all seemed so pleased with themselves.

Peter did take some video of one of the songs, but I need to figure out how to get it on here, so that may or may not happen!

As well as the school activities, we were also keeping busy at the weekends, making the most of all the 'Holiday' activities that seemed to be happening. We attended our first ever ballet - the Colorado Ballet performing 'The Nutcracker', which we all enjoyed. We weren't quite sure what the boys would think (and made sure to refer to it as 'The Nutcracker' rather than 'the ballet') but they didn't seem too worried, although Campbell was starting to get tired, and could have done with one or two less dances at the end. Interestingly though, he has been the one who has recognised the music each time we have heard it since then, and is always excited to point it out to the rest of us.

Speaking of Campbell, he was selected to represent his school and be recognised as a 'Rising Star in Denver' at a basketball game at Denver University. The School had run a fitness program over the previous months where the kids had recorded all their physical activity (converted to miles) and when they had 'walked' the distance from School to DU they received a t shirt. I think they must have also got their names in the hat for the rising star thing, and Campbell was the kid from first grade who was lucky enough to have his name pulled out. He was so excited when he got home because he got to go to a basketball game for free, and he could bring 20 of his friends. TWENTY!! We pointed out that the logistics of us getting those 20 friends to the game with us could prove tricky, and he decided that maybe the five of us would be plenty after all. The day after the Nutcracker, we headed to the basketball, and it was amazing to see the facilities that the University had (nothing like that at Waikato University!)

We enjoyed the game (DU won so that is always nice!) and Campbell had fun when he joined all the other kids who were being recognised, down on the court at half time (a prize for anyone who can spot him in the crowd though - I didn't realise he had taken his sweatshirt off, so didn't even recognise him myself!)

A couple of weekends later we headed downtown for a couple of fun activities. First up was a behind the scenes tour of Coors Field. We have been there to watch baseball a few times now, but this was fun because we got to explore some different areas of the stadium that we wouldn't normally get to, including the Rockies dugout. We were the only ones on our tour, and we really enjoyed ourselves (as you can tell from those smiles!) The people taking us around were lovely, and we learned a lot about the field, and the franchise.

After lunch we headed to the Denver Art Museum to see the King Tut exhibit. Lots of amazing artifacts to view, and lots to learn about life in Ancient Egypt. It was really interesting, although there was lots of reading (we had decided not to pay extra for audio guides), which was a bit tricky for the little kids, not to mention lots of people all wanting to read the same thing.

No photos were allowed in the Art Museum of course, but outside was a different story, and the kids were especially taken with this sculpture of a big brush and pan, and were keen to act as the rubbish that was being swept up (although they did a good job of pretending that they weren't so keen!)

From there we had planned to take in the sights of the holiday lights at the nearby Denver City and County Building (the exterior of which is lit up with different coloured lights in spectacular fashion). Unfortunately, the evening we were there the lights were not so much spectacular as they were MIA - something wasn't working properly so there was only one solitary green light shining. We thought about heading back into town to see them on another evening but never quite made it, so had to settle for seeing them on the news instead.

More exciting was Hayden's first attempt at ice fishing. After an early start to the day he went with a friend and his family, up to the lake at Georgetown, in the mountains. There they spent the morning out on the ice fishing (and falling down!) and having a wonderful (but chilly) time. We headed up after lunch to see them, and it was amazing to see them out there on the middle of the frozen lake. Hayden had a wonderful time, and best of all we had lovely fresh fish for dinner.

We might have pulled the boys out of school for one afternoon, for a highly educational tour of the Denver Mint (where they make the US coins for us all to spend). Tours of the mint are free, but you have to book ahead, and holiday tours always fill up fast, so we figured one afternoon out of school would be okay. Since we have been living here Hayden has begun collection coins, and we have all learned (whether we wanted to or not!) a lot from him about all things American currency. It was really interesting to see the coins being made (and the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of shiny new coins that were fresh off the mint!) The day we were there they were minting pennies (one cent coins), and Kennedy Half Dollar coins. The half dollars are only minted a couple of times a year so we were lucky to see those. Unfortunately we couldn't get close to those lovely shiny new coins, and no photos were allowed, but we still all enjoyed the tour (and the afternoon off school!)

And then of course we had our usual December activities of Birthdays and Christmas (we headed to the mountains to find the snow - a separate blog post to come about that) and the not so usual activities of rushing around getting ready to move (or not, who knows? - a separate post to come about that too!) and of course our trip to New Zealand. Probably some other stuff that we have forgotten too. December was a bit hectic - no wonder we are so behind with the blogging!!

We are still here... Happy New Year!

2011-01-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

Yes we are still here, and yes we have been neglecting the blog. Our New Years Resolution should have been to get it up to date quick smart, and keep it like that, but New Years came and went and we didn't think of it. After our wonderful (but too short) two weeks in New Zealand the past two weeks have been hard work - lack of sleep, jet lag, catching up with missed school work for the boys, coughs and colds, and trying to get ourselves sorted for the coming adventures have been keeping us busy (not to mention unmotivated to blog, and a tad grumpy!) Anyway, it may not be a resolution, but getting the blog sorted is on the to do list. Coming soon... a post about our white Christmas, our trip to NZ, and our (long, long ago) Fall Break Trip to California. Best not hold your breath though!

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-12-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Technically, Thanksgiving was a month ago, but in blogging world, where time passes much more slowly (and we live in a constant state of 'trying to catch up' and wonder where the time has gone?!) we are going to pretend that it was just a couple of days ago.

So, Thanksgiving 2010. Since this was our second Thanksgiving we had some traditions to uphold! We of course had to have a repeat of the turkey feast. After checking the blog to see what exactly we had done to cook the turkey last year, and remembering that it had cooked more quickly than we had expected last year, we were a little more leisurely in our preparations this time round. As it turned out, this year the turkey seemed to take longer to cook. Of course! That was okay though, because it gave us more time to prepare the rest of the feast. This year we decided to pretty much stick with our traditional menu, with just a few minor changes. We had forgotten to get bread rolls and cranberry sauce so had to make those ourselves (much yummier than the bought ones anyway!) We decided to have some roasted pumpkin, but leave out the rest of the roasted veges. We trialed a recipe for a new 'yummiest mashed potatoes ever' and discovered that they really were the yummiest mashed potatoes ever, and we added some broccoli for green (to break up the beige and brown of last year). Green bean casserole stayed the same. Yum. As was tradition, our friend Joanne joined us, and made a yummy Apple Crumble for our dessert, and her friend Mike brought homemade cornbread that was delicious (a first for us too, so it doubled as a 'taste test')

Untraditionally, this year Thanksgiving also doubled as a bit of an early Christmas for us. Anticipating that our stuff would be packed up and on a boat by Christmas, and not wanting to have to take a trampoline in our carry on bags, we had decided to put our Christmas tree up early, and enjoy some presents too. Since a feast was already part of the plan, we figured we may as well make the most of it! The boys had became proud new owners of 'nerf guns', and getting back to our Thanksgiving traditions, we headed outside for a run around mid feast. Since it was a little later than last year, we didn't get as far as the park, but the parking area next door was the perfect place for a nerf gun war anyway, and when one of our neighbours joined us with his nerf gun, it was even more fun.

Once it was too dark to really see much of anything anymore, let alone find the nerf gun projectiles (darts?) on the ground, we headed back inside. As the only American in our group, Mike got the job of explaining football. Unfortunately for him, we had forgotten about that little tradition, and didn't remember the football until about five minutes before the game ended. Luckily five minutes on the clock means a lot longer in actual game time, but that doesn't change the fact that the game was pretty much over. Fortunately Mike didn't seem to mind, and we got back to listening to NZ music. Afterall, listening to NZ music on Thanksgiving is a tradition now!

National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, Albuquerque

2010-12-26T21:59:00.001-07:00

The last stop on our New Mexico road trip was back in Albuquerque at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. New Mexico has played a major role in nuclear history not only for the United States but also the world. It was up in the town of Los Alamos, north of Santa Fe, that the 'Manhattan Project' took place, and the first nuclear bomb was developed. We were lucky enough to visit there last year. When it came time to test the bomb, the Trinity Site not too far south of Albuquerque was chosen (and we had driven past that area the day before). Hayden was especially interested to visit the museum in Albuquerque and learn more.

We didn't have a lot of time to view all of the exhibits but still had a good look around. Inside the museum the things that were most interesting to us were the exhibits about the Manhattan project and the Trinity test. Hayden was impressed by the sample of 'Trinitite' they had on display. Trinitite was the glassy residue that was left behind after that first test, formed from the sands that were melted by the blast.

There were also exhibits about the bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Having visited Nagasaki I found it especially interesting (and also kind of disturbing) to see what people had written in the visitors book in that area of the museum.

After that, we headed outside, to an area that Campbell and Bridie had been especially keen to see (the written exhibits lose their appeal pretty quickly when you cannot read them, and don't really understand them anyway!) They had a great time checking out the assortment of planes and bits of submarine etc that were on show, and marveling at the size of some of them.

After that it was time to head back to the airport, and return our shiny (ish) new rental car, with just a few more miles on the clock (and a little bit of white sand in the carpet)

We didn't think that was too bad for three days!

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

2010-12-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

While the previous night had been quite a bit later than we had planned, the good news was that we had a couple of extra hours to play with today before we had to get to the airport ('today' being the day after the adventures in the last post, which was actually a while ago, as opposed to today, the day we are finally blogging about it!) We decided to take the roundabout way to Albuquerque so that we could visit the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument (and get another stamp in our National Parks Passport!) We weren't entirely sure what to expect, but soon discovered that the Monument actually consisted of three different sites. We visited two of them - Abo and Quarai.

Both of these sites had originally been settled by Pueblo Indians. The pueblo at Abo was built by the Tompiro Indians and settled by the year 1150 AD. At Quarai the Tiwa Indians built the pueblo around 1300 AD. Early in the 17th century both sites came under the influence of the Spanish government and the Catholic Church, when Fransiscan Missionaries established missions here. By the late 1670s all of the Salinas Pueblos had been abandoned as a result of drought, famine, disease, and uprisings. They were never resettled. The ruins of the churches that had been built still remain, and we were amazed by the size of them. The walls are so thick, and so high, and you cannot help but wonder how they had been built. As was tradition, the women of the pueblo were the ones who did the construction work, and clearly they did a fantastic job! The kids were also excited to recognise kivas in the courtyards of the churches. At Quarai there is not only a round kiva, but also a square one which was new to us, but apparently not unusual.

As well as having fun exploring the ruins and spotting lizards, the kids were able to complete some more junior ranger activities while we were at both sites which they were pleased about. Then it was time to hit the road again. We had one more stopped planned for in Albuquerque before we had to get to the airport!

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

2010-12-21T22:05:00.001-07:00

While we knew we really wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns, from there we had a couple of options of where to go next. Option one - we could continue south into Texas, stopping at Guadalupe National Park and then the west Texas town of El Paso (sing along!) and then pop over the border into Mexico (Mexico the country, not New Mexico the state - we had packed our passports just in case) to see what we could see. While that was very tempting, we didn't have a whole lot of time so it would have to be a very fleeting visit, plus the fact that Hayden's Mexican friend had advised that that wasn't the safest part of Mexico to visit (I think his words were something like 'don't go!') Option B would see us backtracking north again, and then headed west over the mountains to White Sands National Monument, and then north towards Albuquerque, as far as we could get. Option B was the winner.

White Sands National Monument is a protected area at the southern end of the White Sands Missile Range. and is the closest thing New Mexico has to a beach! The Missile range has been a military test site since 1945, and is also an alternative landing site for space shuttles. Fortunately for us, it was all quiet today, and we were able to have fun exploring the beautiful white gypsum sand dunes of the monument.

(not excited to see this sign!)

We went on a few different walks, including a ranger led one, and it was amazing to learn how well adapted the plants and animals are to living in what seems to be such a harsh environment. Many of the animals have changed colour to be much lighter than they would normally to camouflage better. The kids still managed to spot a couple of locals though.

With sand as far as the eye could see we were a little amused to see a sign warning of 'soft shoulders' at the side of the road (meant to get a photo on the way out but we forgot!) and with a shiny new rental car to drive around in, this one was a little disappointing to see.

The kids had a great time running around on the dunes though, and we had timed our visit perfectly to see the sun setting. I would love to know what they were talking about in this photo!

Dinner was another picnic, and then we were back on the road. Our plan was to continue east to Las Cruces and find some accommodation on the north side of town. Unfortunately, we didn't realise in time that when we got to Las Cruces and turned north on the interstate, that all the accommodation was to the south. Oops. Rather than turn around and go back we decided to continue north (getting closer to Albuquerque and so less traveling the next day). We hadn't been traveling long when we had to pull off the interstate (along with all the other traffic) at a border check point. Not being American citizens we of course had to proceed to a secondary check point. The man asked if we had our visas with us, and Peter replied they were in the boot. This caused a little confusion until we clarified that in fact they were in the 'trunk' and Peter was invited to get out of the car and get them. It only took a couple of minutes for the man to verify that we were in fact there legally, and we could carry on (feeling very pleased we had decided to bring all 9 passports on the off chance we might pop over to Mexico!)

We decided to head to the town of 'Truth or Consequences', partly because we figured there would be accommodation there, and partly because it seemed kind of fun to visit a town called Truth or Consequences. We discovered though that when it came to Truth or Consequences, the truth was that it was the weekend of the Hot Springs festival, and the consequence was that all the accommodation was full. By now it was starting to get late, and it had been couple of hours since our picnic dinner, so we headed to the McDonalds that was next door to the (no vacancy) motel, to get some hot drinks and dessert. Feeling refreshed we were soon on the road again. All this time we had been driving east of the White Sands Missile Range, and although we couldn't see it in the dark, it was interesting to know that we were now just a matter of miles from the Trinity test site, where the first ever atomic bomb was exploded, on July 16, 1945. The following weekend the site would have been open to the public, but I am not convinced we would have visited even if we had been there then. Just a bit too scary to think of!

Thankfully it was also just a few miles to Socorro, the next biggish town along the interstate, and best of all, there were no weekend festivals in Socorro!

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

2010-12-21T20:02:00.001-07:00

The next morning we headed back down to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There are several different cave tours to choose from, guided and self-guided, but we had been told that we shouldn't miss the 'Big Room' tour so that was what we decided to do. Caves seem to be a bit of a theme for us this year (starting with The Cave of the Winds in Manitou Springs, and then Wind Cave and Jewel Cave in South Dakota) and we have been impressed by each of them. It is fair to say we had very high expectations, and we were not disappointed! The Big Room self guided tour starts with an elevator ride down into the cave, and the self guided tour then follows a path that is 1.25 miles long. It winds around what is basically one huge cave - The Big Room, that covers an area of about 8.2 acres (just over 6 football fields). It is huge! Photos cannot even begin to do it justice, and we were in awe for the couple of hours that we were down there, at both the size of the cave, and the beauty of the formations.

Here are the kids near the start of the tour (Bridie wearing her Roswell alien antenna of course!) You can see a couple of people behind them to the right, that helps to give an idea of the size of this small part of the cave.

some of the formations in the cave

looking up at the ceiling

ripples that formed from drips in a pool

Giant Dome Column (on the right) rises 19 metres above the trail,

while the neighbouring twin dome stalagmites reach 18 metres high. They are huge!

Of course, Campbell couldn't pass up the opportunity to complete another Junior Ranger program, and all the kids happily posed as Carlsbad Rangers in the Visitor Centre!

Above ground at the park is one of the only areas of the Chihuahuan Desert that is protected. It is the wettest and biggest desert in North America (most of it is to the south in Mexico), but still had a lot more life in it than we had imagined. There was a lot of green vegetation too, although on closer inspection, it was all a little too prickly for my liking (Hayden was a happy boy though - he loves this stuff!) we could have explored for a lot longer (Hayden was hoping to see a tarantula), but after our picnic lunch it was time to head to our next big stop for the day.

Our Southern New Mexico Road Trip - Roswell and Carlsbad

2010-11-22T22:39:00.000-07:00

Not that many weeks ago (surely not months?!) 'every second Friday' coincided with a teacher only day at school, and conveniently enough, cheap airfares to Albuquerque. We had been wanting to visit southern New Mexico for a while, but never had quite enough time to get down there. We needed about three days for traveling down and back, plus time to explore, and 5+ day weekends don't happen nearly often enough! Flying to Albuquerque from Denver though, only takes about an hour (instead of the seven hour drive) so with time ticking by, and flights on sale, we decided that would be the best option.

We decided to fly down on the Thursday night, so we would have a full day Friday for exploring. Of course, our flight out of Denver was delayed, and with no assigned seating, and lots of business people on the flight (who all want to sit window or aisle, but never the middle seat!) it was impossible to get five seats together. Thankfully a lady offered to move so Bridie and I got to sit together, and then someone else moved so the boys could sit together a couple of rows behind us, while Peter got one of those fun middle seats. By now it was getting late and we were all feeling tired. Campbell fell asleep but the other kids didn't - although barely worth it anyway on such a short flight anyway. When we got to Albuquerque we had to get a shuttle over to the rental car place. The guy told us it was a new car, but we didn't realise until we saw the car, that he meant brand shiny new, with only 51 miles on the clock, and that lovely new car smell. Fancy! Of course, it also had factory issue unadjusted seats etc, but it didn't take us too long to figure out how it all worked and only a few minutes to get to our hotel for the (middle of the) night.

Our first stop the next day was at a supermarket to get our picnic supplies for the weekend, and then we were headed out of town (stopping along the way for a snack and a quick game of hopscotch) and driving south to Roswell.

Roswell was a place that Hayden had been wanting to go to for a long, long, (long) time, so he was an especially happy boy! It is fair to say that there is a bit of an alien theme going on in Roswell, New Mexico.

If you aren't familiar with it, Roswell's claim to fame is that in 1947 a mysterious object (alien spacecraft?) may or may not have crashed on a nearby ranch, and the Army/Government may or may not have gone to great lengths to cover it all up/point out to those silly locals that it was just a weather balloon. Or not. Depending on if you believe that particular conspiracy theory. It has to be said that the International UFO Museum and Research Center, that is dedicated to the all things Roswell Incident, does have some pretty convincing displays. With all that reading though, the highlight for Campbell and Bridie had to be the 'alien autopsy' display, and posing outside with some new alien friends, and of course Bridie's new alien antenna (that she pretty much wore non-stop for the rest of the weekend).

After our close encounter with the third kind (or not) we continued south to Carlsbad Cavern National Park. By this time it was getting later in the day, and we didn't have time to go into the caves, but that was okay, because that was on the list of things to do on Saturday. Today we wanted to see the evening departure of the Mexican free tail bats that live here over the warmer months. While we waited for the bats to do their thing, a ranger gave a talk about all things bat. Contrary to popular belief, bats are not blind, and they don't suck blood. At least, these ones don't. The bats were a little later than usual making a move (we were starting to worry they might have headed south for the winter already!) but after about 40 minutes they started to emerge from their cave. It was very cool to watch as hundreds, and then thousands of these little bats spiraled their way out of the narrow cave entrance and into the sky. There were a few that collided, but mostly they all seemed to know what they were doing. We weren't able to take photos at the entrance to the cave, but when we had had enough of watching them and headed back to the car, you could still see the dark smudge in the sky of all those bats flying away, and we got a photo then. Especially amazing when we thought about how small they were (and how many there must have been!)

When we got back to our hotel in the town of Carlsbad (about 30 miles north) we saw a police car parked outside. We couldn't think of a single good reason for a police car to be there (they are the local police so it isn't like they need a place to stay for the night right?) and were feeling a little nervous. Turns out one of those bats we had been watching (or perhaps a cousin from a neighbouring cave) had flown into the hotel lobby, and they couldn't get it out. What to do? Call the police of course, and have them get it out for you!

Halloween 2010

2010-11-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

After choosing our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch this year, we had to exercise great patience to wait until Halloween weekend to carve them. The kids did take a little bit of convincing, but when we reminded them how quickly they would deteriorate once we cut into them, they decided that the wrinkled, mouldy version would be better after Halloween, rather than for Halloween!

It didn't take us long to cut the tops off the pumpkins, and pull 'the guts' out (and remember just how unpleasant that part is!) and soon the kids were busy working on their jack-o-lantern faces. They did a pretty good job too!

With pumpkins carved, it was time to work on the costumes. The boys had plans for scary masks and capes, but we convinced them to save those for later in the evening, and instead for the afternoon they agreed to Bridie's requests to accompany her on some Wizard of Oz themed trick or treating. Hayden was the scarecrow and Campbell was the tin man, and if I do say so myself, their costumes (made from string, tinfoil, empty weetbix boxes and assorted other jumble we gathered together) didn't look too bad!

We had had plans to meet up with Bridie's friend, who quite by chance was dressing as a lion, but unfortunately missed phone calls meant it didn't happen. Instead we headed to the local Walmart store, where they had lots of trick-or-treat stations, and the kids all came out with a satisfactory supply of treats.

We could have left it there, but for the promise of those scary costumes the boys had put together, and an invitation from Hayden's friend to go visit a rather generous nearby neighbourhood. Just quietly, if I had known there would be goodies for the adults too I may have gone along as well! The boys were very excited when they got home (and that was even before they had really eaten any of the candy!) and happily reported that houses in that neighbourhood really did give out full sized chocolate bars.

Jackpot!

Autumn Activities

2010-11-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

Peter has to take our word for the fact that the weather here was wonderful in October. For most of October he wasn't actually in Colorado, with work trips to Peru and Nevada, and then fall break trip to California. He did have about 20 hours home between work trips though, and we decided to make the most of it and do some classic American autumn activities. We went to check out the Denver Botanic Gardens corn maze and pumpkin patch. The pumpkin patch was pretty well picked over, but we managed to find some good ones that had been missed. The hard part was narrowing the selection down to just three, to bring home for Halloween. Once the decision was made, and the lucky pumpkins were safely in the car, we ventured into the corn maze, clutching our 'maps', and hoping not to get lost!


The corn maze and pumpkin patch at Denver Botanic Gardens (Chatfield)

The kids did a great job of keeping track of where we were, and we didn't have too much trouble finding our way out (just a few dead ends encountered!) It did take us about 45 minutes, but that was because the maze was so big, and had a pretty intricate design (including the shape of a marmot), not because we got lost! To celebrate our escape from the maze we shared a freshly cooked yummy scrummy funnel cake before heading home (wishing all the way for just one more funnel cake!) Fun times!

Autumn in Colorado

2010-11-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

Colorado has a reputation for some fast changing weather. The locals like to say 'if you don't like the weather just wait five minutes'. Last year in Autumn we had snow in October, including a blizzard, and lots of wind that hurried the leaves off the trees, and made our trip to the mountains to view the changing colours, a bit of a non event!

This year, for the most part autumn has been pretty mild, with lots of sunshine and lovely blue skies. October saw lots of record highs, not a lot of wind, and not a drop of precipitation in the metro area (that has only happened 15 times since records began). While the kids have been a little disappointed about the lack of snow, we have been making the most of the conditions to get out and about.

Colorado also has a reputation for beautiful autumn leaves, including of course, all those aspen trees, and so a drive into the mountains to view the colours is a common autumn weekend outing. The USDA Forest Service have a website reporting the percentage of leaf colour in different forest areas and the estimated dates of peak colour, and for a couple of weeks there seemed to be nightly updates on the news, telling you where and when to go for the best show. Seems a little bit of overkill, but when you do get to see those beautiful leaves you understand!

After last years slightly disappointing experience, this year we were determined to see the autumn leaves at their best. We headed up to the mountains a little earlier than last year, to the Pike National Forest, and it was just gorgeous. Some of the colours were so vivid they almost seemed fake, especially with the bright blue sky behind them, and the temperature in the high twenties (c). A highlight for the kids of course were the pet lizards that someone had brought along with them for the ride (not someone with us, someone else who was out to see the leaves) and Hayden was especially pleased when the lady asked him if he would like to hold them (or rather, have them sit on him and dig their claws in!)

Autumn Leaves in Pike National Forest (Sept 2010)

And then last week the weather really changed. 23 degrees celcius on Monday. Snow on Tuesday. It didn't snow for long, but it was thick and fast, right when it was time to go to the bus stop of course. Thankfully it didn't stick to the road (as we had a few places to go!) but did hang about in the shadows for a few days, and hurry some of those lingering leaves off the trees. We have had a couple more sprinkles since then, but nothing that has stuck around. Up in the mountains it is a different story though, and the view of those snow capped peaks is just beautiful.

We noticed too, that the twinkly fairy lights have been hung in all trees along the neighbouring streets so that is another sure sign that winter is coming. We just have to get through a bit more autumn blogging!

Conversation with Bridie...

2010-11-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Look Mum, I have a splinter!

You mean a blister...

Oh yeah, a blinter.

No you mean a blister...

Oh yeah, a splinter.

At which point, I gave up, and Bridie was declared the winner.

We put a plaster over the 'splinter' and agreed that it was time to retire the two sizes too small snow boots, and start wearing the new, right size snow boots, because those ones won't give her splinters.

What the boys have been up to...

2010-11-06T17:04:00.000-06:00

When the boys are not standing on the street in their pjs,
they have been keeping busy breaking stuff.

Well, breaking boards.

And rather pleased they are about it too.

This morning the boys both tested for their Taekwondo green belts. After the events of the night I wasn't surprised to see Campbell yawning his way through the test, but he and Hayden both did a great job. Their favourite part, of course, was kicking their way through the boards, but being presented with their new belts was also a highlight.

Both boys also brought home fantastic school reports yesterday too, so we will have to have a double celebration this weekend. Lucky for them the movie they have been waiting to see opened yesterday. Might be time for some Megamind.

Our 3am pj party with the neighbours (and fire trucks)

2010-11-06T17:03:00.000-06:00

While there are lots of ways to meet the neighbours, it turns out that a 3am pajama party on the side of the road, complete with alarms, flashing lights, and fire engines, while not our first choice, works well too.

It seems one of our neighbours must have decided on some late night/early morning cooking. Shortly after 3am we were woken by the sound of the fire alarm. First thoughts on realising what was making the noise (and it is amazing how many thoughts can run through your mind in that brief moment) - yay - we were all asleep so it isn't our fault the alarm is going off! (accompanied with feelings of HUGE relief about that!) This was followed by a rush to the kids rooms to get them and their jackets - thinking all the while that the alarm didn't seem to be as piercing as we had remembered. The kids admitted later they had been scared, but at the time were all calm and sensible and I was impressed with how quickly we were all up and out. In the hallway the alarm was as piercing as we had remembered. Hurt your ears piercing, which is probably a good thing, as it makes you want to get outside even faster.

Which is why we were surprised to find there was only one other person who had vacated our part of the building ahead of us. Slowly, slowly more people appeared. Many of them had taken the time to get dressed. One couple, a good ten minutes later, emerged with bags packed. It seemed kind of strange to us that you take the alarm seriously enough to feel the need to pack and save your possessions, but not seriously enough to actually hurry to save yourself. Perhaps this wasn't their first night time fire alarm experience? Even more surprising were the number of people who didn't even bother to leave their apartments. Some of them stood on the balconies, while others just looked out the window every now and then. I guess they were feeling pretty safe, but I still wonder how they could stand to be in there with those alarms?!

Meanwhile, out in the street, we were thankful for the unseasonably warm weather Colorado has been having lately. It was of course cold (probably around zero) but would have been much worse if there had been snow. We had grabbed our passports (only because they happened to still be in a bag beside the bed following our recent adventures) but nothing else - no money, phone, car keys or even a watch. (and not the 'old passports' that have our visas in.) I had visions of us shopping the next morning in our pjs, until I remembered the no money part. With no flames in sight, and just the occasional smell of smoke (imagination or perhaps someone smoking?) we started to wonder if maybe it was a false alarm?

We soon discovered that it wasn't a false alarm. That late night cooking experience had resulted in a kitchen fire, that had been extinguished and soon we were told it was safe to go back inside. The alarms in the hallways had stopped thank goodness, but we found the ones in the apartments were still going, and now did sound a lot more unpleasant. Not sure what everyone else was doing but we decided to head back outside until the alarms had all been turned off. Luckily it was only another ten or so minutes.

Of course, it took us a lot longer to get back to sleep after the excitement. The kids were all a little worried it might happen again, so we made sure to leave the jackets and shoes ready for us near the door, just in case. Bridie lasted about a minute in her bed before climbing into ours. About that time we wished we already had the lovely new bed we had bought just that day, but then realised it probably wouldn't have helped. No matter how big and comfy the bed, Bridie will want your spot!

This morning nobody wanted to get out of bed, and we were all glad it wasn't a school and work day (although the boys still had somewhere important to be). The hallway still smelled of smoke (the apartment with the fire was on our floor but in another 'branch' of the building) but seems to be clearing (or perhaps we have just gotten used to it?) The main topic of conversation today with the kids has been 'why do people cook in the middle of the night? But why? (But WHY?)'

Now we are all looking forward to an early, and alarm free night, and no scared kids come bedtime. Might have to hang the jackets near the door again though, just in case!

Fall Break on the West Coast

2010-10-31T09:59:00.001-06:00

We have just gotten back from a wonderful week on the west coast. San Francisco didn't give us her best welcome (rain, rain, rain!) but soon came right, and we managed to do some exploring in the sun. After a few days there we headed over to Yosemite National Park for a couple of days, then down to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, before heading back over to the coast for our last day. We ate lots of sour dough bread, and yummy fish and chips, saw some fantastic views and wildlife, as well as some HUGE trees, got some more stamps in the National Parks passport and some more Junior Ranger badges, walked a few miles, drove a few hundred miles, and listened to 12 hours of audio books on the road...

Now we have a pile of laundry to do, pumpkins to carve, and finishing touches to put on Halloween costumes ready for Trick or Treating later today, and just a few blog posts to catch up on the rest of our (September?!) October adventures before we share all about our west coast adventure. Hopefully soon. Back to school and work tomorrow (Peter is home this week -yay!) Where does the time go?!

It's all becoming a blur...

2010-10-21T09:59:00.000-06:00

Lately we seem to have been busier than ever, and don't seem to have much to show for it! School, playing with friends, and assorted after school activities, have been filling our weeks. Our weekends have involved a few adventures - local autumn themed ones, and further afield road trip ones. One of these days we will do a blog post about those adventures! Peter has had back to back work trips for the past couple of weeks - first to Peru, and then home for a whole 23 hours before heading to Nevada. Roll on 4pm Friday when he is due home for just long enough to do the laundry before packing the bag again so we can all head off on a Fall Break adventure to California - yay!

Right now, Bridie and I are heading to the park, to check out the lovely autumn leaves, and make the most of this beautiful weather. This time last year it had already snowed several times and the leaves were long gone, so we have to enjoy it while we can!

The World According to Campbell...

2010-10-18T15:49:00.000-06:00

"If a baby bunny is born on the grass,

and there are predators around,

the baby bunny will be hopeless,

and it will just have to be eaten."

Clearly it doesn't pay to be without hope.
(or perhaps he meant helpless?)

Either way, I am glad I am not a baby bunny!

What we have been learning lately...

2010-10-16T13:08:00.002-06:00

If you take the shell off a snail it doesn't turn into a slug. It is still a snail, just a dead one.
temporary tattoos have highly effective sunscreen properties.
Alas, when you finally remove the temporary tattoos, you are left with some rather unusual tan lines.
The actress who played the part of Violet, in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie lives in Colorado. She came to the school movie night a couple of weeks ago, and told us about making the movie. The part where she turned into a giant blueberry involved her being sandwiched inside a giant polystyrene ball for nine hours. The Oompaloompas were not great at driving that giant blueberry, and as a result many, many takes were required to roll her out the door. It was even less fun than you might imagine.
The school gymnasium floor has about the same level of softness/hardness as a mattress in Ghana. Children who are equipped with blankets and pillows don't seem to mind, and will happily lie on it for a couple of hours. We learned that at movie night too.
Bats are not actually blind.
We really like that new car smell. In fact, for Bridie, it was the highlight of a recent road trip.
October in Colorado is usually a lot cooler than this.
October in Colorado usually involves a lot more precipitation (snow) too.
There are a couple of storms lining up to the northwest, and it is possible we might get some snow in the metro area next week. Until then, we don't actually mind the warmer, dryer weather, and the autumn leaves are looking beautiful.
Pancakes are good for brunch.
Putting chocolate sauce with the bananas and cream on your pancake is a mistake. The chocolate sauce gets a bit sickly after a few bites. Maple syrup is a much better choice.
Jimmy Johnson is a well known, and highly successful former football coach. We learned this by watching the latest series of Survivor. We then learned that Campbell already knew who Jimmy Johnson was, because he had been talking football with a friend at school. We plan to introduce him to rugby, and the All Blacks, one day soon...
Violin practice is made more difficult when you leave your violin bow at music.
Hayden has not forgotten how to ride a bike.
Hayden is very, very happy to finally have a bike to ride again (after opting for a scooter, when we went bike shopping last year)
NZ passport requirements have changed, and fees have gone up. Again. Last year when we had to renew passports for everyone but Bridie, we knew plenty of doctors, teachers, lawyers etc, but not for longer than 12 months, so they couldn't witness our photos. This year, when those same doctors, teachers and lawyers etc have now known us for more than 12 months, the rules have changed and they cannot witness Bridie's photos because they don't hold NZ passports. Grrr.
Our friend Joanne now holds a New Zealand passport, and is happy to sign on the dotted line just as soon as we get the photos.
Getting passport photos that fit the strict rules is proving to be difficult.
Getting passport photos that fit the strict rules is proving to be difficult and tiresome.
When you drop a scoop of ice cream on the floor the five second rule isn't an automatic. It really depends on where the ice cream is at on the 'frozen-melted' spectrum, and even then, it is easier to get another scoop, than to clean the ice cream off, so don't ask me to try.
If a dog pees in the hallway, and that dogs owner (master? best friend?) doesn't clean it up, it will evaporate to a super concentrated puddle of almost dry dog wee, and we will have to remember not to step in it every time we walk that way.
sea monkeys don't pee on the floor. They are good like that.
Saturday is 'free sample day' at our local supermarket.
Everyone thought that the Chicken Tortilla soup was delicious, and it seems that 'free sample day' is a very clever marketing scheme, as we came home with two cans of it (it was on special, as well as being delicious).
A later school start also means a later Shakespeare club start, and 8am is a much more civilised hour to be dropping Hayden at school, than the 7am start of last year. Alas, the 8am traffic is much worse. The first week it took us 20 minutes to get to school (and 5 minutes to get home), including 12 minutes at one set of traffic lights. This week we took the 'long way' to school - involving 8 traffic lights instead of the usual 4, as well as a much longer 'school zone' (driving past three schools instead of one). It took us about 5 minutes to get there (and 10 minutes home - we took the 'short way' home).
From now on, we will be taking the 'long way' to school on Shakespeare mornings.
While he still doesn't know what they taste like, Peter now knows what a guinea pig looks like served on a plate, thanks to the dinner choice of one of his fellow diners. Eeew.
Our pediatric dentist and her team of staff really are very nice.
Our children are going to cost us a fortune in future dental visits.
Our children's teeth are too big for their mouths.
In a somewhat futile attempt to make room for teeth, the boys have to work on wiggling out their loose teeth asap. If Campbell doesn't wiggle his out by December 3, the dentist is going to yank them for him. He also needs to work on getting the last of his six year molars through so they can be sealed at the same time. No pressure. December 3 is a Friday, and his appointment isn't until 2pm.
We are trying not to think about the 3 sets of braces that are looming in the future.
Did we mention that our kids are going to cost us a fortune in future dental visits?

Observations (and conversations) from the backseat...

2010-10-11T23:23:00.001-06:00

Driving in the car today, I hear Bridie's voice from the back seat:

"It stinks to be you, eh Mum?"

not feeling particularly 'stink' I asked "Why do you say that Bridie?"

"Because you're getting all the red lights"

"Hey you're right (as another light is changing to red right in front of us) That is kind of stink isn't it?"

" Yep. That's what Dad's supposed to do (get all the red lights).

But I still love you"

Dorothy lives here...

2010-10-06T17:12:00.000-06:00

and you better believe, she is really rather pleased with herself!

some of the 'everyday' catch up for September...

2010-09-29T13:10:00.002-06:00

Well, September is almost over already, and the time seems to be going faster than ever! Blogging just can not keep up!

One of the 'everyday' highlights of recent weeks had to be Bridie's school starting again after the summer break. She was so excited to be back in her classroom with the same teachers, but was disappointed to find many of her classmates from last year are nolonger there. She seems to be settling well though, and is happy enough to make new friends. Last year she had a friend named Scarlett. This year she has a friend named Violet. I think she might be working her way through the rainbow!

On her first day back she paused momentarily to admire the new mural on the wall, and then was straight into the playing. This year she is in the 'Pre-K' class, and gets to go three mornings a week, staying for lunch for two of those days. Lunch is proving a little tricky, as they have strict rules about what isn't allowed due to allergies. Every day Bridie asks for peanut butter, then nutella (or perhaps nutella, then peanut butter) and still doesn't really understand why that is okay for the boys to have on a sandwich but not her. Today she settled on butter on a bun. Yum.

While she loves her school, she still really would prefer to be in the Kindergarten class already. The other day while we were at the boys school, she heard one of the Kindergarten teachers coming down the hall with their class. She promptly ripped off her visitor sticker, and pushed me out of the way (I think so the teacher wouldn't see me) and tried to merge in with the children. She was hoping that the teacher would think she belonged in the class. She was not very happy with me when I pointed out to her that the teacher knew her, and knew that she wasn't in that class quite yet. We went home and played schools instead (she wanted homework!)

Before she could start her new school year she had to visit the Doctor for a health check. When we got there the Doctor said that if she wanted she could get her next lot of immunisations (last time they told us they would be due at 5 years, but in NZ they are due at 4 years, so we thought we should check) Because they use different mixes here, and she is also required to have a Chicken Pox vaccination for school, she was looking at four needles. After last years experience I wasn't looking forward to it, but Bridie was a star. Unfortunately they only had three in stock, so we had to go back the next week for the fourth one. She didn't mind though, because it meant she got to get more stickers and tattoos, and she is quite the tattoo fan!

As for the boys, they have settled well into their new classes. Campbell has to do weekly speeches to his class (as do the rest of the kids), and each week is a particular theme. The Christchurch Earthquake was nicely timed for his 'current events' speech. The family tree was easy enough. And then we had the 'American Patriotism' theme. It could be a place, a person, something about the flag etc and he had lots of choices of topic from our travels. He decided to go with George Washington, 'because, he was our first president'. Sigh.

To help balance that out, Hayden informed us that he is nolonger required to pledge allegiance to the American flag every morning at school, because, as his teacher quite rightly pointed out, he wasn't born here. Not quite sure then why he has had to do it in his other classes, but he isn't worried. He feels kind of silly when everyone else is doing it and he isn't, so he said some days he does and some days he doesn't, depending on how he feels. His class have just finished a geology type science unit, and the teacher asked Peter to go in and talk to all the fifth grade. The kids were all really interested, and had lots of questions, although Hayden said a couple of them had a bit of trouble understanding Peter's accent.

Once again, that Christchurch Earthquake was nicely timed. It made the TV news here, and also the newspaper several days in a row - which is a big deal because International News doesn't get a lot of coverage here, unless it directly involves the US in some way (such as the war, Obama or Clinton visiting somewhere, or Paris Hilton getting detained at an airport etc) Hayden's teacher phoned us that evening to make sure that our family and friends were all fine, and to let us know that the following week they were scheduled to talk about earthquakes, but that she was happy to postpone it if it would be too upsetting for Hayden. We assured her he would be fine, and in fact, he was rather pleased because they were able to talk about NZ for a change!

Autumn has officially started (as of something like 9.09pm?! on Thursday 23 September). To celebrate, Colorado has been having some beautiful weather with temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s celcius, along with a few record highs, wild fires and subsequent fire bans. The leaves are changing colour, and a little more brown seems to be creeping in. The vegetable garden at the park is past its prime, with most of the vegetables now harvested, and the sunflowers all gone to seed (but still a couple of big pumpkins that the kids love to check on). Hard to believe though, that in a few weeks time it could be snowing!

Speaking of snow, now that Hayden is in the fifth grade, he gets a free ski pass. Every fifth grader in Colorado gets a pass that allows them 3 free days at each of 21 different resorts in Colorado. So far we have stuck to sledding and snowboarding in our backyard, but we are thinking we really do need it to start snowing soon, and get ourselves organised to actually get to the mountains for some skiing or snowboarding this year. Or maybe I will watch while the others ski and snowboard... I am still deciding on that one!

Daylight Savings doesn't end here for a while yet, but now that it has started in New Zealand we are back to being five hours 'ahead' instead of six. 3pm Wednesday in Denver, is 10am Thursday in New Zealand. We promise not to phone you in the middle of the night, if you promise the same!

And finally, last week Peter got a summons for jury duty. He isn't actually eligible for jury duty since he isn't a US citizen. Luckily it was an easy phone call to be excused. Having to wait and turn up on the day to be excused would have been a drag!

Capulin Volcano NM and Sand Dunes National Park

2010-09-29T12:12:00.000-06:00

Catching up again...

The weekend before the sport billy weekend it was Labo(u)r weekend. A three day weekend, and an opportunity for exploring that we couldn't pass up. We decided to head south and get a couple more stamps in our National Parks passport. The first stop was at Capulin Volcano National Monument, in northeast New Mexico. We had tried to go there once before (on our way back from Texas) but the weather didn't cooperate. This time it was perfect - not too hot, and not too cold, with beautiful blue skies in all directions. Much better than the gray sky and snow of our last drive by!

We drove up the road that winds up around the (extinct) volcano to a carpark near the top. We were just in time for a ranger talk about the volcano and surrounding volcanic field. Like Auckland, there are a lot of volcanoes in this area - each having erupted just once. We learned about the different types of 'bombs' that had erupted, and the kids were especially taken with the 'cow dung bomb', as seen by Campbell's happy face as he poses for a photo! After the talk we walked around the crater rim trail, admiring the view, and looking for ladybirds (or ladybugs, if you prefer). During the summer the ladybirds are thick here, and it wasn't long before we spotted them. We had never seen so many of them in one spot before! After we completed the rim walk, we headed down into the crater to check it out. We didn't see any ladybirds this time, but did spot several lizards and some deer, and the kids were happy to tick off some more boxes of their Junior Ranger activity books. As we headed out of the park, we stopped at the visitor centre so that the kids could hand in their booklets and get sworn in (lost count of how many times we have done this!) Proud as always, we were also slightly amused by this one. Campbell misheard the ranger, and instead of saying 'Capulin' he was saying 'Captain'. As in, I promise to help protect 'Captain Volcano' and I promise to tell my friends and family about 'Captain Volcano' (or words to that effect). Either the ranger didn't hear Campbell's 'Captain Volcano' or she is better than us, as she kept a straight face the whole time.

From there we headed back into Colorado, and spent the night in Walsenburg, (where we narrowly avoided being taking out by a deer that ran into us, and gave us a huge fright!) ready for an early start the next morning. We were headed to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, and the road was lined with wild sunflowers which are always pretty to see. Great Sand Dunes is the newest National Park in the USA, and was chosen for the Colorado State quarter (25c coin) in the new National Parks quarters collection. Hayden, who has been collecting the different state quarters was especially looking forward to visiting.

We had planned to visit the sand dunes during the summer break, until we discovered how hot it can get on the dunes - up to 60 degrees celcius, which didn't really sound like fun! Fortunately when we visited at the end of summer it was hot, but not that hot. Unfortunately, the stream that flows near the base of the sand dunes was long gone. During the spring and early summer the snow melt feeds the stream, and while not hugely deep, it does have waves, which would have been fun to play in. By the time we visited the water level had dropped, and the stream was gone. Or so we thought. We learned that it was still there, below the surface of the stream bed. If you dig down a little way you find it, which is good, but not for swimming!

Instead we happily settled for having fun in the sand. The kids of course couldn't resist digging, and running, but we had forgotten to bring our sled to ride down the dunes. Initially we were disappointed, but then we discovered that sleds didn't work that well (nobody else was having much success anyway). Another family had brought sand boards and were having a great time, and when we stopped to watch them, they offered us a turn. They were regular visitors to the dunes, and the Dad told us about the time he had attempted to sled down one of the biggest dunes. He had reached the bottom with 'sand in every orrifice'. Peter and I decided to give it a miss, but the kids had a fantastic time. The dune was really steep, so the hike back up was hard work, but they all happily had several turns (Bridie hitching a ride with Hayden)

It is amazing how big the sand dunes are. The biggest dunes rise approx. 600 to700 feet above the valley floor. They have accumulated over thousands of years, from sand blowing across the San Luis Valley, and piling up at the base of the mountains. This is a photo of the dunes from the Visitor Centre. Those teeny little spots are actually people on the dunes.

We never expected to get all the way to the top of the dunes, but decided to climb up and see how far we got. The view was amazing, but it was hard work walking on that loose sand, so when Bridie decided she couldn't possibly walk another step, and carrying her up the dunes didn't sound like fun to us, we headed back down to look for more bugs. Hayden had already discovered a rare sand dunes tiger beetle (are you surprised?) that are found nowhere else in the world so he was feeling pleased about that.

Alas we didn't find any 'lighting glass' but did see a great sample during a ranger talk (in that green cloth in the photo below). The lightning glass forms when lighting strikes on the dunes, and the quartz sand is superheated and turns to hollow tubes of fragile glass. Very cool.

After finishing up at the sand dunes we decided to head back to Denver, giving us one day left of the long weekend to recover from our adventures, and get the sand out of everything. The sand dunes are definitely going on to the 'go back one day' list though. Such a fun day!

Those Scary Crickets and Caterpillars

2010-09-28T22:02:00.000-06:00

Our kids love snakes. We have lost count of the number of snakes that Hayden has caught this summer. The first one he caught was a team effort with Bridie, and she has joined him on many snake hunting adventures since then. She has never caught one by herself though. Until today that is...

This morning Bridie and I went to the park. There is a little stage type area beside the garden, and Bridie was putting on a show for me. Mid show she spotted a snake, and didn't even hesitate a second before grabbing it by the tail. She was very pleased with herself, although a little disappointed that it promptly got away, slithering out of her hand and into a crack in the rocks.

We decided to take a walk around the park along the path where Hayden usually spots snakes in the hopes of seeing another one. Alas they were all hiding (someone was ahead of us walking their dogs, so seeing a snake was always going to be a long shot). We did see crickets though. Lots of them. On the path and in the long grass. Bridie was completely freaked out by them! Snakes she will happily grab by the tail without a second thought, but those crickets were just plain scary. I guess, they are kind of big, and she is kind of small. We did find a big green caterpillar that wasn't so scary. She decided she wanted to take it home to show the boys, carrying it on a leaf to the car, where she transferred it to her hat. As we drove down the street she started freaking out again. The caterpillar had climbed out of the hat and it was on her. Scream, scream, It's on me! The caterpillar is on me! GET IT OFF! hysterical screams and sobs. Feeling like a mean mother I explained to her that I couldn't get it while we were driving, and there was nowhere to pull over, but that the caterpillar wouldn't hurt her. The hysterical screaming changed to hysterical giggling. 'It's off me now. It's walking..... It looks funny!

At this point I had visions of caterpillar guts hanging out, but thankfully she just meant it walked funny, not that it looked different to how it had looked when the hysterics had started. Still, I am thinking that we might give the bugs a miss for a while, and just stick to the snakes. As far as Bridie is concerned, snakes are way less scary!

Waaaateeeeer!

2010-09-17T13:05:00.000-06:00

This is how Bridie feels when she eats too many potato chips.

She sure does love her potato chips!

She also feels this way when she has had enough of

walking in the sand dunes.

(More on that soon!)

Our Sport Billy Weekend

2010-09-17T13:00:00.000-06:00

While we didn't travel through time, or from/to another planet, or even fight bad guys, last weekend definitely had a sporty theme. Sport Billy would have been pleased! Friday was an ESF and Peter spent the day playing golf at a golf tournament with some other people from work. He hadn't played golf since the tournament last year (and that was the first time in a long time too) so was rather pleased not to have embarrassed himself (he had been a tad worried!)

On Saturday we had our school district fitness festival. Over the summer the kids had the opportunity to take part in a fitness challenge - to complete the equivalent of a marathon (26.2 miles) of physical activity. We got a conversion chart to help work it out - so it didn't have to just be walking and running - swimming and taekwondo and soccer and looking for snakes all counted too. Both boys managed to complete not just one 'marathon', but several marathons each. The final mile of the challenge was to be completed at the fitness festival on Saturday, where about 2400 people participated in a 1 mile or 5km walk or run.

We had so much fun, and the boys were very proud of the fitness challenge medals they received at the end. All the proceeds from the event on Saturday go to benefit our school district, and so lots of schools were participating. Prizes were given out to the school that had the most people participating on the day, and in the challenge overall. The boys were really proud to go up and receive one of the cups that their school was awarded.

The High School cheerleaders were there to cheer everyone on, and the marching band from one of the High Schools were also there to build team spirit (or something!) Marching Bands are not really the done thing in NZ, especially at school, but I have to say, in real life they are much cooler than on TV! Those kids were really talented, and who knew they could play such modern, non marching band sounding music? The hats are still funny though...

The boys both had a go at the military style obstacle course (over and over!) while they waited for the walk to start, and then again when they got back.

After the walking and running was done, a lot of local restaurants had set up stalls with yummy food samples. One of the stalls - Starbucks - had been open and dishing out coffee even before the walk/run had started. I thought it was kind of ironic to see people queuing for Starbucks at a fitness festival. As it turns out, it wasn't as ironic as the queue for pizza a little later (9am)!

After all the fun of the fitness festival, we had just a few minutes at home before it was time for the boys to head to Taekwondo. We have decided that on weekends when we don't have big plans, we might try to fit a taekwondo class in, so that we have a bit more time after school during the week (for fun stuff like homework!)

On Sunday the sport theme continued with a baseball game at Coors Field. We were hoping that the Rockies winning streak would be more powerful than our own Coors Field attendance record of only seeing the Rockies lose. The kids were very excited, and Bridie was especially pleased to discover that Mickey Mouse is also a Rockies fan:

We arrived early and ate (and drank) a proper baseball stadium lunch while we watched the teams warming up.

We are thinking it pays not to lose a bet if you are a member of a baseball team too, especially if you are not a fan of pink Disney princess back packs, and hand holding. Bridie didn't think it was such a bad thing, and was just wondering where they got those pretty pink Disney backpacks from?

We had planned ahead this time, got our tickets a couple of weeks earlier, and had fantastic seats (padded even!) and the sun only reached us about 5 minutes before the end of the game, so no sunburnt and stripy feet this time. A great big winning home run for the home team always makes for an enjoyable experience too.

We have decided that we do prefer evening games to afternoons, as there is a bit more of a party atmosphere. That said, we decided to come to this afternoon game because when the game finished the kids had the opportunity to go down onto the field and run the bases. A lot of children were taking advantage of that opportunity, and the line was long, but totally worth it. The kids loved it, and practiced jumping at the wall to catch the ball and prevent the home run (the crowd goes wild - yay!) Or something. They had fun anyway!

Then as we headed back to the train station, feeling rather pleased about the day, we saw one of the Rockies players. Luckily we just happened to have a stash of baseballs and markers in the bag, and so the kids are now proud owners of autographed baseballs. On a side note, on Monday I had to go out and buy more baseballs for the stash, because winter is coming fast, and we might not be able to get them soon (had to go to two shops as it was!) and of course, we won't ever be able to play baseball with those autographed balls.

And on a completely non sporty note, right by the train station we spotted this construction site fence, complete with decorative crocheted flowers. If crochet was a sport, this would definitely be a gold medal contender, don't you think?

Nolonger up to date!

2010-09-13T20:49:00.000-06:00

As it turns out, we didn't stay up to date for long! We are all well, and keeping busy, and still trying to figure out our after school routine. We had a fun trip away the first weekend of the month, and this past weekend was a sporty themed one. We have lots of photos to share, and will be adding the words very soon. The plan is to get some blogging done tomorrow, but don't hold your breath!

Up to date!

2010-08-31T21:49:00.000-06:00

We had a relatively quiet weekend, recovering from the first week back at school. The highlight would probably be a game of mini golf, that Campbell had suggested the previous week (we had gone bowling instead that time, because the mini golf place wasn't open early enough) and some backyard baseball (Bridie had a new princess ball and glove that she was keen to try out!) We have a long weekend coming up this weekend, so are planning a little road trip then. Thinking we might have to squeeze in one more baseball game before the season ends too. Night games seem to be a bit more fun than day games, but we don't get so tired and grumpy at day games (well, some of us don't!) and there is a day game coming up where all the kids get to run the bases after the game ends. I am pretty sure I know three kids who would LOVE to run the bases at Coors field. Might have to get on and organise some tickets...

Into the second week of school now and both boys seem to have settled right in to there new classes. Our mornings are a lot more relaxed with the later school start, but at the other end of the day we are still finding our way. The Transportation department are still working on getting the buses away on time (even the police are getting involved, with some tweeking of the traffic light timing in an effort to get the buses moving) and the boys are getting home about 12 minutes later than they should (which is much better than last week). It may not sound like much, but when they don't have a lot of time before we have to head to Taekwondo (2-3 times a week) every minute counts. We are finding it a bit of a rush. Homework is starting to come home now too, and other activities will be beginning, so that will add to the challenge. Hopefully we will figure out our afternoon/evening routine soon. Some clones would be helpful!

For the past two evenings we have had 'back to school nights' - first grade yesterday, fifth grade tonight. It was a chance to meet with the teachers and hear about what the kids will be doing in class this year. It sounds like some fun stuff is planned, and the teachers seem perfect for our boys. Hopefully they will continue to enjoy their school work (well, except those tests of course!) and learn lots. And not grumble about homework!

And on that note, I think we might be up to date with the blog. Haven't been able to say that for a while. We shall see how long that lasts!

Our visit to Ghana...

2010-08-29T21:33:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago Peter and I had a whirlwind visit to Ghana (we just about spent more time on planes than we did on the ground in Ghana). It had taken a bit of organising, which was a tad stressful, with flights being changed several times, and a mistake being made with my Ghanaian visa (the embassy had recorded my passport issue date in place of the expiry date, making it look like my passport had already expired) so we had to send it back to Washington DC to be fixed. Thankfully FedEx must work weekends, as my passport arrived back here in Denver on the Monday. Whew. We were due to fly out on the Tuesday. Our flights were good (Denver to Washington Dulles, and then just a short wait before the flight to Accra), the seats were comfy, and we both got some sleep, which is always a bonus.

We were picked up at the airport and taken to a hotel, and then about 10 minutes later, got a call to say a car was waiting to take Peter to the office to talk work stuff. No time for a shower, so he got to go stinky, which he wasn't excited about. Meanwhile, I couldn't figure out how to get the hot water to work so got to have a cold shower instead. Turns out the switch for the hot water heater was outside the bathroom, by all the light switches. Of course, silly me. Why didn't I think to look in another room for the switch! After the work talk was done, we had a nice dinner out - with some more work talk :), with one of the Accra based guys and his wife. After that it was back to the hotel to attempt to get some sleep. We had been introduced to the rock hard beds and pillows last time we visited Ghana. We were pleased to find the pillows at the hotel were softer than what we remembered, but the bed? Could it be possible that it was even harder than last time? We nearly snapped our tailbones sitting down on it. Was it even a mattress, or just the base of the bed that you are supposed to put the mattress on? Thank goodness for sleeping tablets I say!

The next day we headed north east out of Accra, via plane to Sunyani, and then a bus to the mine at Ahafo (might be easier to see if you click on the map image to enlarge it).

It took us a while to actually get past security at the front gate, as nobody had told them we were coming, but one of the geologists came to our rescue, and did a great job of acting as our tour guide at rather short notice! We stayed in the camp there for a couple of nights, and while Peter was busy talking work stuff, I spent a day at the 'village' getting to know some of the expat wives, and being amazed by how much it has changed since we last visited, five years ago.

Last time, there were just a couple of houses finished and being lived in, and the rest was a big construction site. No school, no doctor, lots of talk about the pool they all wanted but no actual pool etc. Now there are lots of houses with lots of families, a shiny new school with about 60 students and 14 teachers (a mixture of Ghanaian teachers and 6 expats - all from NZ, four of them from Thames), a 'club' complete with restaurant for when you cannot be bothered cooking yourself (or if you are feeling really lazy, there was what looked like a delivery bike outside!) a pool, a tennis court, a squash court, a commissary (that reminded me a lot of the old Waihi Beach Four Square, complete with milo on the shelf - something we haven't seen in a supermarket for a while!) roads, families, (did I mention people?!)

Here is a photo of the village that we just got sent. The shorter looking grass area around all the buildings, is surrounded by a fence, so it is a pretty big back yard! You can see the pool in the foreground. The club, tennis court, gym, squash court, craft room (!) and commissary are down in that area too. The school is on the far left (partly cut off), and the rest of the buildings are houses. In the top right of the fenced in area (or that general vicinity) there is a paintball gun area/range? (whatever you call it!) and plans for a BMX track coming soon. Talk about a golf course, or at least, a few holes, are also in the works (but we heard that five years ago too!)

We saw a few lizards running around, but thankfully no snakes (the driver told me they are all poisonous, and the school principal said they had had 16 in the school grounds so far this year - eek!) One of the mum's said her son had been bitten by a snake last year (he had been hunting them!) but thankfully the snake was small so it was more of a scratch than a bite. There is a medical clinic up the road at the mine, complete with a doctor, and a South African paramedic (apparently they are the best paramedics because they deal with so many car crashes and shootings in South Africa?!) and apparently they can deal with snake bites too!

It was all so, so different. Even the trip up there was easier as they now have daily flights in and out of Sunyani, which is less than an hour north of the mine, and with so many people traveling in and out from the mine, there is a bus that goes to and from the airport daily (as well as shopping trips to Sunyani and Kumasi every week too).

The little regional airport at Sunyani is my new most favourite airport in the world. Where else in the world can the arriving passengers stop on the tarmac to chat with the departing passengers, only to have ground staff politely interrupt to say "I am sorry to interrupt your conversation but we are ready to board now' ?

To weigh the bags they have a scale like you sometimes find in the chemist (only smaller, and the bags don't always fit on it properly, but that's okay). They did have a metal detector and xray machine but they must be broken so they did the most cursory of bag searches instead. Well, they did to most bags anyway. For my bag the man had accidentally taped the handles together when he put the baggage label on, so they couldn't really open my bag much. My bag got the abbreviated cursory search instead. While we waited in the line for that, we had to take care to step over the extension cord that plugged in the TV, and be sure not to block the view of the other waiting passengers. The reception wasn't the greatest, but hey - I haven't seen a TV at DIA, so Sunyani is a step ahead there!

A few minutes before the plane from Accra was due to land the local fire engine arrived with lights flashing, followed soon after by a paramedic. Then we were invited to go back into the bag search room so the male passengers could get a pat down, and the female passengers could be checked with a hand held metal detector (there was obviously no female staff member available to do a pat down). We waited outside while the plane landed, the ground crew unloaded and loaded bags, transporting them on a big handcart that one person pulled while another pushed. While this happened we walked to the plane and up the fold out stairs, and within about 10 minutes of landing the plane was taking off. It is the only flight for the day, and I suspect the fire engine and paramedic are a little disappointed to have been surplus to requirements yet again!

There was a little bit of confusion when we got back to Accra. We got out of the van at the Company Guest house, only to find we had been booked into a hotel again (even though we would be leaving that evening). When the driver came to get us to take us to the hotel we got him to stop by the new mall that has opened recently. We were very impressed - it really is a mall! (Goldfields Thames, eat your heart out!) By the looks of it, a bit of an expat mecca too, and obviously makes life a bit easier.

The confusion continued when our ride from the hotel to the airport didn't arrive. And didn't arrive. And didn't arrive. Luckily the hotel had a shuttle, and the airport was much better organised than last time we visited so it didn't matter that we were an hour later getting there (we were in a queue the entire three hours last time and only just got to our flight in time - this time we had time to spare) Our flight back to Washington Dulles was great - we were in first class (ooh la la - the first, and probably last time!) We got quite a bit of sleep, and our flight arrived 25 minutes early. Washington Dulles airport, however, was not great. Five big international flights arriving (four from Africa, one from South America - probably a few non US citizens on board?) and for the first 30 minutes we were in the non US citizen immigration line - there was only one desk open. By the time we made it through (and we were the first from our flight) all the bags had been removed from the carousels and stacked up on the floor beside them. From there we had to recheck our bags, and more chaos ensued. Apparently a baggage conveyor belt was broken? or something. We were asked what flight we were on and told to put our bags 'here'. We did. Side by side. We continued on through security, and made it to our flight just a few minutes before they started boarding. When we arrived in Denver, Peter's bag was there. Mine was not. It was on another, later flight to Denver, and they would have it delivered to me. That night I got a call to say it was on the way. YAY! Then they arrived and I discovered it wasn't my bag (even though they had added a label that had my name). The guy assured me that it happened a bit, and that he was sure I would get my bag the next day. The following evening I got a call to say it was on the way. I wasn't entirely convinced, but thankfully this time it was my bag (lucky, because the presents for Hayden and Bridie were in that bag, and they had been waiting oh so patiently, if not a little anxiously!) It made me love Sunyani airport (where I could see my bag pretty much the entire time!) even more than ever!

So, despite the slight lack of organisation, which is kind of a standard way of life in Africa, our visit was really good. We didn't see anything that would make us not want to go back, so that is always good! Now the waiting begins again. One day, hopefully soon, HR are supposed to be sending Peter a contract to look at, and we are thinking that our family adventures next year might be Ghana based. In our experience, HR work at glacial speed, so add a bit of Africa in there, and you know not to hold your breath. While we wait, we are busy making plans for some more adventures here, and getting back in to the school routine. And appreciating the fact that there is a well stocked supermarket just down the road (with an entire aisle dedicated to chips of all varieties). Our days of chip choice overkill may well be numbered!