Denver Days

We filled the Denver Days of our trip with as many indoor activities as possible.
Our drive there was, thankfully, uneventful and just began to snow as we pulled into our lodgings. Because we were staying here at least a week we chose larger accommodations. We stayed in a two room residence with a small living area and even smaller kitchen....just to get a bit of our own space.

Chris REALLY needed this as I left town for 3 GLORIOUS days to surprise my sister Lauren in Anchorage. She will be having her first child in around 9 days from now and I didn't want to miss her baby shower. I secretly arranged with the host a surprise. What I didn't know was that when I blogged about being there I didn't expect her to read it at work and find out. She called me in happy tear as soon as she read the news.......but was mad I didn't tell her sooner and she would have taken the day off. In the end it all worked out as I spent the morning with my Dad and partner in crime Marjory hiking in the mountains.

Back to Denver.......
Our first stop was a Denver Icon a sort of Tijuana meets Disney

Casa Bonita

The food was well.......pretty bad and overpriced but you just consider it as
park admission.

We had front row seats for the diving shows.

The boys love, love, LOVED the pirate cave.

At first they were REALLY SCARED but soon they were facing Black Bart without Mom and Dad. (Mostly because after 3 times Chris and I were done.)

We pretty much had the place to ourselves and it was great to let the boys run after traveling in the car for 3 days.

After lunch we went to the most amazing Children Museum in Downtown Denver.

Even though I'm a bit of a germ aphobe I love hands on museums for kids. They helped me out by putting tissues, hand sanitizer, and sanitizer wipes on every corner. I also saw workers cleaning things the entire time we were there.

Next A Middle Child's Dream come true.....he could commandeer his very own Fire Truck!
Could it get any better than a REAL fire truck with all the lights, bells, and whistles functioning?

Just when we thought it couldn't get any better it did. Upstairs there were rooms and rooms of things kids love to do and even some rooms such as this one kids never get to do at home.

Build with wood scraps using REAL tools, not kiddie hardware. There were about 20 individual work stations with aprons, safety goggles, hammers, saws, drills, nails, screws, etc.....I thought the boys would never want to leave this place.

To Market To Market.....

After gathering necessary goods at the market there was a huge kitchen to prepare the "pretend" food.

Next we traveled to the Woodland Forest where you could climb in and out of fox holes.....

or in GIANT bird nests in full animal costume if you so desired.

Painting for our ARTISTS.......

and a magnet board that was just begging to be rearranged. See what I mean ....something for everyone and every age. They even have and infant area downstairs that was amazing but I didn't photograph in there.

The puppet show Z and E did totally cracked me up.

It started off very nice and friendly....

then Zach got bored and moved on so E continued by himself. I don't really remember the story line but all of the sudden he......

had the puppets just start wailing on each other in a true Ethan style.

On to the mini sports court.

Not bad for a shorty!

Zach held his own too in the game of horse.

And Sweet Graham just crawled and explored to his hearts content.

We all LOVED this place and we're so glad to have experienced it together as a family, not just mom and the boys telling Dad what a great day we had.

The next day we toured the Denver Mint (sorry pictures were not allowed).....and ate at our favorite family restaurant THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY! With a menu like theirs it's easy to please everyone....most of the time....some kids are just moody.