Elizabeth Photo Shoot, 12 months

They're here!! Cute Elizabeth's 12 month pictures, taken by my friend Katie Ash in the ward. She did such a great job! I love how we captured this little baby just as she is, so we can remember what she looked like at one year old forever.

While the Cat's Away...(Still Spring Break)

Part of our Spring Break plans included a little getaway for Mom and Dad. We flew Grandma Joanie into town on Thursday morning to be our official babysitter. Jon had been working Monday through Thursday from basically 7 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. all week, and was completely exhausted by Friday. We'd long ago originally planned to fly to San Francisco for the weekend, then switched to Las Vegas, then decided on Winter Park, CO, but because we've got a few things (financially) coming up and in the works, we decided maybe a staycation would save us a lot of money and be the best in the long run. And no regrets we did!

So Denver and Colorado Springs it was! There is plenty to do around here, so just for kicks we started off with a matinee to see "Kong" (Jon's choice). The theater was pretty much empty, but had been fully refurbished with reclining leather chairs, and we had a blast sitting back and watching an "adult" movie with a theater all to ourselves, and since we're such high rollers we even got popcorn!

We hurried down to Colorado Springs for a quick lunch at Rudy's BBQ, which is fast becoming a favorite of ours. They have really good pulled pork, which is cheap and tastes just like the South.

I'd scheduled a tour of the "Cave of the Winds" which had been highly recommended as one of the top things to do in Colorado Springs, so we headed up the mountain to Manitou Springs and the scenery was breathtaking with the freshly fallen snow.

Cave of the Winds was discovered back in the 1860's, but of course had been used for thousands of years before that by the Ute Indians as an ancient burial site. There are so many ghost stories and fascinating folklore surrounding these caves, they are just wonderfully creepy and so beautiful inside! Even though it had been snowing off and on all day, the caves maintain a perfect 54 degrees year round. 

There are two tours-- a Discovery tour that lasts about 30 minutes and just basically takes you inside where it's all lighted by electricity, and the second which is a 90 minute Lantern tour which takes you about 1 mile into the cave to parts unknown. There is no electricity back there (obviously), and you have to crawl in some parts to get through the passages, but that's what we chose to do and it was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever done! 

Again, since all we had were kerosene lanterns, most of my pictures didn't really turn out, but the cave was haunting and beautiful, and extraordinary. Jon never got scared-- he said it reminded him more of Lord of the Rings and the dwarves, but I definitely didn't want to be last in line going through some of those pitch black tunnels!!

The "Giant's Heart" formation

We headed through that tunnel on the left and that was the end of the lighted part of the tour. The rest was pitch black-- in fact our guide said that the only other darker place on earth was at the bottom of the ocean. Thankfully neither of us were claustrophobic!

There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere.

What they call "cave coral"-- it grows for centuries and is just beautiful! I won't go into detail about the ghost stories and various legends of the cave, but we had a natural born storyteller for a guide, and I pretty much had goose bumps the entire time. In fact, one of the girls on our tour passed out about halfway through, (seriously! so scary!), but not from fright. She'd just come from Chicago (basically sea level) to here, where it's nearly 7,000 feet in elevation, and we think it was altitude sickness. Of course it just added to the already freaky tour. We had an absolute blast though!

Out of the caves and breathing fresh air once again. We survived!

Next we checked into our room at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort. We took a little stroll out on the golf course to admire the sunset over Pikes Peak before heading to dinner.

I found a little German restaurant called "Edelweiss" that featured completely authentic food and had all German waitresses and workers. It was such a flashback to living in Austria for me! I tried the beef rouladen and rotkohl.  

It was decorated just like a hunting lodge in the Black Forest. Jon got the wienerschnitzel and loved it. You can see the NCAA basketball scores on his phone in the background, ha ha. We headed back to our hotel to watch the games and get some wonderful, blessed uninterrupted sleep!

The snow from the previous day had vanished in typical Colorado fashion, with sunny blue skies in its place. We lounged out by the pool and soaked in the hot tub before getting ready for the day. I could definitely get used to that!

My handsome little cowboy enjoying some R&R.

We headed back to Manitou Springs, which is home to the Cog Railway that travels up Pikes Peak. I've been dying to make it to the top where there are pristine views for days and days, but because of the snow they still weren't able to clear a path for the train to the top. We opted to check out the little downtown instead.

We found some amazing Middle Eastern food for lunch at a place called the "Heart of Jerusalem." Jon was thrilled because that just happens to be his favorite kind of ethnic food, and we hadn't really found any around Denver yet!

We headed over to some cliff cave dwellings, which the Hopi and Anasazi Indians used to inhabit for centuries before us white guys came and ruined it for them. Pretty fascinating how they built their homes right inside the cave for protection and defense.

An example of a pueblo home as well.

Looking out from inside one of the cave dwellings.

I think my kids would love this museum so we'll have to come back and explore some more.

We decided to finish our day up with a hike to the Seven Falls, which is right in the heart of Pikes Peak.

No joke, we burned off some serious calories with all those stairs! It was a steep incline, and we hiked up over 500 steps to get to the very tippy-top. 

This was Midnight Falls, which was another mile or so up the mountain. All in all, it was a lot of hiking but I'm glad we got to see such pretty sights along the way. 

Jon with "Devil's Thumb" in the background. It was around 5 p.m. that we finally hiked back down and to our car, so we loaded up and headed back into Denver, where we had a dinner reservation at Del Frisco's, a super fancy steakhouse Jon gets a gift card to every year for work.

Super fancy selfie in front of the restaurant because we are cool like that!

We had some serious money to drop with that gift card, so because we were being high rollers all weekend, we ordered 4 courses, complete with virgin Mojitos (or "mocktails") just for fun, and two kinds of shrimp cocktail for our appetizer.

Jon ordered an amazing Chilean seabass with fried rice, and I got the steak medallions with potatoes and haricot vert. I don't know about you guys, but I'm just as happy with my $10 steak + 2 sides at Texas Roadhouse, but it's fun to see how the rich feel every now and then.

My steak medallions. Yum. Our waitress brought us some chocolate mousse for dessert, for Jon's birthday, but I forgot to get a picture. We had a really good time reconnecting, playing around, exploring the sites, sleeping in, and eating lots of really good food. I hated that our date weekend had to be over so soon! Many, many thanks to my mom for being a good sport and taking on 4 kids by herself all weekend so we could go. Maybe we can make it a spring break tradition, Grandma Joanie? (wink, wink)

Spring Break, part 1

Our kids get two weeks for Spring Break every year, which seems kind of crazy and wasteful to me, since we start so dang early in August! Quite frankly, I'd take one more week of summer, and give up one of these weeks of spring break. The weather generally isn't very nice in March but it is in August, but with that being said, our first week of spring break was actually really lovely!

We went hiking up around Evergreen, CO to a park with a trail called the "Three Sisters." It was a gorgeous day-- nearly 80 degrees and sunny, and just perfect for a picnic. There was a really nice trail perfect for the kids, with lots of easy rock climbing for them to do. It looks like we made it to the top of the world on this one, the first of the three sisters!

Even Lizzie made it up to the top of Sister #2 thanks to Jonathan. He is a true mountain goat, and Lizzie hates to be left out of the action.

Zach really wanted to hike under those rocks but they were making me just a little nervous.

Family hiking selfie! Lucy refused to participate because she was mad at Zach about something (surprise, surprise). But we did catch Cowboy Jon in action!

Spectacular views of the gorgeous front range on Sister #3!

I loved this picture because it was all my little ducklings following their dad down the trail, nobody was complaining, and even Leah was hiking all by herself just happy to be outside in nature. We had a great time.

We got back just in time for me to take the girls out for a night on the town. We started with dinner at our local favorite, Casa Mariachi. 

Then we headed over to the movie theater to see the new Beauty and the Beast movie. The girls LOVED it-- especially Lucy, who is a huge Emma Watson fan. 

Monday, March 20th was the official First Day of Spring, which meant free Rita's ice for everyone! It's been a tradition since Lucy was a baby and we lived in Philadelphia to go every single year-- and we've succeeded except for the one year we lived in Vegas. I had to teach that night, so right after my class finished we hurried over to the only Rita's in Denver and the line was so long it was out the door! 

But boy were we sure glad we waited! Yum! A little taste of spring in a green paper cup. Jon met us from work and got to enjoy some free water ice too.

The next morning I was feeling adventurous and brave, so I loaded the kids up in the van and headed down to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The weather was promising, and we always have such a great time whenever we go. First up was feeding the giraffes. Lizzie tried feeding them too, and I'm not joking, that giraffe sucked her entire little hand into his mouth with his blue tongue-- it was disgusting. But the best was her reaction! She looked kind of startled at first, but then she started laughing hysterically and thought it was so funny she'd fed that big huge giraffe all by herself.

So, feeding animals became the theme of the day for her. She'd crouch down real low by every single animal and get right in their face, and say, "Hi! Hi!" in her cute little voice. Then she'd try to feed them. Sometimes with food, sometimes with rocks or sticks, but she had a grand time pretending to be a zoo keeper.

Here she is petting the little goats and being a goat whisperer. She could have stayed in the goat pen all day.

After washing our hands really good, we headed over to have our picnic lunch. I don't know why, but food always tastes better outside.

We found the baby chickens next, and got to feed them as well. You can see Leah in the background who loved feeding the chickens, which reminded her of Moana's rooster Hei Hei.

Zach-O couldn't resist feeding them either.

Lizzie is trying to make chicken noises to talk to her little birdies. We had so much fun!

Last but not least were the gorillas and orangutans. I love how these two are just staring at each other--mommy gorilla and baby Lizzie. She was so worn out after all that animal exploring she took a good nap on the way home from the zoo. I'm so thankful we have such an amazing place to visit so close by. Our first few days of spring break have been off to a fantastic start!