Colorado 2018 Part 2: FTD Spouse Breakfast, Denver Aquarium, Denver Children's Museum, Heading Home

I started my second day even earlier than the first, but with bedtime being about 3 hours earlier than the previous night, it at least made sense :) This particular morning, it was a 5am (a.k.a. 4am at home) morning, and I got 2 precious hours to sit down and read my Bible and pray and think about 2018 a bit, which just has NOT been happening as much as I would like it to at home. It was nice, and it set my whole day off on a good note!

I had packed things up pretty well the night before, so it wasn't much to toss in the rental car and head out the next morning. We said our goodbyes to my dear friends from HS, bid adieu to our hosts and made our way across Littleton to Toast for breakfast with some dear, sweet friends whose spouses also have FTD. I had the avocado toast, and it was so good!

We stayed WAY too long for Cashel's liking (but he got to play Minecraft the whole time, so it wasn't ALL bad in his mind), and then made our way to the Denver Aquarium. It was SO COOL! I think I may have actually enjoyed it even more than he did, and that's saying a LOT!

Denver Aquarium

I'm already plotting in my head to take all the kids back there sometime, because it was SO incredible! I am so fascinated by aquatic animals, and they had such an incredible variety of them! After we finished up at the Aquarium, we made the extremely short jaunt just down the street to the Denver Children's Museum, which was also pretty awesome!

Denver Children's Museum

The Children's Museum was really impressive too, and had SO many cool things to stimulate kids and encourage brain development. We made it just prior to their New Years' Eve bubble pop event, which was super hyped up, but to be honest, wasn't really that exciting for an almost 7 year old kid and his 37 year old Mama lol So...we did it, then explored. But to be honest, I was pretty weary, and my hip flexor was acting up, so I felt a lot of the time like I was just worn out. Cashel had a blast, though, with everything from the bubbles and water play to the vaccuum and light up peg stations and everything in between. It was a lot being so busy, but it would be fun on a not-quite-so-busy day with all my kiddos. I opted to leave my DSLR in the car, and was so busy not losing Cashel in the mix that I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I did at the Aquarium, but it really was pretty cool! You could easily spend at LEAST half a day here if you went through at an average pace.

After we were done there, we decided to head to the airport, as the roads weren't the best, and we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get settled and find some lunch. Cashel chose Panda Express, and was super thrilled about it!

He was also excited to bid adieu to his moose friend ;)

Truthfully, most of the rest of the day went about like this...

We made it back to Sioux Falls in just enough time to grab our bags and hit the road to get home around 10pm.

It was so fun to travel with my kiddo! It was SO much easier to take him just by himself as opposed to with an entourage, but I know at least when we were at the Aquarium and Children's Museum, we wished that we had the other kids with us. We cannot wait to go back sometime!!

Colorado 2018 Part 1: Littleton, Red Rocks, Idaho Springs and Lookout Mountain

My eldest son and I made a whirlwind trip to Littleton, Colorado for a weekend, as one of my very best friends from High School was getting married, and there was no way I was going to miss it! We had such a great time, even if we could've used a vacation from vacation upon our return ;)

I thought I'd do a short recap of our time there, as well...any recaps these days are super short due to being a single Mom of 4 kids under age 7 and managing a full-time job and a husband in assisted living slowly slipping away to bvFTD. Still, blogging and recapping my life is one of my very favorite things to do in my "spare" time, so here I am :)

We left after a couple days at the farm down in Iowa, and drove home to switch bags a bit and grab a couple things we had forgotten, then made it to the airport with time to spare to eat. (Granted, it wasn't really long enough since the food took way longer than we thought, so we ended up having to take it to go on the plane)

Cashel declared this the very best day of his entire life after he was able to sit up in the cockpit with the pilot and check out all the controls :)

Our flight got in right around 9pm, but by the time we picked up our bags and rental car, we didn't make it down to Littleton to our airbnb until around 11pm their time (midnight ours back in Minnesota).

It was so nice to see two of my good friends from growing up in Indiana, who were staying at the same place with us there! They (as well as the host) stayed up to wait for us, but we headed to bed very soon after getting in and unpacking our things.

Morning came a little too early for me, what with the time change and all, and my normal wake up time being 5am CST. I "slept in" until 6am MT (which was actually 5am CST), then crept around to find some coffee and settled in to relax a bit and watch most of Mamma Mia. This was one of those (extremely small) windows of peace and rest I had during our trip, and there weren't many of those!

It was short-lived, however, when Cashel came down for the morning and did a song and dance for me :) We grabbed some quick breakfast, made a quick stop at Target for a card and some hiking boots for Mama, and then made our way on over to Red Rocks for some morning hiking!

Red Rocks Hike and Amiptheatre

It was a GORGEOUS day for a hike! We were perfectly comfortable in long-sleeve shirts and pants - I even got so warm in my sweatshirt that I had to tie it around my waist at one point!

We hiked for a while, then made our way back to our car and hopped in a for a short drive further up to the ampitheatre.

We didn't stick around there long or hike on down to check out the view from the bottom due to Mama's feet being a little sore after hiking in new boots that morning. Also, we had hoped to make it to Idaho Springs to have lunch at Beau Jo's and have a little time to explore around there as well. The view heading that direction was SO BEAUTIFUL!

Idaho Springs: Beau Jo's and Shopping

Yes, please! I knew about Beau Jo's from a road trip my hubby and I took back in 2009, where these same friends took us here for supper one night. I knew Cashel would think it was cool with the enormous crust, so we opted to have lunch here again. Cashel, however, was not so amused at all the drive time, and then having to ::gasp:: WAIT for our food to be made. (Can you tell we don't do sit-down restaurants a whole lot as a single Mom with 4 little kids?)

After lunch, we hit up a few of the shops before Cashel got too antsy to keep going lol

We thought the rainbow ice at the top of the frozen waterfall was a nice added touch :)

We stopped to pick up a Napoleon (Cashel's choice) and a chocolate croissant (Mama's choice) at a little bakery before leaving town to head up to Lookout Mountain on the way back to Littleton. The Napoleon was DELICIOUS, but ended up a disaster after Cashel sat on it in the bag, so the chocolate croissant is all I was able to get a picture of ;) SO.GOOD!

Lookout Mountain

The views from Lookout Mountain were just absolutely breathtaking! But it was COLD up there, so we didn't stick around too terribly long. We wish so badly that we had tacked a couple extra days onto our trip to really get out there into the mountains instead of just viewing them from afar, but it was SO BEAUTIFUL! Considering how much the mountains call to me, I'm not really sure how we ended up living in such a flat state, aside from knowing that the full seasons really speak to me too, and the autumn colors in Minnesota are hard to beat!

The rest of the evening was the wedding, which I don't plan to recap on my travel blog, but stay tuned for day 2 of our adventure in Denver, covering the Aquarium, Children's Museum and heading home soon!