Since I don't travel toward the mountains and Golden very often, I requested a stop at Colorado Mills mall so that I could check out The Children's Place Outlet store. Sometimes I find really good deals there, that particular day I didn't. After looking at Eddie Bauer and The Children's Place, I was ready to move on; however, my girls remembered the Lego store and wanted to visit it. If you have ever been to Colorado Mills mall before, you might know that the Lego store is quite a distance from The Children's Place store. Since it wasn't me making the suggestion to keep on shopping, I was happy to oblige. Chris ended up finding some laptop bags (the complete story will be in another post) at Wilson's Leather, so he was quite happy with the visit as well.
We left the mall around 5 pm amid cries of, "I'm hungry." and, "Can we go to Olive Garden?" We drug out our visit to the mall until 5 pm and close enough to the dinner hour--'cause you know 4:45 is just too early to eat dinner. The nearest Olive Garden wasn't exactly close, but we weren't in any hurry.
We finally arrived at the condo around 7:30. We got situated and set up an extra bed for Amy. The girls watched tv while Chris and I drove to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and food for Sunday; by the time we returned, we were happy to send the girls off to bed.
We attended church meetings in Frisco on Sunday morning at 10 am. Crazy but we met the temple president and his wife there and friends who used to be in our ward. One young boy, he wasn't any older than 9, bore his testimony about prayer and finding his dog. We were all enthralled with his story and how his prayers were answered, but ended up laughing when he said, "If I hadn't prayed and my mom hadn't gone to the basement and turned on the light to look, we might never have found our dog who had fallen into the window well, for a very long time. Except that we might have smelled him." The entire congregation started laughing.
Our girls weren't too thrilled to be "visitors" in Primary, but ended up enjoying their time in a ward so tiny that the visitors outnumbered the regular attendees. I sat in Relief Society meeting next to the open window listening to the stream next to the building and enjoying the beautiful scenery.
We returned to Silverthorne and the condo for lunch. Chris found a hike for us just a short distance further up the hill--to Lily Pond Lake. I think this was the first hike where our children didn't whine and complain the whole way. I know! Miracle! This is Kristen's first year of hiking without hitching a ride, and she was a very happy hiker. The first part of our hike was a rather steep incline up to the actual trail.
Can you just imagine what this must look like when all the flowers are in bloom?
We hiked up over a small rise to another lake that sparkled in the sunlight. I highly recommend enlarging the picture.
Next thing I know, Chris was walking out onto a log with Kristen hanging on for dear life to his hand. She made it to the end of the log, let go of his hand rather reluctantly while expressing her desire to hang on, posed rather quickly and was then deposited back on the shore. Unfortunately, that depositing unbalanced Chris and the log gave way under the mud beneath it. His foot plunged in to the mud and water. He did his best to wash the mud off, but really, he should have seen that one coming.
And wouldn't you know, Amy and Misha had to follow in Dad's footsteps--at least they didn't fall in!
The girls were throwing rocks and branches in to the lake and were having a grand time when all of a sudden we hear a splash and then extremely loud wailing from Kristen, "I fell in the water!!!!!!!" Really it was mostly just her hands that were muddy, but she was not very happy nonetheless. Chris helped her get washed off Daddy style.
You can see that her oh-so-supportive Daddy wasn't as upset about the whole incident as Kristen was!
On our return portion of the hike, a few members of our party were not quite so enthusiastic. To keep their minds off of being tired and hungry, I played an alphabet game with Kristen. I gave her a letter and she had to think up something that started with that letter. She zipped through it. Seriously, Chris and I were quite impressed. I asked her how she thought of something so quickly. She replied that she just remembered the alphabet cards in her classroom at school and the pictures that were associated with each letter. Wow! Impressive.
Misha's turn was next. Chris started quizzing her on her multiplication facts. She knows most of them, but she doesn't have them down so that they just trip off her tongue. And before we knew it, we were walking back down the hill to our van.
Kristen was pretty pooped at bed time and went to sleep around 8 am. Chris and I let the other two stay up lots later playing games. I think they will always remember that part of our vacation.
We packed up Monday morning, cleaned up the condo, and headed down to the Silverthorne outlets. Back to Wilson's leather for an extra 30% off. Misha got a cute jacket and Chris...another laptop bag.
We spent time shopping, had lunch, and then headed off on a hike that some lady told Chris would offer great views. Well, yeah, because you sent us straight up the mountain. You can tell that not all of our family were thrilled by this... Seriously, if someone tells you that the Ptarmigan Trail is a great hike with amazing views, think twice before taking your 5-year, make that 10-year old on it.
After 25 minutes of going straight up, we'd had enough. Good workout for the day. Done. We decided to maybe try another hike in Georgetown, but that plan was kiboshed when we got into traffic. Something caused a major slow down and it was three hours later when we finally arrived home. Good weekend away though.