My sister and family left yesterday.  We did a lot of fun things in just a few days.

I have a tradition with my nieces.  We always make cinnamon rolls when they come to visit.  I make the dough and roll it out.  Then they apply butter and cover it with cinnamon and sugar.    Davey joined in too this time.

We made a mess, but it was fun and the best kind of mess.

Davey reunited with Uncle Kev who also became his new Superhero Super Pal.  He had a great great time playing with him.  They read stories,  Kev made up stories, they went to the comic book shop.  It was super fun. 🙂

We climbed Pike’s Peak (or Peaks Pike as David likes to call it).

Or better, I should say we rode up the mountain on the Cog Railway.

This was a beautiful trip.  David took what I thought was the coolest of photos.  He said it was a giant bald eagle.

It was actually a big ole black crow.

We made the trip to Breckenridge, and we had a fun afternoon in Boulder.

We also had some time to play around the house, and Davey had the best fun dancing with Mikayla and Jadyn.  He was so excited that we were able to rent “Just Dance” the Smurf version (He is all into smurfs thanks to McDonald’s latest Happy Meal toy).

Koko Puff even wanted to join in the fun.

Davey was having so much fun that he could not be confined to a single spot for dancin’.

Yesterday morning, they had to begin their trip home.

We made one short stop at an open space near our house so that Mikayla and Jadyn could see a prairie dog village.

I got a few last pictures.  Here Davey is making a run for it!

And hugs.

It’s time now for us to plan a trip to the East Coast!

My sister and family are here.  They arrived Sunday, and we are having a great time!  Monday we went to Pike’s Peak and took a train to the top.  Maybe I’ll post some pictures of that as well, but today we went to Breckenridge.

Davey loves walking hand in hand with his cousins.

We walked around Breckenridge and had lunch.  One of the main things that we’d wanted to do was to go down the alpine slide.  This involved a trip up the mountain in the gondola which is a totally enclosed ski lift.

But.  David doesn’t like heights much.   Davey was sympathetic and kept a tight grip on David’s hand.

Davey had found something to be hilarious here.  I can’t remember what exactly, but I love his forward leaning laugh.

David was not enjoying himself much.  We were all having too much fun with it (He was too though – despite his discomfort of being suspended in the air, high above the ground).

It was at this point that he said, “If you rock the gondola, I’ll knock you out cold.”  You can tell we were worried.

Davey did also keep a watchful eye for his Daddy.

But then it was more fun and a fist bump with Uncle Kev.

Davey was too small for the alpine slide (well we didn’t want to put him on the ski lift.  He could have ridden down with David).  So instead, he bounced in a bouncy house.  Then he “panned gold” with his cousins.  He loved that too.

He thought this was just greater than great.  I don’t think he cared much about the panning, he just liked doing what his cousins were doing.

On the way back, Uncle Kev came up with a great game.  At each stop, the doors would open.  So Kev helpfully used his mind to shut the doors when we’d take off again.   Oh Davey thought this was great.  He wanted to use his mind too.

He really Worked his mind!

Thanks to the great minds, we made it safely off the gondola!

We had a pretty quiet weekend but at the same time we were getting very excited about the arrival of “the cousins”.  We were so excited for my sister and family to arrive.

We spent Sunday cleaning.  I made some refrigerator pickles.  I have to show a picture, because I just think refrigerator pickles are so pretty in their little jars.

I also was inspired by a friend to make a caprese salad.   I got lucky and found some great tomatoes at the farmer’s market.  I just found this salad almost too pretty to eat.  We gobbled it up though.

So that’s the food photo section of the post.

We hung around in the backyard too.  It was a beautiful day especially in the shade.   David showed Davey how to make his superheroes swing on ropes (yarn).

Davey found this hilarious.

He was fascinated.

And then he wanted to try it out for himself.

I was happy to sit, knit, and watch them.

Yesterday afternoon, we decided to go one of our exploration drives.  We hadn’t done this in awhile.  We decided to drive up to Nederland which is about 18 miles west of Boulder.

It was a beautiful drive.   We drove through a canyon most of the way alongside a river.  Boulder Creek?  I don’t even know what it is called.  Lots of rugged rock formations along the way as well.

We came up into Nederland where there was a beautiful lake.  Nederland is a small mountain town.

We walked around a little and looked in shop windows.  Davey liked this one.

We walked through a covered bridge.  Always a fun thing.

We even found a German American restaurant where we decided we wanted to have dinner.

But before we sat down, we first looked over the menu and found it to be pricey and so we decided to pass.  Pricey meals with a 3 year old don’t typically work out too well.

Davey was not happy.  At all.

(He was fine within minutes though and later had pizza in Boulder.)

There looks to be great camping and hiking all around Nederland.  We will try that someday when Davey gets a little older.

That was about it for Nederland.  We had to navigate around several groups of kids (young adults) who were on a search.  We overheard, “I just have to find some weed and I’ll meet you back at the camp”.  Not exactly our scene, and we decided it was about time to head home.

More than our trip to Nederland, I enjoyed the quest for the Lost Ball.  There may be many Lost balls in our future, but I really enjoyed documenting the attempts to get it back.

David and Davey were playing basketball in our backyard, when they accidentally threw the ball into the neighbor’s yard. (I have been asked to edit this to explain that the ball actually BOUNCED into the neighbor’s yard.)

They decided to try to figure out how to retrieve that ball without having to bother our neighbor.

The ball.

Gathering more supplies to retrieve ball.

Another attempt:

There was another attempt which involved a bag and a cord, but finally Davey and I went and asked the neighbor if we could go into his backyard.  We were granted access.

The little things.

Did you know that dragonflies have 3,000 lenses per eye?  Those little guys have some range of vision!

This was just one of the things we learned about dragonflies this morning.

Our rec center sponsors a series of  nature walks for preschoolers, and today we went on our first one.

Davey liked making this little dragonfly with a clothespin, paper, and a pipe cleaner.  We attached a magnet, and I was looking forward to putting it on the fridge.  However, on the way home, he took two wings off to make it a “butterfly”.  Then from there, he just completely dismantled it  (not that there was much dismantling left to do).

Although Davey liked learning about the dragonflies, he was more interested in:

Running with the pack:

Making a new friend and off they went – hand in hand.

But he did really enjoy searching for “dragonfly parts”, and when he found one, he was so excited.  “Mommy!  Mommy! LOOK!”

Tonight we were talking about the day while he was getting sleepy.  We talked about the dragonfly part that he found.  He told me it was green.  I insisted that no it was blue.  We went back and forth for awhile.  I was certain it was blue, but I finally agreed with him to end the discussion.

I should have listened to him.

They sat for a short story.  He enjoyed that too.

Seems like such a long-legged kid here!

I always like to get a close-up if I can.

We’ll have to do that again!

Today was our wedding anniversary.  It’s an all-inclusive our as Davey felt it was his anniversary too.  He wanted cupcakes, cake, balloons and streamers.  We did make a cake.  As usual, all he was interested in was the icing.

He likes all opportunities to celebrate.

Tonight we went on a Family Moonlight Walk.  It was sponsored by our town rec center.  We met at dusk.  There were probably 15 people?  Davey was the youngest child, but he didn’t know it.  He jumps right in there with the older ones and doesn’t mind telling them what to do.

“Mommy, he’s talking too loud!”

“Hey!  Don’t kill that cricket!”

He’s very interested in the other kids and wants to move along in their pack.  David and I were instructed to stay back.  He kinda moved to the back to indicate how far back we should stay.

We learned about bats.  For awhile, we looked for bats and saw several.  Then all the kids became interested in identifying every bug they saw on the sidewalk.  All flashlights would point at this small bug.  Davey would squat with them and they would identify the creatures which were primarily crickets, roly polies, and daddy long legs.  They had great fun with this though.

Davey had a new flashlight (Buzz Lightyear!) so he was pretty much set for any scenario.

I wish I could have taken pictures.

Davey was up way past his bedtime and when he did get to bed, he fell asleep within 10 minutes.   As did David!