Hello! It's Tuesday. It is rainy here, and warm. Grant and Abbie are playing with toy dinosaurs, and have a blanket to represent "the muddy part". Abbie has a "pretend scallion bite". I think she means scorpion. Hee hee.
Sunday evening we came home from Colorado. We had a good visit with Brother. When we first got there, we were locked out of Brother's house! I was pretty stressed out at that point. I knew that if Brother's schedule had suddenly changed to the other shift that he wouldn't be off work until 11pm! But it hadn't. He was just running late. We ran off to Sonic, and when we came back to try again, he was home. We spent the evening hanging out together. Thursday, he went to work again, and Josh took me and the kids to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It was great. If you haven't been, they have quite a large herd of giraffes, and raised walkways so you can see them at face level. You can even feed them! Although it wasn't nearly as impressive as the St. Louis Zoo, and wasn't free, I thought it was a very well kept and well stocked zoo. It is also a good place to go if you need to burn some calories: it's on the side of the mountain, and has lots of uphill walking. The giraffes were spectacular, of course, and they also had some extremely healthy looking okapi, a tapir, a very cheerful baby orangutan, mountain lions, and a clan of naked mole rats, to name a few.
After the zoo, we drove through the Air Force Academy. We went in the south gate, stopped off at the airport and saw some monumental planes. We also were super fortunate in our timing, because it was flight training day, and there were several planes towing gliders. Then, the gliders would be released, and the "baby pilots" would practice steering and landing. We also went through the visitor center. It has a great little gift shop. The whole base is very scenic.
For dinner, we went with Brothers to his favorite local Italian resteraunt, Zio's. It was very yummy. The entrees are enormous, and then Josh talked Brother into getting dessert. (It wasn't hard to do.) He'd never tried the Italian Wedding Cake, so he got one. It was as big as a book! I laughed.
Friday, we were supposed to stay at Brother's place while some guys came to do some warrantee work, but they called early and cancelled. So I took Josh and the kids to Garden of the Gods. We stopped off at the first parking place and did a lot of walking. I took lots of pictres, too. Then we drove through the park and stopped again at Balancing Rock and walked again. Everyone had a great time.
After the garden, we went to Manitou Springs. We went through the Castle Museum first. There was a fire fighters' exhibit in the basement, and then the regular caslte above. The castle had its own chapel, which was interesting, and a room for the priest. The great hall was nice, and there was a conservatory with large windows facing the mountains. My favorite, though, was a little enclosed area off a closet under the stairs. It had the only original wallpaper in the house: blue and green fleur de lis....made with Paris Green dye. In case you haven't already been informed, Paris Green is an arsenic-based poison, that nowadays is used as an insecticide. (Obviously, this wall was separated by a locked glass.) The plaque stated that to this day, there have never been any sightings of insects in the room.
There was also a tea room. I made Josh take me there for a snack. I had tea. The kids had lemonade. We all had finger sandwiches and scones. It was so great! Well, I thought it was great. Josh gets total husband brownie points for taking me. I'm going to have to bring my grandmother next time.
On our way back to Brother's, it rained. In fact, there were tornado warnings.
Josh wanted a cheeseburger, so Brother took us to Red Robin for dinner. I wasn't hungry, but I ate the giant burger anyway. This was not a good plan. Oink!
We watched the old Clash of the Titans movie, and then showed Brother Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog for the first time. He loved it, just as I suspected.
We were going to go to the Colorado Renaissance Festival on our last morning, but it was 45 degrees and very rainy. We could accept cold and we could accept rain, but not at the same time. We had breakfast at Einstein Bros Bagels, and I had an extra yummy hot chocolate that burned my tongue. We walked around at the mall and some bookstores instead, and took the kids to the play area. We said goodbye to Brother at the Barnes and Noble. I love that store... Then, we drove to Salina.
Just before we got there, we encountered another tornado warning. For a while, we were between two storms, and the sun was setting. There was a spectacular double complete rainbow. I couldn't take a picture through the windshield because the darkness made the flash go off, so I took a video of it.
The Best Western hotel in Salina is filthy and makes your skin crawl. But the employees are super friendly, the breakfast is good (that room is actually clean), and best of all, the indoor pool is almost as warm as a hot tub. It's wonnnnnnderrrrfullll! We swam in the morning, and then I drove the rest of the way home.
Yesterday, Josh started his new job! He is in training with the regular security guards right now, and then later he will be trained by the communications department. So far, happy, happy! The only part that still irks me is that I've been asking about the schedule since the FIRST interview, and he's already had his first day of work and still can't tell me what his schedule is going to be like - not even the training schedule. I had to let mom arrange to watch the kids this weekend, even though she's done more than anyone could possibly think to ask for this summer already.
Poor Mom. She quit smoking again, but also had a very bad cold. But she sounded much better today. She's getting better. (Now my dad is catching it!!)
This weekend is taiko, taiko, and TAIKO! Friday is the Zoo, Saturday Drunken Fish, and Sunday Missouri Scholars Academy. And tonight is practice for these shows. I'm eager to get started! I'm on a new part for Tobihi, but otherwise it's stuff I'm very familiar with. (I wish I hadn't eaten that Red Robin Cheeseburger, though!!)
By the way, remember how Josh's uncle kept asking him to come and help Grandma move home every time he had a day off, and it never actually happened? She moved home while we were gone. Guess Josh wasn't needed so much after all. He visited after work yesterday and said she's looking good.
Well, if I ever get an idea of Josh's schedule, we might plan a karaoke night. Wanna come?
Hope you have a wonderful Tuesday! Take care.
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