Yesterday

Just a quick post to say that I hope you all had a lovely Easter and were able to enjoy time with family. We had a nice, low-key day here...managed to have all three boys home for the day. 

My "Easter baskets" were very much on the practical side...toiletries, some candy and one or two things specific to each boy (like shirts, ramen and car things...very exciting, lol). I didn't even bother putting them into some sort of nice container. In the past, I've used things like dump trucks, sand buckets, bath caddies or lunch bags but this year just couldn't think of anything they'd actually use that could hold the items I'd gathered. So...I used paper grocery bags and a used Amazon box. Viola. :) 

We also had a modified egg hunt. Rather than the stepped up egg hunt that I did last year (where I actually hid things pretty well, lol), I hid a bunch of tiny plastic ducks and offered up "a buck a duck." This went better than last year when I tried to keep things even and each boy could only find his own eggs, and Asher came out victorious with three more ducks than Micah. (Noah, not really needing the money, opted to only find a few ducks and was entertained, instead, by watching his brothers.) In case you're wondering, yes, there are still seven unfound ducks, lol. (I know where three of them are but actually have no idea where the others are.)

Beyond that, Nathan fed his squirrels and us (we have too much food left!)...we watched three episodes of a show we've been watching together...I managed to get a group photo...and we played some Jackbox games. Then, Nathan drove Micah back to Boulder to end his spring break and we all did some prep for the coming week. 

Blessed to have been able to celebrate another Easter with all three boys here, as I know logistics will make that more difficult as they get older. Now off to tackle April! :)

Thankful Thursday

Just a quick post today. We've been doing a lot of shopping around here lately...

1. Noah bought a new car. Back on the 18th (after weeks and weeks of research, a number of test drives (mostly while Nathan and I were in Vegas) and discussions with the dealership), Noah bought himself a new car. It's a Mazda 3 all wheel drive hatchback. Thanks to his time working at the bank and his general good financial sense, he got a good financing deal. He's happy. :) 

Thankful that he's adulting. :) Also, him having his own car means that it wasn't problematic for Micah to take our Audi back to Boulder for part of spring break this week, lol. 

2. Other shopping. I've also been doing plenty of other shopping...for travel items after our Vegas trip and before upcoming trips, for Easter basket items for boys, and for Micah's infusions. Look! I bought this for Micah:

It's a hoodie with zippers on the sleeves so that he can still wear a hoodie while having his infusions. (It's often quite chilly in the infusion clinic and the actual infusion is cold liquid, too.) I found this lovely company called Be Well that makes them. They also make hoodies with zippers for chemo ports and other infusion related items. So happy that a company like this exists!

3. Date lunch. It's not exactly shopping, but Nathan and I had our date lunch today at Stone Flower...where The Fox & The Crow used to be. We were quite happy with our meal and particularly happy with our dessert...

It's a crema catalana...a creme brulee with jam and honeycomb. It was DELICIOUS. So thankful to have succumbed and tried it in the first place. (We were almost "good" and didn't order dessert, lol.) 

Mostly, I'm just very aware of how blessed we are to be shopping in the first place. Thankful. :)

Thankful Thursday: TBT edition

Happy Pi Day, everyone! Today's Thankful Thursday is a Throwback Thursday (TBT) edition. Here are five random March memories...

32 years ago. Thirty two years ago today, Nathan and I met. :) So very thankful for that!

(I've shared this photo before but it's the only one I have of us from that year. It was taken about a month after we met. I explained our initial meeting more here.)

21 years ago. Our first winter in Colorado introduced us to Colorado's March snowstorms. We're in the middle of one now, though Fort Collins isn't getting hit nearly as much as areas around us. This is Noah at our rental 21 years ago...

It was A LOT of snow. Thankful that I don't mind the snow most of the time, that mostly it melts not long after the big snow, that my own driveway didn't require shoveling this morning, and that all of mine no longer require assistance putting on or taking off snow gear, lol.

14 years ago. Fourteen years ago, we road-tripped to San Diego. We saw lots of things and took lots of pictures and bought lots of Legos. :) (You can read more about it in March and April 2010 posts here on my blog.)

Thankful for the memories, the time spent together, and that once upon a time boys cooperated with dressing in coordinating outfits when on vacation so I could find them easier and so pictures looked better, lol.

10 years ago. Ten years ago, in a bout of adulting, we redid our master bedroom. It was overdue and fabulous. To this day, I still do a happy sigh when I walk into the room. :)

(Here's the blog post with before and afters...along with the posts before and after it, lol.)

Last weekend. Not so much of a throwback but last weekend Asher and Noah worked together to build Asher's new computer. (His laptop suffered a critical injury while in his backpack when Asher rolled to avoid a collision on his One Wheel with a pedestrian who was on his phone and not paying attention. He decided to replace it with a desktop computer instead of another laptop.)

Thankful both that they have the knowledge to do all of that and that they did it together. :) 

(Asher's on spring break this week so has had the time to work on setting things up on his computer. He's also been working part time back at his old YMCA job since that school district isn't on spring break right now, though they did cancel school today on account of the snow.)

Meanwhile, the CU Boulder Taekwondo club posted this on their Instagram story this week...

Yes, that's Micah in red. Thankful that he's found his people. :)

Okay, that's enough from me for now. Hope you're all staying warm and that you take a moment to reminisce today.

Vegas, part 3

So, that was our trip to Vegas. It was good. Here are some random thoughts and observations to wrap up:

According to my watch, we walked more than 33 miles (more than 80,000 steps) in the just under 72 hours we were in Vegas. A lot of those steps were actual stairs...as we generally opted to take the stairs rather than the escalators whenever possible (since they were faster and since we were eating plenty, lol). (If walking The Strip, you have to cross the street at elevated walkways so there are escalators and stairs to and from each of those.) We had the option of taking a bus or tram or monorail along The Strip but found that, though the app made it easy, we were usually quicker just walking once you accounted for the time waiting for things and boarding them. Very thankful for our health and ability to just walk everywhere.

Americans are not great at being pedestrians, lol. Maybe it's just Vegas but we've been to other touristy places in Europe and the US and it was definitely the worst we've experienced in Vegas...people not understanding the flow of pedestrian traffic, people distracted by their phones, people just stopping in the middle of everything for no good reason, etc.

The choices of footwear were fascinating. (We were both happy with our good walking shoes but did decide that it wouldn't be the worst thing to bring an alternate pair to be able to switch each day for trips with lots of walking.)

Colorado's generally a health conscious state and we embrace that. We decided it's good for us to sometimes go to places like Vegas so that we can better appreciate our fresh air and good drinking water and ease of eating healthy. (It's rare for us to see anyone smoking in public where we live so walking through casinos and streets full of people smoking was a little crazy. Our drinking water here in Fort Collins is directly from the Rocky Mountains; we're a little spoiled. And there's definitely a focus on healthy eating here that was not present in Vegas. It was tricky to find healthier options in Vegas for sure.)

(To be clear, I understand that not all of Vegas is what we experienced on The Strip. For my purposes, I'm just talking about The Strip since that's where we were.)

We miss our mattress whenever we're traveling. We've gotten pretty good at traveling and have honed a lot of our little conveniences and such, but there's no way to pack a good mattress.

We packed a lot into our time there. We had a working list of options and decided on the Neon Museum, the Atomic Museum and the Cirque du Soleil "O" show as our main things and would recommend every one of those. 

Aside from our main attractions and our eating, we walked to and through most of the hotels/casinos on The Strip. It was interesting to see how they differed along with the commonalities. Also, having actually been to Venice and Paris and Rome, we feel safe in saying that the vibe in each of the properties modeled after those places was a very Americanized take, lol. 

Three days was definitely enough for us in Vegas. We'd go back for a few specific things (like to go to a BattleBots bout) but we'd stay fewer than three days. :) 

We decided that maybe a good tagline for Vegas would be "too much," lol. There was just too much of everything...too much noise, too much visual stimulation (screens everywhere!), too much indulgence, too much waste...just too much, lol. 

All in all, we had a lovely little break and enjoyed ourselves and our time together. And now we're happy to be home. :)

Vegas, part 2

On Wednesday, we walked a lot. ;) We started with walking past the BattleBots arena and continuing on to the Atomic Museum (about another mile east of The Strip). We spent a good bit of time taking in the impressive exhibits and information there. If you have the time, we recommend it for sure. Because we'd not timed things well and were pretty hungry when we finished at the museum, we caught a quick Uber back to The Strip (fascinating driver...wouldn't have minded having a drink with him as we're sure he's led a very interesting life and has stories aplenty). We walked through the Paris hotel and settled on having a late lunch at Mon Ami Gabi. It was seriously delicious and our patio table had a great view of the Bellagio fountains. 

(We were glad to have watched the fountain show on Monday night, as they didn't run at all on Tuesday. Apparently a yellow-billed loon found its way into the fountain lake...and, as one of the 10 rarest birds that regularly breed on the mainland US...the Bellagio had shut down operations in consideration of the bird's safety. They think it got blown off course by the high winds just before...decided the fountain show wasn't hurting the bird so started back up during the day on Wednesday for a period...and then shut things down again while they wait for the bird to move on.)

After our fabulous late lunch, we walked across The Strip to explore the Bellagio and the Cosmopolitan a bit...saw the world's largest chocolate fountain but weren't able to see the conservatory as they were in the process of switching things out from their Lunar New Year display to a more Easter themed display. 

From there, we stopped briefly to make sure to check in for our flight the next day then continued on down The Strip to the south. We went to the giant M&M store, saw the Big Apple Coaster across from there, found a fun Stranger Things store, took a picture with the Statue of Liberty, and walked through the Excaliber and the Luxor before turning around and walking back to our hotel.

We had a nice dinner at the Tilted Kilt on the Linq Promenade (just outside The Flamingo) then went back to our room to chill for a bit and change before our 9:30 Cirque du Soleil "O" show across the street at The Bellagio. (Another reason we picked The Flamingo hotel was knowing that it was just across from where our show would be. It was nice being able to just walk back after the show let out.)

Photos weren't allowed once the show started but we managed to get these...

The show was soooo amazing! "O" is a water show so there was plenty of flipping and diving and just overall impressive feats. Wow.

On Thursday, we checked out and took our bags down to the hotel's baggage hold then continued in our walking tour of The Strip. We ventured thru The Venetian (with their indoor canals and interesting displays), Treasure Island, The Mirage, the Forum Shoppes, and Caesar's Palace. We ended up having our last Vegas meal at Caesar's at Gordon Ramsay's Pub & Grill, and it didn't disappoint. (Plus, our waiter was great and had wonderful recommendations.)

The last photo is of me in one of the many "sugar" stores around Vegas...because I just thought it was fun. We didn't buy any candy. :) 

After that, we collected our bags, caught an Uber and got to the airport. Our flight was slightly delayed due to a shift in the winds or something but made it to Denver just fine. We grabbed some food at the airport before shuttling back to our car and driving home. Fortunately, the forecast snow wasn't too bad and was only just starting during our drive. 

And that was Wednesday and Thursday. Whew. I'll be back with one last wrap up post...