Somewhat Annual Fall Trip to Estes

Yesterday, we finally headed up to Estes Park. We try to do so each fall...to take in the beautiful colors and eat at our favorite places...maybe grab a game of mini golf or go on a hike. Things didn't go quite as planned this year. But, we managed and had a lovely time altogether. Here's what I mean:

- The detour we tried to take (because they closed down our usual route for more permanent repairs after the flooding a few years ago) ended up being a dead end that cost us about an hour. But, that just caused us to rearrange our plans and hit another out of town favorite for lunch at Proto's Pizza down in Longmont. 

- After finally making it up to Estes and browsing at the shops (which the boys humored me with), we stopped at Hayley's for ice cream, as is tradition. :) Then we tried to get in a game of mini golf, only to discover that our favorite little course has closed permanently. The owner retired...which is sad for us but we wish him well.

- Since mini golf was out, we headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. We left it too late this year for any of the colors; we knew that in advance but hadn't been able to find time any sooner. Instead, we revisited Bear Lake just to say hi:

But it had started raining at that point and was overcast and chilly. With Asher not feeling great and Noah asleep in the van, we didn't stay long.

- Then we headed back to town for an early dinner at our favorite restaurant in Estes:

Hooray!!

- So we left Estes about 6:00, feeling pretty good about the day. And then we got stuck in traffic for almost an hour. We *think* the little town of Lyons may have had a Halloween parade and closed down the main street...which happens to be the only way out of Estes (on this side of the Rockies) now that the Loveland route is closed. We were not thrilled. But, we survived and made a quick stop at my brother's in Longmont to drop something off with him, use the bathroom and meet his new kitten (that he proclaimed the cutest kitten ever).

- And then we finally made it home a bit after 9...much later than originally anticipated and having used up pretty much the entire day. But. It was a day spent altogether and we enjoyed each other's company and got to eat yummy food...so all was good. :)  

(Note...yes, we ended up spending way more time in the van than we'd planned on. But, actually, I rather appreciated that. For all that I complain occasionally about time spent driving boys everywhere, I really do enjoy the captive time with them. While they were captive yesterday, we had some nice discussions and played many rounds of "I'm Thinking Of"...which is like 20 Questions but without a limit on the number of questions. At various points, my turns were spent thinking of historical figures or geographical locations...which Noah declared cheating as I was just trying to sneak schoolwork in, lol.)

Four on Friday

Quickly popping in to do some catching up...

1. Last Saturday, Nathan, Asher and Ocean met again to finish their "first-draft" flyer for Science Olympiad. They'll be building more before the actual competition, but this was their starting point. After they finished, we took it over to our gym's indoor basketball court area to test it out. :) It flew, though not as they were hoping. So. There will be some tweaking and redesign...which they expected and is good. 

2. The following day, Noah and I journeyed down to Denver for the first JOAD tournament of the season. Noah's in the middle:

As starting points for the season go, it wasn't horrible. And we're feeling pretty okay about the fact that Micah opted not to do JOAD this season, as his assigned shooting time would have been Saturday at 8am (the furthest shooting time from Noah's Sunday at 1pm possible), lol. 

After he finished, we headed over to IKEA for a quick stop to get a replacement frame for Noah's kitchen chair. (Because, of course, it recently decided to join the list of things around the house that need replacing, lol.)

3. I finished my necklace challenge! It took me about 5.5 weeks of wearing a different necklace every day, but I did it. :) Really, it was pretty fun. It reminded me of what I have so that, hopefully, I'll do better at using them going forward. I'm going to tackle scarves next but think I'll give myself some wiggle room to account for warm weather. (It's been too warm lately to wear many of my scarves.) I counted 24 scarves, so will give myself all of November to wear each of them.

4. Everything else here is just continuing as usual...busy with homeschooling and karate and archery practice and swimming laps and Science Olympiad and all. Noah's had a couple of tests this week and also his advising appointment for spring semester. Nathan's busy with work and I've managed to meet a friend for lunch, get my hair cut and make it to the gym four times this week. Yup. Busy. :) 

TGIF!

Tradition

Yesterday I continued my tradition of taking leaf pictures with my boys. It makes me happy. :)

We started with the somewhat now obligatory "pile of leaves and then throwing leaves at each other" pictures. We also jumped...

Yes, the younger two thought Noah should do his jumping with one of them on his back. Unsurprisingly, it worked better when Micah was the one on his back, lol.

And then I asked the boys to each find me the most beautiful fall leaf so I could take some individual shots. They didn't look very hard for beautiful leaves. ;) But, they cooperated enough that I got shots of each of them. (Asher's "leaf" shots involved weirder than normal pictures...which is fine...but I ended up preferring this solo shot of him from a bit later in the walk.)

And then I decided I needed a picture of me jumping with the boys like last year. (And Noah decided he was done being in pictures at this point, lol.)

After that, we continued walking over to the neighborhood park. The boys had brought along wiffle bats and balls and proceeded to challenge each other with who could hit it furthest and fastest and other such challenges. On the walk home, Asher was simply, thoroughly, delighted with his solution to carrying the gear...

 
And that was our annual leaf walk. :)  

Since last Thursday...

Just recording things... :)

Last Thursday, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I wish my dad were here to see it. :) He'd have been thrilled. (See some about his love of Dylan here and here.) To celebrate for him, the boys and I listened to Blowin' in the Wind.

On Friday, I took this picture:

Last week, you see, Karate West was doing their annual pictures. I snapped this one of the demo team members who showed up (we're missing four) Friday night.

Saturday morning, Noah headed over to CEC to take the PSAT. 

On Sunday, I went for a run (gorgeous fall weather!) and did haircuts for Nathan, Noah and Micah. That evening, Noah had his first dress rehearsal of the JOAD season:

This morning, this is what I got as I headed out to take boys to Options:

As you can see, Micah's pretty delighted with his new haircut and I pinned Asher down to let me do his hair since it was sticking up all over the place, lol. 

And I'll also tell you that after today I have seven necklaces left in my personal challenge. :) (I totally wore a string of pearls to Noah's dress rehearsal yesterday, lol.) It's been lovely remembering what I have and a fun challenge. I'm thinking I may have to tackle all my scarves next... ;) 

Miller Farms

In typical Colorado fashion...yesterday...on the one day of the week where it got cold (like 20 degrees colder than all the other days that were full of sunshine and tee shirt and shorts temperatures)...we went to Miller Farms with our Science Olympiad team. (We'd had it on the calendar for a month. Of course.) We were maybe not quite prepared for the weather, though we grabbed what jackets we had from the van. ;) But. Asher and Micah and I had a great time. 

(Note. We've actually been to Miller Farms multiple times. Neither boy claims to have any memory of this. I'm finding this is one of those parenting things...I *know* I've done things with boys but they don't remember the experience so I end up doing them again, lol.)

We started out with the hayride...with stops at four or five different fields where everyone got off to harvest what they wanted. As homeschoolers, our entry fee included five bags of produce for each person. We, surprisingly, made use of that allotment...

Up top, you see more than half the team confirming that they could see their breath. Yes, it was that cold. Then Micah was picking some peppers. (That first field had peppers, squash, melons, onions, scallions, eggplants, tomatoes, and kale...that I saw. Micah started planning out menus, lol.)

Our next stop was pie pumpkins. Micah's contemplating making pie. :) 

After that we stopped at sweet corn (and green beans and cabbage and dill), where we may have grabbed more than just a bag each. :) We had corn on the cob with dinner last night, btw.

The next stop was potatoes...which got messy, as we hadn't come prepared with a trowel or shovel or pitchfork like some of the other homeschool families on our same hayride. Micah didn't mind digging, though, and has plans for those lovely little potatoes. 

Our final field had carrots and beets and brussel sprouts. And then we headed back, loaded our bags into wagons and got everything into our vehicles. (Must say that having older boys comes in handy and makes things easier!)

The kids, then, wanted to hang out a bit and explore the other offerings. We took pictures in the giant chair, playing in the pit full of old Croc pieces, exploring a weird space saucer thing, with a strange giant dung beetle, and on some sort of old plane. There were plenty of other skeletons of planes, helicopters, trucks, etc along with a corn maze (in popcorn corn), too. 

 
And then, finally, we headed out...stopping on the way home to get something warm into us. :) Whew. Could have done with slightly warmer temperatures and/or a bit more preparation on my part, but it was a really good afternoon. Loved seeing the boys so happily interacting with their teammates and that Micah was so excited about figuring out how to use all of the produce. :)

(Btw, sorry the pictures aren't bigger...been having issues with Squarespace this week regarding loading pics and resizing. Ugh.)