Time away

You might have noticed I missed a couple of posts I’d regularly do, as well as the second issue of the newsletter for June. My family and I took some time off for summer vacation — something that we have a fair amount of flexibility with, as my husband is in academia and I’m a freelancer, meaning that “some time” was roughly a month away.

So what did we do?

First we drove to Colorado to spend time with my in-laws, including such things as a trip to the Denver Zoo (Our daughter was beyond thrilled at seeing a real, live polar bear! Her brother was more taken with the Komodo dragon and the tapir.) and the discovery of a bean-to-bar chocolate shop in Fort Collins.

After that, it was off to Nevada to spend almost a week with my mom (I did mention this), and we did things like take the kids to the Discovery Museum and go to the wildlife rescue Animal Ark. (The girl was every bit as thrilled at seeing the jaguar.)

On our way back east, we stopped and spent a day at Dinosaur National Monument. It’s a bit out of the way, on the northern border between Utah and Colorado, but if you get a chance, you should definitely check it out. The enclosed rock wall that remains from excavations (with dinosaur bones you can touch!) is really amazing.

Then we spent more time in Colorado, which included a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. We even hiked from the visitor center parking lot (11.796 feet) to the nearby summit (12,005 feet). We also went to see Inside Out, which was quite the emotional movie, and we watched the Fourth of July fireworks at Estes Park.

All in all, it was an excellent vacation, and I wouldn’t have said no to another month of it, but there are responsibilities — band meetings for our son, teaching for my husband, and freelance gigs for me. And coming back when we did let us put our daughter in the last session of swimming lessons at the local pool this summer, so that worked well, too.

I’ll post more photos later this week!