As most of you already know, we were supposed to take a trip up to Denver last month to meet our newest Little Niece Bailey and to Celebrate Brandon’s 30th Birthday. Well, due to some major sicknesses that were going around our house we were unable to make it up. Thankfully we all recovered and we finally made our way up to Denver. Yay! We didn’t get to have the surprise party for Brandon like originally planned but we did get to meet our new little niece and got to spend lots of good time with all our family. It was such a fun trip and the perfect little get away I think we were all in desperate need of. We left Wednesday evening at 5:30pm and arrived at 12 O’ Clock midnight on the dot. We were supposed to leave this morning to head back but changed plans at the very last minute and decided to head back last night. Brandon and I are both big fans of night driving so we hit the road at 8:30pm and arrived at 2:30 this morning. A bit crazy I know. I am sure this goes without saying, but we are EXHAUSTED!!! So due to extreme exhaustion and way too many pictures to fit onto 1 post, I am going to break this blog post into two parts. So this is part 1: Day Thursday & Friday of our trip. I will try and post Saturday and Sunday sometime this week once all my laundry is caught up and we have some food stocked back up in our fridge. Priorities friends, priorities. First off I want to mention….
The kids did AMAZING on the drive up. Autumn fell asleep around 8:45pm and we never heard a peep out of her, not even when she was awake. Owen watched a few movies and finally fell asleep at 10:45pm. He is my little night owl if he is given the opportunity to stay up. He also did great and just watched his movies and kept to himself with no complaining. Yay for a quite successful drive up.
Thursday:
Thursday morning we had a very exciting outing planned that Owen was very much looking forward to. So while Brandon and I were busy packing up and getting ready, the kids sat quietly on Papa Bruce’s (Brandon’s Dad) couch watching cartoons….with their beanies on of course. Hahaha.
Once we had everything all packed and ready to go, we were off to the Denver Zoo!!! Brandon has been dying to take us to the Denver Zoo for quite sometime now but it never seems to fit into our schedules when we go up to visit, so this time we made it a point to plan for it in advance. The high was only 42 with a slight chance of snow, but we were going snow or no snow. It was a bit cold but not unbearable. Nothing a Jacket, Gloves and a Beanie couldn’t take care of. It was such a fun, big, beautiful zoo with lots to see. I am so so glad we were able to go, we had a blast. It was so nice we basically had the whole zoo to ourselves and we got to see everything. We stayed for a full three hours and then it started to snow on us and the temperature started to really drop so we decided to pack it up and head back to Papa Bruce’s house for a nap. Here are some pictures from our time at the zoo (Beware, there are A LOT)!
Kangaroo’s
The Leopard & Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep
Owen was beyond excited to see the Penguins. This is his favorite animal and we don’t have these at our zoo in Albuquerque. Needless to say he LOVED this part!
Things we learned while at the penguin exhibit; Autumn’s a little taller than a Fairy Penguin, Owen is almost as tall as an Emperor Penguin, and Mommy is still not 5 feet even with Uggs on.
I mainly had to share this picture because there is a funny story that goes along with it. So Autumn was so happy standing with her hands on the glass watching these monkeys. Well, one came up and started banging on the glass right in front of her and scared her half to death. It wasn’t funny at the time, but it sure is funny to think about now. Haha. Poor Autumn! I don’t think she is very fond of Monkey’s anymore.
This was awesome. We got to the Low Land and Silver Back Gorillas just as they were feeding them. It was so fun to watch them eat their Lettuce, Tomatoes and Popcorn. We could have stayed watching them all day.
Camels, Giraffes, Tigers…
Hippos, Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears. I am telling you we saw it all.
We even made it just in time to watch them train a baby Seal for a show he will be doing this summer. The Kids LOVED this!!!
Eeeew!
Dory and Nemo!
Owen also really liked the Komodo Dragon. He thought it was so cool when he stuck out his nasty lookin’ tongue.
Check out how huge this tortoise was!!!
And that concludes our trip to the Denver Zoo. Can’t wait to go back!
After we all took a much needed nap we headed over to the Elementary School Mimi Teaches at to visit Mimi (Brandon’s Mom) in between parent teacher conferences. Mimi loved walking around showing off her Grandkids to all her teacher friends. She even got to take the kids to the Book Fair that was going on at her school and bought them each a new book. They are so spoiled. After that we headed over to visit GG (Brandon’s Grandma) at the Rehabilitation Center she was staying at. GG had back surgery three weeks ago so she has been in rehab to get her strength back before going home. It was a beautiful facility and all the staff members were wonderful and super friendly. When we got there, Auntie Rose, Papa Nick, and Aunt Bev were all there too. The kids had so much fun visiting with all the family.
Autumn really does love her GG, she is just too much of a wiggle worm busy body to sit still on her lap. Lol.
The kids wandering the halls with their crazy Aunt Bev.
Later that night, we headed back to Papa Bruce’s house where we ordered pizza for dinner and enjoyed a night of games and built a nice warm fire.
Owen was so anxious to show Papa Bruce how well he can read now.
Playing some Zingo, one of Owen’s favorite games.
And building a nice warm fire. Brandon’s favorite thing to do at his Dad’s house in the winter!
Way to go babe!
Friday:
Friday we didn’t really have much on the agenda. We took it easy in the morning and took our time getting ready. Once we finally got around to getting dressed we decided to head over to check out the new Ikea store that opened in Denver last July. Brandon’s sister needed to pick up a few things there too so she decided to meet us there for a morning of shopping. For those of you who have never been to an Ikea store let me just say they are awesome. They have a really cool free day care play area for potty trained children so we let Owen choose if he wanted to shop or play. Surprise surprise he wanted to play, so we checked him in and went shopping. Once we picked him up we all headed upstairs to eat lunch in their restaurant that has really yummy inexpensive food. It was such a fun morning.
This play area was awesome. Autumn was really upset she couldn’t stay and play with her brother. Owen had an absolute blast and was super sad when he had to leave. Ikea is awesome!
The left is Brandon, the kids and all our fun finds at Ikea. Yay! On the right is Brandon with our new niece Bailey who is just 7.5 weeks old. Isn’t she just precious?! This was our first time meeting her. There are tons more pictures of her to come in my next post, we spent all Saturday and Sunday with them so I promise you will get your Bailey pictures!
After Ikea we headed back for nap time. Once the kids got up my hubby and the kids dropped me off at the Light Rail train so I could go do some shopping alone downtown at the 16th street mall. My hubby is so awesome….
Let’s just say I spent most of my time at H&M! LOVE this store and really really really wish we had one here in Albuquerque. I was gone for about 3.5 hours and really enjoyed my alone time to shop.
Thanks again hubby!
While I was busy having fun shopping, Brandon took the kids to a place he used to love going to growing up…Fat City. It is basically like a Hinkle Family Fun Center for all you New Mexican’s. They have arcade games, play areas to climb on, bowling, putt putt, a huge ball pit, and etc. The kids loved it and made sure to tell me all about it since I wasn’t there. Brandon only had his cell phone so the pics aren’t the best but here are a couple…
Such a fun two days let me tell you, and I still have two more days worth of fun to show you! Check back in later this week to see the remainder of our trip and for the adorable pictures of Bailey I know a lot of you are waiting for! Off to bed now!!!
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