Camping!!

We have lived in Colorado, the state of huge, beautiful mountains for over a year now and we FINALLY made it out for our inaugural camping trip.  It was quite a chore getting the camper ready and mom was so out of practice that she forgot to pack to marshmallows!  We ended up stopping at a gas station on the way to get them 'cause you can't camp without s'mores!  She did remember the beer though so not all was lost.

We went camping at the Arkansas River Headwater recreation area.  It wasn't quite the pine tree/mountain site we were hoping for but it grew on us pretty quickly.  We had a nice secluded sight that was a short walk from the river with amazing views of Mt. Princeton and another "fourteener" that we don't know the name of.  Mom loaded the camera up with all kinds of pictures of them.

We barely got ourselves settled when I dragged everyone down to the river for some fishing.  I am a fishing machine and couldn't get enough, even though I didn't catch a single thing all weekend.  That was not for lack of trying though.  We started at the river by our campsite, drove to another fishing site, then another.

We ended our day of fish hunting here at Hecla Junction which was very, very pretty but had no fish.  We managed to catch a dog fish named Haile and two shoe fish but nothing we could actually eat.

We finally headed back to our campsite, started up the fire and got to cooking s'mores.  A good day!

We had a really good night sleep (which isn't saying much because we never sleep well camping so anything more than an hour or two of sleep, counts as good) and started the day with more fishing.  This time, mom and I headed down to the river but mom isn't as good at this fishing thing as dad is.  She won't touch the worms and I won't either so we weren't expecting much.

After breakfast, we headed to the town of Salida so dad could get in a practice bike ride before his Sunday race.  Mom and I hung out at the park with Haile, wandered around the farmer's market and soaked up small town Colorado.
When dad was done riding, he found us a nice fishing lake.  Everyone else was catching trout left and right.  Except for us.  It was another bad day for us.

 (This is what happens when your dog is almost 14, spends most of her day sleeping in her kennel and her family decides to take her camping/hiking.  You get a dog so exhausted she won't move from the floor of camper)

We spent the a lot of the afternoon in our camper waiting out the thunderstorm but it was really relaxing and we caught up on some napping and some card playing.

On Sunday, dad entered the Colorado State Bike Championship so we spent the morning cheering him on and then headed home.

We were tired and dirty and smelly but it was a great weekend and we are planning our next one.  With marshmallows.

First One Then The Other!

We finally have something exciting to report in the Land of Goedel!  We were having a nice, quiet, boring kind of week.  I had two loose teeth for several weeks and had been diligently working away at them and was getting a little tired of the whole process as were mom and dad who were being forced to do "tooth checks" about 50 times a day.  This involved them sticking their fingers in my mouth and wiggling my teeth back and forth to make sure they were still loose.  I think mom finally got tired enough of it that she sent me into the bathroom on Wednesday and told me to "wiggle the heck out of that tooth and get it out already!"  So I did.  Next thing mom knows, I'm yelling from the bathroom that it's out!  She comes running in to find me on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  I was completely unprepared for all the blood and it freaked me out more than a little.  I kind of hyper-ventilated, kind of cried, felt like I was going to throw up.  Just basically traumatized.

That went on for about 15 minutes when mom finally reminded me that now, the Tooth Fairy can come.  Oh yeah!  The Tooth Fairy!  I had completely forgotten all about that!  That got me over my trauma very quickly and life was good again.  The fairy let me keep my tooth and brought me some cash- I was up at 5 AM on Thursday looking for it so thank goodness it was there!

Life returned to normal pretty quickly after that- back to day camp on Thursday and Friday.  Mom came to pick me up on Friday afternoon, I dragged her to the vending machines, begging for a treat (didn't get one of course), telling mom all about my day.  About 20 minutes into my monologue, I just happen to mention that I lost my other tooth at camp that day!  Talk about a complete 180!  Major trauma after the first tooth and then forgetting to mention the second one!  The second one came out because I tried to open my water bottle with my teeth and left it hanging on by  thread.  My favorite camp counselor pulled it out the rest of the way AND because we were on a field trip, I got a ticket to go back for free! This tooth thing is pretty cool!
The rest of the weekend passed pretty quietly.  I was a big fat grump all weekend and so was mom, so we had a wonderful time together!
We did have a good Sunday though.  Mom and I went swimming in the morning and in the afternoon had our old Tucson neighbors over for a bar-b-que.  They had moved to Dallas about a year before we left and are in Evergreen for the next three weeks, so they headed down to see us.  It was so awesome to see them again and we all had a great time.
That was our week in a nutshell.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

I'll Wake You When It's Over

OK- before we start, I need everyone to stand up, walk around and stretch a bit.  I need you wide awake because this is one snoozer of a blog and I don't want you falling asleep.
We did not do anything this week/weekend.  The end.

Well, mom and I went to the zoo on Wednesday and that was fairly fun for me.  All of the animals were either pooping or peeing.  Thankfully, those are no longer my favorite topics of conversation but I still think they are interesting enough that I got kick out of it.  I even have a few stories.  Mom and I were watching the hippos swim around when one surfaced near us.  We watched as it slowly raised its hind end out of the water and started wagging its tail.  Everyone laughed...Ha ha, how cute look- hippos wag their tails when they are happy!  No, they don't.  Apparently, they wag their tails when they poop, thus flinging poop everywhere in an ever expanding radius.  Mom and I literally had to take a step back to avoid the shower.
Then, it was onto the monkeys.  The Denver Zoo has a new exhibit that houses the monkeys on islands in the middle of little lakes.  The islands are connected by ropes overhead that the monkeys can cross to get from one island to the next.  Well, it turns out the girl monkey likes to do her dooty while hanging from the rope that crosses over the path where people walk.  We got a big, fat warning from the zoo volunteer to keep moving as the girl was directly overhead.  We avoided that but got to see the boy monkey hanging from his rope, peeing into the water.  Hours of entertainment, I tell ya!
As you can see, I'm not the only one interested in body fluid elimination.
The rest of the week was pretty boring compared to that.  Mom worked and grocery shopped on Saturday (woo hoo!!) so dad and I had a daddy/daughter day.  We went to Monster Mini Golf (where dad took a really cool picture but mom forgot upload it, so you'll have to wait until next week), then to a "decorate your own" cupcake place and THEN to McDonalds.  We tore it up!
We are FINALLY going camping in two weeks- our first trip since we moved to Colorado and we will be camping at the headwaters of the Arkansas River.  Our campsite is close to the river and fishing so we spent Sunday running all over town looking for a decent fishing rod for me.  We didn't really find one so we just settled on the kiddie rod and are hoping I don't catch anything to big.  I did get a cool new tackle box with lots of lures in it though, so that was hours of fun for me.
Sunday night, we went to our old neighbor's house for dinner and that was loads and loads of fun.  I got to play with my old friend Collin and one of my BFFs Camryn.  The adults all had a fabulous time as well, drank too much sangria, ate too much food and went to bed to late.  It was a fun night but made for a rough Monday morning!

I'm hoping we have a few more things to report in next week's blog, so hang in there, fearless readers!

Kind of a slow week up here for us.  And it was surprisingly long considering it was a 4 day work week.

We had a very quiet 4th of July.  No fire works this year which was OK with mom and dad.  Last year, neighborhood fireworks were going off until midnight and it made mom and dad cranky.  We got lots of good sleep this year.

In the morning, my Daisy Scout troop walked in the Highlands Ranch 4th of July parade.  It was pretty danged hot but we did awesome.  There was also a food drive associated with it and because of the energy and resourcefulness of some of the other moms (certainly not my mom), our troop brought in the most food and we won a pizza party!  Not bad for a bunch of 6 year olds, no?

After dragging ourselves back home, we spent the rest of the day being incredibly lazy.  It was very hot and hazy so we camped out on the couch.  (This seems to be the new family hobby-not good).  Mom made hot dogs, deviled eggs, watermelon and ice cream for dinner so at least we ate OK.

On Friday, we made the trek to Dave and Buster's, my new favorite restaurant.  The food is awful but the games rock and that is all that really matters.  To me anyway.
Saturday, I met with my friend Sophia at the park.  Her mom is my other Daisy Troop leader.  She is only slightly more organized than mom so they spent the time trying to make a plan for the coming year.  It looks good on paper anyway.  We'll see.
Sunday morning, mom and I went to church.  We may have found a keeper but it is 20 minutes away so come the first snow storm, we'll be praying from our living room couch!
I had a birthday party in the afternoon.  Mom dropped me off and headed out for some shopping and dad worked on his new bike until it was time to pick me up.  A nice relaxing day.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week and hopefully, we will have more exciting things to blog about next weekend!

We have had a quiet week around here.  We were pretty tired all week.  Mom spent most of the week recovering from her run on Saturday.  It was Thursday before she could get up and down the stairs without yelping and pulling herself on the hand rails.  Dad and I were getting kind of tired of the whole thing, so thankfully she is back to her normal whining!

I went to Camp Invention all week.  We spent all week taking apart things (I brought a keyboard to pull apart) and then using the parts to build a balloon popping machine.  We also got to think of an invention of our own to work on so I decided to build a dragon you can sit on.  I had a great time all week but my absolute favorite thing of all was taking trips to the "recycle room" to gather supplies for our projects.  Mom spent good money on this camp and all I wanted to do was go through the garbage!

First day of camp

My alien costume that I also invented

After a long week, we had a quiet weekend.  Friday night we went to see Brave and then out for dinner.  Mom had a stellar Saturday that involved cleaning the house in the morning, working in the afternoon.  The evening was saved by a trip to the Rockies game.  Mom's Father's Day present was tickets in the high roller section with a private, air conditioned concourse and a carving station for food.  We still ended up in the main concourse because that is where the really good food is.  Mom found the frozen, chocolate covered cheese cake on a stick stand.  Mmmmmm.  Even though dad thinks that is completely not baseball, mom says anything on a stick is American and therefor  is baseball......

After the game, the Rockies put on a great fire works display.  We enjoyed it even more because fireworks have been banned throughout most of the state because of the high fire danger.  These are the only ones we'll get to see this year and they were pretty awesome!

Sunday was a very quiet day.  We had big plans to get my playroom organized and cleaned out but ended up parked on the couch watching movies all day.  It has been crazy hot here- almost as hot as Tucson but we don't have a pool to jump into here so it is a little rough. 

This is a picture of my cousin Sophia.  We love, love, love this picture and laugh every time we see it!  Uncle Adam says this is Sophia's "peek a boo" face.

Hope everyone has a safe, happy fourth of July week!