my favorite Colorado things...

I never knew that I'd be so glad to see dandelions. They make me happy.


So does real grass.


And, of course, the mountains.


Loving Colorado! It just feels "right."

bok tower gardens

David's parents were visiting us over the weekend. We love visiting new places, so we headed to the Bok Tower Gardens. It was gorgeous!


The "singing tower" was built in 1927 and is is home to the carillon. What is that you ask? It's basically a keyboard that is mechanically attached to a set of bells. 60 of them to be exact.


Here is the size of the largest bell.


And here are the keys.


The tower is built on Iron Mountain, Florida. I got a chuckle out of this. The "mountain" (290 ft.) is the tallest point in Florida, and overlooks beautiful orange groves. We enjoyed listening to carillon concert from this spot. We also spent quite a bit of time sitting at the summit reading books and relaxing.






This place was very kid friendly. At the visitor's center, we checked out a little book bag of kids' nature books with a little picnic blanket. We also got some "magic paper."


There were 8 posts located throughout the gardens. Each of the posts depicted a different creature.


Here's the magic: upon rubbing the white stick on the shiny side of the paper, voila! The creature appeared. The girls eventually got tired of this, but they finished 6 out of the 8 posts.




I had to get in at least one shot.






Grandad and Abuela.

african skies

Went went to Africa this weekend to celebrate M's birthday. Of course, it was *just* Animal Kingdom, but it never ceases to amaze me how authentic (in a Disnified sort of way) they make it feel. The first and last photos were taken on the African Safari ride. I made sure my shutter speed was set at 1/640 to get clear photos. That ride is incredibly bumpy and I actually felt a bit nauseous (it doesn't really take much) by the time we got off. Also, if you have a chance to go, the new "Finding Nemo" musical is just fabulous. The other great thing is that park is very shady, so we felt almost cool most of the day.







I meant to say "thank you" to all of you who weighed in a few days ago with encouraging words or empathy about cranky school-aged children. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one. I had no idea that it was so common for kids to be this way. We're continuing to weigh other options, but we're going to give it a little more time first.

air boat scenery

Here's some of the beautiful scenery we saw along the way from the airboat ride.