Ok, people who keep EMAILING me to ask me to out myself, shame on you! Don’t you know how to play a game without cheating?! Tsk.

So we had a….day.

It is hot. Very hot. Like 125. Actually I think it was mostly 90 with a Heat index of 100. But when you add in my natural body heat index (you know, the one with the burning blistering pink skin covering 90% of my upper body), I think I may have surpassed 125. Its been a very hot May in Houston so I am relatively used to heat like this but I swear I asked my kids about a dozen times if it was really sweltering or if it was just me! I was just miserable.

Still, we managed to do a few cool things today. We went to a botanical garden so I could get what turned out to be a few terrible shots of flowers for this week’s Theme Thursday over at the photo blog. Also the kids really like botanical gardens, it wasn’t purely selfish. But damn, was it hot. And not stroller friendly. And overall I wasn’t impressed. It gave me new appreciation for our botanical gardens at home. We were going to do some other things on the park grounds but I was cranky and the idea of spending any more time in THAT park where the sun was clearly hotter than everywhere else on earth, was just too much.

Here’s a picture I got about half way through our visit to the gardens. Don’t we look….hot?! In Addison’s defense, her bright red cheek would be thanks to a mosquito (they ALWAYS target her face!) but she was plenty sweaty too.

This picture is funny because what you can’t see is that Addison was on Dalton’s lap. She was such a little pistol about having her picture taken today so while everyone was being cheesy, she was flopped over in half frontward. ha.

So we regrouped in the car (read: Air Conditioning) and took our picnic and headed to another location where I got these pictures. Here’s a hint: this is not a zoo. In fact, there are NO zoos here at all.

We had a REALLY good time here. Wish we would have skipped the botanical garden and just hung out here all day.

For dinner tonight we found this awesome Chicago-style hotdog joint and OMG we were so happy. I LOVE chicago-style hotdogs and tony LOVES Italian Beef. We’ve tried to replicate both in Houston but I swear I spent hours upon hours looking in every local store possible for even  a FEW of the ingrediants and couldn’t find them. Once Tony actually mail ordered Italian beef from Chicago, so desparate was he. So this was a major treat. Totally authentic, cheap and delish. We will be going back tomorrow for our to-go order for the freezer at home.

We also hit up Maggie Moos for the second night in a row. Have you ever had Maggie Moos? Some friends of mine (shout out Michelle!) turned me onto it and it is SO much better than Coldstone or Marble Slab. It is super creamy. Again we don’t have MM at home so I had to fill my cravings until next time. Lately Addison has been so picky about her ice cream. She eats very little and she had started making references to enjoying my (chocolate) ice cream better than her (stain-free white-colored varieties). She’ll just not eat most of her’s these days so I thought better of it this time and asked her if she wanted chocolate ice cream. She thought about it and thought about it and turned to me very seriously and said “Pink”. Ugh. Of course! Pink ice cream. I took her to the “Mix-ins” and we went through every single option, always with a “nooo. hmmmm, noooo” until we came to the marshmellows which received an eager approval. So Strawberry with marshmallows it was and I’ll be darned if she ate every last bite of it before they were even done making the rest of our’s!

So we’ll be heading home tomorrow night. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get to do some of the dinosaur stuff that I was too on fire to do today. Also we will be taking at least a driving tour of the campus of what may very well be Dalton’s future college.

So we spent the last week in Denver, thanks to some wonderful family and friends. You know how you get the free vaca if you just sit through the sales schpiel for the rental property or time share? This was a reconnaissance mission, for sure. Except the salespeople were my husband, my Dad and my friends and the vacation WAS the sales job. I went in totally skeptical because I LOVE Houston. LOVE! I think I’ve written enough to make at least a few of you barf over how much I love Houston. And my boys love our neighborhood and their friends. And even Tony who CLAIMS he was not in it for the sales job and left SAYING his heart was in Houston took approximately 2.5 days to relocate that heart for good. To be fair, Denver was always the place we would retire but I’m 33. This was not imminent. I was a tougher sell for a few reasons. First, I am absolutely phobic of heights and driving along the side of the Rockies = my worst nightmare. Plus also I’m a nervous driver anyway. And then there’s the snow. But dammit if the Rockies stole my heart too. And more shockingly, they stole the hearts of my kids who by the end of the trip were ready to pack their bags and move in for good.

But lets back up a minute to right about the place where we get off the plane. This is what we saw:

Keep in mind, this is MID-MAY!!! Talk about your warm welcome. not. I was less than thrilled. Actually I was wishing I had drank heavily on the airplane. Plus we absolutely do not even own clothing appropriate for this kind of weather. Luckily it was pretty warm despite the snow and the kids made due with borrowed gloves and I packed extra shoes for everyone.

Of the five days we spent in Denver, three were snowy. Two were in the upper 70’s, low 80’s. Seriously. Whacked OUT!

The kids had fun having massive snowball fights…..

{you have to enlarge these pictures to really appreciate}

And building a giant snowman with Grandpa….

And combining the two….

And eating snow….

And falling in the snow….

And climbing rocky snowy icy boulders that threatened their very lives….

Occasionally some elk, deer or fox wandered through the yard….

And eventually it stopped snowing….

And eventually that snow started to melt….

And we got out a bit. We went to red rocks….

We also went on a gold mine tour, visited a dinosaur nature center, toured the Coors factory (all you can drink beer! Woot!) ate buffalo, visited Dinosaur Ridge….

Let me interject here to say that we are HUGE dinosaur geeks, particularly Dalton & Teegan who both have literal encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs. Talk about your living history!

When we weren’t seeing the sites, we hung out back at my Dad’s house, what I fondly refer to as The Cabin even though their REAL cabin is in Michigan. When you are at 8000 ft, though, with bear and mountain lion outside your back door it sorta feels like a cabin.

Addy played with Grandpa….

Noah read to Grandma….

Teegan cooked and had painting lessons….

And we all just sort of hung out and enjoyed the lack of oxygen

Rough life, huh?!

When it was less slippery, Addy & Noah played outside in the snow

and collected dandelions to blow (quite the juxtaposition!)….

If we had made the travel plans after the job loss we would have stayed much longer - we definitely were not in a hurry to return home. Unfortunately our tickets weren’t changeable so we had to limit our stay to a short 5 days. We all fell in love. Dalton & Teegan said they’d readily move if they could move their friends with them. You know, as much as I love where we live now and as beautiful as I thought it was, you really can’t fairly compare beauty when one half of the equation is the Rockies. Everything else looks so…well….flat. Blah. Boring. While its nice to be home with our comfy familiar environs, my morning walk just wasn’t the same.

My Mother’s Day Recap:

I woke up in a good mood despite it being before 8am. Kids made cards and crafts while waiting for Dalton to wake up and then presented me with stepping stones they made, each unique and special its own way.

We packed the kids and stuff into the car and headed out to visit a beach on the boulivar pennisula near Galveston. We had a hot tip that it was THE place to spend the day beaching, shelling, etc. The weather? PERFECTION it was like 70’s and breezy - a far cry from the mid-90s from the previous week.

We took a ferry to get to the beach and it was really fun! We saw dolphins playing in the water. And by playing I mean mating. A small fact I did not realize until I went home and examined some of the photos I took and now I am traumatized!!! It was super cool to see them splashing and jumping and flipping in the water. None of us had ever seen dolphins in the wild so it definitely made our day.

The beach is one of the few drive-on beaches left in the US which meant we just drove the coast until we found a great place to park and stay. The water was typical golf coast ugly but the beach was really nice, clean, full of shells. The kids filled a bucket with live hermit crabs and Dalton even nabbed himself a baby speckled crab.  We found a dead jellyfish which was super cool since we’d never seen a jellyfish in the wild - dead or alive. And frankly, I’d rather see them dead.

The kids had a blast in the water. Even Addy, who I knew would be totally freaked out by the water this summer, eventually was willing to dip her toes in and run along the edge. The water is always warm in the coast so that makes it really fun to play in. Noah got to go out alone and body surf the waves for the first time. He is getting to be a major swimmer this summer! Amazing what a difference a year makes!

And best of all, I got to take tons and tons of pictures. 350 to be exact. I’ve felt guilty for disconnecting a bit from our family experiences because I’m so busy taking pictures so I’ve tried to balance it more and leave the camera at home but I really wanted to get some great beach pictures so it was definitely a great Mother’s Day treat! I got to take all kinds of pictures I had really wanted to take including some cool gull shots, pelican shots, the dolphins of course and I got to really experiment with direct sunlight and shadows which is perfect for this week’s Theme Thursday over at Land of KA.

We had some awesome seafood for dinner, of course, and then headed home late into the night. I just love going out to Galveston but our new favorite spot will be Crystal Beach, for sure.

Check out my photo blog today and this week. I’ll be posting a few pictures every day from our great Mother’s Day adventure. I promise I won’t post all 350! haha.

Happy Mother’s Day to my Mother, my Step-Mother and all my dear friends whose mothering inspires me on a daily basis!