2012 Vacation Day Six: Buses and Babies don't mix

Tents sizes usually seem to be wrong.  For example: they say they fit 4 people but I look at them and wonder how two people could even fit comfortably.  So when Brandon and I initially bought our new tent we were skeptical that it really could fit 9 people as advertised.  Then we set it up for the first time and realized that it probably could fit 9 people.  That's when we decided to invite Emily and David and their two kids to share our tent.  All 9 of us did fit.  We had 4 adults on one side and the 5 kids on the other.  We had to be a little strategic about where we put our stuff, but other than that it was just fine.

There was one downside to all of us sharing a tent - the domino effect off all the kids waking up in the morning.  First it was Derrick, then Asher, then Bridger, then Lydia, and finally Charlotte.  They, and we, were all awake by 6:15.  The people in the tent in the back ground of this picture had come back late the night before - long after our kids were asleep.  They were not happy about the 6:00 am wake up call.  They hurried up and packed up their tent and were out of there.  Our other neighbors were more understanding.  The dad of the family told Brandon that he took his kids camping as babies too.     

 Brandon heated up water and we all had instant oatmeal for breakfast.The girls enjoyed practising eating with spoons and spilled all over themselves and me.

 Then we all worked on rolling getting organised, and putting the tent away.

 The girls were getting ornery and in the way a little bit so we finally decided to put them in their car seats in the car.  They actually liked this and even fell asleep.

 Emily tried out the baby backpack we'd brought out for her.  We had been given two, but we were never able to use them because I got pregnant right about the time the girls were big enough for them.  And now we have three kids so we never really will be able to use them.  Emily and David will be able to put them to good use.

Our plan for the day was to go to Bear Lake.  According to the research I'd done Bear Lake was about the only stroller accessible trail in Rocky Mountain National Park.  However, the road to Bear Lake is currently under construction.  If we wanted to go to the lake we would have to take a shuttle bus.  That is, unless we could make it past the road block before 9:00 am.  The kids had woken us up so early that we actually had a pretty good chance of getting camp cleaned up before 9:00.  We started to hurry.  I joked it was like trying to make it out of a country before the boarders closed because of a war.  

But all our efforts were in vain.  We actually missed the 9:00 am cut off by minutes and were directed back to the nearby visitors center which was also a shuttle stop.  It's probably good we missed the cut off because we probably would have had to park at a park and ride stop further up the road and we'd still have been on the shuttle.  

We went to the visitors center and spent a moment nursing babies/looking around.  Then we all got on one of the shuttle buses.  I've been on shuttle buses in other national parks and I thought this one would be just like those.  But this one was crowded.  And I had little kids with me this time.  Three little kids to be exact and they all wanted to me to hold them.  Let's just say it was not a fun ride up to the lake.   

 Once we got to Bear Lake I was very disappointed.  All I could think was, "We rode all that way for something that looks just like the Uintas?!?"

 We stopped for a snack break.  Charlotte was very cute and said "hi" to everyone who walked by us.

 Everyone was having a good time, but I was still pretty stressed out from the bus ride up.  So I was not having a very fun time.

 We took some pictures.  If you look closely you can tell that I'm stressed and that Brandon is stressed because I'm stressed.

 We finally solved the some of the stress problems by putting Derrick and the front pack on Brandon.  That way when the girls wanted me to hold them I didn't have to deal with Derrick too.

Just this one small change helped me enjoy the view a lot more.  It really was pretty up there.  

 Some nice passers by took a picture of all 9 of us.   

 After walking around the whole lake (it really was stroller accessible) we went back to the shuttle stop.  Charlotte had fun playing with the flag which was fitting because it was the 4th of July. 

 Lydia had fun playing with ants and rocks in the cement cracks.  She says, "boooog" every time she sees a bug.  She loves ants.

 It was getting time to get for the bus to arrive so we all started waiting right where it would stop.  There was no way we wanted to miss it.

 It came and we all got on. The ride down was less intense then the ride up (for me at least.)  Brandon had Derrick and so both girls could sit comfortably on my lap.  Charlotte fell asleep about halfway through the 20 minute ride and Lydia fell asleep about 30 seconds before it was time to get off (or course.)  Once we were all off of the bus we swore we would never take 5 kids under the age of 3 on a vehicle we didn't have control over.  We also ate lunch.  We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the parking lot.  The kids sat in their car seats and ate.  

 Then we said goodbye to Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was a pretty place and if our kids were older we could have stayed a lot longer and done some really cool things.  But we'd done about the only toddler friendly thing there - and even that hadn't been that toddler friendly.  So we left the park and started driving south east to the Denver area.  Emily and David left as well.  The followed us most of the way to Denver, but then split off to go to Colorado Springs to spend the Fourth with David's family.

 Brandon and I drove to our next stop which was a Howard Johnson hotel in Wheat Ridge, which is a suburb of Denver.  The first thing we did was give all the kids a bath and then take showers ourselves.      

 Then Brandon took a little nap.  He'd been having a hard time staying awake while driving and only Dr Pepper and the promise of a nap kept him going.  You may notice that this hotel room is a lot smaller than the one in Fort Collins.  It was so small that the hotel staff only gave us one roll in pack'n'play because they thought two wouldn't fit.  I said, "I'll make two fit."  I made Brandon get one of ours down from our car top carrier.

 I enjoyed getting pretty again.

 Once we were presentable again we drove about 5 minutes to Golden where our friends Audrey and Noel live.  Audrey and Noel were one of the few couples who were in our student ward longer than we were.  They got married in March of 07 and were were married in May.  We were all in that ward together until the summer of 2010.   Thanks to our blogs our friendship actually became stronger after we moved out of the ward.  We've been bloggy friends for 2 years.  A few months ago I e-mailed Audrey and asked if she would like to interact outside of the comments section of our blogs.  She readily agreed.

Originally we were going to take all the kids to a firework show.  But then the worst forest fire season in Colorado history had to start and all fireworks were banned.  So instead we hung out at the Merket's beautiful house.  The girls enjoyed running wild and playing with all of Cooper's toys.  Derrick and Ellen kind of stared at each other.  And us adults talked and caught up and had a great time.  We had so much fun that we totally forgot to take any pictures.  Well I took this one when I was looking for something in my diaper bag.  But we had fun anyway, even if we don't have the pictures to prove it.  

 Noel and Audrey fed us a wonderful dinner of hamburgers and corn on the cob.  They also gave us homemade ice cream.  It was all really yummy.  They'd offered us their guest bedroom, but we'd declined because we like to do our own thing when we are on vacation.  So it was back to our tiny hotel room for us.  I'm glad we stayed there because the girls fell asleep almost before we set up the second pack'n'play.  I don't know if they would have done that with all of Cooper's tempting toys around.

Brandon and I still did the bedtime routine in case the girls were semi awake.  Brandon and Derrick were both asleep before I was done writing in the girls' journal.  I would have fallen asleep too, but I needed to get my pajamas and some other things out of the car.  I hurried and did that, and then I was in bed.  The clock said it was 10:22 as I shut my eyes and fell right to sleep.

2012 Vacation Day Five: More Fun with the Fam

Our night in the hotel went really well. Derrick woke up once, but didn't wake up anyone besides me.  He and I were also the first ones awake in the morning so I gave him a bath in the sink. When the girls woke up we gave them their usual bottles.  I should mention that powdered milk saved us on this trip.  We treated it like formula and had it pre-measured in their bottles.  Then all I had to do was add water when needed and, ta da, happy babies.  

 We got the girls dressed and headed down the hall to breakfast.  I was a little worried that the girls would go nuts in the breakfast room.  But they were very well behaved.  They sat in their chairs and ate mostly yogert.

 Brandon went out to organize the jeep while I stayed inside and organised the stuff in there.  The girls enterrtained themselves by pretending to talk on the phone and the remote.  (I unplugged the phone so we didn't make any phone calls)

 They also liked jetting spun around in the office chair.

After we checked out of the hotel we went back to my sister's.  My Aunt Diane was there.  She lives in Denver and had driven up to see everyone.  The last time I saw her was at Emily's wedding.  She met all my kids for the first time.  She told me that Derrick was her favorite boy name.

We all went to see Emily and David's plot at their community garden.  This isn't their plot, but we can pretend it is :)

 Then we drive to the Fort Collins City Park.  We ate lunch and then the kids found their way over to the playground.

 I loved how many baby swings there were. At one point I was pushing Charlotte while Derrick was strapped to my chest in the front pack.  Derrick would laugh everytime Charlotte swung close.  It was the first time I ever heard him laugh.

 We had a little photo shoot everytime the kids played together on something.

 See what I mean?  Four cousins playing together is super cute.

 Emily and David weren't quite packed for the rest of the week yet so they went back home while we stayed and played at the park.

 There was a lake and we walked around it.  Derrick was having a great time.

 The girls were zonked.

 They didn't even wake up when we put them into the jeep.  We met up with Emily and David and then we all went to get gas. (on rode trips we always get gas when we are at half a tank) and then started driving to Rocky Mountain National Park.  The girls were still asleep.

They didn't wake up until we were driving through a canyon.  Imagine falling asleep in a park and waking up to this:

 We drove through the city of Estes Park, paid the $20 park entrance fee, and suddenly could see this:

 There was a lot of smoke in the air from all the fires, but the view was still breath taking.

 We drove to our campsite in the Morraine valley.  Brandon and David set up the tent with some help from the little people.

 I was worried our tent pad would be too small, but it was just the right size.

 Emily and I took care of feeding our babies. (Check out Emily's self braided hair)

 The kids soon discovered the tent porch was also a sand box.  They had fun putting rocks into Derrick's car seat and the tent.

 Brandon and I have learned that simpler is always better when it comes to meals on road trips - especially when babies and toddlers are involved.  So dinner was just Dinty Moore stew and bread bowls.  It was ready in mere minutes and tasted so good.

 Since dinner was so easy we had pleanty of time to enjoy our campsite.  We had to walk into it about 50 feet, which was nice because it meant there was a good buffer between us and the road.

 We took these impromptu family pictures.  There are actually some really cool mountains behind us, but the camera couldn't pick them up because the air was so smoky.

 Here are Emily and David and Asher and Bridger.  I'm so used to my identical twin girls that I'm amazed at how different Asher and Bridger look.

 Charlotte was so cute.  She would put a little orange hat on her head and then start trying to climb up the large rocks next to our campsite.  It was almost like it was her adventure hat.

 Campfires were banned because of all the wild fires in Colorado.  So we tried to make s'mores using our camp stove.

 They didn't really work out.

 But the kids liked them anyway.  (See Charlotte's hat)  Charlotte helped me carry the chocolate to the campsite and then she insisted on eating at least half of a chocolate bar.

Soon it was bed time.  Brandon and I had learned from our earlier camping trip that we needed to keep bed time as familiar as possible.   We borrowed my mom's pack'n'plays for the girls to sleep in.  We brought their favorite stuffed animals and the pillows my cousin Heidi made.  They sleep with these things every night.  We also did our usual bed time routine.  We sang a hymn, read a chapter from the book of Mormon, read a page from the conference Ensign, wrote in their journal, and had family prayer.  The girls were crying at first, but gradually they settled down.  Asher, Bridger, and Derrick also went to bed rather easily.  

 All of us adults stayed up and played a game called Forbidden Island.  It's a game where all the players work together to beat the game and rescue things off of a sinking island.  It was really really fun.  I wish I had a picture of all of us playing it around the picnic table, but I'd left the camera in the tent and there was no way I was going back in there.  We finished the game around 10:45 and we all crept into the tent and went to sleep.