We had so much fun last week, we needed a little time to recover before we were ready to post. We left Sunday at about 1:00 to Drive to Denver. The drive should take about 7 hours, but we hit snow as we went over the mountain pass. Needless to say between slick roads, too much traffic, and not being able to tell where our lane was, it took us an extra hour and a half to get there. The kids all handled it quite well, so as a reward we let them go swimming at 10:00 at night (our motel pool was open from 6 am to 11 pm)! The next morning the kids went swimming first thing (of course) and then we went to Hammond's Candies http://www.hammondscandies.com/for a factory tour. They are one of the only candy factories that still make their candy the old fashioned way (by hand). It was really cool watching them roll out tubes of candy, cut them and twist them into candy canes. We enjoyed watching ribbon candy being made, and we really loved the free samples, yum! The tour ended in the gift shop and we indulged our children by letting them fill their own shopping baskets with delicious treats (later in the trip Eva complained that the simple sight of candy was making her sick). 
Next we went to the Children's Museum http://www.cmdenver.org/. It was a fun enough museum, but there were at least 3 school groups there in addition to a large number of regular visitors, so the kids had to wait at every exhibit to get to play. Eva loved the grocery store/restaurant exhibit, and Thomas loved the train exhibit. We ate lunch at their restaurant and it was quite good. Clay had a Wasabi Roast Beef Sandwich, and I had a mozzarella pesto sandwich that reminded me of Grimaldi's because the cheese was so fresh.Our next stop was the Aquarium, Clay's favorite. http://www.aquariumrestaurants.com/downtownaquariumdenver/flash_content/index.html Thomas got scared at the flash flood
exhibit (like Eva did when we went there several years back), but we all enjoyed seeing all the different kinds of fish, the tigers, and petting the manta rays. We finished our day by going swimming and ordering pizza. We stayed up way too late, so the next morning we slept in, and then made our way to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science http://www.dmns.org/main/en/ There was so much to see there! Clay loved the space exhibits, especially the life size model of the Mars Rover. Thomas loved the Dinosaurs. Eva said she loved it all. I enjoyed the butterfly collection and the hall of gems and minerals, and the mummies. I did not think about the fact that mummies are d
ead bodies, but I was reminded of it when Thomas pointed at it and said, "Sick!" He then asked if we could leave the room because it was making him "kind of sick". Eva approached the whole subject with scientific curiosity I was quite proud of her. We had lunch in the museum cafeteria and it was quite good (any food outside of Blanding is quite good though). We traveled less than a block to visit the Denver Zoo http://www.denverzoo.org/ We had a lot of fun at the zoo seeing so many different kinds of animals. We enjoyed the Sea Lion show, we had fun riding the little zoo train, but the kids were absolutely ecstatic over the carousel ride. The last time we tried to get them on a carousel was when we went to Lagoon with Richie's family, and Richie's Mother tried to take Eva and
she screamed and cried (Thomas was not born yet). It is funny how something so simple was so fun. We ended the night with dinner at the Olive Garden -delicious! and swimming, even Timothy got in the water for a little while. Our final day included one last swim, and then -- finally -- the whole reason for the trip -- The Butterfly Pavilion! http://butterflies.org/ I love butterflies and the Pavilion is a great way to enjoy them. As we walked in we watched a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis, then we each had the pleasure of having multiple butterflies land on us, and finally as we were getting ready to leave I saw a Magnificent Owl in flight they are my favorite because they are brilliant blue on one side and ugly brown on the other. Eva got freaked out and thought we left her (even though we were less than 20 feet from where she was playing) so she left hr brother, and went to the office and told them we were lost. Thank goodness that was our only experience of "losing" our kids on the trip. Oh, and both kids held a tarantula! Thomas who has been mortally terrified of spiders his whole life, was like, "sure I'll hold a tarantula" and then he held it twice because I did not get a picture of him the first time! The trip home was horrible, as we experienced rush-hour-like traffic in the middle of nowhere and it took us 2 hours to drive 5 miles! Ugh! Anyway, we survived Spring Break 2008.
Next we went to the Children's Museum http://www.cmdenver.org/. It was a fun enough museum, but there were at least 3 school groups there in addition to a large number of regular visitors, so the kids had to wait at every exhibit to get to play. Eva loved the grocery store/restaurant exhibit, and Thomas loved the train exhibit. We ate lunch at their restaurant and it was quite good. Clay had a Wasabi Roast Beef Sandwich, and I had a mozzarella pesto sandwich that reminded me of Grimaldi's because the cheese was so fresh.Our next stop was the Aquarium, Clay's favorite. http://www.aquariumrestaurants.com/downtownaquariumdenver/flash_content/index.html Thomas got scared at the flash flood
exhibit (like Eva did when we went there several years back), but we all enjoyed seeing all the different kinds of fish, the tigers, and petting the manta rays. We finished our day by going swimming and ordering pizza. We stayed up way too late, so the next morning we slept in, and then made our way to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science http://www.dmns.org/main/en/ There was so much to see there! Clay loved the space exhibits, especially the life size model of the Mars Rover. Thomas loved the Dinosaurs. Eva said she loved it all. I enjoyed the butterfly collection and the hall of gems and minerals, and the mummies. I did not think about the fact that mummies are d
ead bodies, but I was reminded of it when Thomas pointed at it and said, "Sick!" He then asked if we could leave the room because it was making him "kind of sick". Eva approached the whole subject with scientific curiosity I was quite proud of her. We had lunch in the museum cafeteria and it was quite good (any food outside of Blanding is quite good though). We traveled less than a block to visit the Denver Zoo http://www.denverzoo.org/ We had a lot of fun at the zoo seeing so many different kinds of animals. We enjoyed the Sea Lion show, we had fun riding the little zoo train, but the kids were absolutely ecstatic over the carousel ride. The last time we tried to get them on a carousel was when we went to Lagoon with Richie's family, and Richie's Mother tried to take Eva and
she screamed and cried (Thomas was not born yet). It is funny how something so simple was so fun. We ended the night with dinner at the Olive Garden -delicious! and swimming, even Timothy got in the water for a little while. Our final day included one last swim, and then -- finally -- the whole reason for the trip -- The Butterfly Pavilion! http://butterflies.org/ I love butterflies and the Pavilion is a great way to enjoy them. As we walked in we watched a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis, then we each had the pleasure of having multiple butterflies land on us, and finally as we were getting ready to leave I saw a Magnificent Owl in flight they are my favorite because they are brilliant blue on one side and ugly brown on the other. Eva got freaked out and thought we left her (even though we were less than 20 feet from where she was playing) so she left hr brother, and went to the office and told them we were lost. Thank goodness that was our only experience of "losing" our kids on the trip. Oh, and both kids held a tarantula! Thomas who has been mortally terrified of spiders his whole life, was like, "sure I'll hold a tarantula" and then he held it twice because I did not get a picture of him the first time! The trip home was horrible, as we experienced rush-hour-like traffic in the middle of nowhere and it took us 2 hours to drive 5 miles! Ugh! Anyway, we survived Spring Break 2008.
