trains & mines (and old stuff!)

Our last full-day in Colorado, we drove to Cripple Creek to get a few last tourist-y things under our belt. The weather was gorgeous and the views were continually incredible as we rode through one of the mining town's oldest railways with our little dumplings. Afterwards, we went on an official gold-mine tour (1000 feet underground!) and thankfully had a much better time than on our lantern tour a few days earlier (even though Emily was still very nervous the entire time!). It was such a great way to wind down before heading to Tonya & Stephen's for the night (and gave us lots to talk about while sitting in traffic for a million years!).

Useful butt shot! ;P

Views from the train.

And R3 was enjoying every damn minute of it.

We had to wait a hot minute for our gold-mine tour to begin, and fortunately there was a lot of old crap to look at! ;P

When we finally got underground, we had such a wonderful young tour guide. He was probably 24 years old and gave tours of the mine during his "time off" from his real job (as a miner!). He was so enthusiastic and knowledgable, and was so sweet to R3 and Sadie who asked 90% of the questions during the tour. ;) This used to be a functioning mine, so there was lots of history and demonstrations to give you the full experience.

Sadie, playing with the "dust on the wall!" We then found out it's a pretty powerful laxative, which thankfully freaked her out. ;P 

The green streaks are copper!

Took a small ride while we were there.

Views from below, where miners used to climb up and do their thing.

See those purple streaks? Follow that, and you have gold. :)

Emily may have been glued to her Da's hips the entire time, but she was very excited to her very old gold ore piece!

Rose gold flats in a gold mine!

Pretty psyched I got pictures of all of us 1000ft below the surface! ;P

You may think you know what this is...

Something for Da to mess around with! ;P

happy labor day!

I may be PMS-ing like something fierce (hooray!) but we had a pretty swell Labor Day weekend, if I do say so myself...

- Richard and I both having a today off (a miracle in the retail world!)
- went swimming at Nancy & Nery's with all of our favorites on Saturday night (and brought Vera and Matthew home with us, doncha-know!)
- threw a little birthday shindig for my mumsie for her birthday on Sunday (pizza and brownies included! oh, and Sadie crying because Juju wouldn't spend the night ;P)
- watched hilarious movies with my angel man all weekend Bad Words, Clerks, and The Other Woman ;)
- and read a lot in bed and great sleeps, too!
- getting a great deal of blogging done today... most of our Colorado vacation is now up #yas
- the finale: dinner at Braums (the littles have been asking for ages... the simple things, you know!)

Hope you had a wonderful Labor Day!

a day at the zoo!

On our second day in Colorado, we drove to Colorado Springs to check out the zoo WITH TONYA. This was the first time the littles' met one of my favorite people, and well, the rest is pretty much history. ;) (I overheard R3 say, "Ky said you were nice, but I didn't think you'd be this nice!")

Seriously, it took about 3 seconds to get this going. ;P

The zoo has a great ski-lift that gives you a good view of the entire place (and the surrounding flora!) and had a little play area up top.

5 out of 6 smiles made it -- pretty good, right? ;P

Best friends already!

Then it was time to get serious, go back down, and see some am-i-nals!

The zoo even had a carousel, which was Emmy's favorite part of the whole vacation. (She had never been on one before!) She was so freaking cute/excited the entire ride. :)

Sadie was really into the power-fist this day!

There seemed to be an abundance of chipmunks, which took over the littles' attention as soon as they discovered it. There was plenty of "keep moving! quit trying to catch the damn chipmunks!" ;P

What did I tell ya?

cave of the winds

Our first big adventure in Colorado was the Cave of the Winds, which leads you into a guided tour of some of the States' highest mountains, which was all planned out by Meghan. It was a pretty interesting day, to say the least! I was downright green from altitude sickness (thank goodness I was the only one) and we discovered pretty quickly (after our two-hour wait!) that the littles really aren't that into dark, cramped spaces -- no matter how old, rad, or majestic. So! Lessons learned! ;P But the silver-lining to all of this is that the two-hour wait made us pretty apt to at least take some pictures, and boy we got some good, fun, and silly ones! Oh, and Meghan learned the value of compromising, but that's kinda hard to photograph. ;P

Sadie lost a tooth that morning, too!