Guard Dog

As I mentioned before, one of Drew's favorite places to play is in the kitchen. This past week he's started standing at the garbage can and trying to grab stuff out of it. Not only is that gross, it's dangerous. For awhile, if the lid was closed he'd leave it alone. Yesterday, he started climbing up there even with the lid closed. Well, awhile back, McDonald's was giving away Star Wars bobble heads in the happy meals. One of the bobble heads we have is Chewbacca. It's a windup toy that "walks" and makes a little noise as it unwinds. I discovered a few days ago that Drew does not like this toy. I don't know if it's the noise, or Chewbacca, but he cries whenever he sees it. He then throws it or pushes it away. We decided to use Chewbacca as a "guard dog" for the garbage can. All we have to do it this (look below) and Drew will leave the garbage can alone. He goes to stand up, sees the toy, and crawls away quickly after giving it a dirty look. It's actually really funny!

He makes a pretty good guard dog.


Not a big guard dog, but it does the job.

Drew loves to swipe things off the coffee table. It doesn't matter what it is... if something is on there, he'll be sure to throw it off. Well, yesterday it was the Sunday paper. He threw it on the floor, then proceeded to crumple and rip up the ads. Lily decided to help him. This is what our paper looked like after the kids got through with it.

I was able to read the paper without having to piece too much of it together.

On Saturday, our friends Emily and James had their reception/luncheon at the Lake Estes Marina up in Estes Park. Estes is only about 45 minutes to an hour northwest of us. Of course, there is road work being done about halfway up the mountain so it took us a bit over an hour. We had to pass through Lyons, which is about 15-20 minutes past Boulder, and as I mentioned that Erik asked "Where are the lions?" I explained that it was just the name of the town and he told me, "Oh, I thought you meant there were real lions!" I guess he was excited to see them. As we got into Estes Park, traffic got really slow due to a "special event." Turns out the Highland Games were going on. That would have been pretty cool to see... too bad we didn't know about it. Anyway, the reception was across the lake from the games, so we were able to hear the cannons and see some of the air show which was pretty cool.

The view over Lake Estes. The big white tents you can see on the other side are the Highland Games. The overcast sky and misty weather was actually beautiful, just extremely cold!

I knew Saturday was supposed to be the coldest day we were having for two weeks. It was supposed to be in the 50s. I took jackets for the kids. Well, it turned out to only be in the low 40s! I didn't have hats, gloves or winter coats for everyone, but that's what we needed! On top of that, it was breezy and raining (that misty rain and then harder rain) the whole time we were up there. The kids didn't care... they were out playing in the rain. Luckily, a few people had fleece blankets we could use to warm up the kids when they finally came up to eat. Their little noses and fingers were so pink. I had to give Lily my jacket to wrap around her while she ate. Daniel actually took Drew and Lily to the car for about 15 minutes to warm up while we waited for Emily and James to cut the cake. All in all it was a nice reception with good friends, good food and beautiful surroundings. It was just so darn COLD!!!! Next time we go up we'll be more prepared.

Playing out in the misty rain.


Erik had fun!


I think Lily was the coldest one, poor girl!


Drew warming up in the car.

After we left, we drove into Estes Park to see the Stanley Hotel. This is the hotel Stephen King was staying in when he got the idea for The Shining. It was not the hotel used in the movie. That hotel is in Oregon or California or somewhere out west. However, in the 90s they made a tv movie version of The Shining that had the guy from Wings as Jack. The white hotel with the red roof they show at the beginning of this movie IS the Stanley Hotel. They filmed inside the Stanley for this movie version as well. It's a beautiful hotel and I'd love to be able to stay there sometime. It's reported to be actually haunted, with 4 or 5 ghosts that people have seen in various places throughout the hotel. You can take ghost tours and stay in the room that is the "haunted" room in the movie, but it fills up quickly, especially for Halloween. Maybe we'll have to at least go on a tour while we're here. I definitely want to go back up and spend a day here, maybe without kids.

Stanley Hotel