Colorful Colorado

A few days after my birthday we headed out to Colorado. We had a departure time of 7:30 set by RD, and we made it!
It was a typical car ride, about 8 hours, with an hour lunch break. The kids wanted treats and jerky, argued about a million little things, took turns with 2 tablets until the batteries died, and kept a lookout for wild animals. We forgot to get a book-on-cd for the trip, so it was a bit more boring than usual, but we made it in pretty good time.
When we got to CO I was surprised with some birthday flowers, card, and cake! I was so excited, this was no regular cake; it was Nana's frosted angel food cake, which we always heard about, but never got to try in Boise. And it was even better with strawberries and whipped cream. perfect.

The next day we headed over to see RD's grandma, Mama Carol. We went to lunch with her, where Reese helped make it memorable by telling us and the surrounding booths that his hamburger was disgusting. Not much of a filter there.
We went back to her place to play some games. Mom ended up playing Qwirkle with the girls, while Mama Carol taught the boys how to play canasta. Cameron didn't talk much and picked it up quickly; and was on RD's and Mama Carol's team. Reese struggled to listen, prompting Mama Carol (who says what she thinks, like Reese) to tell Reese "you're a nice young man but you need to learn when to keep your mouth shut".  If you know them, you can totally see it happening. Somehow Reese and I won, even though 'our team'  didn't play so great (looking at you Reese).

We ran a few errands on that side of town, including going to the HAM radio outlet so RD could pick up his father's day gift.
The next day was RD and I's trip to RMNP!! WOOP woop!!!
   While we were heading to our adventure, Gramp and Grandma took the kids to this great zoo where they could feed animals, including the giraffes.  Aubree and Reese loved how long the tongues on the giraffe were, and Reese liked teasing the giraffes to get them to extend their tongues as long as they could go. Grace liked talking to the turkey, and Aubree remembers the elephants. Cameron's favorite part was spying the lynx hidden in its cage. They also went out for lunch, which the kids love.
     Gramp also suited up Reese and Cameron so they could help him out with his new beehives. Reese's job was to use the smoker to calm the bees, and Cameron's job was to take pictures. The smoker ended up not working, and Cameron slowly inched farther and farther away, but it went well. Gramp found out afterwards that Reese's suit had a huge hole on the arm! but fortunately he didn't get stung.