Satori Smiles

The past few days we’ve had Gramy and Grampy visit us from Wisconsin, and we all had a great, relaxing time!

The weather was perfect, sunny and 70′s. We drove to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park and then down the western side of the Rocky Mountains and around back up the eastern slope where we live on the Peak to Peak Highway.

We enjoyed this refreshing stream, Satori played in it quite a bit. Grandpa and I learned about the geology of the area while she splashed with Grandma. This was the site of the Lawn Lake Flood in 1982 which had a flash flood from a dam that broke. It rushed down the mountain as a 30 foot high wall of water, creating an alluvial fan in this area and the meadows below. Huge boulders were deposited in the meadow. It reached Estes Park.

Here we are driving up through RMNP and Angela stopped to get photos of our Flat Kids we’re hosting this week. If you look just to the top left of my hand, you’ll see the line of bare area where the Lawn Lake Flood rushed down the mountain, and where we were in the above photos.

We then drove down and did a loop around the mountains, viewing the ugly damage the pine beetles are doing to our Rocky Mountain forests. A few of the trees on our property are already dying.

The next day we visited our quaint neighbor town of Nederland, where the Carousel of Happiness just opened this summer!

Every stop to get groceries now necessitates a ride on this beautiful carousel.

If you’re ever up our way (Rocky Mountains above Boulder), be sure to stop in Ned to take a whirl!

The family went camping this weekend, to watch the Perseids meteor shower. The campground is just across the road from our house.

In fact, we live in the distant hills in the background of this photo.

Satori playing a logic game.

We even had a little visitor, a flat traveller we are hosting for the week! We’ll be taking her and any new Flat Travellers we get this week, to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Which reminds me, I have to get photos of Flat Satori’s travels! I’ll do that next.

EDIT 2 days later:

For those who wanted to know more about the Logic game Satori played above, it is Kanoodle. Our family loves logic games, and this is truly pocket-sized so I can throw in my purse or even in a big pocket and pull out anywhere. The game says it’s designed for 7 years and up, but the first puzzles are easy enough for a four year old, and perhaps a bright 3 year old. The puzzles start out as 2D, but then they get harder, until you’re solving 3D puzzles. Entertaining even for an adult!

We’re back in Colorado and looking forward to taking it easy at home for the next few months! I need a day or two and then I’ll respond to any website emails and comments.

Here’s some photos of our last 12 days from visiting my parents (Grammy and Grampy) on their Wisconsin farm.

The weather has been cooperating, and my Dad was so proud of his crops!

Soybeans starting to grow.

We drove around on this new vehicle to check out all the fields.

Maddie our Golden is getting old and we had to pop her in the back.

We got to visit Great Grandma down the road!

Satori and I made this froggie stepping stone for Grammy.

And of course, Satori now is sporting a new little bob haircut! We’re all loving it.

Here’s a selection of photos from our 9-day trip across the National Parks of the West! We explored Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Glacier National  Parks. We hit 5 states – Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and back to Colorado. Here we are on our hike in the Tetons overlooking Jenny Lake at Inspiration Point.

Can’t miss Old Faithful! I’m so glad we sat here to get the geyser all backlit like this.

One of David and Satori (my favorite) hiking in the Tetons.

A view of the Tetons from down below.

In the Tetons we saw quite a few moose, close to the road too. We saw so much wildlife that were so close that we could actually reach out and touch some (of course we didn’t though).

A mountain goat in Glacier National Park.

We also saw a baby mountain goat feeding right next to the road, and he was sooo cute! He had the sweetest little bleeeaatt he did over and over.

Driving Glacier was so scary, the road was so narrow, and up so high, and they had construction to boot! Luckily David drove on this harrowing road. I barely had enough courage to pull the camera out.

Yellowstone showed us tons of bison. These two were leisurely strolling down the road.

Our family in front of Yellowstone falls.

Why Yellowstone is named after “yellow stone”.

Speaking of the human body, I’ll share a few other resources we’ve used in our little unit study foray.

After a very healthy spring with Mom constantly talking about eating right and exercising, Satori decided she wanted to learn about the human body and become a doctor. So for a month we learned about human anatomy by reading this First Encyclopedia of the Human Body, a very gentle introduction for a young one.

Off Netflix (not Instant) we watched National Geographic’s Inside the Living Body. Satori couldn’t get enough of it, she watched it four times before I sent it back. She said she wanted to watch it  until she had it all memorized. Last time she did this was when we studied prehistory and she watched Walking With Monsters a dozen times.

As a finale, we saw Body Worlds at the Denver Nature & Science Museum. Of course photography wasn’t allowed inside the exhibit so I don’t have photos of this field trip.

This was simply an introduction to the human body, but Satori really was interested and retained so much. She’ll bring up things she’s learned in everyday conversation everyday now. I can’t wait to go into more detail and study anatomy again.

We had the pleasure of my niece Peyton’s company this weekend. Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy, but on our last day, the sun broke long enough for us to head to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. We love this zoo. The first thing you do is get to feed the giraffes, which are eye-level to you.

You’re also able to feed the colorful birds. They will fly right on your head or your feeding stick.

Satori’s favorites were the Grizzlies who wrestled in the water in front of us!

David was most looking forward to the Mountain Lion, and to our joy, just as we walked up to the exhibit, they were feeding her! This picture will always bring a giggle to us, as little Peyton kept asking very loudly “Can I feed the kitty? I want to feed the kitty.” Meanwhile the lion was biting down on the feeder tool and not letting go… The zookeeper had to explain why they had to stay outside the cage as they fed the cat, and that they couldn’t let visitors feed her.

We lucked out again this spring with another peacock showing off!

We only had two hours to spend at the zoo, and could’ve spent all day there. But we lucked out because as we were leaving the zoo, it did start raining pretty heavily! Our timing couldn’t have been better.

Just wanted to share some pics of our zoo trip last week. As we were approaching the giraffe area, we saw our first peacocks of the day. I mentioned to Satori how cool it would be if they would show their feathers for us. And a second later, we were treated to this display!

Yeah, I took a lot of bird photos, this isn’t even half of it.

The baby giraffe here was just born six days before this photo!

We were quite entertained by the antics of the seals.

Normally I wouldn’t have given this guy a second glance but now that we are learning our birds, it was so fun to watch all the different ducks.

This weekend we were honored to be invited out to Steamboat Springs to hang out with my Aunt Marge/Uncle Dave when they rented a house out here for the week. While just 80 miles away from our home as the crow flies, it does take us three hours to get to this place. But we love to drive, and I don’t think there are many places in the United States that are as beautiful to drive through as Colorado…  Here’s the view of the ski area from the opposite hill, which is where we stayed for the night.

The home they rented was absolutely beautiful, the perfect sanctuary for a vacation.

Here’s Satori with her new kitty – Rebecca – that Aunt Marge got her as a gift. Rebecca has not left Satori’s arms! Thank you Marge!!

The home was so accommodating, very tastefully decorated, and I think I counted about 10 beds total in the house. We had the basement floor to ourselves, Satori had her choice of bunk bed. Down there they had a Ping Pong table, and they also had Foosball and darts. With all the bedroom space, I did not expect a separate business office room, but it was very cool. Surrounded by snow, it was just such a beautiful place. It would also rock for a summer vacation, the deck has a nice swing, and previous guests had seen porcupines, skunk, fox…. The house was filled with books of all kinds, plus some Rocky Mountain field guides that I think I will have to get!

We had a wonderful time with Marge, Dave, and their friend Barb. During the day, Satori, Marge and I strolled the streets of Steamboat and drooled over some of the unique shops. Evening time, David and I then learned the card game Golf, which was super fun.

In the morning I went for a peaceful walk further up the hill and took another picture of the slopes…

While we did not ski this weekend, we did go tubing at Saddleback Ranch. This guy was here to greet us on the way in.

Here we are ready to go up the hill. It was so warm that we totally did not need to wear snow suits/pants, but Satori kept hers on just so she would stay dry. Our gloves and hats were taken off very quickly.

This was our first time tubing at an official hill with a tow rope and everything. This picture makes the place look much smaller than it really was, but there were three different slopes to go down. Slow, Medium, and Bumpy Fast.

Even the slow one was super fast, it was such a thrill to go tubing!!!

Here’s David and Satori going down the Medium speed slope, while Mama took one turn out to be the photographer.

Weeee!!!! We can’t wait to return.

Family field trip to Lafayette’s WOW! World of Wonder children’s museum today.For just $7 (Satori’s admission), it was an inexpensive way to spend such a wonderful day.

And here’s Satori in the biggest bubble I’ve seen! Many other kids loved this so much, they had to change their clothes as they got soaked! Luckily, the museum had spare socks on hand if you needed them.

There was so many different rooms – science, art, museum, dramatic play, logic, and air/flying!

Out little actress LOVED pretending to be a bank teller, and a train station ticket master.

Even mama got in on the bubble action (I love bubbles)!