Downtown Bound

This post is, once again, long overdue! A couple of weekends ago we were incredibly blessed with a gift of a night downtown Denver. I kept it a secret from Robin and surprised him on a Friday afternoon (he thought we were just going on a dinner date, until I told him he wouldn't see his kids until the next day ;-). Robin's parents took the kids overnight (my first night away from Jersey!) and we headed downtown on our adventure. It was the most fabulously refreshing 24 hours away!!!

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Robin standing outside The Curtis hotel where we stayed.

Dinner date and a night out on the town!

The next day we explored the city, walking around 16th Street Mall and everything in between. It was so gorgeous and sunny and we had SUCH a wonderful time wandering around and not worrying about which kid needed to nap, and who to feed next before another diaper change, lol.

Our hotel was an adventure all by itself. Every floor had a different "theme" (movies, music, TV, etc) and the details were hilarious - right down to the Disney voices talking to you in the elevators and the awesome signage in the bathrooms... I couldn't resist taking some pics with my phone camera in the bathroom!

Enjoying our time in the sunshine.

The "Horror" 13th floor :)

The awesome gym, which we took full advantage of on Saturday morning! We haven't been able to work out TOGETHER for so long - it was a blast!

Hotel lobby...where you can borrow all kinds of books and games from their "library" to take up to your room!

Denver Arts...so beautiful. Can't wait to see a show there some day!

Walking around downtown there are pianos every couple of blocks called "Keys to the City." They were donated and then painted by various local artists. So cool! Anyone from the homeless to the wealthy tourist can just sit down and play them anytime. Robin even took a stab at it ;-)

Out to lunch at an old brewery downtown (the most quiet and enjoyable lunch I've had in quite some time! I didn't have to serve anyone, and MY lunch was delivered to me ;-).

Finishing up our time downtown!

We had so much fun together, but of course missed the kids and were excited to see them the next afternoon. Speaking of kids, they did great for Grandmommy and Pappy! Jersey's first slumber party was a success, and mom and dad came back refreshed and reconnected :) So thankful for the blessing of such a fun gift!

Garage Sale

Last weekend we had our first garage sale! I felt like I had "arrived" in adulthood, as that is surely a right of passage of some sort...

When we moved from Seattle we only had about two weeks notice, so we basically packed up everything we owned without taking time to go through any of it, and moved everything to Colorado. One of the many blessings of the house we live in now is that we have an unfinished basement for storage! It is wonderful to keep camping gear, baby items, off-season clothes, etc. However, there were quite a few boxes down there which were never unpacked after the move, and we weren't REALLY sure what was in them. We decided that having a garage sale would be the perfect excuse to make us clean out the basement, get rid of some stuff, and make a little bit of money at the same time. The plan worked beautifully as we sorted through ALL of our boxes, deciding what was worth keeping, and what wasn't (if we hadn't used it in the last year, we obviously didn't need it, no matter how "nice" or "great" it is!).

Friday mornings are the best traffic for garage sales, apparently, so I decided since I was by myself with the kids I would just do it from 8 - 11 am on Friday, and then we would do all day on Saturday if we had enough stuff left. Turned out that we sold MOST of our stuff on Friday morning - we definitely experienced the 8:00-serious-garage salers-rush!" I couldn't believe how many people stopped by that morning. That worked out well so we only did the sale until nap time on Saturday...and we made $200, selling who-knows-what!!! Needless to say we were quite happy with ourselves. I was able to use some of that money to shop at a HUGE community garage sale this weekend to stock up on some clothes and things for the kids - perfect! It was actually a pretty fun family day on Saturday as well all hung out in the garage, played on the lawn, Tyson charmed all of the people who stopped by, and we moved high chairs outside to eat lunch :)

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Father and daughter...drinking Starbucks and reading the Saturday morning paper as we started day 2 of our sale.

Tyson had price stickers all over him and thought that was the best part of the whole day. Every time someone asked him how much he "cost," he said: "I'm expensive." (And I said, "He might be half price by nap time" ;-)

Robin eating his smoothie and left over pizza, Tyson having lunch in his high chair, and Jersey just playing in her exersaucer :)

Teething...and chewing on EVERYTHING! (She finally got her first tooth 2 days ago!)

The girls, getting some sun! (I love how completely mismatched Jersey's outfit is in this picture...)

Whew! The end of a long, but fun weekend. Story time with daddy in their PJ's.

I just love hanging out with my little family. Even when it's something as simple as a garage sale weekend, we enjoy being home together :)