Colorado 2012 part 2

We resumed our trip up to my folk's cottage after our little detour for the train ride. The trip is about 12 hours and the kids did wonderfully due to our newest purchase of dual DVD players. It was the best money I've ever spent in my life. I hate plopping my kids down in front of the TV but when the alternative is 12 hours of screaming, crying or hitting each other.....I'll take it. We found a model of DVD player that uses a USB stick, so we loaded nearly every movie we own onto this stick and just plugged it in. It started with Astro Boy and went through about 20 movies finishing with the movie Up. Nonstop. It was awesome.

So off we went through the mountains to our destination. My parents have been building this house for about six years now. My father designed it and hired a builder to build it. There was really no rush since it's a retirement house for them and they aren't retiring for a couple more years. They head out there to work on it whenever they can and right now it's about 90% done in my opinion. Sean and I started having kids in 2007 and have yet to see it since bringing babies out to a work zone hasn't been high on my list of fun times, so this is the first opportunity to see the place. It is finished to a point that I wasn't worried about my 2 year old grabbing a nail gun or falling off an unfinished deck. It's nearly done but still needs quite a bit of finishing work. I knew going out there this summer that we'd be "roughing it" in a sense. For instance, there was a bed to sleep in but no running water. We used jugs of water from a well pump outside to wash, cook and even flush the toilets. We had a refrigerator but no stove so we cooked out on the grill and on the Coleman stove. It really was fun.

The cabin, or cottage as my Father calls it, is absolutely beautiful. It's all done in the Arts and Crafts style and the attention to detail is amazing. My parents should be very proud of what they've built out there, it's quite a home. I'm so excited to have such a fun place to bring the kids out to visit every year. A lot of memories will be made there I'm sure.

We kept busy outside when it wasn't raining. In Colorado it seems like about 2 pm the clouds move in every single day. Maybe it's just when we visit but it's like clock work. So you plan your activities before or after the clouds move in. We went four wheeling around the mountain a couple of times and Sean took Wesley once. I had a blast hanging on to Sean as we explored the back roads.

We took the kids fishing once. I thought we'd get the chance to do more but just ran out of time. Wesley got to cast a few times but had more fun placing stickers on his fishing pole. Mom got a fish on the line but it got loose at the last minute. Too bad, would have been fun for the kids to see a trout.