peacock

final palm springs day

It was another beautiful day in Palm Springs. We lounged by the pool all day. We played lime putting and I sunk a hole in one! I earned us BOGO margaritas. Just what we needed! 🙂
We swam, we relaxed, we hung out with friends and had a truly wonderful day! I’m so, so grateful for this time we had and hope we will plan another trip together soon. 

palm springs | tie dye and build a buddy

Gwyneth and I got up early and went to the archery class at the hotel. It was just the two of us which was really fun and it was early enough that the heat had not fully hit yet. 

Lots of fun with my little lady!

Then it was back to the pool. 
We splurged and got rafts for the girls too so we’d have more pool toys to play with. They were all lots of fun and provided hours of entertainment. 
We had the pool to ourselves most of our visit. It was wonderful!
Gwyneth and Sarah took a break in the afternoon to make tie dye shirts. 
silly girls!
the view from the pool. We fell in love with all those palm trees. 
the shirts turned out great! 
Annabelle took a little break for lunch. The heat was a lot to take but she kept on laughing…
After even more swimming, all the girls took a break to build a buddy. Those suckers were fully stuffed! 
We had dinner at Las Casuelas  and it may have been my favorite the entire trip. Everyone seemed to enjoy their meals and fancy drinks. It was a great choice!
So thankful to Connie and Mitch for such a fun vacation. 
I sure do like this guy.
The whole crew!
After dinner we headed back to the hotel for an attempt at the escape room. The girls were really eager to find clues. We found all the clues and keys and managed to escape!

palm springs | whale riding and pizza party

Our first full day in Palm Springs was all about sunshine and swimming. It is hot, hot, hot in Palm Springs – the temperature was over 100 degrees everday. It maxed out at 107 degrees while we were there. Yikes! That is crazy hot. We didn’t mind much though because we lounged by the pool and swam our days away.
The view from our hotel. 
Time to hit the pool!
The Tendlers had this silly whale that provided hours and hours of entertainment for us all!
Awesome!
The girls were having so much fun that I had to join in too! It was a blast!
The hotel had a sundae bar each day at 2 pm. It was a sweet, cool break from a full day in the pool. 
Ice cream didn’t keep them out of the pool for long. 
We all cleaned up and grabbed dinner at Bill’s Pizza in downtown Palm Springs. The pizza hit the spot! 
The girls enjoyed the mist outside the restaurant. 
We walked around downtown and found a yummy ice cream shop. Yep, that’s ice cream twice in one day. While on vacation….

welcome to palm springs

Our dear friends, the Tendlers, invited us to join them for a vacation in Palm Springs. What a treat! We were so excited to get away and looked forward to time with friends. 
Here we go….
We arrived just in time for dinner and the Tendlers picked out a great Mexican restaurant for us. We met at Los Arcos and felt like vacation was officially underway! After dinner we hit the pool and I don’t think the girls dried off for 4 days straight!
The three girls played beautifully together the entire trip. I was so grateful for that and it made for the most relaxing trip. Connie and Mitch are super relaxed and have the same love of dining out that we do so we all meshed easily. 

2018 summer bucket list

We are back at it again this summer! This is our 5th summer with our silly little bucket list. I still love it. I love putting the list together and checking off each adventure over the summer. Like most things I do, it’s over the top and I get a bit obsessive. 
The list has evolved from a list of fun things to do to almost a photography challenge. The girls know the clip doesn’t come off the board until I get a photo I like…which may be even more challenging than doing 100 fun things over the summer. 
At the end of the summer I make a chatbook and we have great memento of all our fun little adventures. The summer buckets lists from years past are here.  
Here we go….
Last Day of School
 LEGOrado @ Colorado History Museum
Rockies vs Reds @ Coors Field
Boondocks
Welcome to Palm Springs
Pizza Night in Palm Springs
Tie Dye
Build a Buddy
Archery
Ice Cream Sundae Bar
Palm Springs Pool Party
Warner Brothers Studio Tour
 Hollywood
Redondo Beach Pier
Redondo Beach
Long Beach
Long Beach Aquarium
 Queen Mary
 Downtown Disney
Disney Character Dining
California Adventures
 Disneyland
School of Rock
Morton’s
 Mount Evans
Afternoon Tea at the Brown Palace
Vacation Bible School
Dance Rehearsal
Swim Team Pancake Breakfast
The Greatest Showman Camp
The Little Mermaid at Boulder Dinner Theater
Dance Recital
Greek Festival
 Father’s Day
Incredibles 2
Glenwood Springs
Strawberry Festival
Glenwood Hot Springs
Painting with Bubbles
Cupcake Wars at BMK
Swim Meet #1/ My Birthday
Annabelle is 11!
Celestial Seasonings Tea Tour
Grease at the IMAX
Jurassic World
Kitchen Day with Dad
Painting with Tape
Newsies at Candlelight
Cousins Lunch @ 5280 Burger Bar
Staycation @ DIA
Rigazzi’s in St. Louis
Swimming in St. Louis
The Arch
Botanic Gardens in St. Louis
Pabst Museum (Milwaukee)
Discovery World (Milwaukee)
Mader’s Restaurant (Milwaukee)
Cousins! (Milwaukee)
Brewers Game (Milwaukee)
Amtrak Train Ride (Milwaukee to Chicago) 
Dinner at Ditka’s (Chicago)
Chicago Art Museum
Giordano’s Chicago Style Pizza
Michigan Avenue (Chicago)
98th floor of the Hancock Tower (Chicago)
Carson’s Ribs (Chicago)
The Bean (Chicago)
Navy Pier (Chicago)
Botanic Gardens (Chicago)
Sweets Ice Cream
Painting with sponges
Rockies vs Diamondbacks
BMK Jumangi Camp
Swim Meet #2
Sunflower Art Camp (Boulder)
Hotel Transylvania 3
Swim Meet #3
 Alligator Spirit Night
 Ant Man and Wasp Girl
 Swim Banquet
 Sushi for Gwyneth’s 10th birthday!
 American Girl Doll Store
 Digital Photography Class
 Cake Boss
 Painting with Crystals
 Bowling
 Sewing Class
The Samples Concert
 Art Camp at the Arvada Center
 Elitch’s
 Mid Air Adventures
BMK Fairy Tale Treats Camp
 Great Wolf Lodge
 Water Park
 Water Slides
 Broncos vs Bears
And just like that, it’s the first day of 5th and 6th grade!

legorado and rockies game

We started summer break off with a trip to the Colorado History museum. We were pretty excited for the exhibit cleverly named LEGOrado. 
We explored the main floor exhibits before heading upstairs. 

There was some pretty cool artwork on the walls for the event. Many of our sports favorites. 

The exhibit definitely had some cool pieces and it was fun to check them out but overwall it was pretty underwhelming.I would feel bad saying that but the clerk at the front desk said the same thing. There was just one big table of displays and then a small area for building your own. It just didn’t meet our expectations. On a positive note, here’s a few of our favorites:

Casa Bonita

It only took us about 20 minutes and we had planned most of our day to spend at the museum. Hmmm….

Lucky for us the “Play Ball” exhibit was still open and it did NOT disappoint. It was awesome! The lighting wasn’t very conducive with picture taking so I didn’t’ snap as many pictures as normal, but there was so much amazing memorabilia! 

After the museum we met friends for pre-game drinks at The Pig and the Sprout. It was our first visit and the food was great. The drinks were even better. I had a bacon bourbon and it was delish!

Our friends, the Geyers, are visiting from Kansas and were attending the Taylor Swift concert tonight. Their twins didn’t want to go so they spent the evening with us at the baseball game. It was their first MLB game so that was pretty exciting.

Frozen yogurt time!

The kiddos became fast friends! They have met before, but it’s been a few years. 

We headed back to the house and the kids played hide and seek and board games until it was finally time for them to get some sleep. The kids slept over and were ready to play again in the morning!

last day of 4th and 5th grade

Summer is here!
Today was the last day of 5th grade for Annabelle and 4th grade for Gwyneth. They both had a fabulous year, but were pretty excited for summer vacation. They have grand plans for doing….absolutely nothing! That’s what they said anyway. They want to lay on the couch and watch movies and play with legos. HA! We’ll see how long that lasts…
They invited their friend Kierra over for a sleep over. They stated up super late…we finally asked them to please, please, please go to sleep after 2 a.m. I think it was their perfect kick off for summer!

movie and water balloon fight

I had so much fun last week sneaking out to the movies with my friends that I did it again today. AMC has a $5 Tuesday offer, so we took advantage and saw Life of the Party. I was joined by my friend, Connie, and it was a such a wonderful excursion in the middle of the day. The movie was ridiculous and funny and had several laugh out loud moments. It was a perfect break in the middle of a hectic day. 
Gwyneth’s class earned a water balloon fight and I was looking forward to watching that madness. I ran home to get a few work messages sent and then went over to the school….just in time to miss the water balloon fight. I was 4 minutes late and the balloons were already gone. They had several hundred balloons and made their way through them very quickly. I was bummed to miss the fight, but still had a good laugh watching them splash around in the buckets of water. They were soaked!
Best class shot I could get: 
Let the photo bombs begin: 
Gwyneth was so fortunate to be in a class with some really great kids this year and made some wonderful friendships.

zoo day…wait, what?!?!

The girls earned a zoo day from the fun run. As usual for their school, there were so many parent volunteers each parent was just asked to take their own children. It’s pretty great how involved the parents are at this school. 
We pulled up to the zoo at the same time as approximately 30 buses. Nope! Nope, nope, nope! There were kids everywhere. I’m sure once we got in it would have been fine, but the sea of kids at the entrance was a bit disheartening. 
I stopped and asked the girls “who wants to ditch the zoo and head to the Botanic Gardens?”. It was a resounding “Me!!!” as they saw the buses unloading. We switched gears and hit the gardens and peace was quickly restored to our day. 
The Botanic Gardens is my absolute favorite place to take pictures. I could stay there all day and just snap away. The sun was pretty intense when we arrived, so our lighting was a bit off, but that didn’t slow me down. 
We texted B and let he know that we were ditching the zoo. He surprised the girls by meeting us downtown with their Elitch passes. It’s started to rain shortly after we arrived so the girls were only able to ride a few rides but we weren’t complaining. What a fun day! Only three more days of school to go…

camping with annabelle

Annabelle and I attended our last Girl Scout event together for her troop. It has been quite a journey for her and scouts…definitely not the experience I had in mind for her. She started in kindergarten and the troop has undergone many, many changes. So many troop leaders and scouts that have come and gone. I took a turn leading the troop and it certainly had it’s fair share of challenges. In the end, I would like to think that Annabelle had a good experience and enjoyed her time. I’m not positive that she wanted to be done with Scouts but this troop is most definitely done. 
We spent the weekend at the YMCA of the Rockies. It is a lovely camp ground in Estes Park. We had a great big cabin with plenty of room for all the Scouts and moms. We spent our weekend exploring and didn’t get to do nearly as much as we have liked. Annabelle and I quickly agreed that we would need to return with Gwyneth and B. 
The camp grounds are nestled right up against the National Park. It was beautiful and there was wildlife right outside our cabin. 
We spent our fair share of time in the craft lodge. The jewelry section was a big hit and we made some super cute bookmarks. It was a wonderful weekend with my girl!