Day 71: Garden of the Gods

So today I decided I had to take Haley to Garden of the God's here in Colorado Springs. If you are visiting the Springs, you have to hit at least one of the tourist attractions right? It was such a good idea in my mind, but in my mind I didn't account for 4 kids. Still, it was so much fun, just not as smoothly fun as it was in my mind.

We packed a lunch and headed to the Garden which is all of 5 minutes from my house. As we were driving there I could tell that the kids were a little more tired that I thought they would be this early. Bennett was especially exhausted and I was kind of feeling bad that I had suggested it because I was all worried that Haley felt pressure to go when we would have been just fine to put him down for a nap. But we went. The first 10 minutes at our favorite spot didn't go to smoothly. Poor Bennett was getting so frustrated because he kept slipping on the loss gravely sand and falling. Finally Haley took off his shoes and he had a lot more fun climbing on rocks. Jack was a little off his game too, but thank goodness the blue birds came and started eating our scrap food because they saved the day! Well, the kids did start throwing their food as much as possible at this point, in hopes to get more blue birds to come, but hey, they were having fun.

The weather was beautiful! As we left the wind was starting to pick up and it was cooling off a little, so we picked the perfect time to go. On our way home we swung by the Home Depot for some paint and framing supplies. The kids fell asleep in the car so when we got home we got right to work on the menu board. At this point Haley was asking me why I didn't tell her that my menu board took me two weeks to make. But I loved making one for her mostly because I know how much it has changed my life. We spent the entire after noon making meal tags and I created a frame for her board that I'm in love with. I plan to make three just like it to go over my bed in my room. I'll post pictures once I get them made.

By the time the boys woke up Haley and I tried our hardest to just let them play so we could keep working on tags. That's about when we learned just how obsessed Bennett is with Alivia. He couldn't leave her alone, and being a 2 year old little boy he was having a hard time understanding what we were talking about when we were saying "Gentle." I never could figure out what he was doing that was making her so mad, but we must have finally made him understand that he couldn't do that, because finally he just started poring water water on her face from his sippy cup. That made her really mad. He just loved that little girl so much, and I think he was fascinated that he could make her react like that. But he had plenty of sweet moments with her too, like holding her hand in the car and constantly wanting to know where "Baby Ali" was.

So guess what we did after dinner? Oh, yeah, we kept working on the menu board tags. And guess how late Haley and I were up again? 2:30!!! We are insane. We were so tired but we had to finish it. And it looks so good. Again it was another night of talking and laughing until we almost wet our pants. It was a little sad to know that Haley is leaving me tomorrow. But seriously, I'm so happy we could do this. I look forward to many more similar trips in the future.