farm livin'

taking i-80 home gave us the chance to impose on our friends owen & kim who live in ft. collins. as they raise and train horses, their house is like an amusement park of sorts, with no end of barnyard chores to take part in. cleaning stables, feeding and watering horses, moving tractors. even more amazing is the fact that owen is a computer programmer, which forces me to conclude that they know civilization exists, and that they chose to live this way.

penelope was absolutely taken with her newfound equine responsibilities. she learned the safe way to give a horse a cookie, (which involves putting the cookie in a bucket and sliding the bucket under the fence) and kept asking to "pet the horses' locks". kim (who also gives riding lessons) was really in her element, and pen went home believing that she is a fully qualified rider/trainer/caretaker. in fact, now when she cries, instead of asking for her "lovie", (comfort blanket) she says she wants to ride a horse. this demand has the added benefit of being impossible to meet, so she can basically keep crying as long as she wants to.

lucia had her own animal encounter...

eli, on the other hand, stuck with what he knew...

fresh off the alps

we were lucky enough to catch our friends the hiatts on a us visit from their home in geneva. since tom has been learning french in switzerland, i was pleased to see that he hadn't adopted the practices of wearing berets and pencil thin moustaches or deep glottal laughing. the hiatts are, however, in the annoying habit of remaining young and fit over long periods of time...

dino-museum

i was not present at the trip to the museum of ancient life at utah valley's historic thanksgiving point. so, from the pictures, i'll try to pice together what happened...

among the 100 or so available toys, penny and eli find one to fight over the entire time. the other 99 go untouched. tears, screaming, acts of gruesome violence, the whole bit...

lucia puts the sharp end of the toy in her mouth and gets hurt; falls down on a spiny dinosaur toy; spends most of the time crying...

eli smears sand all over pen; someone climbs all the way in the sand pit; lucia eats the sand; sand all over the car...

...how'd i do?

banzai

we did manage to drop in on our friends the aus, who so generously set up their inflatable "banzai splash blast lagoon", whereupon the kids immediately had a competition to see who could take in the greatest volume of hose water nasally...

westward-ho!

the trip to utah was cut quite short due to illness, conflicting work schedules, and home responsibilities. however, we were able to fit in a little time with friends, cousins, and of course, a ride around the block in an atv-towed covered wagon.

hotel-philia

i don't fully understand the kids' fascination with hotels. sure, there is usually a pool involved, but that's just one side of the coin. a hotel stay most often means lousy food and a shared bed. for us, three kids in a confined space means a complete loss of situational control. the smaller the enclosure, the more unsuppressed the youthful exuberance. the stress of sharing up to three walls with any number of weary sojourners means we start castigating them about noise by around five o'clock. by the time the sun goes down, we have moved on to psychological threats and full physical restraint. still, a night's stay in any shabby hotel ranks right up around viewing the fish tanks at wal-mart on the kids' hierarchy of priorities.

so although one might think that no good would come of leaving twelve hours late for an eight hour drive to utah, it provided a golden opportunity for a midnight check in at one of the country's most poorly maintained hotels located in green river utah. (yes, this is a real place, but just barely.) although the kids were all fast asleep when we pulled into the parking lot, they managed to get in one last hyperactive outburst before crashing in their bed. although pen and eli could stretch out seven times over in their shared queen sized bed, kelley and i couldn't help but take a couple pictures of them spooning all night.

super sonic

on occasion, the peak heat of a summer day warrants a trip to sonic for a fountain drink poured into an industrial sized drum with a cap and a straw. kelley had left hers sitting on a low table, and once lucia got a hold of it, there was no prying it from her grasp...

eli and penelope order their drinks purely based on color; they ask for it by name. penelope always orders a "pink" drink; eli, "blue". although in fairness, a single serving has so much artificial coloring, you literally can "taste the blue"...

splash park

one of the great ways to beat the heat in denver while simultaneously getting tapped into the community's latest in communicable disease is the local splash park. free of fare, the kids can spend the day wading in pools of runoff from other children's un-immunized and germ ridden bodies, ingesting large quantities of chlorinated water laced with all manner of bodily excrement. this particular locale has the added advantage of sitting right under the approach corridor at buckley air force base, so the festivities are always intermingled with eli's calling out of whatever esoteric military aircraft types happen to be flying in. in fact, when we were talking about splash parks, i once told eli about the crown fountain- an artistically designed waterfall and fountain structure located at millennium park in chicago. so intrigued was he to the point that he temporarily lost all interest in our local splash park, desiring to do all his splash parking in chicago. realizing what i had done, i explained to eli how far away it was, how onerous it was to get there. he persisted. i told him it would likely be a long time before we were able to make it to chicago. he was not deterred. finally, i mentioned to him that there was no airport next to millennium park. without stopping to consider the matter, he immediately responded, "dad, let's not go there. dad, let's never go there, okay?"