Week 22

 I can't believe I am still counting weeks.  When I first started doing that, I thought maybe quarantine/pandemic would last a few weeks, but here we are, 5 plus months later, still counting weeks.   This was an adventurous, full of birthdays and slightly challenging one, but we made it through with lots of good memories.  After returning from South Dakota, we did a few things in Denver (mostly used our time slots at the pool and the boys competed in their final meet of the season) and then headed back to the mountains.  Despite the crazy upcoming school year and how different it will look and feel, the teachers continued their tradition of matching older kids with incoming 3rd graders as buddies.  Our meet up needed to look different given the situation, but the 3 moms and sons met at Congress Park to play Whiffle Ball, climb trees and eat popsicles.  

The little ones (with a neighbor up there) began a new fort.  They spent quite a bit of their time outside building it complete with "flooring".

Brian and I typically try and trail run while we are up there each morning.  On our last morning, we came across a couple walking who mentioned that there were four moose up ahead hiding behind the bushes, but that they were moving away from the trail and we should be fine.  Luckily, we talked to that couple a few more minutes, and in that time, we looked up to see a huge bull moose crossing our trail and a few moments later, the female.  It was truly amazing to see them so close!  And on our way down, we saw 2 deer (very close) and this fox, pictured below, ran across our trail.  We don't typically run with phones, but Brian happened to have his this time.

Brian tries to work while we are up there, not always easy with the boys and me around, so on Monday I took them to the beach by the lake in hopes that they could play a little.  It was the perfect thing to do because there was hardly anyone there (sometimes its very crowded) and the kids were able to dig and splash in the water a bit.  Something different when often our days seem to blend together.

We came down Tuesday for a family event that evening.  Wednesday was my nephews 17th birthday, so Adler set up a zoom call with him.  Thursday we were supposed to head up to camp until Saturday with some friends, but due to some things we needed to do in Denver we ended up not going until Friday morning.  And it was a good thing because Papa was in a bad bike accident that day (also happened to be his birthday) and ended up in the hospital.  He is now at home recovering and we were able to head up Friday morning and spend the day and night camping.  We are back home today to get groceries and then going back to the mountains tomorrow.  We are trying to spend as much time up there as possible before school starts (maybe?) next week.