Bead Show!

Today was the first day of the annual Denver Bead show. I look forward to this all year...it's a great place to find new and different beads. In past years the show has been held north of the city up off I-25. It was always too crowded and hard to maneuver around. This year it was held out near the airport at the Holiday Inn convention center. There were a few less dealers but nothing that wasn't missed by me. I happily spent about 4 hours wandering around, looking over all the vendors and comparing prices and beads. I got some great beads to build necklaces and bracelets for Christmas and Birthday gifts. Did I mention that I always go with out kids? They want to touch everything and want me to buy them lots of beads...hard to explain that these are NOT kid beads!

Teachers

This week was "Back to school night" for the boys. Tuesday night was 2nd grade and last night was 4th. Both of the boys teachers are GREAT! They love them as much as I do. Both teachers have great attitudes about their kids and how to help them through what ever difficulties they are having in school. We have a new Principal this year and teaching the kids "respect & responsibility" are stressed this year. 4th grade especially...she encourages the parents to let the kids remember

to pack their homework/library books and what not.

Here is a picture of what greeted me as I sat down in Michael's chair at school.

His was the only one that had one of the arms taped down on the desk so I had

a "hug" from his desk buddy. We won't mention that I ripped off about 3 fingers

trying to get the tape up from off the desk!

Trip to D.C.

We spent a few days visiting family in Maryland. We headed down to D.C. on Saturday. We got tickets to ride the tourist trolley around town which worked well. The kids liked being able to hop on and off when we wanted to go somewhere new. We started with the National Aquarium which was very small. The descriptions did not match much of the fish exhibits so we really didn't know what we were looking at. We then headed over to the air and space museum and then onto the Indian museum. By that point we were tired but I wanted to make one more stop at the Lincoln Memorial. Ben had fallen asleep on the trolley so he hung out with Donna and had a snack while we went up and visited Lincoln. I remember the statue the most from our trip to D.C. in High School and it was still impressive. We went out to dinner Sunday night to P.F. Changs (YUM!) to celebrate our anniversary (12yrs), Donna & Warren's (44 yrs) and Dee & Andy's (6yrs). They all fall around the Labor Day weekend. A good time was had by all since the kids were happy and ate well....it didn't hurt that we ended the meal with an amazing piece of cake with raspberry sauce.

Back to school! Wednesday the boys were
off to school and I was left feeling a lot like
"Wiggy"...a cat at the shelter. Actually, I did
try and upload the picture of the boys on the first
day but it wouldn't load right. The boys both love
their teachers and the kids that are in their class.
It's all good.
Di

New Pets

Yes, more pets. Not that we don't have enough but Michael and Ben wanted pets of their OWN.

I heard them discussing getting kittens but I was able to put the stop on that! Michael got stuck on the Mice right away and I was able to talk Ben out of Gerbils (they chew everything and I already have a pet like that). So, after making them wait 2 months (after our big summer trip) we spent 2 weeks getting the mouse house and other supplies. I took them over to Denver Dumb Friends Leauge (animal shelter) to look at their supply of unwanted mice and there were quite a few females to pick from. Ben found his right away--it had to have spots (thankfully it was very friendly), Michael had to go through about 4 before he found a very nice white and grey one. He couldn't decide between the white/grey and a red one and I felt bad for the red one since they were cage buddies---we took both. Yes, I have a mouse now too!

As for our recent trip up to Glacier...there are a few things that the guide books forget to mention:
WYOMING-Rolling, sagebrush filled highways (boring) with truckers and gas pipe lines if you go I-80 and many, many, many flat, squashed, dead rabbits if you go I-25.
UTAH-N.E. Utah NOT like the the rest of Utah (no rock formations)
IDAHO-Roads surrounded by fields of potato plants or black, chunky lava rock.
MONTANA-
--Record heat for the 2 weeks we were in the area (98*).
--Record heat driving us to swim in the snow melt river feeding Lake McDonald (36* or so?)
--Free range cattle/horses/dogs in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. This in an area where the
the speed limit is 70mph and the road is twisty. 2 free range horses wandered around camp
on the reservation just outside the East entrance to Glacier. The cows act like they own the
road and take their sweet time getting off to graze. I guess maybe the grass IS greener on
the other side!
--The last minute repairs on Going-To-The-Sun road in Glacier were scary...a substantial
bridge that seemed to be stuck to the side of the mountain...well, we aren't quite sure how.
--Light until 11pm! Hard to get the kids to believe you that it's way past bedtime.
--Hiking in trails with snow fields with Bighorn sheep and Mt. Goats on the trail with you (this
a NICE surprise).
--Casino's. They were EVERYWHERE. The gas station, the restaurants, the reservations.
Seedy looking places with seedy clientele.
--Grama spending time taking the boys fishing at least 6 times, in 6 different places and the
only person who caught a fish was me (with Ben's abandoned pole). To top it off it ended
up being a fish on the endangered species list.

With all that said we had a GREAT trip. It ended up being a very different trip then what I imagined. I didn't think it would be almost 100* everyday. I never dreamed we would spend hours on the shore of the lake swimming (it was a chilly lake). While we saw Bighorn sheep and Mt. Goats all over the top of the pass, we hardly saw any other animals due to the heat. They did close all trail in a major section of the east park due to grizzly activity. I quickly decided that I didn't want to camp in that area. We went into Canada to Waterton Lakes National Park which is connected to Glacier in the north. There was a few nice places we found but not terribly impressed by the scenery. Digging for fossils was dirty hard work but interesting. We had hoped to find more fish fossils but found a few anyway. The boys got the hang of breaking the rock open the right way. The dogs spent a week at a kennel outside Glacier. They had as much fun swimming in the lake as the boys did.

We got up at 3:30am to catch an early flight back to Colorado today. It sounded good at the time but it wasn't so much fun to do! We all spent Sunday (father's day) at my sister's in Sparta. As always, she was a great host. We ate very well and the kids were entertained in the form of pool, trampoline, ATV rides, nerf guns......
Monday the boys and I did some shopping at the LL Bean outlet where they got their new backpacks for school next year. They also swam in Mike's pool for hours before going out to dinner at PF Changs (yummm). Yesterday I took the boys up to my old shelter and got some paperwork to copy and use at my current shelter. I also took the boys on a tour of my old home and neighborhood. They weren't too sure about swimming in the lake everyday like we did (but...there's algae!). We also went to Denville Dairy to get Ice Cream. Mike had a big meeting down in Trenton Tuesday night so after an early dinner I took the boys over for more swimming in the pool. While I don't like apt. life so much I DID like having a place to take them in the evening where they could go crazy for a while.
We are glad to be back.