My Rocky Mountain Monkeys

Who would be insane enough to take a 6 week old baby and a 2 year old roundtrip on an airplane to Colorado for 9 days?!  The Nelson Family.  Yup.  We are C-razy.  For future reference, don't let a 9 month pregnant person make these kind of decisions.  But thank goodness we did it, it was a great trip overall!

The Graney family was very generous to let us invade their brand new Denver home in Stapleton.  We fell in love with their swing for Adeline and enjoyed watching Lilah and Patrick play.  Lilah might have told their sweet dogs, Charlie & Gus, "no lick-a my baby seester! walk away. walk away."  Poor guys, they were just trying to be nice.  Stapleton was a lesson in how well they can do family neighborhood planning-- it was amazing.  The parks were phenomenal, the splash pads, the sidewalks... what a neighborhood!  Too cool.  Way to go Graneys!  And thanks for the widely inappropriate VooDoo donuts.  Loved them.  Sorry I ate them all.

Patrick and Lilah ride it up

VooDoo Donuts.  Wow.

Ben's inappropriate donut.  It was deliciously inappropriate.

Stapleton Parks... it's pretty nuts.

We enjoyed 3 days in Denver seeing my brother, Tyler, and showing him his new niece, Adeline!  He of course was majorly proud and excited to have both his nieces in Colorado.  We also got to see my cousin, Kelly, and her kids, Colton & Eli.  We somehow got 4 small children to sit through a meal at Old Chicago while we all caught up.  The Denver Zoo also made the list and was fantastic!  I sadly taught Lilah that a Big Horn Sheep was a goat.  She referenced the "goats" throughout the trip... fail.  But the rest of the animals I correctly identified... mostly.

Kelly and Eli meet Adeline

Uncle Ty and his crazies

Uncle Ty and Adeline

Denver Zoo

Elephant Show

We took our newly minted 6 week old Adeline, Lilah and a jam-packed rental car to 8,000 feet to Vail Village where we stayed 5 more days.  It was beautiful!  Thankfully no one was affected by the altitude.  We took 2 great hikes (complete with Lilah in the backpack), consumed large amounts of fruit snacks, did white water rafting, village shopping, attended a beautiful wedding in Beaver Creek, and mostly enjoyed some downtime.  Both Trevor and Tyler came out to enjoy some uncle time with nieces and have fun in the mountains.  The boys golfed Eagle Vail and thoroughly enjoyed the pretty course.  My mom and I ventured out with wee-ones to some pretty beautiful parks.  Lilah discovered that riding a bus was pretty much her favorite thing, that and squirting herself with a water gun.  Bopper spoiled her with a trampoline, bike rental, ice cream and pretty much anything else she wanted. :)  On our last night we celebrated Frannie Bruening and Paul VonderFecht's wedding which was gorgeous and danced the night away!  Thankfully my dress fit and we had the best babysitters anyone could ask for--Gaga and Bopper!

Booth Falls Hike

Our hiker- stylin' with two Elsa bandaids on her forehead... she refused to take them off.

Pretty wildflower meadows

Aspen forests

Vail Mountain bungee trampoline... someone LOVED it!

Gondola ride with Bopper and Unc "Tray-vor"

Her favorite Dragon book with Gaga

Ford Park

Sort of getting the bike thing... 

The beautiful VonderFecht Wedding

Ice cream

Bopper Duty

Wedding ready

Lionshead Village in Vail

More of the Village

And of course we had to take a picture of the bus!

To say the ride home was stressful was an understatement.  Both kids were really pretty good, but our combined exhaustion was a little destructive.  Lilah missed her nap.  Rooney had a few accidents in the house when we got home.  And it was my last day of maternity leave :(  Vacations are hard.