Easter at the Great Sand Dunes!

we are back from an awesome weekend trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park! We planned to spend the weekend with our Pho for Five friends. The girls absolutely adore their friends, Jackson, Shane, and Finley. Every time we hang out with them, Juneau always says (several times!) "i LOOOVVE my friends".

As a reward for the torture that is the week as the walk-in doc, that person always gets Friday/Sat/Sun off. So our weekend really started Thursday night after i got home from work. I boiled up some eggs, and let the girls decorate them.

This is Nova's new Cheesy smile. Natural looking, right? Also, you may notice that the purple cup is empty. It ended up on juneau's lap about 30 seconds into the coloring experience.

i had to post this picture of Nova's deep concentration face. She has started sticking her tongue out when she is really, really focused. She definately gets that one from her daddy. :)
Juneau was pretty intense with her decorating as well.

The finished product. Real Beauties.

Both of the girls got a real kick out of eating their eggs after they were decorated

On a TOTALLY unrelated note, I finally got some decorations for my office at work. I am sooooo excited about them that i just had to post a picture. A while ago, I got a really cool book by Linnart Nilsson with a bunch of awesome fetal photography. He has devised a camera the size of a pin that he has used during various fetal surgeries to take photographs, and they are amazing! I found some frames at Michael's on sale, and Cris has been helping me get the photographs framed, and i just absolutely love them. Here is a little sampling of what they look like. I think i will have like 8 of them total.

now, back to our weekend :)

I randomly found this ridiculous hotel in Alamosa that seemed to be just absolutely perfect for our gang. All together we had a one year old, 3 two year olds, a 3 year old, and 2 dogs (and that's not counting the "grown ups"!) The hotel i found was probably last renovated in the mid-70's. It had an indoor "waterpark", a denny's-style restaurant, and it was Pet Friendly! All that for the budget friendly family price of $70. i don't think i have ever stayed anywhere quite like this hotel. Let's just say it had LOTS of character!

The weekend was a dentists worst nightmare! as you can see, the girls are eating "Nerds" in bed. Hilarious little Finley kept calling them "nervous", which was all cute and funny until she announced to the room " I have nervous up my nose!" Fortunately she was able to launch it back out through her nostril like a little rocket.

Two Cheesy Grins from our two little Troublemakers.

Fin, Nova, and Shane. snuggled up and watching some "shows"

Ahhhhhh, Karma really came around this weekend for Summit, and we loved it! Summit has spent the last 4 year annoying Sherpa. She runs around behind her and nips at her ankles, and basically just irritates her. Henny is the new, adorable little puppy that joined the Good Gang this week. He is just the cutest little thing, and he adored Summit. Summit went along with Henny's crazy antics for a while, but often just acted annoyed at the puppy energy. We loved watching these two playing all weekend!

On Saturday we experienced the Epic that was Great Sand Dunes National Park. The actual dunes are AMAZING! It is so cool that you are just cruising along through Colorado, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you see these crazy dunes. The weather was supposed to be nice, and in the 50's, and so we got up early and geared up for spending the whole day trekking around the dunes.

Unfortunately, from the second we stepped out of the car we knew it wasn't going to go quite as planned. The wind was CRAZY! and suddenly 45 degrees felt like about 20 degrees. The kids were as brave as they could be, but there were tears shed all around as the freezing wind nipped at their little cheeks, and the sand blew in their faces! We were committed, though, and we hauled all 5 of the kids and both dogs up into the dunes, for as long as they could stand it.

Travis, Jack and Shane "enjoying" the dunes!

We hauled our sled along, hoping to find a good hill to sled down

Eventually we all ended up just kind of scooting/falling down the dunes

Cris was determined to put the sled to use, and he hauled Juneau and the sled up the hill....not an easy task

Meanwhile, Nova found herself a little spot in a windblocked area at the bottom of the dunes. she was happy there for a couple of minutes, until the wind picked back up and blew sand into her face again!

Cris and Juneau made it down the Dune on the sled!

Poor Shaney and Jack were all tucked into their dad's coat to keep out of the wind. Juneau doesnt exactly look too thrilled with our adventure either! We just had to smile and tell them to toughen up and enjoy the great outdoors!

Isn't this just a portrait of Family Fun? nova was definately ready to be back in her warm van with the doors closed and the heater on

Juneau actually fell asleep in the backpack on the walk back to the car The dunes really were an amazing natural phenomenon, and we really want to get back down there once it warms up a little!

After the dunes we decided to head over to the nearby Gator Farm. We had no idea how much of a treat we were really in for.

This was definately one of the strangest places any of us have EVER been to!

Finley was sold on the place as soon as she heard you could actually hold an Alligator!

Not only did Fin hold the gator, she gave that reptile a giant kiss! Juneau was quick to hop onboard with the reptile handling as well. Nova, however, wanted nothing to do with it, and wouldn't even touch it's tail.

There were all kinds of exotic animals haning out at the gator farm. Here the kids are peeking into the tortoise house

The gator farm started out as a Tilapia farm, and still raises Tilapia.

The Gator Pit

We purchased 2 buckets of "Gator Chow" (we think it was really just dog food). Unfotunately, the gators aren't really took interested in "gator chow" and would only eat it if it actually hit them right in the mouth. even then they sometimes were too lazy to actually open their mouths. The actual gator feeding was a little anti-climactic.

and just to give you an idea of the ambience....this is pretty much what the landscaping around the gator pits looked like. All kinds of weird junk, and piles and piles of tires everywhere!

oddly enough, the kids' favorite part of the gator farm was this woodpile they found. just behind the fence was some sort of ostrich or emu....

They had tons of (slightly dangerous) fun on this homemade see-saw

still reading? I have TONS and TONS of pictures from this weekend, so hopefully i haven't lost too many readers along the way! I'm sure the grandparents are still with me :)

Sunday morning we decided to set up a little easter egg hunt for the kids. Since we were out of town we didn't go to church. I did tell the girls the story of Easter, but i doub they have any concept of what the word "Resurrection" means. I tried to think of another way to say it, but "rising from the dead" probably wasn't a whole lot easier for them to grap. Juneau pretty much confirmed my suspicisoin that they had no clue what i was talking about when as soon as i was finished she said "and then we get to eat lots of candy?". so i said, "yes, we are celebrating Jesus being alive". to which she responded "I LOOOOVEEEE candy". maybe next year we will try again with the Easter Story.

Here the kids are lined up and ready to attack the Egg Hunt.

Shane, Juneau, Jackson, Nova and Finley

and yes, it was cold....and windy.

Nova in her element.

enjoying the loot after the hunt we never really let the girls have more than 1 piece of candy at a time. Today we kind of let them just go to town, and they really thought they were in Candy Heaven.

after all the other kids had tired of their eggs and baskets, Juneau was still diligently eating as much candy as she possibly could. I'm sure i've mentioned what a daddy's girl nova is, which reminds me of a little story from this week. I was playing with Nova and she was pretending to be a little baby, so i was rocking her and pretending to feed her a bottle. I said, "ok, now i'll be the baby and you be the mommy". She said, "no, i'll be the DADDY", and then proceeded to pretend to rock me and feed me a bottle. I guess that's what happens when Daddy is the one taking care of the kiddos!

our little cutie playing at the park

Junebug having some fun (After she finally separated herself from her easter basket) The girls swinging

Nova in the old metal structure she referred to as her "rocketship"

Juneau walking Summit finally (this post is allllmost over, seriously!) some pictures of the kids in the waterpark. I only had my point and shoot camera down there, so they are a little fuzzy.

waterbaby

daddy-play

cris quickly became popular with Finley, who just loves crazy play. She's super cute, and calls him "No-fa's Daddy" Nova and Fin in the "hot pool" (holding hands! you know i love that!)

whew, there are a LOT of pictures there! we obviously had a fabulous weekend. of course it would have been nice if it was a little warmer outside. Even with the crazy, windy, dune adventure, and the weird gator farm, and the Griswald-like hotel, we had a great time!