"I Cweams" & Zoo for the Day

We took the girls to eat "I Cweams" (as Lucy calls it) at Maggie Moos on Saturday night. There is this great outdoor shopping mall called Southlands that is fairly close to our house. They have great shops and restaurants and a giant movie theater, not that I would know because I haven't been to a movie in ages, but there's really stuff for the whole family to do there. There are fountains of water that shoot up from the ground and in the warmer months you'll see kids in their bathing suits running around in them. It's a little too cool already for that now, although we did see some wet kids! We like to do dinner, walk around and then go for ice cream.

Sunday we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs. This zoo is built on a mountain and is made to blend with the natural environment. It was really beautiful, but stinky. The coolest were the giraffes, which were standing down on a lower level so that we were eye level with them and could feed them. There was a carousel for the kids and lots of exhibits. We spent over three hours there! The funnel cakes with strawberry sauce were to die for. The girls loved the day and so did we.

Sick Girls and Crappy Labor Day

So, Ian had the bright idea of traveling to Arkansas for the Labor Day weekend by himself. Yes, I said by himself for four days over the holiday. When he was in the planning stages of this little trip I guess I wasn't really thinking clearly or was drugged or something because at the time I thought it was just fine with me. Besides, I was hoping to go on a trip with some girlfriends in late September, which is not happening now by the way. He departed on Thursday for a long weekend of fantasy footballing and poker playing with his Benton buddies from high school. In the meantime, back here in reality the girls and I had a good evening doing outdoor movie night with the neighbors. We had a fantastic time, then Lucy got sick from both ends. So, on Saturday we had big plans of going to the pool but since Lucy was sick from both ends we didn't think we should spread it around. Sunday I awoke at 4a.m. with the sickness too! I guess a stomach virus. So that continued all day but we decided we would go to the neighbor's Labor Day party and infect them too. Maggie was feeling her usual normal, healthy self. She NEVER gets sick and Lucy gets sick if I just say the word sick. I don't know how I had two children with completely different immune systems. Anyway, the next-door party was very nice and the kids ran wild and I ate way too much for feeling sickly. Everyone, and I mean everyone, asked "where is Ian," "he went where to do what," "fantasy football?" I'm sure my neighbors think we're totally weird for Ian having a guy's weekend on Labor Day. By the time Monday rolled around I was about to go postal after basically being in my house with kids and two of us being sick all weekend long. It was just about enough to make me lock myself in the basement until Ian returned. Luckily, the neighbor invited Maggie to the pool with them that afternoon so she got to do SOMETHING on the holiday. All in all Ian had fun and was glad he went but I informed him that there will be no more holidays spent away from us! He agreed.