Dragons and more...

Knights and dragons have been VERY popular around our house lately. Here is one of Aidan's latest dragon creations. Note the unicorn standing next to the tree!

Thinking about fairy tales, I took this picture in a yard near my house. I could never paint it, because people would look at it and say, "It's too pretty. It looks fake." I was struck by the pink above and the blue below.

One of our butterflies hatched. We released it the next day because Colin couldn't keep himself from holding it, and we were afraid it would die. Sadly, the other chrysalis did not survive.
Sadie the spy dog...the most patient dog in the world!

Garden of the Gods

The boys and I drove to Colorado Springs today to pick Fred up from his meeting. We decided to stop at Garden of the Gods on the way back and see what that was like. We were NOT disappointed! Breathtaking views were everywhere, as were interesting rock formations.

Here are Fred and the boys on what looked like a natural staircase.

Some very cool rock formations:

The boys thought it was cool to sit under this gigantic rock.

More flowers and bugs...my favorite!

Colin seemed to have trouble believing we were actually letting him HOLD Brayden!

Aidan, Brayden and Joe

My darling nephew

Colin having one of his many timeouts that he's had this week. He's been testing us ALL WEEK, I guess to see if he can get away with stuff on vacation that he can't get away with at home. I won't go into details about all of that...we want to remember the fun stuff!

Tomorrow's big plans are to visit Dinosaur Ridge, where there are fossilized footprints along a walking trail, and also the Morrison Natural History Museum, which is geared toward children with tons of hands-on exhibits, and whose focus is dinosaurs, reptiles and the Ice Age. It should be the best day of Aidan's life so far!

Today we visited the Butterfly Pavillion in Westminster, CO. What an amazing place!

Inside the butterfly sanctuary, we were not supposed to touch anything, but what can you do when a butterfly LANDS on you? This was Colin's predicament here:

The boys had fun climbing on the giant spider web.

Aidan enjoyed investigating how a mosquito bites its victim...

...while Colin enjoyed seeing how a grasshopper eats.

Both boys loved climbing around on and in the giant honeycomb.

Aidan got a kick out of getting a "bug's eye view" of things.

The highlight for both boys was getting to hold "Rosie" the tarantula.

Here's a closeup of Rosie:

Among other miscellaneous things, here is Colin paying homage to his hero, Uncle Joe:

Aidan was SO EXCITED to hold his baby cousin!