Green Weekend

Green does not refer to the color of the leaves here because they are changing quickly to golden, red and purple. Green does not refer to money because we neither spent nor earned any this weekend. Green does not refer to the environment, although carbon monoxide detecters have been placed in several places along the interstate.

In this case, green refers to what is coming out of Caleb's nose and being lacquered to his cute little cheeks. You see, we are on day 20 of the 10-14 day cold he acquired earlier this month. The first week was all green. The second week was all clear, so we thought we were healing. Alas, this weekend it went back to green. The poor little guy wakes up in the morning holding his throat and saying "ow". In the evenings, he coughs and says "ow". The cold did get him an Elmo humidifier, though. He requests "Dada fan on!" every day. Because of his illness and Aaron's new woodworking project we did not go anywhere this weekend.

In other news, Campbell's school called this morning asking me to pick Campbell up. Apparently, she had a tummy ache and needed to come home. Right now, I have one in bed coughing and one on the couch trying to keep her chicken noodle soup down. Fun days here at Casa de Brown.

Trains and Leaves

Saturday was a relaxed day for us. We went to the zoo in the morning. We wanted to get there one last time before it gets too cold. We also wanted to see the new baby giraffe. He is currently only 2 weeks old. We learned that when the baby giraffe, he was already 6 feet tall! As we walked through the zoo on our way to see the giraffe, Caleb kept repeating, "Baby Wawee", which means "Baby Giraffe". He was very excited to see this baby.

Sunday was our busy day. We got up early and headed to Georgetown for a train ride. We got there at 9am only to learn that they were booked until the 2:55 train. We bought our tickets and decided to go on a drive. We drove over the pass towards Breckenridge. It was a beautiful drive. The leaves were just beginning to turn colors, so we saw several degrees of green and yellow. The higher we went, the more color variation we saw. We stopped in Breckenridge for lunch only to find that Oktoberfest was being held there. We made a quick walk through that and Aaron got his beer.

We made it back to Georgetown shortly before our train was to board. We got on the train and decided to sit in the open air box. The train was an old fashioned steem engine. The open air boxes use to be coal cars. The covered cars use to be used for lumber and/or livestock. The entire trip was just over three miles but lasted about an hour. We went over a bridge that was 100 feet high. We got to see waterfalls and more leaf changes.

The second half of the trip we opted to sit in the covered car. When we had stopped for a short layover, the rain really started to come down. We didn't want to get soaking wet so we moved inside. We were still able to see really well, though. The trip was absolutely wonderful. Caleb loved it and is now telling everyone he sees about the choo choo.

Council Woman

Today, Campbell was elected to the Student Council. Each class had to elect two representatives. In her class 12 kids competed for the position. Campbell won one of those posititions. She had to give a speech which she wrote and memorized over the weekend. We are very, very proud of her!

Spelling

Campbell's teachers are doing a new format for spelling tests this year. First, the students will be placed in one of three spelling groups. The groups are based upon ability. Second, on the tests not only do they have to spell the word correctly they have to use it correctly in a sentence. She brought home her first list today. Here it is.

irate, straightaway, array, bouquet, sachet, weigh, obey, masquerade, carnivore, omnivore, herbivore, deciduous, coniferous, habitat

I'm beginning to think that Campbell has been promoted to an honors high school class without me knowing. She also proudly announced that she is in the top spelling group. My thought was, "Well I should hope so with words like these."

Yeah for Friends

This last week was a busy one. It always seems that a short week ends up being a busy week. Aaron and I both felt like we were playing catch up at work all week. The weekend has been much more laid back but a ton of fun for Campbell.

Friday night she had a birthday party to go to. This is the first birthday part that she has been to since moving here. They started out at the little girl's house then went to A*mazing Jakes which is similar to Ch*uckee Cheese. After fun and games they went back to the house for party games and cake. It ended up being a five hour party, but the kids all had a lot of fun.

Saturday night, Campbell had a sleep over here at our place. Her friend Paige came over. They started by making pizzas. I even made the dough from scratch and it turned out pretty good. The girls were happy anyway. We had also rented some movies so they had their fill of Hi*gh Sch*ool Mus*ical. They actually ended up going to bed early. I was going to let them stay up until midnight, but they were in bed by 9:30. They were up early this morning though.

I took the kids out to breakfast where the girls got their chocolate chip pancakes and Caleb got his mouse pancakes. All the kids were very happy with the breakfast. After eating we came back to the house and the girls got to play the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. We took Paige, who is a very sweet girl, home around 3. Campbell has made some great friends and is really starting to settle into life here in Colorado. Our SC skin did show today when we were complaining about it being cold. Really it's 70 degrees, but it's only September. This may be a long winter!

Labor Day

With it being a three day weekend and all, we decided to go away for the weekend. Aaron left work a little early on Friday and we packed the car. As soon as we got Campbell from the bus we loaded in the car and headed out of town. We did have to turn back twice to get important things like hiking shoes and Frog and Dog.

Anyway, we went to Glenwood Springs. The drive wasn't too bad. We made it in under 3 hours. We went to our hotel which was really a bed and breakfast inn. The in is at the base of a a ski run. From our window you could see the ski runs. It was a really great place to stay. We spent the rest of the evening just watching tv and letting the kids play in the play room.

We got up early Saturday morning and headed to Marble for a hike. As we entered Marble we saw a huge buck in the middle of the road. He didn't seem to care much about us being there. We made a quick drive through the town of Marble. We even got to see the house where Aaron's grandpa lived. The last time Aaron and I saw the cabin was 10 years ago. We didn't get to go inside (no one was home) but Campbell still found it interesting.

After our little tour of Marble we made our way to the trail head for our hike. We don't have a 4X4 so we had no choice but to hike it. We started with a 1/2 mile uphill hike to the trail head. We were hiking to the Crystal River Mill. From the trailhead it was 4 miles to the mill and 4 miles back. The hike wasn't that difficult and it was certainly beautiful. The trail does allow for 4X4 vehicles, so we had to watch for those along the trail, but we had a great time. The scenery was amazing.

We had our picnic lunch in front of the mill and then headed back up the trail. All in all, the hike took us about 5 1/2 hours and we all did great. We even got to see the little lake where Aaron went fishing with his uncles when he was about Campbell's age. After the hike, we took a drive up to the marble quary, at least as far as we could go. The chunks of marble they bring out of there are incredible.

To end the day, we went to the hot springs in Glenwood. The water in the hot pool was around 104 degrees. The cool pool was about 92 degrees. The hot soak was fabulous after our 9 mile hike. Campbell preferred the cool pool but Caleb and I spent most of our time in the hot pool. We even met up with one of Aaron's co-workers and his family. After the pool we took the kids for some much deserved ice cream.

Sunday mornig we got up and got all of our stuff packed. After breakfast, we checked out of the inn and headed to Aspen. Before leaving town though, we made a short hike up to Doc Holliday's grave site. Campbell loves anything history, so we couldn't skip this one. They have a stone marker next to the grave site stating that they are not exactly sure where in the cemetary Doc Holliday is buried. Aaron found this to be quite funny especially since we had to walk all they way to the back of the cemetary to get to the grave stone. Once we made it to Aspen, we just walked leisurely through town. We did some shopping and had lunch. After lunch we started our drive home.

We went home over Independence Pass. Campbell was very excited to see the Continental Divided at the top of the pass. She also go to see tundra which is what they studied in class last week. Caleb was not thrilled that we woke him up to take him out into the cold air just to look at more mountains. Our last stop was in Silverthorn. We did a little more shopping and then went to dinner. We had a great dinner at a little Italian restaurant. We made it home late in the evening and everyone pretty much went to bed.

Today we all go haircuts and just hung out. We needed the day of relaxation to recover from our weekend of fun. We hope you all had as much fun or your weekend as we did.