Thanksgiving in Colorado

Portrait of a family roadtrip: Mom drinking Dr. Pepper to make it to the destination and the back seat totally out of it during hour 14 of the drive. Dad got home on Saturday night from Great Gma Roueche's funeral and we left Sunday morning to drive to Colorado. It wasn't a super early start time because we knew that Gma and Gpa Roueche were also driving home that day.

Leona being Queen of the Stump on a hike.

Lev thought it was hilarious to "chase" the kids in his stroller. Leona did too.

They were so excited that it was snowing. They had all been hoping for a really huge blizzard while we were there. While that didn't happen there were at least a few flurries and the kids got to be in the snow for a bit. So much drama over such a small snowman, those photos are included for posterity so that they can't deny that they ever fought.

Leona's contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was helping to make the deviled eggs.

The most important thing at Thanksgiving, having as close as possible to a 1:1 ration of pies to people. Just kidding of course it's celebrating all of your blessings with people who you love, but pie is a close second. Thanksgiving day was a real triumph for dad as he ate his first full meal since we got to Colorado. He got food poisoning (or was the only one to fall to a stomach bug) during the trip and by the time we got to Gma and Gpa's house he wasn't feeling great. He then spent the next 24 hours being violently sick. He was shut up in the basement bedroom on strict quarantine. On Wednesday he finally ventured out of his cave, but he clearly wasn't back at 100%. Thursday we were all grateful that he could join us again in the land of the living as well as the fact that no one else had gotten sick. 

We had originally planned to go skiing over Thanksgiving, but with dad being so sick that plan had to be scrapped. We went ice skating on the outdoor rink next to the library instead. It was a lot of fun, and the weather was beautiful- around 60 degrees. This made it ideal to be outside, but we were glad that we got to the rink right when it opened, because things were getting slushy by the time we left. Leona was super grumpy about falling a bunch and didn't want to accept any tips on technique, but she was dogged in her determination to keep getting up when she fell.

Other highlights from the trip included seeing "reindeer", playing games, staying up late, movie night, going to the Parker tree lighting where there were ice sculptures as well as performances, and Leona getting a hold of dad's phone to take way too many photos. We had a really nice time and the kids were very good sports considering the drastic change of plans and the slow pace of the trip.