The Christmas Season: Christmas Lights, baking cookies, a visit to see Santa @ the Spring Creek Gardens, decorations

M&M cookies:

Peppermint Molasses Cookies:

Meringues w/ Dark Chocolate Sprinkled on Top:

A good book and a cup of eggnog with toasted homemade marshmallows:

Neighborhood lights w/ kisses for the reindeer:

Spring Creek Gardens:

There won't be any pics of the kids with Santa this year...he was late showing up!

Lights around Fort Collins:

The girls trip downtown:

 The lights were beautiful and could get even the biggest Grinch in the spirit of Christmas!

 The trip downtown wasn't complete without a stop at Walrus Ice Cream:

 You know you live in Ft. Collins when...

they light up their bikes!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas.  Don't let it run you around!

Rode the MAX!

Finally rode the MAX downtown with the kids.  We biked from the house to the South Transit Center and locked up our bikes there.  The kids were disappointed that our first bus wasn't the extra long green one. My daughter kept telling me that we weren't on the 'MAX' yet so I was glad that we were able to catch the official green one on the way back.

You are able to have 4 bikes inside on the long, green buses and three on the outside of the other buses. Personally, I don't think that's enough since they were filled on our trip during the summer with CSU out of session.

After getting off at the Mountain Street Station we walked over to the Oak Street water feature, then headed towards the Clothes Pony/Dandelion Toys.  Stopped in at the Perennial Garden and found a water feature I must have then we checked out all the ice cream stores downtown.  The kids decided to go for Ben & Jerry's.

 It was yummy...but my Green Chili Beer at Coopersmith's was even better!

 We loaded back on the bus at the Mountain Street station and the kids had fun pretending to buy tickets.

 We did stop at the Spring Creek station to go over the couple of million dollar bike/pedestrian overpass.  The views were nice from the top.

 The views were nice from the top.

For our family this convenience will probably only be a novelty since it's 3 miles to get to the bus and only about 5-6 miles to get downtown.  It's far faster to just bike downtown for us even though it was a fun day outing for the kids.  

Family time!

We had the wonderful opportunity to spend a day with my niece this week.  Luckily, she came out skiing for her spring break and was able to spend the night at our house.  My children hadn't seen her in awhile and they loved getting to spend time with her and her boyfriend!  We took a quick walk in old town after soccer on Saturday.

Firecracker 50

Over the 4th my husband and his friend participated in the Firecracker 50 held in Breckenridge, Colorado. Here they are warming up before the start.

 The race starts downtown Breckenridge before the big 4th of July parade.  It's pretty cool for the riders since most people wouldn't have been there otherwise.  The kids had fun trying to pick out Daddy.

After the start we headed over to stake out our place for the parade.  Luckily a friend let us borrow these cool hats so we were officially in the spirit of the day!

After the parade we headed towards 'The Dredge' down French Gulch Road to see if we could spot them crossing the road.  We got lucky and saw both of them!

We headed back to the house for awhile and I ran up behind to what we call the 'snowmobile road'.  I made it with 8 minutes to spare.

After another hour or so we headed down to the finish at Carter Park.  I have video of the finish but no photos.  This is a shot of the support staff with the very dirty rider.

 The drink of champions:  1554....I kid, I kid!

 Still smiling.

 I guess a ghost beat these two!

Urban Hiking Mile High

We decided to take the kids down to Denver to see the 'skyscrapers' and explore the city a little. We'd been to Denver with them before but only to the zoo and museums.  We parked near the newish art museum and walked from there.  One of these days I need to stop in and check out their exhibits. The outside sculptures provided entertainment.

Our next stop was the park/mall area (Civic Center Park) around the State Capitol.  It has a huge homeless population so beware.  The kids didn't seem to notice them.  

View of Capitol from front steps.  They are currently working on the gold dome so we didn't get to see anything but a white cover.

Inside:

The rotunda....again covered due to work.

Walking down the 16th Street Mall.  Taken before security told us we weren't allowed to climb on the sign.  Personally, it looks like something meant to be climbed!

Riding the free bus so we didn't wear the kids out.

Fun photo shot:

Going in the ?? building to view the city from above.

View from the ?? floor:  That's Coor's field.  

Mountainside view w/ Invesco Field.  A little Bronco's fan was made happy at the site of this.

For old times sake we stopped at P.F. Chang's for lunch.  I know there are some awesome places to eat but that use to be our treat when we went to Denver and we knew the kids would like it.

Lunch was made even more exciting by all the traffic and noise (see fire truck below) surrounding the restaurant.

On the way back to the car we stopped to view some major construction.

Downtown Denver

Trails Used:  Art Museum to 16th Street Mall, bus, walk back

Distance:  4.78 miles
Difficulty: Easy