Colorado or Bust!

Our family vacation this summer was a week in Colorado. We spent the first few days in Estes Park, then headed down to visit Celestial Seasonings Teas in Boulder and then on to Denver. In Denver we enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of a family we met during our trip to China. They have seven children and three of their children were adopted from China as older children. Sarah had so much fun she was completely asleep in the car on the way home -- or "fun overload" you might say!

In Estes Park we had a great time walking in the downtown shopping area as well as going through Rocky Mountain National Park. We saw several kinds of animals, but Sarah enjoyed feeding the chipmunks the most! We made two trips up the tram so she could buy scoops of peanuts and sit and feed them to the many hungry chipmunks. And we didn't need to further than the parking spot in front of our hotel to see wildlife -- deer!

Then we headed down to Boulder to tour Celestial Seasonings Teas. Quite interesting indeed. The "mint" room where they store the mint leaves before making them into tea had such a strong smell that Sarah asked to walk outside. The guide said that if they were to leave the door open on the extra reinforced walled mint room for one day that the mint could be smelled for a mile away.

In Denver we toured Hammond's Candies which has been around for a long time. The kids liked getting the free candy samples (ok, I did too!). Then we wanted to have Chipotle for lunch because it's one of our favorites but the closest Chipotle we have is in Springfield and we don't get there much. The family we were with used their GPS to find the closest on and, low and behold, it wound up being the original, very first-ever Chipotle. Pretty cool.

The best part about Denver was having time to visit with our friends. The kids went swimming and then we all went walking so the kiddos could climb rocks and splash in streams. A GREAT time was had by all!