On Sunday, Dan and I got to take care of Loren and Lily without Lindsay. She went up to Denver for a hair appointment and some much needed quiet time. It was fun. The kids have a play room area in the lower level. They each had an indoor tent set up from a previous day, I guess. I found an old Transformer (Jetfire) of Dan’s in Loren’s toy box. Loren gravitated to the space shuttle toy. For some reason, we were good and evil (I was good) and we were battling. Of course, nothing could destroy the shuttle. And everything I stated that I had (lasers, missiles, bombs), Loren’s shuttle had too. At first, he didn’t like that the plane turned into a robot. But then I told him the robot could fly too and that made it all better. Dan was watching Lily paint with her water colors. It was a relaxing afternoon. Eventually, the robot and the shuttle became friends. I added a deep voice to the robot when he “spoke” to Loren. That was received well. Then Loren brought down a hand-puppet: Squacky. He of course had a higher voice. Squacky even helped Ace (Loren’s stuffed dog) and became Dr. Squacky.
After getting dinner down, the kids and we got to watch Wall-E. Such a great film. It was interesting watching the film from the perspective of a 4-year old. I take for granted that I can watch a scene, study a character’s actions and facial expressions and guess what emotions and thoughts they might be having. To a four year old, it is silence. What is going on? What is Wall-E doing now? Why doesn’t Eve move? Where are they going now? I’m tired. Where is Wall-E? … and so on. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t annoyed. I answered the best I could and let him keep asking. Curiosity is good.
After the kids went to bed, Dan and I tried beer from our last brewery: Capital brewery. It wasn’t
open for tasting when we visited, so Dan had procured some mixed six packs. We split six bottles and were impressed. They get a five out of six. We could only imagine what these tasted like on draft.
So the following day – Monday – was my last day in Dodge, rather Colorado. Dan and I took the kids up to Denver and got another opportunity to hang with Katie. This time, we got a tour of NREL! Well, I got a slightly better tour than Dan because he chose to wear shorts and flip-flops to a pilot plant. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures. I found out I was allowed only after we left the building! But it was great to see that our money is going towards some great study into gasification of organics for fuels.
The rest of the day was typical end of vacation stuff: head to airport – get through security – have a delay in leaving – fly – meet people – land – wait forever for a bag – have a great friend pick me up – chill in the apt for an hour – drive to Delaware.
Thanks for reading all of this. Even though the roadtrip is complete, I am sure I will find more things to ‘blog’ about.
~J^3
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