Rayna's Excellent Adventure - Part #1

AND what an adventure it was!! Nana and Papa were DARN tired by the time the weekend was over - but we sure had smiles on our faces!!

Rayna's adventure started Friday evening when we met Brad in Colorado Springs after her volleyball game (and yes, her team won!!). Glenn and I had eaten at Texas Roadhouse ( a delicious margarita, smothered grilled chicken with jack cheese and grilled onions and mushrooms, loaded baked potato and baked beans!) and then it was shopping time at Hobby Lobby and Walmart before picking up Rayna!!

So it was bedtime by the time we hit home and I slept poorly that night - maybe too much rich food to eat?? You suppose???

But the 3 of us were raring to go on Saturday morning as we packed up a backpack with snacks and fishing poles!! First stop was Papa's work as he had to load some granite so I headed back up to Gold Hill Java to pick up smoothies for Rayna and I and a coffee for Glenn!! Rayna LOVED the little umbrella they put on her mango peach smoothie!!

Papa and Rayna decided they better catch some live grasshoppers to fish with - they brought one of our water bottles from the house and I don't think I'll be using it for water anytime soon!

And then it was off to Catamount Reservoir, where the parking lot to hike in just happens to be on Edlowe Rd where our old house is - my, I had forgotten how pretty the aspens were on that road!! The parking lot was FULL of hikers and one bunch offered to take our photo!

We hiked in about a mile and a half - the water was really low and we walked on places where water used to be!! Rayna had her sunglasses on and ran on ahead of us - big mistake - she sunk in this black, clay-lake mud and couldn't move!! She tried to step up and of course her shoe came off in the mud and she walked forward on her white socks - then tried to step with the other foot and the same thing happened!! Papa ended up pulling her shoes out of the mud and the white socks? Well, I ended up throwing them away when we got home because they were NOT going to come clean!!

Rayna ended up just putting her tennis shoes (caked with mud) back on without socks and luckily she didn't get any blisters!!

Her tears from that episode turned to one big smile when she immediately caught a fish!!

I had brought a blanket out and spent my time reading while Glenn and Rayna fished - he reeled in another nice one so at least we had two to cook for dinner that night!! We hiked back to the car and I couldn't help but take a picture of these gorgeous aspen trees!

Then it was off to the movie "The Dolphin Tale" - an excellent movie and we all loved it, along with the popcorn and pop which is a must when taking in a movie!! And if THAT wasn't enough, Glenn decided we needed ice cream and we went up to the new ice cream shop "Mountain Scoops" which features soft serve ice cream and gelato - yummy!!!

After arriving back home, we put Rayna to work picking tomatoes - tough job, huh??

Next on the list was crafts!! I pulled out a bunch of my scrap booking supplies and we made the place cards for Thanksgiving Day! Can you tell Rayna was having fun???

One of the things I bought at Hobby Lobby was the cardboard folder where you put in the quarters for the different states!! I not only had a nice cardboard folder, but also did the smaller yearly ones for the states where you collect 4 per state!! I have been at this project ever since they started producing the quarters but still had 4 slots left to fill!! I knew Rayna would enjoy this project since we have a huge glass jug we put our change in and it's almost full!! So the NEXT project was to start through the jug................

I couldn't believe all the quarters we had for the corresponding states!! We kept at it and before long, the folder was ALMOST full and I had completely finished MY OWN folders!! But we couldn't find Florida - we were to the bottom of the jar and had exactly 10 quarters left to look at when lo and behold, Rayna found a Florida one!! HOORAY - we FILLED her folder!!

Glenn grilled up some yummy fish for dinner that evening and we checked in with Jaime to make sure "mom" wasn't missing Rayna too much!! She wasn't!!

Even though it was 8:00, we still had ONE more thing to do and that was to get in the hot tub - a relaxing end to a fun-filled day!!

But wait, we still have ONE MORE DAY for Rayna's Excellent Adventure..................