Drive and Denver

On Friday August 21, we started our drive to Albuquerque.  We left on Friday evening and drove to Des Moines, IA.  We missed a turn somewhere along the way and got lost in rural IA.  The good news was that we got to watch a beautiful sunset.  On Saturday, we left early from IA and drove all the way to Denver.  The continental breakfast was awesome, though!  Biscuits and gravy!

Man are our kids road-trippers!  They did wonderfully.  During our entire drive, there and back, about 50+ hours in the car, they only watched about 6 hours worth of movies.  We did all daytime driving too.  Wahoo!

In Denver, we stayed with my Aunt Lisa and her partner Peggy.  They have a beautiful home and we're so grateful to have had somewhere to stay.  We played at the park on Sunday morning with Aunt Lisa and then drove to Idaho Springs, CO to do some hiking.  This is where the altitude hit me.  Headache and dizziness galore.  So we drank tons of water on our hike, peed in the forest and felt better after lunch.  Speaking of lunch, we ate at a super yummy pizza place called Beau Jo's.  I went there during my Freshman Fall Break with my roommate, Lindsey, from Denver and our friend Mark.    Alan and I had a garlic cream pizza with artichokes and red peppers.  The kids ate pepperoni pizza.

In the afternoon, we visited with some friends from Madison, the Burtons.  Our kids were so happy to have toys and friends to play with.  We loved chatting with Mandie and Jon too.  And we got to meet their new (to us) baby, Henry.  What a cutie!  After our visit, we drove to Albuquerque.  I think we accidently got caffeinated soda for dinner, so the kids were up way too late.  Abbie went on timeout (yes, we got her out of the car), but then our drive went smoothly.  Upon entering Albuquerque, we encountered our first drunk-driver on the interstate and called 911.  So nice to be back.

Here's a video with our pictures from the drive and Denver: