May Museum

 While Ruth and Dana were here we also went to the May Museum to see this amazing bug collection.  Here I am by the big bug at the entrance - look at that storm cloud coming over!

 

The collection was huge and had a lot of bugs from tropical places - most of them caught in the 1930s.  Matthew looks a little weirded out.

 The collection was really amazing.  The collector had worked for the British Museum and got to travel all over the world...and apparently caught a lot of bugs for his own personal collection along the way.

Dana is an entomologist so probably appreciates the collection more than the average person, but we all really liked seeing all the amazing specimens.

Fossil Hunters

After visiting Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument we stopped at a privately owned fossil quarry just outside the park.  For a small fee you could dig your own fossils.  We decided to give it a try.  Here are all our tools (provided by the quarry).  We're ready to go!

This is what the quarry dig site looked like.  So many fossils to be discovered in those layers of rock.

Almost immediately we started finding fossils.  Matthew found a small bug fossil and I found a leaf.

Dana found a very well defined pine needle fossil - in my opinion, the best fossil find of the day!  Anna was overly helpful and brought Dana lots of rocks, whether he wanted them or not.

The people at the quarry told us what kind of rocks to look for and how to "open" them to get at the fossil layer.  Here is Dana working at it some more.

Matthew and Anna enjoyed rock finding the most.

Here Matthew tries to open up one of the rock pieces.

Here is a leaf fossil I found.  Can you see it?

And here is that same one and a couple more.

On the right is the bug fossil Matthew found and two of the better looking leaf fossils.

Grant slept most of the time.  :)

A better view of Dana's pine needle fossil, shown with a real pine needle.  Maybe prehistoric pine needles were bigger!

 

Dana looks for good rocks.

We actually found a ton of fossils.  I was surprised at how easy they were to find.  I kept thinking this would be a great activity for the cub scouts.  :)  

On the way home we got some pictures of the changing trees.  

Pretty

And the north face of Pike's Peak - still snowy from our storm a few weeks ago.

We had so much fun being fossil hunters for the day.

Florissant Fossil Beds

While my sister and her family were visiting us we went to Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.  Ruth and Dana like to go to national parks and other fun outdoor places, so they hit a few while they were in Colorado and we got to go with them to this one.  The Florissant Fossil Beds is a very rich fossil deposit up in a mountain valley north of Pike's Peak.  Volcanic eruptions covered a lake bed there 35 million years ago (ish) and created fossils of plants and animals in the river bed.  The eruptions also petrified many HUGE redwood trees that were growing there at the time and you can still see the petrified stumps.  Really cool.  Here we are at the visitor center looking at some of the fossils.

Anna and Matthew worked on the fossil puzzle (a picture of a wasp/yellow jacket thing fossil).

One of the huge petrified redwood stumps

We took a short nature walk through the valley.  I think it was a mile.

A petrified stump of something

Ok, there were a lot of huge petrified tree stumps...can you spot Dana, Matthew and Anna next to it?

I'd like to come back in the spring when the wildflowers are out.

I kept taking off Matthew's baseball cap for pictures but he thought it was too bright.  Sorry.

The big stump

I pushed the stroller along this unpaved trail.  It said it was wheelchair accessible, but after walking it with the stroller I would argue that it is not.  We did make it back though.

The trees were starting to change color.  I love that yellow color.  So beautiful.

More fossil adventures to come...

Cousin Time

My sister and her family came to visit from Washington this week.  We had so much fun hanging out with them.  Plus Grant and his cousin, Magnus, got to see each other.  Magnus is about a month younger than Grant.  They are doing some of the same things and some very different things.  Grant is chunky while Magnus is long and thin.  Grant sits a little bit and Magnus likes to be on his tummy or army crawling around.  Magnus is on the verge of real crawling and is quite wiggly!  Grant has brown hair and brown eyes and Magnus has red hair and blue eyes.  They do have kind of similar Keeler mouths.  :) And they both dislike riding in the car and sitting in high chairs.  They were cute together and I hope they can be cousin friends when they are bigger.

 Look, they are playing together already

 Anna, Magnus, me, Grant, Matthew and Ruth

Magnus was poking Anna, but she doesn't seem to mind.

I'm trying to get Magnus to like his Auntie Em, but it looks like I haven't won him over yet.

He's very stoic, this one.

But Dana and Ruth have definitely won over Matthew, Anna and Grant.  They all had so much fun playing with them and going on adventures and hanging out (sometimes literally).

Grant had the best time, and I think he tried to stow away in their car.

But they ended up with the right baby and all was well.

It's too bad they live so far away.  :(  But it was fun we got to see them.   

More adventures with Ruth, Dana and Magnus to come!

New tricks

 It starts out like this...

...and ends up like this.

Grant is getting better and better at sitting, although he still tips over a little bit.  Sometimes he slides onto his tummy on purpose so he can grab at things.  And sometimes he is happy to stay on his tummy for a while, sometimes not, but he's definitely getting more practice at it.

Pike's Peak

My brother John came into town this week from California for a visit.  He's so much fun and I'm glad we got to meet up.  We went up Pike's Peak (on a train) and it was really cool.  The fall colors were just starting to come out and it was really pretty.  There was snow up at the top, but it was a nice sunny day and not that cold.  Here we are (John, Matthew, Grant, me, Anna).

 

 Here we are going up on the train - Lexie (John's lady-friend), Anna, John and Grant

Great views at the top!

 We got lots of donuts.  They even had fudge covered donuts!

 And there was snow up there.  Some of it was slushy and messy.

 Lexie, John and Matthew and his donut

 Going back down the mountain.  Why does Matthew look so worried.

 The aspen trees were changing color.  So pretty.

It was so fun having John and Lexie come visit us in Colorado (and so nice to be close enough for family visits).  We tried real hard not to bore them!!  Thanks for visiting guys!  Come back again soon!