The Childrens are Soft

But before I get to that, let me tell you something funny HannieC said. We were up early Sunday morning so that The Mrs. could sleep in, and I was standing in the kitchen making coffee and HannieC was talking to me. All of a sudden, she just started stomping her feet in place. It was early, and my head hurt cuz I woke up with stuffed up sinuses. So I said, "We could do without the stomping." To which HannieC replied:

Well, you're just going to have to get used to it if you have kids. Kids tend to be on the noisy side.

Then, she started giggling and screaming, and she ran laps around the first floor of the house stomping her feet as loudly as she could.

Didn't wake up The Mrs., though.

So yesterday was the big day that we do our first touristy thing since moving here. We decided to go to Estes Park and then to Rocky Mountain National Park. Estes Park is about an hour away, and Rocky Mountain national Park maybe 30 minutes from that. Our goal in Estes Park was to ride the aerial tramway. We stopped at the Visitors' Center (a very nice one at that), and The Mrs. got a little map with direction to the tramway. We drove about 10 minutes, and there it was in gigantic letters:

Aerial Tramway
Entrance behind this sign.
Closed for the season.

Rats. That pretty much kills everything there is to do in Estes park with two little childrens. So we wandered a little downtown until we found an eating establishment that had meat-smelling smoke pouring out of the chimney, and had lunch. I had the buffalo sausage. It was tasty, but not as good as pork, honestly.

Then we hit a candy store where we got about 4 lbs of candy. That was by accident.

The trip up into Rocky Mtn Nat Park was uneventful. We had decided to go to a lake called "Bear Lake" cuz the lady at the Estes Park Visitors' Center had said the kids would like it. We got most of the way up, and a sign told us that the parking lot was full and we'd have to park and take the bus. So we parked and took the bus. The Childrens love riding a bus.

While on the bus, it started to snow. The womensfolk got very excited about that. The Mrs. spotted it first, and then HannieC got all worked up about it. When we got off the bus at Bear Lake, there was even some snow on the ground.

HannieC immediately began making a pest of herself by throwing the snow at everyone else's head. This went on for half the walk around the lake. The trip around the lake is probably about a half mile or so. Exactly at the opposite side of the lake, both Childrens burst out into wailing and tears. They sat down and refused to move. They even refused to be carried. The reason?

They learned that their hands got cold if the kept grabbing snow without gloves on, and their hands were now cold, and they reused to put them in their pockets to warm them up because they don't like to put their hands in their pockets. So for like 15 minutes, the kids sat on cold boulders and hollered. People came by and gave us dirty looks for breaking the serenity of the park. Except one group of guys who looked the situation over, and then one of them said, "Are you folks having a good time today?"

Wise ass.

I told him The Childrens had just now learned that if they stick their hands in snow, their hands get cold. He said, "Well, the good thing is that's a lesson they only need to learn once."

Clearly, he's never met my childrens.

After much cajoling, I got MaxieC up onto my shoulders, and then I got him to stop crying by posing for stupid pictures with our arms outstretched and pointing at stuff. Then, that morphed into us doing the YMCA song (in stereo, I guess you could say). Then, of course, I don't know the words to the YMCA song, so I made up a lot of my own words. These mostly focused on all the things on the trail around Bear Lake at Rocky Mountain National Forest that you could pee on.

This kept MaxieC very interested. Later, he recited for The Mrs. all the things you could pee on. You can pee on a tree. You can pee on a rock. You can pee in the lake. You can pee on the snow. Etc. The Mrs. observed, "That's why it's important to have a daddy to teach you this stuff."

We eventually got HannieC moving (after The Mrs. tried to carry her on her back (as MaxieC refused to leave me for The Mrs. and neither child would allow me to carry both)) and made it back to the bus stop, where we sat on a nice worm bus for 10 minutes. Then we started the ride down the mountain, and The Mrs. gets a brilliant idea.

"Now that The Childrens are all warmed up, let's get off at the next stop and walk to the waterfall. "

I don't know why I accepted this plan, which was so obviously flawed. I think the altitude had gotten to our brains. But off the bus we got. We got from the bus to the trailhead, which was all of about 20 yards, when The Mrs. realized MaxieC didn't have his jacket with his hood on anymore but had the other jacket on, and it was windy at this stop. So she tried to put his hooded jacket on, and all Hell broke loose. He wouldn't put the hooded jacket on; he wouldn't put the other jacket back on; HannieC recalled that she wanted to go home, not hike around in the wind and snow.

I declared an end to the adventure, and we went back to wait for the next bus. There was lots of whining while we waited, but the nice park ranger talked to us, and that quieted The Childrens down.

On the way out of the park, there was a little herd of elk grazing by the side of the road, and The Mrs. leaned out the window and took a couple photos. She declared that it was the closest she'd ever been to elk in the wild. I, of course, was closer the one time I went elk hunting and had to stop to let a herd cross the road in front of me inside the residential subdivision in which we were staying. No shooting in the subdivision. That's the only time I got within a mile of an elk during the hunt.

I shoulda run one over.