We enjoyed this time during which we had Grandpa Boehm all to ourselves, listening to stories we had never heard from him before and being able to ask him all of the follow-up questions we wanted. This man has seen a lot in his 92 years.
The weather of that morning was an indicator of how unpredictable and variable our weather would be on the entire trip. The sunny skies of Southern Wisconsin turned into dark, forbidding thunderheads covering the state of Iowa. Lightning, thunder, and torrential rain kept our driver focused on his job at hand. As soon as we crossed into Nebraska, we were met with the hot and humid weather more typical of the Great Plains.
When we arrived at our hotel, we were met by my friend Alli and her boys Eyassu and Zach, who just happened to be driving from Denver to Omaha that day. Alli and I had been communicating with each other through the day to see if we could meet up with one other. Surprisingly, it worked! The kids all remembered one another from our time together in February and everyone was able to spend an hour or so out of the car hanging out together.
(I think there's photographic evidence of this encounter somewhere, but I couldn't find it as I went through out pictures. Maybe it's on Alli's camera ...)
Friday we finished the drive and landed ourselves in Denver in the late afternoon. Towards the end of our trip, we did a pit-stop at a park and pulled out scooters for Kate and Ethan that we had packed along. I'll have to remember how useful those scooters can be on a long road trip ...
Our first official stop on this tour of the west was my brother's home in Arvada, Colorado. Adam, Jess, and Nash moved into their house last fall and have done a great job turning it into a home. Our family was blessed to have the basement to ourselves, but spent most of our awake time upstairs with the Colba family. Now that I think about it, Adam joined us in the basement during Nash's nap time. Ping pong, chess, and other various games were enjoyed by all of us down there.
16-month old Nash took a liking to his cousins right away, especially Kate. Nash discovered the first evening that Kate would clean up after him, even if it meant brushing dirt off of the sidewalk after he dumped it by the fistful.
When we had learned that Nash has recently become interested in tools, we packed along one of Ethan's old toys to pass along to the youngest Colba grandkid. Kate enjoyed setting out the airplane parts and helping Nash put it together.
Although this handsome guy is hard to turn your back on, he wasn't the only focus of our time at Adam and Jess' house.
There was also plenty of stop rocket time for Ethan, which included Uncle Adam bringing a couple of ladders into the house to retrieve several of the rockets at one point.
Food and games were also high on the list of favored activities.
And when you run out of games and organized activities, leave it up to Matt and Kate to develop their own exciting game.
Of course Tanqy got her fair share of love from the kids.
And Anna and Nash turned into good mealtime buddies. If they weren't interacting with food, then they were looking at books together.
During our four night stay at Adam and Jess' home, this was the best picture we were able to get of the four cousins together. It's hard to get them all to smile at the same time ...
The next update will include stories from our sight-seeing excursions in and around Denver!
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