Fall Follies

We had our first scary phone call from school this month when on a Friday afternoon we received a call that Claire had fallen at school and that she was not moving her arm and seemed to be in pain. Needless to say we both dashed out of work and tried to reach her as quickly as possible as we conference called out pediatrician to find out what to do as it was close to the end of the day. Dave picked Claire up and took her to the pediatrician's office and I was able to meet them there. Poor Claire seemed out of it and definitely was not using her arm at all. After meeting with a few nurses and nurse practitioners we were sent down to X-Ray. I think that we all experienced pain with the X-Ray as Claire was completely freaked out by the X-Ray machine and was screaming while I was holding her and Dave was waiting outside the room and could only hear what is going on. It sucked to say the least, but a good thing happened during the scream fest and that was that Claire or the X-ray technician fixed her arm. It turned out that she had nursemaids elbow and it needed to be popped back into place. We were very happy to learn that it was not broken and that her recovery took basically as long as it took to walk back upstairs to the clinic room. By the time we were back in the room she was eating, drinking, playing, and charming the nurses. While we hope that this is the biggest injury Claire will ever experience we know that this is probably the first of many emergency trips in our future.

Camping at Rocky Mountain National Park- Take 2

On the last weekend in August we headed back to Rocky Mountain National Park for another fun weekend of camping. This time we were staying at the Glacier Basin Campground with Natalia, Barry, & Alba. We had two great campsites with amazing views right next to each other so that the girls (and us) could easily move back and forth between the campsites.

View from our campfire area

We had planned on doing a hike with the girls and Dave suggested a hike that he and I had done backpacking 9 years ago. I remembered the hike as being beautiful and not that bad (after all we were carrying 30-40 pound packs then). Well, the 4.5 mile hike up to Sandbeach Lake was tougher than either of us remembered and the almost 2,000 feet of elevation gain was not kind to us. The boys were champs and carried both girls all the way up to the lake. Unfortunately we arrived at the top at the same time as the thunderstorm. We quickly ate our lunch and enjoyed the lake for 10 minutes before taking a group photo.

Seconds after this photo was taken, lighting struck the lake in one of the most amazing flashes of light I have ever seen and hope never to see again. Dave and Natalia ran for cover with the girls and Barry and I grabbed the bags. We set a pretty fast pace down in the rain, but it still took us more than three hours to descend. On the way down, Natalia and I helped out and carried the girls. The were both troopers, despite the rain they seemed to have a great time.

Claire and Alba in their rain gear back at the bottom of the hike

The whole gang in front of the trail head, post hike. Look at all t

hose smiles, we were proud of doing 9 miles with the girls!

Back at camp, we all hung out around the fire and enjoyed a great meal of lentils and rice prepared by Barry before snacking on some S'Mores made in the campfire. The girls enjoyed the campfire and seemed to understand that it was hot and pretty much stayed away. They were both adorable in their head lamps!

On the last day we returned to the picturesque (and flat) Sprague Lake to enjoy a walk and lunch before heading back to the real world. We feel very lucky to have such a great family to spend time with and that Claire is blessed with a great friend like Alba.