After packing up and lunch with James we went home to dirty laudry and cat hair floors.

It started snowing this morning and we were watching the snow swirl around the windows. The window in the room is 4 feet tall and about 10 feet long, so it was like being in a giant snowglobe. The snow was rushing down, then it would swirl left and right and then woosh down to the ground. Very cool. If I ever have a million dollars to build a house it would have giant windows everywhere.

The kids played cards and watched TV in the morning.

Then after a swim in the pool and a heat up in the hot tub we went to the mall for lunch.

The 16th street mall is a mile long stretch downtown that is closed off to traffic. Only people and the shuttle bus are allowed on the streets. So we hopped on the shuttle and went down to the hot dog man. Now, there are many, many hot dog men on the mall, but only one that we go to. He is a jovial Russian fellow that is happy to hand out dogs to the bums, if they work on his stand for a few minutes. He was happy to see us, we haven’t been there in awhile. We ate our dogs in the cold wind and then hopped back on the bus to go to commons park. It’s just a grassy area with a hill by the Platte river. The girls rolled down the hill and we played by the water. Of course as soon as I said don’t fall in, Joel slipped and got wet. Oh well.

After that we went back to the hotel to rest, all 3 girls slept in the pitch black room, it was nice!

The girls and I went to the library about 5:30pm to see a preview of Central City’s opera of Cinderella.

I guessed we’d be able to stay an hour, I was right. The closer it got to an hour the more fidgety they became. But, we did get to listen to some of the opera and see the gown designs. We traipsed back to the hotel and had dinner with James. Then we ordered chocolate ice cream via room service………….it was very good!

Hannah enjoys the good life:

Today after a game of tennis on the 4th floor roof we went to Lookout Mt. for William Cody’s birthday celebration. Here’s the view from the roof and Joel and Hannah ready to play.

At the celebration there were Cody look-a-likes. This one guy has been doing this for 30 years, he is certainly becoming the part!

Here’s Bethany with Red Bear and wife.

Bunny tagged along and even had a hat for himself.

Here are the kids being Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill.

We all sang Happy birthday (off-key, ever notice that the more people you have singing the song the worse it sounds?) and then the Buffalo Bill’s cut the cake with a Bowie knife.

After scarfing down cupcakes, ice cream and cake we went to the museum to make rope, color a birthday card and make an Indian pouch.

The girls were very disappointed to find out that they were NOT having the buffalo chip tossing contest. Now at this point I must tell you that neither one of them knew what a buffalo chip was, they just knew they could win a prize by tossing it the farthest. The lady at the museum said, no, they were too wet this year because of the snow. Bethany looked confused. So they’re wet, so what? Well, I said they would get messy if they started falling apart because they were wet. Aren’t they just chips, you know like potato chips, Bethany queried? Um…..no, they are buffalo chips, cow patties, cow pies……..poop. Ohhhhh, ugh, says Bethany (this from a person who did a presentation on digestion and had a baggie she squished for the audience.) Grace was still willing, but it was a no go. Oh well girls, maybe next year they will preserve a few chips so they don’t get wet in the snow.

The kids sat on the horse and tried to rope the calf, with no success.

We wandered around for a bit more and then went to the trail side overlooking Golden. One of these days we’re taking that trail that goes down the backside of Lookout Mt. just for fun.

We said bye to the buffalo and Bill and went down the mountain towards home.

On the way down, besides passing up 20 insane bicyclists going up the hill, we saw a group of people flying remote controlled glider planes. There were about 10 of them in the air zipping around, it was pretty cool. We also saw a deer that was down to the bones; guess a lion and coyotes got him. This got us talking about our trip to the Lookout Mt. nature center sometime back. We were there with a guide hiking in the snow and Joel found a deer leg, just a leg. Oh, says the ranger, must have been that lion. Yep, he says, he went through here not too long ago and marked all the car tires it the parking lot. Glad we missed that one!

After washing some clothes and checking on the cats (yay! No, poop or vomit anywhere – that it shouldn’t be!) We’re headed back to the hotel to eat some free food and watch TV. I think tonight we’re going out for dessert.

We went to the Colorado history museum and saw the 7 falls dancers and made teepee papers and bead necklaces.

We saw the broom outside the art museum and the cowboy and indian on top of the museum.

We fed the pigeons.

We went to the Mr. Shine show at the library and Grace and Hannah danced and sang.

We swam in the indoor pool and here’s the view inside the hotel.

We’re on the 25th floor.
Here’s some Denver archit

ecture.

Today at presentation club Joel spoke about Blaise Pascal, who invented the mechanical calculator (Joel’s favorite), hydraulic press, syringes (his least favorite), made use of the barometer, theory on vacuum (not the Hoover kind), theory of probability and had a programming language named after him. As a side note Pascal was home-schooled, the reason Joel picked him.

Bethany did the digestive system, with her Donna digestion. We had a little ball that we poked in her mouth, ran down the esophagus into the stomach and then squeezed through the small and large intestines. Bethany also had an example of what a carrot looks like after its been chewed 10 times and 30 times and a baggie filled with Gatorade, carrots and a banana that was squished together to show the action of the stomach. That pretty much grossed out every kid.

Grace did rocks. She showed a few rocks from her collection (granite, mica, sulfur, sandstone, quartz, slate)

and showed how they were formed (metamorphic, sedimentary, igneous.) The kids had fun smelling the sulfur and flaking off mica bits.

Other reports were the brain, fingerprints, dogs, manatees, Saturn, which roof shingles cool your house better, butterflies, horses and radios. (The topic was science) Next month the topic is Geography and Joel has picked the origin of bongo drums (since he received his set off e-bay.) Bethany has picked food, but hasn’t narrowed down a county yet. Grace will need help with this one, maybe a model of the Earth and it’s surfaces (since she’s into rocks right now.)

Hannah just sat and looked cute.

Tonight and through Wed. we’ll be on a mini-vacation downtown courtesy of SME. They are having a convention (as they do every year) and this year it’s in Denver. We have a room on the 25th floor of the Hyatt. They have a rooftop tennis court that we’ll be checking out and an indoor swimming pool. Sunday we’re going to Buffalo Bill’s birthday bash and the girls are sure they’ll win the buffalo chip-tossing contest. We’ll see!

Well we have a conundrum, I say even if Denver missed the snow record, I get to count Highlands Ranch because we’re not part of Denver. James says no, the offical count is in Denver and if they say they came in 2nd place (which remember is first loser) then it stands.

I don’t know. I have snow in my yard, some of my neighbors still have 2 feet in their’s. So, why can’t I count it? I think I will. Today was Denver’s day to beat, but they lost Tuesday when they went out to measure and found only mud.

So offically, for Highlands Ranch, this is day 69 with snow on the ground. Even 2 more days of melting can’t stop me……..snow is coming Saturday and maybe Monday.

We went to the mint today, you’ll have to take my word for it, they don’t allow cameras.

They also don’t allow:
Cameras or camera cell phones (so you don’t take pics of the coins.)
Packages of any type
Handbags, book bags, backpacks, purses, fanny packs, diaper bags (sorry, dirty babies need to hold it in their diaper.)
Tobacco products (’cuz it’s gross.)
Video recorders or any type of recording device
Strollers (Joel thought maybe you could use a stroller as a weapon?)
Personal grooming items (makeup, hair brush or comb, lip or hand lotions, etc.) (they don’t want you to look pretty.)
Any pointed objects (pens, knitting needles, umbrellas, etc.) (again with the weapons)
Knives of any size (duh!)
Martial arts weapons/devices (again duh!)
Guns, or ammunition (was this really necessary to list?)

So, we each received a newly minted 50 states quarter, fresh in the bag, never left the mint. Joel got Nevada, Hannah got New Hampshire, Bethany and I got Montana (the newest) and Grace got Texas. You’d have thought Grace got a million dollars because Bethany was trying her hardest to swap quarters with her. (You can find those in change Bethany.) But Grace, realizing that what she had was valuable to someone else, refused every offer. Then we looked at old coins, bead money, jewelry made from money. All of which the tour guide said doesn’t have anything to do with the mint, it’s just there to occupy you before the tour. We saw banks and coins from Rome, Greece, and New Guinea. Joel thought one use of stones for money was silly, especially since the wealthier you were the bigger the stone, which had to sit on your front lawn to show everybody you were wealthy because it was too heavy to move. (What a sentence!)

Then we went upstairs and looked down on the blanks that were being dropped out of a machine. (The Denver mint only mints coins) The blanks start out as a heavy coil of metal that is passed into the machine. A stamper cuts out the right size coin and they go down the conveyor finally landing in a bin (that you wouldn’t want to rob our guide tells us, it weighs 1 ton.) The scrap (webbing) is sent back to the manufacturer and melted to be used again.

From the blank room (why would you want to steal a blank anyway?) we went to the pressing room. One machine was pressing pennies, another nickels, another the new $1 gold presidential coins. The penny machine presses 12 pennies a second, 16,000,000 pennies a day. (They make so many pennies because only 55% of those made go back into circulation; the others are hoarded, lost or just forgotten.) They check the machine every 15 minutes to make sure the press die isn’t fading out. She said they replace the pressing die on the gold $1 coin machine 3 times a day! (It wears out more quickly because those coins are heavier and the machine has to press harder.) The reason the pressed image is lower than the ridge on the coins is so they don’t rub off flat. We saw an example of what happens to messed up coins, they go down in the basement and get pressed in a waffle machine. They are unmistakable mistakes. We found out that in 1942 because of the war, nickels had to be sorted in a different machine because they didn’t contain nickel (the war needed that nickel!) Also we found out that the ridges on the dime, quarter and half-dollar were originally there because those coins contained silver at some point and people would shave the sliver off the coin and then put it back into service. The ridges (118 on the dime, 119 on the quarter, 150 on the half-dollar) were there to prevent it, now they are there because we’re used to it.

We went in to the old mint building and saw a safe that once housed 6 gold bars, but after the Oklahoma city bombing all the gold was put into the basement. (Denver stores ¼ of the US supply of gold.) So now the vault has file cabinets in it. To finish the tour we went down the stairs past the old security vault where whenever the front door was open a security guard would sit in there with a machine gun, rifle, pistol and baton. There has never been a robbery at the mint (though the tour guide told us there was a robbery of $5 bank notes outside the mint, but they don’t consider that their robbery because it wasn’t technically inside the mint, and it wasn’t their money.) Joel asked how much money it takes to make a penny, answer 1.23 cents. Aren’t you losing money then? Yes, but it takes 22 cents to make $1 coin, so we make it up there.

We had a quick math lesson outside. 16,000,000 pennies a day times 1.23 cents to make each one = $19,680,000, that minus how much a penny is worth = $3,680,000 a day they lose making pennies. We didn’t get the daily total on the $1 pieces but let’s say it’s ¼ of that, so 4,000,000 times 22 cents to make them = $880,000 to make them and they are worth 1 dollar, so 4,000,000 coins at $1 minus the cost to make them = $3,120,000 profit. That plus the profit from the half-dollar, quarter and dime make up for the loss of the penny and nickel I’m sure.

Here’s the coin production for Jan. 07:

Denver 213,600,000 (1C)
51,600,000 (5C)
110,000,000 (10C)
129,800,000 (25C)
0 (50C)
117,320,000 ($1)
622,320,000 (Total)

Cool.

Here are the Valentines pics I finally took:

James got quite a few of my Honey-do’s done today, and some of his own.

He put the hinges on the gate to the girl’s bedroom, fixed the brakes on my van, unclogged the bathroom shower, and put the backrest on Grace’s car seat. So I did one I was putting off; go through the file folder and put everything in order. It was quite a mess, but now all the bank statements are field under bank, insurance under insurance and receipts gathered together. I’m sure it will get messy in a week. But for now if you ask me to find something I can.

This meeting was a hot chocolate tea party and manners. We talked about good and bad manners, sang some silly songs about manners and then had our tea party. Some girls brought a special tea cup to drink from. I brought my china, a cup from Bethany’s 1st birthday and Bethany and Grace brought 2 cups that were my Aunt Johnnie’s.

When we started listing manners on the board the kids listed bad ones first, burping, farting, talking with your mouth full, throwing food on the floor. Then we wrote good ones, some of which were just the opposite of bad (don’t fart, don’t burp.) For the drinking and eating part everyone was using his or her best manners, mostly. After that we decorated white handkerchiefs, much to Joel’s disappointment they are for decoration only (because of the pen marks.) But I told him I have an extra plain white one that he can use as a hanky. Grace was talking about good/bad manners all night. She kept telling James “You know what’s good manners? Not talking with your mouth full. You know what’s bad manners? Farting at the table.” And so on.

To our surprise, and probably the weatherman’s too, it snowed in the afternoon and into the night. Getting close to the record-breaking day.