Whew!

We started our day by going to story time at the library. I asked Hannah if she wanted to go in ‘big girl’ story time with Grace or ‘baby’ story time with me. She picked baby story time. I think she just wanted a puppet show (not today.) Ms. Nancy came up and pulled out an……otter puppet. She said, ‘Do you know what this is?’ Hannah was saying, ‘It’s an otter, it’s Mr. Otter, like I have.’ She so wanted to get up and go pet it and tell Ms. Nancy that she had an otter too, but I told her to wait until the end. So she waited patiently for 30 minutes! We sang songs and read books about the beach. We counted shells and heard a story about the 3 little fish and the big bad shark (‘he tares me’ said Hannah.) We did a baby bounce and Hannah seemed a little embarrassed about bouncing on my knee. Then another story and finally Hannah could get up and tell Ms. Nancy all about her Mr. Otter. How she threw him the fire and he’s all crunchy now, but this otter is much nicer and soft and she ‘noves him’. He was a cute puppet, but his mouth didn’t move, I might get him anyway, he’s so cute and soft (not crunchy!) Grace came out and said ‘Ya know what we talked about?’ I said the beach and she was amazed as always, ‘How’d you now that?!’ Because whatever the baby story time is about pre-school story time is about, no she hasn’t caught on yet!

After we left with a bag of books we headed over to park day. The kids played and I chatted. We had a good group today about 10 moms, so that means lots of kids running around. Hannah fell down and scraped her knees, but no one else got hurt. The trees were so shady it got a little chilly when the clouds passed by, but in July/Aug. I’ll take those shady trees over a play land with no shade anyday, ouch hot! My friend A had posted that she wanted to go to Bailey to see the Coney Island hot dog stand; I misread the post and thought she meant today and I was all ready to go. Thankfully she said she could go twice and we headed to the mountains. From the park it was only 45 min. to Bailey, it’s up a pass of 285 and I guess it is in the mountains, but I always think of I-70 as going ‘into the mountains.’ 285 is more foothilly with mountains behind it.

We arrived at the hot dog stand (Hannah thought I said hot dog man and she said, ‘Ohh, I nove hot dog man. He hug me and give me hot dog.’ Yeah we’re good friends with our Russian hot dog man on the mall; we’ve known him since 2003!) and ordered.

This stand was built in 1966 and was originally on Colfax st. It’s not very big inside, but it’s got lots of character.

They moved it to Woodland park and then in 2006 moved it to Bailey.

I remember seeing an article about the move, but when I checked they hadn’t opened yet.

It was on my radar to come up and see, I just hadn’t been yet, so thanks A for getting me up here! There was a mill wheel that was working with a small amount of water falling in it.

There were hummingbirds zipping around over our heads.

We ate hot dogs and ice cream and played with our friends.

Bethany found a caterpillar in this flower.

Here’s the view from the top of the stand, that river’s roaring.

We sat by the river for a minute and then left.

Although their hot dogs and buns aren’t the best, you can’t beat the surroundings.

On the way to pick up James we stopped in Pine (where we missed the rhubarb festival last Sat.) to see if the antique shop was open, nope. So A said let’s head up the hill to Sphinx park, so we did. The road got narrower and narrower; we had a rock wall on our left and the river on our right. Finally we turned around and she decided that the whole area was the park. On the way down we saw this, the Sphinx rock.

It sorta looks like the Sphinx, if you use your imagination. We stopped by the Pine Grove cemetery and saw these pretty paintbrush flowers.

Grace picked some to put on the grave of a little boy who died in 1910, age 9. There weren’t many graves so I guess there is another cemetery somewhere around there. Here is the view from the front of the cemetery, very nice.

Hannah just picked her flower to take home.

Pine Grove is so small all they have in town is a library, coffee shop, fire dept. and the antique shop. I think they should have the rhubarb fest on 2 different dates………..just for me……….since I missed it this year. Oh well, there are other festivals coming up.

(No, not through yet.) After dinner we went swimming at the log pool (as opposed to the turtle pool or the whale pool.) Everyone had a great time and as we were walking to the car I was thinking how we had made it through the whole day with no accidents (minus Hannah’s scraped knees.) Just then Hannah tripped and landed smack on her face on the concrete. So, when you see pics tomorrow and see a scraped head, scraped nose and mouth you know what happened. Sigh, I could do with a little less drama in my life, but I doubt that even if I stayed home everyday we’d never have an accident (after all most of our ER trips have been from things that happened at the house.)