Hotel Living

Since Cheyenne is a small community Evan has to do a few rotations in Denver over the next two years, this month being one of them.  The program puts Evan up in hotel (The Drury Inn-what a name).  There is a door on the bedroom so I don't have to be super quiet while Autumn naps which is a plus along with a full breakfast and dinner every day.  Down side is there are only 3 dinner menus that they rotate through (but 3 free cocktails per night :)  The worst thing about this month wasn't necessarily the hotel living as it was Evan's schedule.  He worked noon to midnight.  He usually works 12 hours a day so that's no big deal, but since he gets home so late, he needs to sleep in and it is tough keeping Autumn quiet (especially because she decided for a couple weeks that she should wake up at times that started with fives and sixes.  Not ok)  Also I am still car-less.  The first half of our stay was really nice weather so we walked the 1.6 miles one way to Target a couple times and the 1.4 miles to Ikea a couple times too.  Then I discovered that the mall is only about that same distance too so we went there once.  On one of the first days off Evan had we took Autumn to the park.  I thought it was a pretty cool park.  Autumn loved the HUGE slide that was there.

Autumn is very adventurous and loves to be independent (as long as you're watching her.  Its like "Mom mom come here.  NO I can do it by myself!" )

Evan also liked the long slide.

Autumn's favorite thing to play with as of late is Duplos that she won in a bingo game at our family reunion.  Evan always builds these cool thingys and Autumn always tries to knock them down.  Pretty funny watching Evan try to get them away from here. (other favorite thing...not wearing clothes)

Some other activities we did in the hotel included playing "ghost" and building forts.

Autumn's second favorite thing to play with is Play-doh (also a Bingo prize).  It always amazing me how she doesn't mix the colors.  I don't think I told her not to do that.  She likes me to roll the Play-Doh into balls, and says "ball" to let me know what to do.

Then we went to Seattle to visit my parents (post on that next).  I think Evan was bored with us gone, so when we returned he suggested we visit the zoo.  Earlier in the month he didn't want to go because it was "too far".  I think he just likes to lounge and relax on his days off, can't really blame him.  It is quickly becoming fall here as evidence of the extreme flooding in the Denver area (we went home on a couple of Evan's days off and what should have taken us 90 minutes to get to Denver took us 8 hours because of road closures.  Minor inconvenience in comparison to those that lost their homes.)

Anyway the zoo was fun.  It was perfect zoo weather, chili in the shade, but nice and sunny otherwise.

I thought Autumn would like the giraffes and lions, because she likes them in her pictures books, but she could care less about them.  She however LOVED the elephants.  We spent a solid 30-40 minutes looking at the elephants and making elephant noises.

At one point one of the elephants pooped.  Autumn thought that was great.  She kept pointed to her bum and making noises as if to say, "Hey she just pooped, just like me from her bum!"  It was definitely exciting!

Autumn banging her chest like a gorilla.  Her favorite book is still "Goodnight Gorilla".  Although she did fall in love with "Are you my mother" while we were visiting my parents.  She made my dad read it every night.

More hotel fun.  I thought it would be cool to have puff ball races being blown by the blow dryer.  Not that much fun, too hard to control the puff balls plus the cord didn't really reach.  It was worth a shot.

Autumn loves her princess shoes.  She often wears them to breakfast.  All the patrons and staff love her.  One night while we were eating dinner Autumn was sitting on the back of the high chair.  I was chewing my food and trying to say, "Autumn sit down you're going to fall" as she lost balance and started to fall backwards.  I jumped out of my seat and caught her by the arm.  Scared both of us.  Now Jared, one of the staff members, calls me Ninja mom!