Denver Day 8

Bailey and his new prize

Yesterday was a weird day here in Colorado. It was much cooler than the other days we have had here and nothing went like we were really expecting. We started off in our morning bath and wet wrap, did a little school work, saw the doctors and had our lunch. A little after lunch, Dr. B and Dr. Elizabeth came in to look at Bailey's skin and they were so happy with his skin, they decided he could have the day off until the bedtime soak and wrap. As a prize for doing so well over the weekend and being faithful to his wraps and his skin, they brought in some big prizes for Bailey to pick through. He picked a remote control car. He was so excited...he had to open it immediately and play awhile. 

Since we had the afternoon off, I let him choose what we did. He was dying to go to the Buffalo Bill museum and grave up at Lookout Moutain, so we took off in search of an adventure.

working our way out of town..bailey was snapping pics

We headed out on 70 towards the west and asceded into the mountains not too far out of town. We quickly found the exit onto the winding roads up into the hills and went to the Lookout Mountain overlook and Nature Center (which was closed on Monday...of course).

Working our way up into the MTNS

Nature Center at Lookout Mtn.

Homeschool moment..we have been talking about faulting, folding, layers, etc.

We looked around and snapped a few pictures from high atop the mountain, then wound around to the area where Buffalo Bill is buried. The spot for his grave is amazing, with views for miles from high atop the mountains. I can see why he requested that he be laid to rest there. It was amazing. Denver looked like just a little blot.









There at the gravesite is the museum and gift shop with café. We enjoyed some lunch in the café. They conveniently had veggie burgers and grilled chicken with plain ruffle chips. I think they must have known we were coming. We both finished it off while watching out the window with the most spectacular view. The gift shop there at the museum had Buffalo Bill hats and Bailey fell in love with them. He just had to have one of course.

Checking out Buffalo Bill's gravesite

Buffalo Bill and his wife are buried under the rock

This makes me laugh everytime

In the café we enjoyed lunch and a new hat :)

He had to hold the hat the whole time

still holding the hat!

yep...still holding

The wind was about 60mph~yep...still holding

Playing with the camera

Bailey took pics out his window as we drove into the Mtns

After the lunch, we heard of a place with natural hot springs, so we took off to see if we could find them. They are in a tiny mining town of Idaho Springs.



Idaho Springs, CO gold mine

This was the cutest little town. Exactly what I imagine when I think of "old Colorado". The tiny main street and cute miner homes were adoreable. I snapped a few pics of the city hall, downtown, and the old gold mine. We also enjoyed the little visitors center that had a tiny museum inside of local artifacts. Lots of beautiful gems (and of course GOLD) have been found in the hills there.

Cute little main street in Idaho Springs

City Hall

Miner St. (notice the waterfall behind it)

Just as we found the hot springs, which actually has a small hotel/motel built around it, we turned in and looked up into the mountains and snow was coming down! It was a little blizzard! Since we had traveled over 30 miles through the mountain, we decided it might be time to head back towards Denver before we were stuck for the night. Everything was covered in just a matter of minutes. Down in Denver it was only 54 degrees, but the mountains were around 34 and we weren't really that high up. I can't imagine if we had went into the "big" mountains.

We drove as fast as we could out of the mountains and made it back into Denver within just a few minutes. The snow followed us most of the way until we descended the mountain just outside of town. By this point, it was already supper time so we headed to the RMH to eat a little dinner.

A sweet group of people had made chili and veggie pizzas (using my favorite pampered chef recipe!) YUMM...it was good and we were able to go play outside on the play equipment before heading back to the hospital for our evening bath and wet wrap. It was a great day and we made lots of fun memories on our adventure.
Love to everyone! 
Julie

Playing at the RMH playground

Jumping on the hamburger



My silly man

 

Denver Day 7

This pic is in the large park near downtown. It is from the area where the Museum and the zoo are located. Think of it like a smaller central Park. Love the snowy mountains in the background!

Well, today once again started out bright and early at the hospital. We got there a couple minutes before 8am and went straight to our room. We ordered breakfast for Bailey and got the bath process going. He did a bleach bath today to make sure any germs are gone and soaked for almost 45 minutes. After his soak, we got him all wrapped up and in the bed for 2 hours. While he was wrapped, I used that time to feed him breakfast and we worked on school. I was his hands for both, of course, and we managed to get all caught up for the upcoming week on his school (he got a day behind at the beginning of the week when we first got to the hospital).
After he was out of his wrap, I carried some of his laundry down and got it in the washer so we would have plenty for the next wraps of the day. His nurse came in to look at him and is pleased with his progress. She said we could skip the midday bath as long as he applied some lotion at the museum...this please him to have the whole afternoon. She also thinks there is a possibility of staying longer, but I will have to talk to the Dr. in the AM.
We headed out a little before lunch and went over to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for the afternoon. We had a wonderful time looking through the museum. They have beautiful exhibits there. I took a ton of pictures (and so did Bailey), but the camera is in the trunk of the car.  Bailey refuses to let me go back down and get it. He is super sleepy and doesn't want to walk down there or stay alone in the room. I will post a few of our pictures on tomorrows post. :) Bailey said his favorite part was the dinosaurs and the mummies (even though they totally creeped him out).
For dinner, a Korean group of ladies came to the RMH and cooked a yummy supper. Bailey said that it was no where near as good as aunt Linli's food. I tried to explain that Korean and Chinese are a little different, but to him, Asian is all Chinese I think. ;) He said even Linli's rice is better. They were very sweet ladies and they made a spread. They had Korean beef, a vegetarian stir-fry with vermicelli noodles and veggies, a beautiful salad with a sesame dressing they made, and fruit. I appreciated a nice meal tonight. I feel like I have either skipped a lot of meals or eaten junk or granola the whole time. I think in the last week we might have had 2 really yummy meals.
After dinner, me and Bailey took a ride into downtown and I drove slow and let him take pictures of buildings and things he found interesting. Denver is such a different place, he found lots of things to take pictures of. We also found a couple of places that we would like to visit. They have a really nice aquarium that we hope we might can squeeze in maybe just an hour or two to try to visit one evening before they close, and we also heard about an area just outside of town near the mountains that has a natural hot springs. He is wanting to ask his dr. if we could go there one day. I told him we will see. We are starting to run out of time. We should leave on Saturday unless our dr. tells us we need more time tomorrow.
Overall, today was a great day. He laughed, played and danced around all day. He told me several times how good he felt and he was in a really good mood. Tonight when he laid down, there was no pacing the room, no crying and no needing massaging. This is a first this week. He is usually itching and hurting because of the wraps he has to sleep in. He says they itch his skin. I am guessing it is probably the strong meds inside that give him the itchy, painful feeling. Tonight, he actually fell asleep while I was typing this out. Watching him sleep makes me so happy. He is peaceful tonight and not in pain. I am so thankful to each and every person who has made this trip possible for us. I can never repay this gift. Even if we don't get everything we were (and still are) hoping for, know that you gave him hope and some ways of managing this horrible illness. That makes it worth it to me. I still pray that we get more answers and come away with clear skin and no more pain. On that note....I wish you all goodnight! Love and Hugs to everyone!

Where has the time gone?

Ok, so Spring officially arrived and has brought with it MANY BEACH DAYS! We are really enjoying our beach time. We had a wonderful Easter and celebrated with our new church family. It was definately weird not being back home with family for our traditional dinner though.

This is the kids on one of their last days of school work for the year. They were soooooo excited to be done for awhile. They really worked hard these last few weeks.

Melissa ready to head to Scampy's for some seafood.

We have also had some visitors!! We have had Nanny and Poppy, Nanny and Nana, and of course, The Jenkinators.

Kirsten out in front of our house being goofy!

Ready for an evening ride!

 We are so glad that it is summer and ready for a visit back home. Hopefully, July 13th we will be pulling up in TN for a two week stay with family and friends! Hope everyone back home are doing well. Love to you all!

No news is good news, right?

Well, once again, I am the blog slacker! I never make any promises, but I do try to keep you updated. We are all doing lovely and spending lots of time outdoors. Between the parks and the beaches, we spend most days outdoors. We finally finished our schoolwork a couple of weeks ago, so the days are now much more fun around here. We have been working on some projects, educational games, and watching lots of movies. That's my favorite kind of day. Much more relaxed than usual.
Bailey is doing great and healing nicely..thank you so much for all the prayers and we continue to hope that he will get a little better everyday!
If you get a chance this summer, come down and give us a visit, we miss everyone dearly.