Thanksgivingtime in Colorado 2023 - 2023/11/24

Catching up and clearing out a few older posts. This is from our Thanksgiving in Colorado 2023. 

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving. 

Staying with Aunt Megan and Uncle Patrick. It was great to have my Grandma's Spiced Tea on the stove for us in the morning. Thanks Megan! 

My mom volunteers at the library in their book store to help raise money for the library. We like to stop by and bring her a Starbucks treat in the middle of the day. 

The kids looking through all the books that she's sorting. 

While Patrick and I are put to work in the back room! All these are donated books, or books that are being pulled off the library shelves. Mom gets to figure out if they have enough value to sell (either online for the really expensive ones) or in the library book shop for a couple dollars. Everything else gets recycled! 

Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving, while Dad and Mom are picking up Jon and family from the airport, we all head to Chick-fil-A for dinner! 

The next day, we had a great Graciasgiving with everyone!

And celebrated an early Christmas (Graciasmas) with them too. 

As we were stuffing ourselves with tasty Thanksgiving foods, Pop Pop asked who was going to get up early with him to hike the Manitou Incline. That was the last thing on many of our minds, but Isaac thought it sounded like a great idea! And guess who got snow overnight? Manitou Springs and Colorado! 

Near the halfway point at Monty's Tree. 

Having a good time? 

Made it to the top! 

Coming back down looks a little slippery! 

But they've got to hurry up and get home because there's a treat waiting for them! 

Jess is making her famous sticky buns! 

The top of the baking pans filled with sugary goodness. 

My family was still at Patrick and Megan's house that morning. These streets are covered in snow! 

That's just Colorado for you! 

After a slow drive, we arrived at my parent's house just as the sticky buns were coming out of the oven. 

Smells fantastic. Looks and tastes even better! 

Pop Pop and Isaac get back just in time to enjoy them. 

Thanks Jess! 

Gram has lots of fun toys tucked away in the basement. 

So much playdoh! 

For their Christmas gift to everyone, Alli and Ian wanted to treat them to Chipotle! Everyone put in their order and Pop Pop went to pick it up! 

And while Pop Pop and Gram agreed to watch the kids, the rest of us headed out for a date day! 

Pizza! Yum! 

Then back to Pat and Megan's house to play board games. They had a fun one that we haven't played before. 

You get 4 different cards, each with 4 unique words on them. You arrange them on your board and come up with a word that combines the two. Then you remove the cards, scramble them and add a 5th card, and everyone else has to try to figure out the correct order. 

I liked Sheila being the answer for "Library Princess". 

And Isaac being the "Climbing Child". 

Back home, it's still flurrying. 

These are some of the most perfect snowflakes I have seen! 

The kids taking advantage of the snow in the backyard. Snowball fight! 

While the rest of us kept warm inside. 

All the girls. 

Ian crashing the party. 

Then all the boys. 

Silly picture! 

All too soon it was time for Jon and family to head to the airport. They were only able to visit for less than 48 hours, but it was still good to see them. 

Hope to see you soon!

The streets are all still covered. Hopefully you have a safe trip to the airport!

They did! 

Safe travels home! 

We've still got a few more days before we also head home. Loving the endless Spiced Tea! 

Cute Alli! 

Helping with projects around the house. 

And getting up into the attic to run wiring. 

Flannel twins! 

This cool weather is the perfect opportunity to have a nice soup! I recreated the Epcot Canadian Cheddar and Bacon soup from Le Cellier. I thought it was delicious, but it was a little too much tabasco for the littles. Oh well. More for me.  

One of nice parts about having someone to watch the kids was being able to get out of the house for a little while. Theresa and I found a Starbucks with a fireplace to sit in front of. 

The kids had disappeared into the basement for the afternoon and said they were working on another surprise for us all. We've had the Festival of Love and the Winter Festival. 

Now it's time for the Rainbow Festival! 

It's all about rainbows this time! 

There's rainbow themed games. 

Close your eyes, and guess which color Alli puts in it. 

Good guess Megan! 

Gram figured it out! 

We're just getting really really lucky with this aren't we. 

Name the rainbow Uncle Patrick!

Patrick - Carl!

No, name all the colors of the rainbow in under 5 seconds! 

Theresa, can you line up all the colors of the rainbow in less than 10 seconds? 

That's a really pretty necklace Avery!

Avery - It's an example. Do you want to see how to make one? 

Making one for Pop Pop. 

Looks beautiful! 

With just a couple days before leaving, I figured out that I wanted to make my own Santa hats! Mom helped me learn how to do that! 

The kids also saw these corgis on some fabric she had and asked for Christmas ornaments. 

It's been a fun visit! The Tesla road trip to get out to Colorado sure was something! We got to experience a bunch of things we haven't stopped at before! After 2 weeks gone, it's finally time to head home. Goodbye Colorado! 

See you soon! 

When we arrived in Orlando, it was already after dark. Our RV has been in storage since we've been gone. It was a quick Uber ride over to pick it up around 10pm. Normally we'd go to a hotel if we're getting in late and having to move the RV around, but we're headed back to an RV resort we've been to plenty of times and shouldn't have any issues navigating. 

Oh, but when we got to the RV in storage and walked up to the door, we knew there was a problem. There's beeping going off inside...

A couple days before leaving Florida and putting the RV into storage, the campground we were at lost all electrical power. Our Solar Panels couldn't quite keep up with our demand, and unfortunately we had to put the RV in storage with only 30% battery life. Since we'd be gone and all the air conditioning units would be off, we hoped the solar would be able to charge everything back up. 

But... a string of cloudy days meant that the batteries died completely, which also happened to turn the fridge off. Later, when the batteries charged back up, the fridge did not turn back on, which meant about 2 weeks of thawed meat which were spoiled and rotten now. The smell when we opened the RV door was horrible. 

After getting to the campground by 11pm, Theresa and I spent the next 3 hours emptying and scrubbing the fridge as best we could. 

Nothing was fixing the smell. I sprayed vinegar multiple times. Bleach multiple times. Made a paste of baking soda and coated every surface I could see to help absorb the odor. Anything that could be removed soaked in a bleach bath for hours to try to remove the smell. Sitting in the sunlight was also attempted. When we thought we had it handled, we'd plug the fridge back in to get cold, but we were getting nose-blind to the smell. Whenever we'd walk back in the door from somewhere the smell would hit us again. 

In the end, it was a product that Nicole recommended that did the trick. It was an enzyme they would use at the Orlando Cat Cafe to remove the smells that cats might leave behind. We sprayed a couple bottles of it into the fridge over the course of a few days, including on all the shelves and drawers. Luckily, Jacob was nearby to give us ice and borrow fridge space from. 

Finally 8 days later, we had a fridge we could use again. Crazy. The RV survived 2 months in Michigan without being plugged in to electric, but that power outage followed by cloudy days did us in.