Summer Fun, part 6

Last summer, we learned of the existence of "Colorado Day," and that Colorado state parks are free to celebrate.  We got a late start last year, and so this year I'd planned to pack lunch the night before, make sure everybody got up early, and take advantage of a full morning at the park.  Unfortunately, I neglected to find out exactly when the parks would be free.  On a hunch one Monday morning, I checked online, and it turned out that it was that very day.  I hadn't packed lunch yet, and we'd gotten a slower start to the day.  No matter, I packed lunch quick and we all headed off to Cherry Creek Reservoir!

We hiked a bit (I left the camera in the car during that bit), and then we went to another trail and the boys biked.

(I'd promised them a bike ride right before checking to see when Colorado Day was, so I had to bring bikes to keep the peace.)

Then we ate lunch and took a dip.

 Crawling along, being an alligator

 Robin waded out pretty deep

 He really wanted to make the ball sink

Burying Mama's Feet

And then Dada's

We stayed later than we would have, if we'd gotten there early, so we probably logged almost as much time as we would've gotten anyway, just at the expense of naps.  I'm just happy that I checked the internet when I did, or we might've missed the free day entirely!

Englewood offers free concerts throughout the summer, and we made it to nearly all of them this year, with picnic dinner in hand.  Here we are, enjoying the final one

Once the food has been eaten, there is, of course, a great deal of running and playing around.

And dancing.  We can't forget dancing.

Someone from the city brings hula hoops to each concert.

I had to try them out, too

Showing off for some friends

Dean did some hula hooping too

Liam got into one, but of course, he much preferred to just drag it around

And for one final thing, I thought I would share a Robinism.  This one requires a little explaining.  There's an episode of a TV show, Peep and the Big Wide World, in which one of the characters can't keep a secret.  But after blabbing his secret to somebody else, he adds "And remember, Hush Hush."  Robin has latched onto this expression and expanded upon it.  So now, whenever Robin says good-bye, he also adds:

"Hush hush if you have a secret, no doing anything where there's wind if you have a secret, and remember--no saying your secret!"

(According to Robin, the wind thing is because the wind might blow the secret right out of your head.)

Of course, less than half of this is legible, even when the person knows what he's talking about.  Most of the time he rushes through this so fast that "hush hush" and several repetitions of "secret" are all that you can pick out.  Silly boy!