A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.
1. Some creative stuff. I can’t seem to get through the summer without at least one project or so. At our first garage sale outing of the season, I found some patio chairs that were super cheap and just needed some TLC. At first, I thought I would just spray paint the metal parts to give them a fresher look, but upon getting them home—I discovered that the fabric was deteriorating and needed to be replaced.
After watching a YouTube video on how to go about it, I set about removing the existing fabric. As with all things—it looked much easier to do on the video. But with a little elbow grease (and a lot of help from Super Rockstar), we got it done.
Next, I found some cute replacement fabric. One big snag I hit, was that my trusty sewing machine pooped out on me. Sigh. I was able to get it working enough to stich everything together, but it ain’t pretty. Oh well—I keep reminding myself that it’s outdoor furniture and will most likely get rain, hail, and sun beaten anyway.
After spray painting all the metal parts, Super Rockstar lent me his muscles again to help pull the fabric back in place.
The final step was reassembling. I was REALLY glad that I had taken some before pictures because I honestly couldn’t figure out how to do it without some reference. I only had a couple leftover parts that I couldn’t figure out where they went–that’s pretty normal for one of my projects.
2. A trip to our zoo. The boys and I try to make a trip to the zoo once a year. I heard there was a new baby hippo, so of course we had to go see him. Our Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is one of the best I’ve ever seen. It’s built on the side of Cheyenne Mountain and there’s a lot of walking up hill, but it’s worth it. The animal exhibits are wonderful and it’s just such a neat place. We got to see just about every animal—including the new baby hippo, Elmo. He was in the murky water when we were there, but we got to see his cute little baby hippo head raise up every couple of minutes. I want one now.
A couple of tips if you are planning a visit:
–They only do reservations now. Ever since Covid and they had to reduce their numbers—the only way to visit has been to make reservations online. Apparently, this is how they plan to do things from now on. We went on a weekday, and it was a very easy process to purchase the tickets.
–Also, I recommend going “backwards” through the zoo. The natural progression is to go through the gate and then directly to the giraffes and that leads you up to the lions and around—in kind of a counterclockwise loop. By going the opposite way (clockwise), not only do you get to see Elmo first–it’s not as crowded.
–And lastly, plan to spend at least 2 hours if not more. We’ve been dozens of times and have all of our favorite places to hang out along the way. Even going at a steady pace and only stopping a few times here and there to play—it took us a full two hours. They have a great restaurant with a lot of variety, a pizza place, and a coffee shop. There are play areas throughout and even a Carrusel to enjoy. You could easily spend 4 hours if you take your time. I love the staff—they are all very helpful, friendly and eager to educate the guests.
Ticket prices vary depending on peak times and such–the average is about $25-$35 per person (here is a link to their pricing page). We did a membership when my boys were little and it was a great value for us.
3. Camping. We went on our first camping trip of the season to Mueller State Park. Super Rockstar and the boys did a “guys only getaway” stay in one of their cabins last fall and loved it. We got the notion to give tent camping a try this year (we sold our pop-up camper when our boys turned to giants overnight). We found out that they make truck tents (for the back of pick-ups) and with adding an SUV tent—we could all be connected together. Wouldn’t it be fun? Oh yeah. It was a real hoot.
It took us over two hours to assemble our tents and connect them the way we wanted them to. It didn’t work as well as I hoped. One of the tent pole’s snapped, an air mattress sprung a leak, and the worst part–we froze our butts off at night. Barney was just glad to have a place to sleep while we were trying to figure it all out.
One bright spot is that they lifted the restrictions on campfires the day we got there—so we got to warm ourselves next to some nice toasty flames, make s’mores, and get the wonderful campfire smell (seriously, can you even say you’ve been camping if everything doesn’t smell of campfire smoke?)
Also, our campsite was great. It had a fantastic view of the mountains and the potties were close by (and very clean).
We got a lot of good fishing in. Mueller has several fishing ponds and Eleven Mile Canyon is about a 30-minute drive from the campground.
Three days after we got home…we bought another Pop-Up Camper. More on that later. If YOU are interested in tent camping–we happen to have a gently used SUV tent and truck tent (we replaced the broken pole) for sale.
5. My Favorite Memes of the Week.
As always, I would love to hear from you. I hope you have a great week!