For some strange reason when something gets over-hyped, I have a tendency to avoid it. This is especially true with T.V. shows. I refused to watch Friends until about 1998 when I realized that my Mom was watching it. I didn’t want to watch Dawson’s Creek, but Kelli made me. I distinctly remember Amy and I making fun of American Idol in the first season, but then I watched the finale when Kelli was at my house and had to watch it, and I was hooked. Each of these shows eventually went on to become one of my favorites once I gave them a chance. It even happened with Harry Potter, and you’ve read my post about how addicted I became to that. Patrick was on book #3 or #4 when the 1st movie came out. I thought, why would I want to read a kids book? And then I watched the first movie and I quickly caught up.

It’s happened again. All last season people kept saying that Heroes was better than Lost, and I thought, no,that’s not possible. I even tried to watch a few minutes of an episode once, I think maybe when we were on our cruise and we only got a few channels. Patrick caved in to the advice of his friends at the start of the summer and bought the first episode from iTunes to watch while he worked out. He was quickly buying the 2nd and 3rd. And then he started in about how I needed to watch it and how much I would like it and soon I was getting a daily countdown of when it would come out on DVD. I told him great, put it on Netflix and I’ll try to watch it with you. But what I was really thinking was that we have more shows to watch now than we have in a long long time and we barely keep up with our DVR as it is. And then one day he just came home with the first disc—he’d borrowed it from a friend. So I was cornered.

I sat down begrudgingly to watch the first episode. I had to admit by the end, that it was interesting. More so than I had thought possible. The second episode got me a little more, and by the third episode I was hooked. We’ve just watched all 23 epidsodes in a manner of days. And after having to make one night time run over to our friends house to get the next disc like some kind of junkies needing a fix, we had to buy our own copy this weekend. It is freakin’ awesome. We will so be watching it from now on. I can see what all the talk was about, and as much I don’t want to say it, it IS better than Lost! But Lost is still really good. If you aren’t watching either of them, you should be.

Patrick actually had a lot of pictures on his phone, so I thought I’d share some fun ones.

Brenden and squinty on top of Mt. Evans.

One of the 3 Mt. Goats Gruff.

Waterfall we saw before eating lunch.

Like mother like son-Patrick snuck a picture of Brenden and I sleeping in the car on the way home. I didn’t even know he’d done that until I was looking at the pictures tonight.

I am taking speech this semester and my first assignment will be due in two weeks. I have to give an introductory speech about a song lyric, quote or object that represents me and why. I’m drawing a blank on what would represent me. I’m not fishing for compliments here, but I’d appreciate suggestions!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks around here. I took on a project to tear down the wallpaper in the kitchen, repair the 3 small holes Bailey chewed the first week we had her and then paint. ( I may post before and after pictures when I finish up the final touches). Then we had family in. Then school started for both of us. And then we took a road trip.

We left on Thursday, bound for the Denver area to visit friends of Patrick’s that I’ve never gotten to meet in all these years. I had a great time meeting them and Brenden loved their 3 little boys (ages 2-5). Brenden did not however like the 12 hour car ride there and back. Especially the ride back as he had come down with a cold that wouldn’t be realized until the next day. (Which I also have and Patrick is trying hard not to give in to.) For a kid that does not like to sit still, even long enough to eat, he did pretty good though.

Friday the family was busy so the 3 of us went to the Children’s Museum and let Brenden play. Then we went downtown and explored. We were pretty tired of walking by the time we got done!

Saturday we drove in the mountains and went up to the top of Mount Evans. It was really beautiful, and really high—14,130 feet high to be exact. It boasts of having the world’s highest paved road. I handled the altitude well at first, but after awhile, I started to feel my asthma. And it was super cold. Then we went back down and drove to Tiny Town, a little town just for kids with lots of mini houses and a little train. Brenden kept going forward to look at something and then going back to the last thing that he saw that he liked.

Sunday we all went swimming at the city’s rec center which was really neat. It had a play room, a rock climbing wall, the pool, workout facility and who knows what else. Patrick and I took turns playing with Brenden in the water and going down the two water slides.

Throughout the visit Brenden practiced going down the stairs until he was a stair master. Their house had multiple levels and he knew how to go up the stairs but not down. The 2 year old showed Brenden how to slide down on his  belly and he slowly  got it and then had to keep practicing. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Great visit. Now we can rest up and try to get over colds until more craziness ensues this weekend.

Here are pics. I may add one of us on the mt. if Patrick has a good one, but so far the ones I’ve seen are not so good.

Brenden practicing his art skills at the Children’s Museum

This was a little pretend vet’s office at the Museum, but all Brenden wanted to explore was the “recptionist’s desk”. I’m sure he was especially happy to see they had a Nortel phone very similar to the one we have at home!

The Museum also had a little grocery store/kitchen area for the kids to play in complete with carts and a register. Brenden loved pushing the cart around and filling it up.

The first stop at Tiny Town was this little Conoco sign that he kept returning to.

Next up was the Tiny Town Tribune.

This is just about as close as I get to the kid actually looking at the camera-which by the way is having technical difficulties.

This little area had a tiny step down from the brick to the astro turf stuff and Brenden took it like he was a mountain climber. Then he crawled up on the bench looking rather proud. This was one of those areas that he kept coming back to again and again.