They're Ba-ack!

Alright, fess up - did ya miss us yesterday?  I'm going to let Grant put up a separate post with pictures of their Indiana adventure, but I can say that I spent my time working on lots of different project odds and ends and giving the house a very thorough cleaning.  Maybe not the most exciting things, but so glad that they're done and I can instead focus on more important things now that they're home again.

We had to play catch-up on Olympic events today since we missed yesterday.  So it was an event double header when the troops got back late this afternoon.  We started with a hockey shoot out!  I thought this was a little safer than an actual game of hockey though I'm sure after the four hour car ride my kiddos would have liked to beat up on each other a bit.  Everyone got ten 'pucks', best score won.  After that we had a biathlon.  The traditional biathlon combines cross-country skiing and shooting, but here at the Gatchel's we made it running and tossing.  I kind of like the idea of combining two totally unrelated skills into one event, kind of evens the playing field a bit.  Anyway, check out pictures of our competition and the medalists below.

We also wrapped up Colorado in a couple of different ways tonight.  First, I made a Colorado Pie for dinner.  Like a lot of the recipes I've come across for some of the states, I'm not sure what exactly this has to do with Colorado, we we gave it a go anyway!

We also got another piece of Colorado mail that we opened up.  My friend Kristina knows people everywhere and she connected us with Stephanie who lives in Westminster which is just north of Denver.  Our thanks to Stephanie for the goodies!

Tomorrow we start exploring a new section of the country by heading to New England to learn all about Connecticut.  We're also going to be searching for hidden mittens.  Noah is on Winter Break tomorrow and Tuesday (because they haven't already missed enough school...) so I'm thinking we might have a go at some Kid Kitchening to create tomorrow night's Connecticut dessert.  We'll see how the day goes.  But until then...

Colorado Fun Fact of the Day:  The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad continues to provide year round train service operating a historical train with rolling stock indigenous to the line. The line was constructed primarily to haul mine ores, both gold and silver, from the San Juan Mountains.

Colorado Mail

2 postcards and a huge map!  Thanks Stephanie - we really like the post card that lists all the 14er's

I finished the Colorado scrapbook page yesterday

Noah gives hockey a go

Bean's turn

She needed a little help

Today's hockey medalists!

Mikayla at the biathlon

Noah's turn

He's a blur!

My turn - we added two laps and 1 additional ball for Grant and I - may have been too much as they ended up kicking our butts!

The biathlon medalists

Colorado Pie

The insides