My Birthday on the Trail

It was a great day today, even if I didn't see my husband.

I am not a huge birthday person. I always forget until the week or two before that my kids have birthdays coming up. And I certinly do not go hog wild on my own birthday. Kristin, however, lives in a world with birth-months, lol. She was ready to do any and everything I wanted today to spoil the mess out of me. I however could care less. But, when in Rome...

We did wake up this morning with one thing on the mind...the hot springs in Ouray Colorado. They opened at 10AM and we were in the pool by 10:15. Two years ago when our family was in Ouray, we came to the springs and within 30 mins it started raining with lightning. They gave us three passes (Jolene was free back then) to come back and said they would always be good. I kept those passes hidden away in my room for two years. We pulled them out this morning and the four of us got in for the price of 1 child.

The springs here have different temperatures in the spring fed pool and it truly felt like a 2 hour bath. There was one section of the pool with water sitting around 80 degrees. With the high in town today around 70 and the rest of the pool around 95 degrees, this felt COLD. But in the cold part was an insane obstacle course. I asked Kristin to go and race me, but she begged no. It was too cold. I agreed, but said we had to. She again said no, and then I whipped it out. The "it's my birthday" card. It worked!! And it was a blast. Tatum later asked me to race her too, so I did. Here is a video of the two of us.

We left around 1:00PM to head further into town for lunch and a little shopping. I got the girls each a little something. It may seem like I am spoiling them, but they have been so good on this trip. We have lived in a van for over two weeks at this point. I have done a lot of work and even more moving them from one place to the next. And they have always listened, obeyed, and fallen in line as I asked. After the shopping we stopped by this chocolate shop that someone along the way suggested we must visit. Yum! Kristin got this cookie that the place called a scrap cookie. They mixed things from all of the good of the day into some dough and made the most amazing mess of heaven.

After lunch, we decided that once was not enough and we went back to the pool. It was like another 2 hour bath. Seriously, the greatest way to spend the day. After heading back to the campsite for dinner, we decided to go back into town once more for another scrap cookie. Seriously, so yummy.

The boys gave us some laundry yesterday when we took them from the LZ to the new DZ so we had to get that stuff clean before we saw them again tomorrow. Got it done, and by the time this was through, I had just enough time to write this post and go to bed. I am exhausted. Good night all. Thanks for reading. A few more pics from the day...