Around town

Now that spring sports seasons are over, we can do some other fun Saturday adventures. (Kip is working a lot of hours, so we have to do them sans-dad.  Boo!)  This past weekend, uncle Shad was working too, so we got to have our fun with the cousins, woo hoo!

Lizzie is working on a report about Molly Brown, the "famous" Colorado survivor of the Titanic, so we went to visit the Molly Brown house in the heart of downtown. It was very cool, restored to its 1910 glory.  The kids were great and especially excited to choose one stick candy after the tour was done.  (No photos allowed, though, too bad!)

One of the things they mentioned in the tour is that Molly Brown (and her husband, JJ)  had largely funded the giant old Catholic church two blocks over, the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, so we headed on over there to take a look.  Beautiful.  It does seem oddly out of place, with homeless people, dingy tattoo parlors, strip clubs, and barred-window bars surrounding it (downtown, seriously); but it was very beautiful, and we got hear the bells pealing for a long time as a wedding inside ended.  Cool!  The kids loved the beautiful stained glass windows and were very curious about the kneeling benches attached to the pews.  No kneeling benches in Mormon churches. :)

 McKinley enjoyed the stairs outside!

There was a small garden to the side of the cathedral with flowers and this statue of the assumption of Mary.  Very pretty!  We waited here for the wedding to finish so we could go inside.  I didn't take any photos inside, but there are plenty on the internet if you are curious.  It was gorgeous!

After the cathedral, we skipped over to the zoo to visit all the animals again.  We love the zoo!  My favorite was Rachel, who wore her fancy pink gloves all day.  Very important, to wear your best gloves to the zoo, you know.

 Ella tried on some elephant ears...

 and everyone enjoyed the log.

It was a fun day, thanks aunt Kendra!  Two last pictures, these are actually from our hike up Green Mountain last Saturday, I just forgot to load them from my phone.  It was a good, steep hike and a beautiful view of Denver at the top.  We encouraged the little girls to keep going by pretending that it was the north mountain and we had to go find Elsa so she could put a stop to winter! :)