Just five bucks

I just posted this on my other blog--why not head over to Storing Up Treasures and help those families?

Our ducks won!

Three of the five ducks that we sent down Plum Creek on Saturday won prizes! We had two phone calls on the machine last night--a total of $55 worth of giftcards to three stores/restaurants here in town. How cool is that?! You should have seen Abby's face when I told her. :D

a bunch of posts...

If you haven't been here since I posted about geocaching, then make sure you keep scrolling after you read the Ducky Derby post. In fact, go all the way back to the geocaching post because now there are pictures! Yippee!

Castle Rock Ducky Derby!

Saturday was the thirteenth annual Ducky Derby here in Castle Rock, organized by the local Rotary Club. You sponsor a duck by buying a ticket, and the first four hundred ducks to cross the finish line (or rather, enter the finish tube, as you'll see) win prizes donated by local businesses, as well as cash prizes. They close off a couple streets downtown and have a street fair, but then in the afternoon they launch the ducks--over eight thousand of them this year!--in Plum Creek, where they sail along for about a mile while everyone follows along on the bike or hiking paths.

The girls and I met my mom and her friend Ben, who was visiting from Oklahoma, and we checked out the fun. (Bev took a lot of the earlier pictures, so when she sends them to me I'll put them up.) We started at Dream Pastries for a mid-morning snack, which is the cafe that was adjacent to our favorite coffee shop that closed. Dream Pastries took over their space and expanded, and now it's a really cute little shop! We've already claimed the big round table in the back corner as ours. I foresee many mornings spent there as the girls get older, homeschooling or reading or playing or whatever.

From there we went down to the street fair, where the wind was making things a bit more interesting. There were wisps of cotton candy flying through the air, and when it got *really* gusty folks had to hang onto the frames of the EZ-Ups to keep them from blowing over. A shame, really, but folks here are used to it so it didn't put too much of a damper on things.

Big Duck, the aptly if not somewhat uncreatively named mascot of the Ducky Derby, was strolling around for photo ops. Abby of course wanted nothing to do with him and insisted we go in the opposite direction whenever we spotted him. PJ, on the other hand, insisted on seeing him because "I want to hug Ducky!" Though once we got there she changed her tune and said to me, "No, *you* hug Ducky." (cute photos coming)

There were businesses and crafty things set up, and also a collection of raptors. (really cool pictures coming!) Sort of an odd thing to have there, since one might consider birds of prey to not be the best ting around ducks, but I guess they're smart enough to tell the rubber ones from the real ones.

We went to lunch after a while at Siena, which I've been dying to try, and it was *really* good. (Great service, too.) After that we went back to the amphitheater to listen to the music for a while (PJ kept insisting on "more music!") and then I took the girls home so I could put PJ down for her nap. Once she was asleep, Abby and I went back for the REAL fun.

We were the first behind the duckmobile, which was bringing the vat o' duckies to the launch site. (There was another HUGE tub of ducks as well as what was inside that yellow box.)

Oh, the humanity! A little hard to tell in this photo, but the parade of people extends far, far into the distance. I'd love to know how many people came to the actual launch, because it was seriously packed. And I was so impressed with Abby--this was a long walk, and she traipsed along without a single complaint, even in the heat (close to 80!). Here is the whole route:

The street fair was at Perry Street and 2nd. Just below 2nd Street, to the west of Perry, you can see a little paved path--it goes under Wilcox, and then continues west to go under the freeway. the launch was under the freeway (yay for shade!), and the creek turns and flows north (yes, you read that right, it flows north) to the west of the walking path. We walked all the way up until the path takes a little jog to the left, crossing over the creek so that the path ends up to the west of the creek. That bridge over the creek was the finish line. Quite the trek for a 4-year-old!

When we got under the freeway for the launch, they took quite a while maneuvering the duckmobile to the edge of the creek.

But once they got it in position....

The little river of ducks really was pretty amazing. And then off we went to follow them!

Once Abby saw there was an off-road trail, she took it. For someone who doesn't like bugs and getting dirty, she sure was excited about walking through the grass and bushes. She kept wanting to go off the path, too, but with little patches of mini cacti around (and who knows what else) Mommy was a killjoy and said no. But in all honestly I'm looking forward to when she's a little older and more mature and I can let her wander around down there. Great goecaching spots, too!

Occasionally the ducks get caught up in some bend in the creek or in the branches of a fallen tree, so a bunch of teenaged boys follows the ducks along and hopped in to whack them back into the flow of the creek with lacrosse sticks.

And then, the finish line!

An orange plastic fence funnels the ducks into a trough that's only one duck wide. They put a big PVC pipe at the end and in the ducks go. They filled probably ten of these huge pipes, then loaded them back onto the duckmobile to be brought back to 2nd and Perry, where they recorded the first 150 winning numbers for everyone to see. Then they started shoveling the rest of the ducks into a big bin to be saved for next year.

There were some openings in that orange fence, however, so ducks kept escaping downcreek. A couple of tween-aged kids were in there to catch them, and Abby, in a rare show of daring and hutzpah, wanted to join them.

(This video is really long, but because I can't open it in iMovie I can't edit it. There's nothing that interesting past about the 2 minute mark, other than me trying to get Abby to come out, so feel free to move on before it finishes.)

It took a LOT of cajoling to get this child out of the water. And even then, she insisted on sitting on the edge of the path and dangling her feet in the creek while we watched them shovel ducks.

Only the knowledge that one of our numbers might be on the winner's board finally got her back into her shoes.

On the way back to town, she told me she wanted to do four things. (It started as two, but the list kept growing.) She wanted to look for our numbers and see if we won. She wanted to go back to the amphitheater and run and roll down the hill a few more times. She wanted to see the people in the costumes. (There was a prince, a princess, a jester, and two fairies there promoting the Renaissance Faire that takes place in Larkspur, the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it town just south of Castle Rock. When we'd seen them before she was a little freaked out by them, but on the way back she said, "I'm not shy of the fairies or the jester anymore. But I still don't want to see the prince.") And she wanted a snack. That she had any energy left to think of doing anything but getting home really amazed me.

And once we got back, all her wishes came true. All the costumed people were walking together on their way out, right towards us, and the jester played all shy when he saw Abby and hid behind the princess. It was really cute. Then we hit the hill so she could do her thing, which exhausted me just watching her.

Running back up so she can roll...

Rolling for the first time (forgive the sideways videos; I can't get them to load in iMovie so I can't flip them):

...and then using Mama as a crash pad:

After that we checked out the winner's board...

...but we hadn't won anything so far, so after I convinced Abby that we would still get our prize if they put our number up after we left, we went back to Dream Pastries for cupcakes and a very big bottle of water.

She's been asking me all day when the next Ducky Derby will be. She had such a great time, and I really did too. This was just another of those small town traditions that makes me really love living here in Castle Rock. Quack!

Boulder!

It was a gorgeous day, the girls had woken up fairly late, and we were itching to do something new. So we decided to go up to Boulder last Sunday, and it turned out to be a great day to do it--gorgeous weather *and* a street arts and crafts fair!

We went down to Pearl Street which has, over about three blocks, a pedestrian only area, which is where the street fair was set up. They've got these little tulip gardens everywhere, and the colors were just beautiful.

After taking a tour of the whole area to see what all there was, we went back to this little rock garden where kids were climbing around so the girls could get out of the stroller for a while.

This is PJ checking out the feeling of the little pebbles on her feet. She eventually took both shoes off, then walked over to me and asked me to put them back on. Abby, on the other hand, was running all over the place barefoot!

In front of this play area was an interesting gentleman playing violin, barefoot, in a white tux:

He was amazing, and the girls--Abby especially, who really does seem to have a real appreciation for music--were enthralled.

After that we had a very yummy snack at Haute Cupcake, home of the famous (really--it was featured on one of those Food Network shows)...

Bacon-Topped Cupcake! Maple cake, chocolate frosting, and bacon crumbles. And it's really, really good.

I got PJ a cake pop (a cake ball on a stick covered in chocolate) but she didn't like it. (It wasn't *that* great, but it *was* chocolate and cake, so it certainly wasn't awful.) So I ate hers and gave her some of my classic vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. It was the sprinkles she was after, really.

Abby got a strawberry cupcake with strawberry frosting and wow, it was goooood.

Look at that cake! So pink! So yummy!

It was a really fun day, and I have to say I really liked Boulder. Lots of fun shops on Pearl Street, and Dan and I have it on our list of places to go for a day trip once we can leave the girls that long with Mom and Dad. It's got that great college town vibe going on, too--there were all sorts of little quartets and duets of college kids performing amidst the art stalls. Definitely a fun place to spend an afternoon--can't wait to do it again!

Hidden treasure (now with pictures!)

Uncle Andrew (Dan's brother) and his son Simon spent the weekend with us. While they were here, Andrew introduced us to the addicting outdoor hobby of geocaching. I've always wanted to try it and was so excited to finally have the chance, but I was skeptical about how the girls would do with it. Walking around looking for something that could be as big as a bucket (though possibly buried flush with the ground) or as small as a rifle bullet (and possibly tied to the branch of a tree) didn't seem like something that would hold their interest. But wow, did they love it!

The first one was just down the street from our house, in a field full of mini cacti and what I think one could accurately call bracken.

Simon ended up finding it, in the middle of a clump of bracken, and once the girls saw the kinds of things people leave in them--Happy Meal-type trinkets, a mini Garfield book on friendship--they were hooked. PJ: "Mama, we go find treasure? *ME* find it!" Abby: "Are we going to go look for more treasure? I want to find it this time."

The next one was a small cylinder zip-tied to the branch of an evergreen at a park not far from the first location.

The third was almost our first no-find; the clue said it was in a metal Saltines box (remember those?) but it turns out it was in a ziploc bag just barely under a layer of leaves.

The girls were so sad when we stopped for lunch and naps. We did a couple more after they woke up--I found the second under a rock at Castle Rock Park:

and Andrew found the first (under a metal box at the base of a light pole) and the third (another tiny cylinder, magnetically attached to a light pole at Centennial Park), and by that time it was getting darker and colder and we decided to call it a day. The girls were not happy, but they needn't worry--Dan and I are hooked and will undoubtedly start doing this regularly.