kahunaburger

The US has the weirdest holidays (not that other countries have fewer of them). Today was one of them: Columbus Day. You celebrate the day that somebody discovered the American continent, knowing that he wasn’t the first one. Some states observe it, others don’t. Most companies ignore it and official places (like the Post Office) use it to catch up on work that they should have done weeks ago (which translates to no official Mail Service on that day).

Schools also seem to take the opportunity to give kids an extra day off and cause headaches for (working) parents to find alternatives for the day. I took off today and had Pia with me since 8:30am this morning. Initially we had planned to go up to the mountains and take a hike amidst the turning aspens, but the thermometer made us revisit those plans. Nature decided to turn off the heating for last night and this morning. When I went downtown to pick up Pia, my car told me it was 38 degrees Fahrenheit out there. That combined with some strong winds made us decide to skip the trip to higher elevations. Instead Miles, Mason, Heidi, Pia and I took the dogs for a long walk in the neighborhood. On the way back the kids started to collect shiny, sparkling and interesting rocks. Pia had collected so much stuff that she had a hard time carrying all of it.

Back home the kids sat out in front of the house and used brushes to clean their booty:

Columbus Day 2007:Brushing Rocks

All that walking and brushing made Pia really tired and she had an almost two-hour nap. When she got up she was rewarded for her long nap with a popsicle out in the front. Funny enough, temperatures had risen to a t-shirt-worthy 70 degrees by 4pm:

popsicle time