An Easter egg hunt and Casa Bonita

Easter is almost here, and the Easter egg hunts are beginning already.  Just this past Saturday a neighborhood near us hosted a hunt for the kids.  Our friends live in that neighborhood and invited us along.  It was much better organized and laid out than the one that I took Evan to last year, but Evan still didn't quite understand the game to get as many eggs as possible. Rather, he was more interested in opening each egg he found to see what was inside.  In fact, I was surprised he even knew to look inside (the plastic eggs we hunted in our yard last year were empty!) so who knows where he got that idea, unless it was just because he sensed something rattle inside the egg as he picked them up?  Either way, he of course ate some of the candies on the spot too, and between peeking inside each egg and stopping to enjoy the candies, he was pretty slow at collecting eggs and didn't end up with very many as a result.  I also feel like now we'll need to fill our plastic eggs with little treats for our own hunt otherwise he'll be very disappointed (or even perhaps confused) when he opens them to find nothing inside.

One fun thing about this early Easter activity, that happened to take place on a beautiful and nice warm spring day, was that I was able to break out some of the cute dresses that Emma was handed down from a friend of mine.  This one had a matching hat (though she quickly figured out how to take it off) and it really brought out the blue in her eyes. :)  I grabbed some cute photos of her in it before we headed out.

Look at my little doll all dressed up

Emma figuring out how to grab her hat and then wave it around in her hand

After the egg hunt, we hopped in the car and headed down to Denver to go to the infamous Casa Bonita.  I had heard of this place when I first moved to Colorado nearly 15 years ago and still had never been.  The main things I'd heard about it were that they had cliff divers (so that piqued my curiosity) and unlimited sopapillas (I love sopapillas).  I'd also heard they didn't have very good food though, so it was all about the experience.  Anyway, just a few weeks ago (around my birthday) I heard it was their 40th anniversary and decided we needed to finally just go and check it out.  So, I used my birthday as an excuse to organize the outing.  The soonest we were able to find a time was this past Saturday, and our friends from the egg hunt came along (they are Denver natives and were able to help guide us through the craziness that is Casa Bonita).  First of all, you begin by standing in a long line, which they fondly call the "line ride at Disneyland".  Given that Emma was due for a feed and the line looked like it would take at least 15 more minutes (and of course we "chose the wrong line" because the other line was moving much faster), I decided to nurse her while standing in line.  That was definitely a first for me.  Not the nursing while standing up part (I've done that when trying to calm her and get her to nurse a few times at home before), but the nursing while standing up in public while also waiting in a line.  I used my nursing cover and so it wasn't too bad, except she does try to pull that off now.  I got one side finished, before I decided I'd finish the rest once we were seated at the table.

Then we ordered our food, waited in more of the line to pick up our food, and then our drinks, and then have someone walk us to where we would be seated.  I think the whole line process took about 45 minutes!  We got okay seats, on the main level to the right of the main pool/cliffs/stage area, but there were big rock features in our way obstructing most of our view of the cliffs.   I finished nursing Emma once we got seated, and then ate my dinner.  We had heard the food was bad, but I didn't realize it was sneaky bad.  Meaning, as we ate the food we all commented on how it wasn't *that* bad.  Heck, some of us had seconds (because we'd all ordered the all you can eat option).  Then we got a couple baskets of the sopapillas.  I love sopapillas, and these seemed pretty good so I had my fair share.  However, by the drive home I had the worst taste in my mouth.  Therefore, I realized the food was sneaky in the sense that it was really bad, but it didn't taste bad at first.  Not sure how they manage that, but they did.

We also saw some shows while we ate, but our view wasn't the best as I mentioned above.  From where we sat I could see the diver start the dive, but only hear them splash in the water down below.  Plus, I didn't get to see any dive shows with multiple divers, so I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped to be with the cliff divers part of this experience.  John and Evan went to a bridge overlook to watch some of the shows and then they also walked around for awhile (while I fed Emma her solid food dinner).  They found the arcade that Evan wanted to play in, but John told him he didn't have money, and then they found the puppet show and got to watch one.  When I saw them come back to the table the first thing Evan did was ask me for money, and started feeling my pockets for money.  Did my son turn into a beggar?  Geez...anyway, then it was my turn to walk with him and explore this interesting restaurant/entertainment venue.  He first led me by hand straight to the arcade, where he pretended to play a racing game (I didn't bring money on our walk either so no games actually got played).  Then we went over to the puppet show stage and he sat down and told me he wanted to watch (but there wasn't a show on at that time).

As we left to find someone to ask about when the next puppet show might be I saw a cave that said it was some kind of hide out.  I thought that sounded cool and might be a fun adventure for us, and so Evan and I went to explore it.  Little did I know...  It was a one way path, that got quite narrow (probably why it's one way) and it got darker too.  And then it got scary...there were scary masks and faces in it.  As I started to notice those things I tried to ignore them and hoped Evan didn't see them.  I figured if I didn't make it seem like anything was wrong maybe he wouldn't notice.  However, the farther we got in, the more he picked up on the vibe (I think because he heard kids screaming up ahead...not scared screams but more playful screams like they were enjoying the scary cave thing).  Anyway, he started to get scared and refused to go any farther.  I didn't want to push it so I made the decision to go back out the way we came in.  However, there were suddenly lots of people behind us.  Granted I picked up Evan and told people as I asked to squeeze by them that I had a scared 2-yr-old.  Most people were very accommodating and helped us get past.  Nonetheless, we had to wait when there were some long lines of people passing, and there were new scary sounds that didn't happen when we were there before (I think someone touched one of the masks or something).  Anyway, that just made it worse...narrow cave, lots of strangers in close proximity, scary sounds...awww.  The poor horror my son was feeling, and it was all my fault for leading him in there! :(

By the time we got out, he had been crying pretty bad.  He was genuinely scared...and for good reason.  I tried to distract him with other things I thought he'd like, but no dice.  He was too scared.  Even the next diver show started with thunder sounds and that just added to the spooky ambiance of this place.  I had ruined it for him.  He wanted to snuggle Daddy and he wanted to go home. :(

We got a quick family pic before we left (just after I had traumatized Evan) :(

Emma seemed to have a good time though.

We tried to perk him up with some kid things that were near the exit (a gum ball machine that dropped the balls down a long windy path for him to watch, and other similar "games" that yielded toys for him).  Granted, it was only a distraction.  Evan talked about the scary cave the whole drive home ("that cave was scary"), as well as has brought it up a few times since.  I sure hope I didn't scar him too badly.  Either way, what started out as a great day that I was really excited for, ended in what I feel was a major mommy fail.