The weekend after Chicago, I had a play date with my friend Susan and her son, Nathan, and the boys. We went to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City – just a couple of miles northeast of the city of Denver.
We got there with time to spare although you wouldn’t have known it from my mad driving skills in my sexy minivan. I thought we were going to be late for the hayride so I gunned it a little too fast for my “momma mobile”. As we walked up to a little wildlife museum in the middle of nowhere, we read about the history of the arsenal. Like any arsenal, it contained weapons and most importantly, it was the home of the making of chemical weapons like mustard gas and others. It was also once the home of pesticides and they’ve been working hard to clean it up. Interesting place to say the least and I certainly didn’t fully educate myself as to where I was taking the boys - - I just saw hayride and thought that would be a fun, free event!
The boys loved watching the bees’ nest and love the snake too. 
They loved the hayride even though we had one of the most inarticulate young park rangers from the arsenal. Poor thing couldn’t piece two words together and as I sat in front, 
I filled in his gaps with words. I’m sure he didn’t appreciate that nor the other 10 folks on the ride but the pregnant pauses and the five minute ums were driving me crazy!
Enjoy the wildlife pictures - - you can see raccoons, birds of all shapes and sizes, prairie dogs, deer, buffalo and a two-day old buffalo, and the last picture in the bunch is the Colorado state bird in a flock (they are called the lark bunting and it was the first time the rangers had seen them in the park this season). It was a unique outing and then we headed over to Susan’s for grub as Eban didn’t want to go home. He wanted to play at Susan’s house. Nice.
At the end of July, I also had my last softball game with the Broomfield United Methodist Church league. The co-ed team was a ton of fun and I'm so glad my neighbor, Sandy, convinced me to play. I signed up for fall ball so I'm looking forward to that. Here's a pic of the team at the last game that went into triple overtime. 
