FREEdom

What a weekend! For one thing, it was hot. And hazy. And we don’t have our air cooler working yet, so everyone is hot and sticky and salty to the touch. You know that feeling when 12-hour-old sunscreen mixes with 12 hours of sweat? Yeah. That. :-)

But we had wonderfully full days! It turned out that this was the weekend for free events, and since it is my summer goal to take advantage of them, we were kept hopping.

Friday night we ate dinner at this awesome taco place called Yolanda’s (not free!). Oh, goodness. It’s near my work, and I have driven by it for five years but never tried it until last week. It is so delicious, and I had to introduce Ryley and Ryan to it!

After that we decided to find the Art Walk down in Denver’s Art District. It’s a monthly event, and we had never heard about it until this year. I’m not sure how we’ve gone this long without knowing that Denver had such a happening art district! But once we got down there, we quickly realized that it was not a “family-friendly” event, per se. We would enjoy doing it as a date night sometime, but it wasn’t a place for Ryley. So we did a drive-by, and we were more than content with that. :-)

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, and we headed across town to have breakfast at the only place in Denver where you can buy Kolaches….The Kolache Factory.

I have really grown to like these little bread-wrapped sausages whenever I go visit my brother in Texas, so I did some research and found out that they’re a Texas thing. The Kolache Factory was busy the entire time we were there! And it was delicious!!!

Our next stop was the Cherry Creek Farmer’s Market, which Ryan had heard about from his boss. We loved it!

It was a happy little place, and there were lots of cute and tasty things being sold.

Ryley bought a little elastic bandana. So cute!

By the way, my aunt Coleen made her the sundress. Isn’t it adorable?

So on to our other free events! We have been meaning to attend a free day at the Denver Art Museum for years. But Ryan is never off work on that day, or we are out of town, yada yada yada. And then on Ryan’s birthday in March we were actually willing to pay admission, so we went all the way down there and found out they are “closed on Mondays.” But it finally worked out:

See how the walls are all diagonal and weird? They’re like that inside too. We got vertigo more than once.

It was a lot of fun, and we loved looking at all the exhibits. I love wondering what the artist was thinking when he painted a portion of a landscape or what was going on in his life at that time. Because for me, when I am putting together a puzzle or something, I can look at it later and remember what I was listening to or what was on TV while I was putting that part of the puzzle together. I know that sounds weird, but I find that kind of thing interesting!

I like thinking about the fact that the people in the portraits were probably in the same room as that painting, and I wonder how far the paintings have traveled.

We didn’t finish the museum. After three hours we were feeling hungry and mentally overwhelmed, so we decided to come back another day. We stepped outside, and it just so happened that this free People’s Fair was going on 50 feet from the entrance to the museum. You can kind of see it in the righthand part of this picture taken from a window in the museum.

The fair was in Civic Center Park, which is basically the Capitol’s lawn and surrounding streets, and we ventured in, in search of turkey legs and funnel cakes.

But unlike the Farmer’s Market, this festival was “dark” in feeling, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t happy. We kind of got the feeling that some of the vendors were selling pot behind their tomato plants. And after a grown creepy fairy sprinkled glitter on Ryley’s head and we found out that a funnel cake was $8, we decided we were done. We were in and out in 10 minutes.

And we were so hungry and tired that we decided to also forego the FREE sidewalk chalk art festival happening just a mile away. WHY did they schedule all these free events on the same weekend? Seriously, spread them out a little bit!!!!

My aunt and uncle watched Ryley so we could go see X-Men on Saturday evening, which was a nice air-conditioned finale to the day. :-)

Today Ryley’s best friend joined us for church (FREE, ha ha!, except for tithe, of course), and then we attended the free day at the Denver Museum for Dolls, Miniatures, and Toys. I was unable to find pictures ahead of time online, so I wasn’t sure what kind of experience we were in for. I actually warned the girls that we would go in and check it out but if it’s creepy, we’ll leave.

It was great. It’s run by friendly old ladies, and there were tons of dollhouses to look at. I don’t know if I would pay money for it, but the girls completed a scavenger hunt of dollhouse items, and it was a really cute museum. A nice way to spend an afternoon.

There is something about Ryley’s profile in the picture above that reminds me of myself. I don’t usually think she looks like me too much, but something about her hair makes her look very similar to how I did when I was her age.

Anyhow, so that was our weekend! Very busy, and the house seems a little cluttered overall, but there’s always next weekend to clean it, I suppose.

Because the free activities are a little lacking for the rest of the month. :-)