Buffalo Bill

Monday was President's Day, so everyone had the day off work/school.  We travelled home from Georgetown, where we stayed after our day skiing.  On the way back, there was a sign for the Buffalo Bill Museum, which my Pop had been telling Phil that we had to go and see.  So we turned off the highway and followed the signs - it was well off the beaten track, but turned out to be lots of fun.  It tells his story of how he was a pony express rider and Indian hunter, and then he turned into a showman, with a wild west show.  He was quite altruistic, and ahead of his time, in that he gave equal employment opportunities to Indians, and women, in his shows, with the most famous being Annie Oakley.  The boys posed out the front of the museum behind these cut outs.
Once inside, it started with a movie of his life and then there was quite an interactive display. The boys could dress up in vests, chaps and hats, and sit on bulls and horses and use a lassoo, as well as look at other displays that they had on the wall. There were also animal skins, which were inside a tee pee, and the boys had great fun dressing up in those as well, which was a little bit gross! You can see a photo below, where Ryan is selecting his animal skin from inside the tee pee, and Luke is helping Quinn put a badger on his head. Outside, was Buffalo Bill's grave - he chose to be buried at this point, which was very scenic and had a great view out over the mountains. 

 The rest of the week was pretty uneventful for us - Quinn and I went to the gym on a couple of days.  We tried to go to the park with our neighbours, Mindy and Ethan for a picnic lunch.  It looked nice outside, but although it is sunny, the sun has not got enough warmth in it for us to be outside for any length of time, yet! I started my volunteering in the boys classrooms this week.  Jen, another of our neighbours with two little boys that Quinn loves to play with, offered to have Quinn one afternoon a week, so that I can go and help out in Luke and Ryan's classrooms. It is lots of fun going in and seeing what work they are doing - I am generally helping with math or writing, and it is fun to meet the other children in the class as well.  One of the games was a money game, and they had to change their pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters into the largest coins that they could - it was a learning experience for me as well! 

There are free days for different attractions in Denver throughout the year, and Thursday was a free day for the Zoo. I was thinking about going in with Quinn. However, the snow started to fall on Wednesday afternoon, with predictions of really big snowfalls overnight. People were even suggesting that Thursday might have been a snow day, so that school may have been called off. Phil had been doing a unit on International Town, with his Grade 7 Geography, which culminated in a 2 day field trip for over 150 children into Denver, to commence on Thursday. So he had to put in place a whole heap of contingency plans for if it was a snow day, or sometimes if there is a lot of snow, they won't call a snow day and call school off completely, but will have a delayed start, so school may not commence

until 11am, or whenever it is deemed safer to be on the roads. Luckily, we did not get as much snow as was predicted, and Phil had his two days at International Town. International Town is experiential learning facility set up by Young Americans Bank, and is undertaken in Geography to teach the concepts of global economics and trade to the school kids. It was a lot of work to set up, and required a lot of collaboration between all the teachers, but from what Phil has told me, it was quite successful!