Stock Values

Marina, Dima and Benjamin came to visit us from the San Francisco Bay Area July 1st - 7th. They stayed with us the entire time and made day trips to see Downtown Denver, Royal Gorge and the Garden of the Gods area, including Indian cliff dwellings, Seven Falls and the Cave of the Winds.

On Independence Day we joined them for a trip to the Denver Zoo in Central Park. Dima decided that he was too old for the zoo and stayed in the car playing with his computer, instead. Neither the 4 year old Benjamin nor the year-and-a-half old Sofae (dressed in patriotic colors) seemed get into the animal action too much, either. Benjamin much preferred to run around, while Sofae misbehaved by refusing to leave Lena's hands for most of the day. (So, what else is new?) In the attached picture, I captured the rare moment of everyone cooperating.

After the zoo, we went to the LD Chinese Buffet in Aurora. Benjamin exhausted from all the running around fell asleep in the car and kept on sleeping there through the entire dinner as his parents took turns joining us at the table. Certainly it was better than all of us having to suffer through more of Ben's tantrums, but it was still hell on his parents - Dima wolfed down his entire dinner in about the time that it took me to eat a scoop or two of ice cream!

We made it back in time to watch the fireworks. Just as last year, we could see many of them from in front of the house - Bennett, Byers, Deer Trail, Aurora, Denver and a few others - all far in the distance...

I drove our Bay Area guests to the airport on the evening of July 7th and by the time I got back to the house, Inna with Maxim from the Los Angeles area were already entertaining Lena and Sofae.