Sunday, October 20, 2019
Colorado Springs has a decent, not great, public transit system. I can get many places I want to go even though it takes a while to get there. My biggest issues in recent years is the early hour at which bus service stops in the evening and the frequency of service on evenings and weekends.
Weekday evening bus service is finished at 9:45 p.m., Saturdays finish at 6:45 p.m.; and Sundays finish at 5:45 p.m. I understand our transit system needs to function with the budget it is given to work with, however I cannot take a bus to an 8:00 p.m. concert or show because I would not be able to get back home. The lack of evening service on the weekends means I need to stay close to home when choosing activities because I might get stranded across town if I miss a bus.
On September 29th Colorado Springs started Saturday evening bus service. The buses still only run every hour, but any service is better than none. What this means for me is that I can take a 1 ½-hour bus trip to the other side of town enjoy a day-long event and still get back home.
That is exactly what my seven-year-old, Mika, and I did yesterday. We left home at 9:30 a.m. and got to the event at 11:00 a.m. We stayed until it finished at 5:00 p.m. We then rode the mall train, played on climbing toys for 15 minutes, and boarded a 6:15 evening bus. We got home about 7:45 p.m. A few weeks ago, we would not have been able to spend the whole day.
Mika and I attended a vendor event called FamilyFest. The event was advertised as a child’s dream show. Each vendor was to provide a free children’s activity. There would be a bouncy house, face painting, and a local news station was offering recordings of your children forecasting the weather. There were hundreds of kids there, which meant hundreds of parents too all at the same time. It was crowded early in the day. Mika’s dad would have hated the event, so we did not drag him along.
Mika had a great time. She started with the weather forecasting activity and then we did all the other activities in the show. Mika made a bag monster; took her picture with a tooth, a ballerina, and an Olympic athlete; created a scrapbook page; spun approximately 10 prize wheels; bounced in the bouncy house; and (most importantly to her) played with the Play-Doh at one of the vendor tables for two-three hours total.
We took a 45-minute lunch break at about 2:30 p.m. and when we returned, we checked out the vendors again in case we missed any activities. We had missed two activities and after we finished them, it was back to the Play-Doh table. There was a really good face painting booth across from the Play-Doh table (with an hour+ line) so I volunteered to wait in the face painting line while Mika played.
An hour and a half later Mika was the third to last child getting her face painted at nearly 5:00 p.m. The vendor with the Play-Doh table let Mika take the used cans of Play-Doh home with her and she is playing with them today. We both had a lot of fun.
My piece of advice to you is to try to learn to love what your children love. Do I really want to watch Mika play with Play-Doh for three hours? Of course not. We broke it up into three visits to the Play-Doh table. I loved watching her do all the activities because they made her so happy. Yesterday epitomized my idea of quality of life.
Until next time,
Susanne
Please check out my GoFundMe page.
Colorado Springs has a decent, not great, public transit system. I can get many places I want to go even though it takes a while to get there. My biggest issues in recent years is the early hour at which bus service stops in the evening and the frequency of service on evenings and weekends.
Weekday evening bus service is finished at 9:45 p.m., Saturdays finish at 6:45 p.m.; and Sundays finish at 5:45 p.m. I understand our transit system needs to function with the budget it is given to work with, however I cannot take a bus to an 8:00 p.m. concert or show because I would not be able to get back home. The lack of evening service on the weekends means I need to stay close to home when choosing activities because I might get stranded across town if I miss a bus.
On September 29th Colorado Springs started Saturday evening bus service. The buses still only run every hour, but any service is better than none. What this means for me is that I can take a 1 ½-hour bus trip to the other side of town enjoy a day-long event and still get back home.
That is exactly what my seven-year-old, Mika, and I did yesterday. We left home at 9:30 a.m. and got to the event at 11:00 a.m. We stayed until it finished at 5:00 p.m. We then rode the mall train, played on climbing toys for 15 minutes, and boarded a 6:15 evening bus. We got home about 7:45 p.m. A few weeks ago, we would not have been able to spend the whole day.
Mika and I attended a vendor event called FamilyFest. The event was advertised as a child’s dream show. Each vendor was to provide a free children’s activity. There would be a bouncy house, face painting, and a local news station was offering recordings of your children forecasting the weather. There were hundreds of kids there, which meant hundreds of parents too all at the same time. It was crowded early in the day. Mika’s dad would have hated the event, so we did not drag him along.
Mika had a great time. She started with the weather forecasting activity and then we did all the other activities in the show. Mika made a bag monster; took her picture with a tooth, a ballerina, and an Olympic athlete; created a scrapbook page; spun approximately 10 prize wheels; bounced in the bouncy house; and (most importantly to her) played with the Play-Doh at one of the vendor tables for two-three hours total.
We took a 45-minute lunch break at about 2:30 p.m. and when we returned, we checked out the vendors again in case we missed any activities. We had missed two activities and after we finished them, it was back to the Play-Doh table. There was a really good face painting booth across from the Play-Doh table (with an hour+ line) so I volunteered to wait in the face painting line while Mika played.
An hour and a half later Mika was the third to last child getting her face painted at nearly 5:00 p.m. The vendor with the Play-Doh table let Mika take the used cans of Play-Doh home with her and she is playing with them today. We both had a lot of fun.
My piece of advice to you is to try to learn to love what your children love. Do I really want to watch Mika play with Play-Doh for three hours? Of course not. We broke it up into three visits to the Play-Doh table. I loved watching her do all the activities because they made her so happy. Yesterday epitomized my idea of quality of life.
Until next time,
Susanne
Please check out my GoFundMe page.