The Unsinkable Molly Brown

My 8 yr old nephew Ethan is really into knight, medieval and all things Titanic right now. He really likes to dress up and has been collecting shields, helmets, armor and other Knight stuff for a while now. Apparently his collection has grown enough to make 2 complete outfits because a few weeks ago he called me and asked if him and his brother can come over and joust on my horses. After laughing and explaining my horses were not joustable horses I offered to take him to Molly Brown's house instead.

It took a while of trying to get our schedules figured out (who knew an 8 yr old was so hard to make plans with?) but finally on Saturday we had a date to go. It was just going to be Ethan, Graham, Ava and I but 2 of my 3 sisters also invited themselves to tag along.

We started out with lunch at Tokyo Joe's. My little sister lives in a town without one and needed a fixin'.

After lunch, and apparently running some blazing red lights, we arrived at Molly's house.

They very sneakingly have you purchase tickets from the Gift Shop.

Which makes it impossible to walk away with just tickets. So Ethan became a proud new owner of a Captains hat.

..and Ava caught up on headlines.

We were limited on where we could take pictures so I got a few of us hanging out on Molly's front porch waiting for the tour

On our tour we learned that Molly was born in Missouri and came to Colorado at the peak of Gold and Silver mining with her brother at the age of 13 in hopes of marrying a rich miner to help support her ill father. She worked in a factory for a while and then married a mine Engineer named J.J at the age of 19. They lived in Leadville and hit it big with silver and became very wealthy. In 1894 they purchased the house we were visiting for 30,000 dollars. It really is a huge house at 8000 sq. ft. and had all the latest and greatest like electricity and running hot and cold water which was very rare to Find in homes at that time. After the Browns sold the house it was divided up into apartments and once purchased by Denver historic society they restored it back to as close as possible to how it was when the Browns lived there.

Most of the tour talked about Molly being an advocate for women's rights and helping children of poverty. I was a bit worried that Ethan would be bored since what her really wanted to hear about was the Titanic but he did really well and asked questions to the tour guide every step of the way. When it came time for the Titanic portion of the tour Ethan surprised everyone by correcting the tour guide several times on Titanic facts, and the name of the last surviving passenger who was 3 months old at the time of the wreck and just passed away in the last few days. Such a smart kiddo!

The tour ended with a room full of interactive stuff for the kids to play with.

I'm not intending to flip off the camera in this picture, I'm trying to keep the hat out of Ava's eyes. Whoops!

The area of Denver that we were in is so beautiful and historic. So we explored a bit, but my camera died right after this picture.

and it came back alive long enough for Ethan to take this shot while leaving. So cute!