Meet the Easter Goats

Sorry, but Easter Goats are much lower maintenance pets than Easter Bunnies (and cuter and more fun too). So the boys got little pygmy Easter Goats from Grandma and Grandpa. The goats will live at Grandma & Grandpa's (I know you were thinking I had lost my mind for a second there). They are 2 weeks old in these cute pics. They will stay with their mama until they're about 8 weeks old, then they'll make the move to Grandma and Grandpa's. Max's goat is the black one; Ben's is the white one. Names to be determined.

How cool am I????

Attention, the Shiers now have a laptop for our family computer. Let that sink in a moment.

Ahhhhhh.

Yes, I am typing from my kitchen...how cool!!! Our 5-year old computer had a broken CD-RW drive, needed more memory and sounded like a small diesel engine when we fired it up. It was time. Plus, Andrew's new job has him working out of our home office when he's not on the road & we found ourselves tripping over each other from time to time.

So I've been setting up the new computer (remember, first laptop (for me, Andrew's used one for work for years), just using the little screen & buttons instead of a mouse took a little practice), & I am now working on tranferring stuff from the old computer to the new one so we can do away with the old one altogether.

This is a slow process for me.

After some trial and error, I got the music figured out. I thought I had the iTunes figured out - I'd just set my iPod to manual mode & transfer away. (I got a cute little purple shuffle for my birthday, which just clips on and replaces the older, bigger shuffle that bounces everywhere when I work out.) Turns out all iPods can be put into manual mode EXCEPT THE SHUFFLE. HAHAHAHAHA. Good one, guys. But I did eventually figure out how to use my shuffle & the music is being tranferred successfully.

I'm not sure about the pictures though. Remember, the CD-RW drive is broken on the old computer, so I can't just burn discs. I do like a challenge. I uploaded pictures to ofoto.com, but when I save them from ofoto to the new computer, the pictures are not as clear. Any suggestions?

About the only other things that need transferred are documents in Word & Excel. This kind of cracked me up...our new computer DOES NOT EVEN HAVE A DRIVE for those little floppy disks we used to use to transfer documents from one computer to another. Andrew & I were laughing about how fast stuff changes. We graduated from college barely 10 years ago & then NO ONE used laptops in class. We all had spiral notebooks and pens and highlighters. Wow. It amazes me how much more computers continue to be able to do & how much smaller the machines are. So anyways, that's the excitement around here.

Another year to celebrate

Whitney posted some fun pics from my birthday on March 1st on her blog. Jody & I are only 2 days (and 4 years) apart, so we had a joint family celebration. 32, not bad, not bad at all!

Carpe-ing the diem

We've had some warm days sprinkled in here and there and we try to get outside everyday that it's not too chilly. Here are the boys last week in the driveway. (Notice Max's Avs shirt...Becca handed this down to Max. Apparently she wore this shirt in high school?!? My guess is it was a little more of a "fitted" shirt for Aunt Becca. Either way, Max loves wearing it!)Last Tuesday, Max's preschool was cancelled due to some flooding in the building (I think it was an issue with the pipes of another business in the building - definitely not due to rain or snow flooding), so we took the opportunity to go to the zoo on what turned out to be the nicest day of the week. It was such a fun day! The boys amaze me with how much they're learning & how much more interactive they are on these excursions since neither is really a "baby" anymore. They both walked almost the entire time. Taking turns pulling the wagon is as much a part of the fun for them as seeing the animals. We rode the little zoo train. Riding trains is for my boys what getting 2 scoops of Ol' Roy is for Aspen. They are absolutely delirious with excitement standing in line...so fun!

Don't jump on the furniture! Jump on the trampoline!

I think the pictures say it all...

Here are the boys and their Valentine's Day present (a day early).
(And Jordan, the weight limit is 80 lbs, so you can't box the boys out of this present.)

Catching up...

Well, it seems as if we're either too busy or too tired or I have too much to say or I have nothing to say, so I haven't posted much lately.

Here's a quick recap, I guess:

Andrew had another week in Detroit for training, so it was just me and the men on the homefront this week. He flew out on Superbowl Sunday, but he caught the first and fourth quarters of the game. The fourth quarter was really the best...what an exciting game!! Even if you didn't really care who won, like me, it was a phenomenally entertaining end to the game! On the homefront, we had the usual...preschool, playgroup, and our Lenten study group (we're studying The Jesus Priorities, 8 Essential Habits by Christopher Maricle) started Wednesday night. Our usual playgroup was livened up (not so sure on the word choice here) by one of the kids barfing (not mine). That particular day, we met at Chick-fil-a because it's been so cold and they have a great indoor playground there, (plus on Tuesday nights, they give you two free kids' meals with each adult combo - what a deal!), so it was a humiliating, barf-in-public episode for our friend. Anyways, Andrew returned home late Friday night, and then Max was sick Saturday & a little Sunday morning. By late morning Sunday, he was back to his normal self...thank God for 24-hour bugs. He had a fever around a hundred, no energy and he threw up three times. Thankfully, not that bad, but no fun just the same.

Here are the boys this morning decorating boxes for valentines. They're mastering the cheesy little kid "smile." Mr. "I-do-it"-Ben lodged a formal complaint filled with tears and drama when it was time to hand over the glue-stick. Guess that's his way of saying "thanks Mom, that was a fun project."

Also, look at the fun silverware they got from Grandma Jill & Grandpa Jim for Valentine's Day. Like the fork-lift? Grandma and Grandpa brought them over, along with delicious fajitas and red velvet cupcakes last night, since they're going out of town on Thursday.

What else? Hmmm, I read Coal Miner's Daughter by Loretta Lynn last week. Talk about pure country...married at 13, 4 babies by 18...what a life!

I also love following the political races going on. They had this thing where they matched people up that pledged the same amount of money on the Obama campaign. I actually made my first monetary contribution to a political campaign & I received an e-mail shortly thereafter with my match...a teacher that teaches at the high school Barack attended - kind of neat.

OK, I'm back. The doorbell just rang and I had to pay the girl scouts for our cookies...yeah! Gotta go!

Need a new post!

OK, I am sick of looking at the van-wreck post. Here are some random snippets from the last couple weeks. BTW, the van is all fixed, no problem.

While the van was still in the shop, Andrew was out of town, so I was driving the big Dodge truck. To park the truck, I pull into the garage very slowly and gently bump the front of the garage, and then I know I'm in far enough. One of the times, I gently bumped Andrew's bike, and Ben immediately started yelling "tow truck, tow truck" from his car-seat. At least he knows the procedure for when Mom rear-ends things now.

Ben has gone through some interesting speech patterns recently. We had about a 2-week period where he stuttered at the end of his words..."I want-t-t-t-t-t-t it," etc. Then that stopped. Now, Aunt Whitney would be proud...he's gone Southern. It's most obvious on his most common word "Maaaa-yax" as he's chasing or running from his brother. (Sorry, but I don't know how to spell Southern.) Just take "Max" and make the vowel about 3 syllables long. You also hear it on "Da-a-ad."

Today, Max wrote his name all by himself at preschool!! Normally, they kind of trace their letters, but today he did it by himself!

Aunt Becca stopped in while she was up visiting from Texas. It was lovely to see her!

I guess that's about it for now.

#$%@&*@@#!!

Andrew's been in Detroit all this week; he gets home tonight. So yesterday when I picked up Max from preschool I said, "Hey guys, how about a special treat lunch at Chick-fil-a?" What a great mom!

But sometimes, no good deed goes unpunished. On our way there, I rear-ended someone.

#@**#(^*#&!!!! Yes, this is ultimately my fault, as I rear-ended them. BUT, in my defense, we were turning right from Parker Rd onto Crown Crest Blvd, which has a continuous lane to drive into. We were of course going really slowly around the corner and it seemed like the driver ahead of me had paused, looked and started going, so I did the quick glance over the left shoulder to make sure no one was coming into our lane, and suddenly I was in the guy's bumper! He'd stopped for no reason!! And it wasn't a continuous lane where you had to merge over in about 10 feet, it was a continuooooooooooooous lane. The good news I guess is that I have the luxury of griping about the annoyance of it all because no one was hurt at all. And if this had to happen, it was the best possible scenario for it to happen. See, the car ahead of me was caravanning with the car behind me for lunch. After we crunched, we continued onto the Chick-fil-a parking lot and the other two moms immediately jumped out of their cars and started helping w/the boys while the dad and I sorted the stuff out. After we dealt with the police, thank you very much for the ticket officer, I ended up eating lunch inside w/the other ladies - weird.

Sidenote: as we were going through our info, the dad pulled out his driver's license - from Utah. Turns out, they live in the next suburb over from South Jordan. They lived in Colorado Springs for two years, then took a job transfer to SLC and have been there for 2 years, and jumped at the chance to move back to Colorado. They too are gentiles that survived Utah. They are here in Parker making an offer on a house. Too weird!!! They turned out to be really nice people (so far, hopefully they don't get a crazy hair and sue me or anything). We just met under crappy circumstances. Also, him not being from here explains why they jumped over into the right lane of Parker Rd at the last minute for Chick-fil-a and then came to a complete stop at an intersection they should've kept going in. Sucks for me.

And I have to say, hats off to Progressive (so far - let's see how much they jack my rates later). I called in the accident about 1:30 and by 4:00 I had talked to two Progressive reps, they had dispatched a tow truck (the van was leaking antifreeze), and the tow truck was taking the van to a "network provider" that will do all the paperwork...I just pay the deductible and don't have to mess with getting estimates, submitting paperwork for approval, etc. The boys thought the tow truck was pretty cool. Max will tell you that the van was crying because of its owies. He says that once it gets fixed up at the shop, its windshield wipers will wipe away its tears.And huge thanks to Mom and Dad for showing up with dinner and a car for me to drive (so I don't have to rent anything). This crisis was a lot easier to manage from Parker than the crises from South Jordan (of which there were several) with their immediate support.

I guess this is one of those life lessons where I learn about forgiving my own imperfections. Fortunately there aren't many. HA!

Still, so maddening!!!!

Voila - Living Room!

Those of you that have been to our house know that we don't have a lot of seating in the living room. We gave away our living room furniture before moving to Utah since that house didn't have a formal front room. However, we had two couches in the basement, one futon and one perfectly good, comfortable couch that happens to be upholstered in a blue & white plaid that I don't care for anymore. In fact, the blue & white plaid couch has been in Mom & Dad's basement since our Halifax house (three houses ago). Anyways, this week, I set about working on the living room. I found a great sage green slipcover and some cute throw pillows for the couch. It only took Andrew & me three tries to get the couch up the basement steps at the proper angle to fit through the door. I dug some candles out of our "decor" rubber tub in the basement for the wall & found a little side table for the big squishy armchair at AFW...voila, living room! (And there's still room for the train tracks - the most important part really.)

Snowy Week

Here we are enjoying our second dumping of snow this week; we got about 7 inches Tuesday & another 7 or so Thursday. Love it! Ahhh, powder so light you can sweep it off the porch!

Merry Christmas!

We had a lovely Christmas yesterday - a very white Christmas. The weather was forecasted to be "maybe a few light showers throughout the day, but it may miss the metro area all together." I think we ended up with 8 inches of snow! But it was a beautiful day & thankfully the friends and family that were planning on coming to our house still braved the roads and made it to and fro safely. One of our guests was Lloyd, and, heck, he'd gladly drive through 12 inches of snow just to help us change a lightbulb!

This year was the first year Max really got the idea of Santa Claus & he has been so excited this last week, planning out where to leave Santa's snack and a little treat for the reindeer too.

The boys opening the first round of gifts Christmas morning:
Men at work: The table is set and Max is ready:Playing with the "laptop" from Aunt Whitney and Uncle Jody. He's already passing me technologically. Their new puppets elicit the biggest belly-laughs from Ben:Enjoying the hand-made candy Grandma Jill & Grandpa Jim gave them (thanks for the pics, Whit):

What the heck?!?!?!

Did you see that Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister is 12 weeks pregnant?!?!?!?!

Breckenridge!

Here are some pics from our trip to Breckenridge. We rented a condo & enjoyed 3 nights & 2 full days of awesome fun! Andrew skied 2 days, Max did ski school for 2 days, I skied one day (I felt like my legs would be good for about 5 runs the second day & just couldn't bring myself to spring for a lift ticket for so few runs), and Ben did great in the nursery for one day (he spent the 2nd day w/me). Andrew said the second day skiing was as cold as he's ever skied in; the thermostat in the truck read negative 8 when I dropped him off in the morning, plus he said it was really windy at the top. According to the TV, wind chills were -25 that day up top. Brrr!!!!

And that cliche about "when it's your kid..." is so true. I was just bursting with this giant bubble of excitement and pride and a big goofy grin watching Max at ski school. I am far more excited watching him learn to ski than I ever was when I learned to ski. Maybe it's just that way when you have kids. When you're a kid yourself, you never really think about learning new things, you just take it for granted and plug on through childhood. But when you're a parent, you watch these little people that you just love so much learn new things - whether it's a first step, a new word, or keeping skis in a wedge - and it's just so much fun it's ridiculous. And while I realize they're not doing anything that millions of people haven't already done, as they say, "when it's your kid..." Riding the magic carpet. This is an incredible innovation from when I learned to ski. It's like those people-movers at the airport; they just ski right on and up they go! Eating snow. A favorite past-time. Mama and Ben.

Bye-Bye Crib

Over the last week, several things have happened to spur us onto getting Ben a big-boy bed. Last week, Andrew, aka The Guy With a Truck, helped a friend move a couple of beds. For whatever reason, his friend had an extra brand new Sealy twin mattress & box springs that he gave to Andrew. Then, Ben learned how to get into his crib via a combination of climbing and somersaulting. He kept getting stuck and having to be rescued throughout the day, but we figured it wouldn't be long before he tried to reverse the process and possibly hurt himself getting out. So we started looking for a racecar bed for him just like Max's bed. The bed was so perfect for Max to transition into a big boy bed because we used it for about a year without box springs and the walls of the car kept him from falling out of bed, so we went the same route with Ben. Needless to say, Ben loves his racecar bed, and he slept his first night in it without incident.

Weekend Fun

Saturday night, Andrew & I rode the light-rail downtown & went to the Nuggets game. It was "I Love the 80's Night." Legwarmers, neon socks, pegged jeans were in the house. And the half-time show - can we just say Tone Loc. Yes, the real 80's rapper Tone Loc, doing some Funky Cold Medina and the Wild Thing. The boys went to Mom & Dad's. This is one of the reasons I am so glad to be close to family again - not just for the free babysitting, but so that the boys and their grandparents can have a relationship. I hope that when the boys are older, they will have many memories of time with Grandma and Grandpa (and aunts and uncles and cousins too). Ben, who is not always the warmest kid to, well, anyone besides Mom, is even warming up to them. He's always been a Grandpa's boy (even with grandpas that aren't his), but Mom said "and Ben's been so friendly - he even gave me a big smooch!" Cracks me up that it's a notable event when our 2-year old is affectionate to his grandma. And then Sunday was my mama's b-day, so we had a fun afternoon playing pinochle and just hanging out.

Santa Express

Here are some pics from our trip to the Colorado Railroad Museum (cool, I just wanted to see if I could do a link or not!) in Golden this weekend. It was their special Santa Express weekend, where we got to take a little train ride & could've seen Santa in a red caboose had we waited in a long line. Even without seeing Santa, the boys had a blast! Their favorite part was this gigantic set-up with model trains running around. We also got to climb in a bunch of engines & cars. Here are Max & Andrew operating all the little controls. Lots of stuff to see there; we only got a small sample in the couple hours we were there.