Someone's 10 today...

Ten years ago: Today: Andrew and I had ourselves laughing pretty hard at her near-death experiences over the last 10 years...

• Chewing a hole in the wall (yes, through the sheetrock) right in the middle of the staircase when we put our first house on the market to sell.
• Eating the very first loaf of bread Andrew had ever made with a new bread-maker as the bread cooled on the counter.
• Eating just the tops off a dozen muffins as they cooled on the counter. We may be slow, but we began to watch carbs closer.
• Eating DeCon a few days before getting spayed. She passed the clot test before surgery but after surgery didn't clot, so she ended up needing a blood transfusion. Whoever heard of a blood transfusion on a dog???
• Eating a whole bowl of Hershey's Kisses around Christmas. I thought chocolate was bad for dogs, but she had no problem, just pooped red, green and silver tinfoil for the next few days.
  

But we love you, ol' girl, for your sweetness and patience, especially with the boys, and your good-natured descent down the totem pole when we started bringing little people into your pack. Heck, you could just be getting ready to make your run at Westminster - ha!

Sweet Tooth!

Here's Benjamin checking out the treats I made last night for our MOMS Club Valentine's Party today. He quietly retrieved the stool from the bathroom so he could be very up close and personal with the cookies. And here he is decorating his cookie this morning at the party. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the frosting and sprinkles were seriously about an inch thick. Just the way he likes it!

Ha! Another post!

Andrew had his long week away this week for his annual sales conference in Dallas. He flew out Sunday morning and gets home (yeah!) this afternoon.

Both the kids have been fighting colds. Ben coughed like a barking seal on Tuesday, so we kind of laid low that day. Then Max started cough-barking Thursday. Oh, those coughs make my throat hurt just to hear them - they're awful! Coughs always seem to bother Max more. Poor punkin coughed so hard he threw up in the middle of the night last night. He's still barking a little bit today, but is doing better. He had a low fever this morning, but I think it's gone now. So yesterday and today, we are also laying low. Three days this week kind of just hanging around the house taking care of sick kiddos, although cold are pretty easy and nothing to complain about (better than puke or pooh issues), just those couple of days they feel like dukie you feel so bad for them.

On the plus side, I've had plenty of opportunity to post on the blog (which is why I'm blogging yet again :) ), update the blog background (that little owl is adorable, but it bugs me that the words stick out into the blog stuff), read my book club book, and even write most of my essay that's due Tuesday. So we made the best of it, I guess. Looking forward to having Andrew home.

You are so not coming in the house

Awww nuts!

OK, what's not precious is the argument over pistachios that resulted in the bag being grabbed off the counter, um, UPSIDE DOWN. What is precious though is the way they immediately started working together good-naturedly to clean up, even channeling Wonder Pets with "What's gonna work? Teamwork." Ben even thought of the broom and dustpan on his own.

Love the peanut gallery too!

So my friend Erin wrote a post that inspired me to jot a few things down too.

Last week, Max picked out the shirt he's wearing in the picture below in the post about our picnic in January. As he picked it out, he said "The last time I wore this shirt, Emily said 'hi' to me."

So sweet and innocent, not a girlfriend thing, he's just so sensitive and aware of friendships.

Then when I picked him up from school, he asked again "Mom, do you like what I'm wearing?"

"Of course, little buddy, you look handsome."

And then he goes "I'm just thrilled with my style."

What?!?!

And always the little teacher, he asked Ben, "Ben do you know what 'thrilled' means? It means I'm very happy."

Me too.

January? In Colorado? During the stock show?

We are having some crazy warm weather for January (highs around 70!) - especially considering the stock show's in town, and it's notorious for being frigid during the stock show. So we had to take advantage of the day and stopped in for a picnic with some friends today on our way home from preschool.

Week in review

The main events around our household this week:

Andrew was on the road Tuesday through Friday, hitting stores in Glenwood Springs and Craig, so it was just the boys and me for much of the week.

The boys had their 3 & 5 year-old well-care checks. All is well. Ben "no thanks I'm just eating air for dinner" is 80th percentile for height and 75th for weight. Max "more please" is 75th for height and 25th for weight. Guess who got his mama's metabolism?

Poor Maxwell had to get 4 (!) shots. Kindergarten shots are cruel! Ben lucked out and didn't need any. After the four-shot-trauma, we met up with my brother, Jordan, who was in town as a member of the all-star broadcast team (woo-hoo!) covering the all-star CHL hockey game, for lunch at McDonald's. We loved getting a chance to see Uncle Jordan!

We had kindergarten registration - hard to believe we're there already! But I am very excited for Max because he just loves school and is so excited for kindergarten. We have year-round schools here and we won't find out which track we get until March or April, but we got all registered on Tuesday.

At the boys' request, we spent Thursday morning at The Wildlife Experience. It's just crazy how fast they grow; we spent a lot more time in the bigger kids' area doing stuff than we did in the littlest kids' area.

We went to church this morning and then hit Costco for a little shopping and lunch. We're probably going to watch some football this afternoon and maybe walk the dogs since I haven't walked them in forever and the weather's pretty nice today.

If you have tomorrow off, hope you enjoy your long weekend!

I'm looking forward to Tuesday...

More skiing!

We took the boys up to Echo Mountain yesterday, a ski area new to everyone in the family. It's a small mountain, only 12 miles out of Evergreen. It's kind of this funny mix of old-time no-frills skiers and the hard-core "dude" snowboard crowd. At this point, the boys only last about 3 hours on the ski hill and we don't need a whole lot of hill for them, so a close, small ski mountain is perfect.

We spent all of our time on the magic carpet - seriously, what an awesome invention for learning to ski! Andrew bought a beginner's ticket (limited to magic carpet and the t-bar) for only $19 & kids 5 & under are free. More mountains need to do this so that people can learn to ski without breaking the bank; if mountains make learning to ski affordable, they'll have people hooked and make money when they have to buy the more expensive tickets for the whole mountain - genius! I didn't buy a ticket yesterday and we found that Andrew probably won't need one next time either; they're very cool about letting you just walk along the magic carpet with your kid and then we just walked/jogged with them as they skied down the hill.

Max is doing awesome with "red light, green light" and mastering stopping with his snowplow and he's getting better at turning. I think we could get one of those harnesses for him and ski behind him soon.

Ben doesn't like to be bothered with snowplowing. He prefers to point his skis straight down the little hill and let 'er rip. At this point, he can get away with this and just crash into us to stop, but we're trying to explain that when he's on a bigger hill, he's going to want to be able to steer and stop. For now though he's having fun.

It's wonderful to hear the laughter and see the smiles coming from both of these bundled-up little masses cruising down the hill!

Hmmm...

Something tells me we're still a little unclear on the meaning of the word "forgive."

Yesterday sweet little Maxwell snuggled up to me and said, "You know Mama, I forgive you."

"Really buddy? What for?"

"For being such a good mommy."

Soda bomb!

So this was the scene in the garage when I got home on Saturday:One of the pops froze, blew its top off,and blew the door wide open! Impressive.

Holy cow, what a workout!

Well after spending 2 1/2 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic, we reached Loveland this morning and took the kids skiing. We just stayed on the bottom part of the hill and worked on snowplows with them.Holy cow, Andrew and I were both totally sweating working with them, between hunching over to keep their tips right, skiing backwards with them, skiing forwards with them while holding them up between our legs, hauling them back up the hill...a total workout! It got easier after I took my skis and boots back to the truck and returned in my regular snow-boots with a ski-pole to pull the boys back up the hill - a human rope-tow. Worked awesome though! We only needed one adult on skis with the kids. Max went to 2 days of ski school last season, but today was Ben's very first day on skis - look at him go!Andrew and I got to enjoy a day of grown-up skiing on Wednesday at Keystone (we've had gorgeous weather all week) while the boys spent the day with Grandma, Uncle Jody and Aunt Whitney, but we are excited that the boys are now reaching the ages that they can join us on the hill. Won't be too many years before they start shooshing by us. It sounds cheesy, but I just kept thinking "this is why we live in Colorado."

If you have a few minutes...

...check out Dave Barry's Year in Review.

Hideous Holiday Sweaters

Last night we had friends over for a Hideous Holiday Sweater Party. We invited Jody and Whitney, warning them that they were the only invitees without kids. They gamely said they'd still stop in for a while.

They lasted about 30 minutes before taking off. Preschoolers can be a bit much if you're not used to them all the time.

Anyways, I didn't take many pictures, but here is my friend Maranda looking hot: Andrew sporting an awesome dickie and sequined poinsettia vest: My sweater, festive turtleneck and Christmas tree earrings: That's right, I have a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, three french hens...the entire 12 days of Christmas are appliqued on my lovely sweater in felt and sequins. The designer (I use that term loosely) even used the sleeves to be sure and fit all 12 days on the sweater: And the kiddos even got some light-up shirts too:

Christmas day pics

We had an awesome Christmas day, joined my mom and dad, Jody and Whitney, and Lloyd and Barbara. Here are some pictures from Christmas morning, before the rest of the crew arrived.
The tree: Ready, set, go! The scooters from Santa were a huge hit. The boys scooted around the house on them all day. Ben kept saying "I got my very own scooter. I got my very own scooter."Andrew, in his new I'm-a-dad-with-small-kids-so-I'm-a-porter-backpack:Awww, the snuggly blankets were a big hit:Hope you had a lovely day too!

This brings the total to...

...10 dozen of these little cookies that I've made over this last week!These have quickly become our family's favorite cookie since we first tasted them courtesy of Laurinda. (Although this batch is not nearly as pretty as hers...still tastes delicious though!)

Week o' Programs

Some pics from the oh-so-cute Christmas County Spelling Bee on Sunday:And some from the preschool program on Wednesday: I'd write more, but I have a cold this week. It's not even a bad cold, but it leaves me with zero extra energy. The boys are resting now so I'm going to take advantage of the time and just lay still while nobody needs me.

Holiday Spirit Runneth Over

I'm feeling very Norman Rockwell-ish with all of the fun holiday activities the town of Parker and our church have put together. Downtown Parker has some really fun little activities for Friday and Saturday evenings in December, and we went down last night to check it out before the arctic cold they've been warning us about arrives tonight. All of the activities are totally free too - bonus! There were carriage rides, visits with Santa,little bonfires up and down the sidewalk, carolers, popcorn and cider...all very high on the quaint scale. And we didn't even see everything, like the coffee shop where librarians were telling holiday stories like The Polar Express because Max wanted to get home and see Frosty on TV. I know. Priorities. It was just fun to see so many people downtown against the beautiful backdrop of all the lights - working to build a sense of community and all that (and yes, I know, drum up business for the downtown merchants).

Then this afternoon we headed over to our church for A Night in Bethlehem, something that I think they started while we lived in Utah and I think we missed last year due to a ski trip. It was a very well-done "Jewish village" with tons of hands-on activities for the kids, like making rope, making sandals, grinding grain with rocks (Max really enjoyed this), petting animals, etc. Here's Max making a mosaic, and here he is making jewelry. Shocker that Ben didn't want to do any of the crafts. He was more interested in collecting the gold coins that the angels were dropping and occasionally having to pay the tax collectors. What a cool idea to bring Bethlehem to life for the kids (and adults too for that matter)! We've always been thankful for our church and all that it has to offer, but especially after our year in Utah, we're just grateful for all of the neat things going on in our church.

And tomorrow morning, Max has his Christmas pageant, The Christmas County Spelling Bee. His line: "And the government will be upon his shoulders" plus all of the songs with the angel choir. So excited!

A totally different subject: Andrew and I reversed the handle on our fridge door today so that it no longer clunks into the counter about a hundred times a day. We figure it is only going to take us about 10 years to get used to grabbing the other side of the door!

Yes, I enjoy the food

Christmas came a little early today. Andrew OK'd me busting out the crockpot from him, Max & Ben. Behold: Today I am cooking a roast and needed the extra room in the 6 qt. crock pot so the roast could cook horizontally instead of vertically in my old 4 qt. cooker. I first saw this crockpot advertised on the Food Network (told ya, I like the food). It's the Hamilton Beach Stay or Go, loaded with cool features, such as a rubber seal around the lid, little latches on the side that clamp the lid on securely, extra large carrying handles, and the handy little spoon rest on top. So now you can take it to whatever gathering you may have to go to without worrying about slopping your food all over the car on the way. Awesome!

And my other recommendation: I checked the book out from the library to preview it and decide if it's worth purchasing. I ran out of sticky-notes for all of the recipes I want to try. So far, I've liked everything I've tried: sauerbraten, cheesy italian tortellini, and we'll see how the caramelized onion pot roast goes over tonight. Mmmm!

Fun in the snow!

We got several inches of snow overnight. The boys got after it right after breakfast this morning: Then inside to warm up with some hot chocolate with marshmallows: Then back out for some more fun: I tell ya, building a snowman with Colorado's "champagne powder" is not an easy task! I thought the snow seemed a little wet this morning when I shoveled so I hoped we could build a big ol' snowman, but it turned out to still be pretty powdery, so this is the best we could do today. And, I have to say, even though it makes for crummy snowmen, I still prefer the powder to the slushy stuff.

And Happy Birthday to my mom!