Yeah March!

March kicks off tomorrow with my 33rd birthday! Mom and Dad are out of town this weekend, so they stopped in last night to celebrate with a family dinner. The boys put the candles in the frosted brownie cake, so it doesn't exactly spell out "Happy 33 Birthday."These pics were taken with my birthday present from Andrew and the boys...a new camera: Yeah!

(And have you figured out which is Max's favorite shirt? If it's clean, he's wearing it.)

Shout out

We have to give a shout out to Sheplers. We bought Max a pair of boots there over a year ago and they got a big ol' hole in the back of them for no good reason - it really wasn't due to normal wear and tear or snagging them or anything. Anyways, Andrew stopped in the other day to see if there was anyway they could fix them or something (thinking at best we might get a discount on a new pair)...they said bring the boots in and they'd take a look. Andrew stopped back in today with Max. They took a look at the boots and told him to go pick out a new pair no charge! Wow! I was so surprised and impressed!

Child.

It's so hard to discipline when you're trying not to laugh. In case you can't tell, that's the Sit-n-spin on top of the trampoline.

So Sad...

I am so sad that tomorrow will be the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News. I feel for everyone losing their jobs at the paper and I will definitely miss my Rocky every morning. This paragraph in particular stood out:

In the past decade, the Rocky has won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than all but a handful of American papers. Its sports section was named one of the 10 best in the nation this week. Its business section was cited by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers as one of the best in the country last year. And its photo staff is regularly listed among the best in the nation when the top 10 photo newspapers are judged.

Wow.

On Being a Mama

I love this.

Book bags!

Whitney's sewing craftiness inspired me to bust out my sewing machine too! Mom came over since there's no school today, and we spent the day making book bags for the boys for their library books. We first headed over to the fabric store for a pattern and to let the boys pick out fabrics (I exercised some veto power) and then headed home where Mom helped me do the rest. The bags are reversible with 6 pockets.

Max chose frogs with stripes. Pockets on the inside:Pockets on the outside:
Ben chose vintage airplanes and stripes.
Pockets on the outside:Pockets on the inside:

Here's the pattern we used:

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night we ate heart-shaped pizza and then snuggled up on the couch together to watch Wall-E. Tonight the boys are spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa's and Andrew and I have yet to make plans. Happy Valentine's everyone!

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.