Out with friends

I'll keep this short and sweet, because I don't want to brag too much, but we have some amazing friends.  My kids have found a group of friends that are amazing examples, kind, genuine, accepting, creative, and simply a lot of fun.  Sometimes I embarrass the kids by pulling out the camera to record some of their adventures.  

This day Stephanie was over and the kids taught her how to make homemade ice-cream with our ice-cream ball.  Everyone helped themselves to two bowls because it was that good.  

Kelton was invited over to a birthday party where a reptile came and brought some of his animals.  The mom snapped this picture and it is perfect!  

The Werners invite us over all the time to go swimming.  The crew has changed a little bit for Cambrie now that they are in middle school and boys are more on the scene (don't know how ready I am for that).  But it is fun to watch them learn how to navigate this new social scene.  

And the Mowers, geesh I cannot say enough about the Mowers.  They are our oldest friends here in Colorado and we love them.  When we have play dates we don't have to worry about inviting over just the right siblings, because everyone gets along.  We normally have the whole crew over there or my whole crew goes to Rachel's house.  This day we decided to meet at the park instead.  I should really take more pictures of our friends because they what make living here in Colorado so wonderful.

Xtreme at Timberline

Time for the first meet of the season.  I haven't been able to watch a lot of McKenzie's routines in the gym, so I love seeing what she can do on meet day.  I was so shocked when I saw how far her form has come.  Her legs are straight, her toes are pointed, she looks so precise.  She had a great meet up until beam.  She shines on beam, and I was surprised when she hopped off that she put her head in her hands.  Apparently she completely forgot her split jump and they knocked off about .5 points.  It didn't stop her from taking 3rd on bars, 4th on floor, and 5th in the all-around.  She works so hard for these few short meets.  I'm love seeing that smile.

Sunday shenanigans

It took Daxton nearly a year, but he finally likes going to nursery.  He likes it even better when his siblings drop him off, why I don't know.  I happened to have my phone out and caught this picture of them walking towards class after sacrament meeting.  Geesh this melts my heart.

When we came home from church we felt like baking.  We made St. Patrick's Day cookies, because it's St. Patrick's Day!  They kids loved doing the work themselves, and did a great job with the sprinkles.  

We ended up making so many that we dropped them off at all of our neighbors for a final good-bye little gift.  And you know what...I really hope that Daxton put on clothes before he started running door to door with those treats.

Let's finally build a snow fort

All winter long the boys have been begging to build a snowman.  Frankly we have not had good snow down here to build snowmen at all!  Leave it to the last major spring snow storm to be nice and wet and perfect for fort building.  In fact, it just wasn't any snow storm, it was a bomb cyclone.  That's a real meteorological term for when the pressure drops so far so fast.  It was true blizzard conditions all day.  In fact, all of Colorado completely shut down for the day because we knew it was coming.  We stayed hunkered in from about 10AM on and just watched the storm outside.  We couldn't see across the street the wind was blowing so hard and blowing so much snow.  The storm let up towards evening and it didn't feel so bitter cold.  That's when the kids pulled out their snow clothes and bustled outside. We hauled in all of the snow from our front yard, sidewalk, and even the great chunks pushed up by the snowplow and built an igloo.

The crew worked on it all day until it grew too dark to see.  

The cold night air iced up the slide nicely and the kids could slide all the way to the sidewalk.  I don't know what they liked best about the fort: the slide, the window, the shelf they could decorate, or the fact that it took nearly a week to melt.

13 years

13 years!  This years are ticking by faster than McKenzie counting for hide and seek.  I chose one amazing man who understands me when I'm crazy, supports me when I'm driven, helps me when I'm overwhelmed, and spoils me just because.  My breakfast that morning was a Jeremy classic: flavorful and colorful.  Look at that spread!  

Most of the day was spent taking care of kids, but we made it out for dinner.  We tried something new, because that's how we like to roll, and found a super unique venue downtown.  I couldn't describe anything on the menu, but that didn't matter for the taste.  Look what a great looking date I had that night!

Lack of creative juices

I feel like every creative juice I usually have is being sucked up by the new house.  I find myself thinking, planning, and dreaming about the new designs, new paint, new furniture non-stop.  So as I look through the blog and realize I haven't posted anything for a month...well, I'm ashamed.  Here, very unceremoniously, are pictures of our life from the last month:

The boys really enjoy painting.  I give them each their own pallet, can you tell which boy painted which picture?  Kelton definitely has more patience than Daxton when it comes to these kid of projects.

  

One of my kids' favorite meals is homemade pho soup.  I love it because the prep work is just cutting vegetables, and it's a great way to get my kids a bunch of food they'd normally not eat.

Cambrie decided to experiment and fill a latex glove with water.  She was pretty pleased with her popsicle.  She said she might add flavor next time so it's more than a pretty ice cube.

I don't buy my kids ice cream cones very often, but I should.  Even though Daxton does a pretty good job of eating it before it melts, it still requires some attention from me (yummy) so it doesn't drip all over the place.

 Well, I did ask him to clean up his mess.

This is probably the sweetest homework assignment we've had in awhile.  Kelton had the cake-themed book bag for the week and we were supposed to make a cake.  Done and done!

 Front room fort time! I think this stayed in tact for three days.  I was shocked.

 I took McKenzie to the last DU gymnastics home meet of the season.  She loves going to these meets because she feels so inspired and motivated to work hard.  As a bonus, after the meet all of the DU gymnasts met up on the concourse to sign autographs for everyone.  McKenzie already has plans to frame her new poster.

 It has been a cold, cold winter.  Normally we play outside more, but we've had so many Saturdays of below freezing days, that we did something unusual and went to the movies.  We watched "How to Train Your Dragon 3."  It was good, and a great way to kill those long afternoon hours.

 I finally made it a priority to sign the boys up for swimming lessons.  They are actually part of a tumble and splash class where they do gymnastics for a half hour, then head to the pool for another half hour.  Kelton is finally learning how to swim (my fault for not teaching him, not his) and it's exciting to see him starting to really get it.  It's been a good class and I hope there's room next session!

Peyton and Cambrie have been working on this pearler bead project off and on for six months.  They created each wall, bed, door, window, and I was so impressed by their creativity and attention to detail.  They had flowers, vines, bricks, curtains.  It was awesome.

Just hanging out at church.  They look so little popping out of that sun roof.

Girls and Science

I decided to take the kids down to the Girls and Science day at the Museum of Nature and Science.  Risas was the title sponsor, which was just one more reason for us to go and enjoy the festivities.  My girls were in heaven.  They walked from booth to booth doing projects, seeing displays, hearing lectures, and generally enjoying being surrounded by dozens of professional women in the STEM fields.  We met up with the Tolleys, and McKenzie met up with Stephanie also which meant we had a lot of friends with us as we explored the museum that day.  

The largest exhibit was the CBS 4 Weather channel station where the kids were able to practice being weather forecasters on a green screen.  It was so fun watching the girls up there that I wasn't disappointed at all when the boys said they needed help on their turn.  

We spent three hours there before the boys were pretty wiped out and ready to go home.  Had I left it up to the girls, however, they probably would have stayed until the museum closed because they were having such a good time.  

As we were walking out of the parking lot, Cambried said that she had never been so inspired.  She was so excited seeing all of the different kinds of engineering positions available and didn't know she had so many choices when she grew up.  I definitely need to get this girl to more events like this.

Sock Hop

This year the theme at the Meridian Daddy-daughter dance was 1950's sock hop.  McKenzie was so excited to get to wear a poodle skirt.  And I have to say that Jeremy looks pretty good in leather.  They danced the night away.  Jeremy said that a lot of the music was 1950's era which meant that they were actually able to dance and he was able to throw McKenzie around a bit.  She loved that!