We like to move it, move it...

New Baby!

Anika and Carrie







Its always so much fun to hold a new baby.

Isnt' she just precious...















Proud Dad!

Flashlights and Daddy

This is speical time with Dad that turns into a wonderful learning experience. These guys look for worms, elephant snails and all sorts of weird and unusual creatures. You just never know what they're going to find.

They can sit and look at these tanks for such a long time and you hear all sorts of interesting comments coming from the boys on their discoveries.

What do you see?

Saturday nite Slumber parties...

Pizza all around with a coloring competition...

Olivia and Samantha

Jolie and Olivia

yes, that's Hunter in the background.

I think we're ready for a night of movies and giggles....

Kristina, Kat, Jolie, Olivia, Olivia and Samantha

Tagged?!

I have been tagged by Bonnie. The directions are, I have to go to my pictures and look in the 6th folder and post the 6th picture and explain it.
Now I pick 6 to forward this TAG onto. Here I go.....

So here is my entry. The picture (above) was taken in April of last year. (I don't have 6 folders of pics for this year as yet, so I'm using '08 pics) I was getting ready to start painting Hunter's room. So this is one of the before pics.

Now I can't show you a before pic without also showing an after pic. So....

here is an after painting pic of basically the same area. Fresh coat of paint on the closet doors and changed the wall color to something a bit more "big boy".

Upgrades all around???

My phone rings a couple of days ago to Shannon calling to let me know of some changes at her house. One of those "changes" was from a Fat Boy to a Heritage Softail, which is what I ride. Of course I'm prejudice about my own bike and can't imagine anyone wanting anything other than what I ride. This of course simply comes from experience of the ride and the beauty of the bike. Here is Shannon, her Mom (Jean) and...


Shannon's new bike. A '08 Heritage Softail FLSTC!






With a 65* temp today it was perfect for a ride around town running errands and just enjoying the break of cool weather. I gave Jennifer a call and fortunately she had the day off from Memorial Hospital and was able to take off with Shannon, Jean and me. We stopped and had a small snack and then took off for the south side of town for another errand. After that we headed over to an overlook of Garden of the Gods for pictures that I had promised to do months ago and then the weather turned sour. With Shannon's new bike and Jennifer on her Hyosung, it was a perfect day for pics.

While eating at IHOP Jennifer mentioned that she wanted to stop at PPHD (Pikes Peak Harley Davidson) to just "look around"............

after "looking around" we found ourselves following Jennifer back to her house on this '07 Heritage Softail to show Bob what she was interested in. The looks we got heading up to the house with the 3 of us all on FLSTC's was priceless. Karen will know exactly what I'm talking about. Women riders still draw a lot of attention and admiration from drivers and other riders. We got Bob's stamp of approval, and his voicing of how nice it will be to take this bike out and ride, at which Jen's face screwed up at the thought of him riding "her bike", ;-), and headed back down the hill to PPHD. The bike is now on hold for a week so that Jennifer can really think about if this is what she wants. I can say that she handled this bike well and it fits her nicely. So I'm anxious to hear if there will be a new bike added to our little group...

Sunday morning pancakes...

Time to get up and start making pancakes. The girls took turns making 2 pancakes at a time. Both did a great job with flipping!

Time to eat!

Saturday

Happy Birthday Karen!

She's enjoying her time at OBLC (Officer Basic Leadership Course). I borrowed this picture from her blog.

Parker started the weekend on Friday getting out of school early because of a fever. So I run down the hill, pick him up, arrive home, dose him with meds and send him to the couch to rest. After a short nap he wakes up with half his face swollen and the eye almost shut completely. What happened??? I have no idea what on earth caused this. After 3 doses of Benadryl and going to bed he still woke up the next morning with swelling in his face. Another dose of Benadryl took all of the swelling away AND he is totally back to normal in every respect. Still scratching my head on this one! I won't share the picture of Parker that we took as its just not a good picture.

Jolie had a wonderful day at the World Arena with Olivia Siedel and her father, Chris, seeing "High School Musical on Ice". What fun they had and then went out for dinner at Yakatori. Jolie couldn't have been more excited about today. She woke up at 7:30 ready to get dressed for a 2:00 pick up time. Had a lot of quick talking to do to keep her out of her dress-up outfit.

Olivia is having her very first sleep over tonight. Marlee is a friend from school and just precious. We took them out for dinner tonight to celebrate this event at "Lemongrass Bistro". Dang (the owner) was so nice and seated us himself and then treated the girls to Cokes. He really played along with the big event and had just as much fun as we did, I think. The girls shared a Combination Noodle Bowl as their dinner and I wish I had taken my camera along to get a pic of their faces when their food came out. After dinner we arrived home just in time to greet Jolie, Olivia and Chris and we all enjoyed visiting while David and I fed the fish. Of course feeding time is always a sight to behold for anyone not accustomed to seeing this group of aquatics eat.

Hemlock Up-date

Off the floor,

pins out,

I get to experience this throw for the first time and the weight of it is surprising.

Unbelievably light weight

Just fittin'... I hope.

Another project finished, the "Hemlock Ring Blanket". (See post from December 31st) My rendition came out a bit larger and measures 5'2" instead of the 4' in the directions. Ever seen a 5' doilie? :-)

Qwest!!!!! Dear Lord...

Ever feel the need? Well the last 5 days have definitely been a test of patience. Quest was supposed to upgrade our service today but last Thursday completely shut us down without a reason why and without notification. David, in the mean time, had just transferred our home phone line to another service that uses the internet. So if we don't have Internet we don't have phones to the house. With Quest's "boo-boo" we had no phones and no Internet until today. Amazingly no one at Quest was able to fix our problem AND no could tell us why our service was disconnected 5 days early! At this point I'm just grateful to be back on line and to know that if the need arises we can call 911 without fear of our cellphones working or not working hanging over our heads. David, of course, has other plans for a enlightening letter and follow-up phone call to the Qwest headquarters. I may include a short note myself! Having survived an unintentional Internet withdrawal, I'm now glad to have caught up on everyone's blogs and my e-mail and I hope I never have to go through that again. Whew!

Hunter had his first day of p.m. kindergarten yesterday. I moved him out of the morning class with the hopes of him fitting in better. The p.m. class is smaller and another child from the a.m. class had already made the transition last week. So Hunter is not alone, even though he was quick to point out that the "other kid is a girl"!

I just thought I'd add this picture of Hunter with his freshly washed hair.....

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

I've been jealous of all the snow everyone else is getting around the country (Please without the problems!) and here in Colorado we've been much less "fluffy" than even an extreme normal. Well imagine my surprise today to wake up to all this! It started last night with barely visible flakes and sometime during the night the flakes got much bigger! Yeah!

Kristina enjoying her new gloves and scarf set that mom just finished knitting.

Kaitlyn is waiting for her new set.
Back to all the snow. This is the second time we've shoveled the drive today. We have about 8" on the ground right now. David and I drove to the fish store to pick up some H2O and the other side of the freeway, quite literally, got just a dusting of snow! Its amazing how just 2 miles can make a difference.

For Parker, no matter the weather there is always time for tree climbing, just think of all the extra padding your wearing!

Great way to finish an afternoon in the snow!

Hot Cocoa!
Another kind of Snowflake! She found this crevice in the rock and has taken up residence there for the time being. She's a cutie!

Happy New Year!

Happy

New

Year!!!