Memorial Day Weekend

 While Jared, Lydia and I did this:

 

Mark did this:

 

 

Jared and Lydia especially love the three stepping stones Mark put down.

Then we all enjoyed his hard work with a delicious BBQ and root beer floats in our new backyard.  Mark did such a great job. We had grass back there but it was never high quality.  We get very little sunshine back there and the soil here is super sandy so the grass never looked nice and full or even very green. I do love grass but I am pretty excited about his new space. We thought about putting some raised garden beds back there but don't think we would get enough sunshine. As evidenced below what we have now is a vast improvement. It will be nice to sit outside and enjoy being with the kids as they play. It also should be really low maintenance which will be nice when we move elsewhere and try to rent out this place.

BEFORE:

A real park!

When we came home from Egypt we moved to Greeley CO.  A friend at the school I worked at is from there and she recommended Greeley to us. I don't think she really thought we would go but we did. We knew we didn't want to go to California or Utah and it met the criteria we had for where we wanted to live: within driving distance to CA, within an hour of a temple, nice fall/seasons, affordable on a teacher's salary. We didn't have jobs, or family or anything really to make us choose Greeley, we just needed a place to go.  After we lived there for a year Mark got his job in Colorado Springs and we have been here since then.  My favorite thing about Greeley that I really miss are the parks.  They have amazing parks with great walking/jogging trails and pretty lakes.  Its so nice and green and its a much smaller town so they feel so much more accessible. The year we moved to Colorado Springs the city had to cut budgets and the parks really lost out.  There are parks here of course but they are nowhere near as nice as most parks I grew up going to or that we went to in Greeely. On Saturday we went to a new park here and finally found some ducks to feed! They were stingy and didn't want our bread but we threw it at them  it in the water anyway. We couldn't tell if they were scared of us like bad things had happened to them other times or they just weren't hungry. Maybe they wanted jam on their bread? So while they ate very few pieces of bread we had fun walking around and playing somewhere new. Jared has been asking to climb the trees in front of our town home for the past few months but these town homes were built in like 2007-2008 so the trees are not real big yet.  On Saturday he finally got to climb a tree. It was a beautiful day (because I love cloudy days) and it was nice to go to a new part of town.  It is crazy to me how big Colorado Springs is. I can't really tell in my day to day life because I stay in like a 3-5 mile radius over by our house.  Maybe that is what we will do this summer, go check out the other sides of town the ones that are like 35 minutes away and still part of Colorado Springs.

 

There were 4 ducks in this little pond, not the prettiest pond I have seen but it did have ducks which was what we were looking for.

 

A real tree! The grass was my favorite part. It was so soft and green. We live on the far East side of town and its flat prairie without trees and weird rough spotty grass so I loved it over here.  We can see the mountains from our house of course but here I felt like I lived by them. This is what I thought Colorado Springs was like everywhere. Mark was super excited because there was a group of people playing ultimate Frisbee at this park. Before we left Egypt he was playing on an ultimate Frisbee team and played like twice a week. It is his favorite sport and he has missed it.  Two summers ago he tried to get a group together but only got like 4 people (on a good week mostly it was him and one other guy) so he didn't get to play. I kept bugging him to go ask the people if they met weekly to play and he finally did.  They do and he was welcome to come play.  So maybe he will have some fun this summer with ultimate Frisbee. 

Dirt and water

Jared loves construction workers and cones.  He often tells us that he wants to be a construction worker.  Anytime we drive down the road and he sees cones or "Machines" he is quick to point them out to us. If we ever go to LOWES he always wants to go to the "cone row".  Cones and construction workers are just behind Lightning McQueen as Jared's favorite toys.  Sorry Thomas the Train your days are over.  Since construction workers use dirt Jared is often asking me what he can use as dirt when we are inside the house.  We have used counting bears, pasta wheels, flowers, and many other things.  The other day as I was looking up fun summer projects I found a website, Dirt and Boogers which I had heard of before but not checked out and found some awesome activities. One was a construction site sensory play.   I loved it and knew Jared would too.  I substituted in some different "dirt" though that I found here. (Gotta give credit to all those fun creative people out there) Jared helped me mix up the dirt and then went to town with his construction site.  I suspect we will play with it often, which will be lots of fun. Now I have some real dirt he can play with although our improvised dirt worked pretty well too.

 

We have finally had some warm days so I got out our water table to play with.  Lydia had never played with it before and found a new way to use it.  I went upstairs and when I came back out to the backyard (seriously like 3 minutes later) this is what I found:

 

 

I was so shocked! She loved it. I guess she just thought it was her personal pool.  I couldn't believe she pulled herself into it. I took her out and changed her and the rest of the afternoon she kept trying to climb back in and almost succeeded a few times. She will have to closely supervised when it is out like I couldn't be more then a foot away, she is fast!!

 

One thing I do like about summers here are the rainstorms.  We had two rainy days this week and one day Jared and I went outside after the rain stopped to splash in the puddles.  I loved splashing in puddles while I was growing up.  When we were doing our spring time art projects we made some umbrellas and rain clouds and one day I had the great (if I do say so myself) idea to show Jared the scene from Singing in the Rain where Gene Kelly sings in the rain. Jared loves it!  He asks me to play it for him all the time. So once we got some decent puddles we had to go dance and sing in them. He was sad when we went in but had a lot of fun singing and dancing in the rain and I did too.

 

 

 Lydia loves the video as well. Recently she has really taken to dancing and singing when we play music. Its fun.

 

 

 

Mothers Day 2013

 

I love being their Mom.



Colorado Springs Philharmonic

For Christmas this year Mark got us a subscription to a concert series put on by the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. While we lived in Egypt we went to the Cairo Opera House all the time.  The Cairo Opera House is beautiful and the tickets were really affordable.  We went to ballets, operas and orchestras.  The series Mark subscribed to is called the Philharmonic Pops Series.  We went to performances of: Disney songs, Broadway songs, Casablanca (while watching it on the big screen) and this past weekend the music of John Williams.  All of these concerts were very well done but I think the John William's one this past weekend was my favorite. It is amazing all the scores he wrote for movies. We heard selections from: Indiana Jones, ET, Jurassic Park, Catch Me if You Can, Hook, Schindler's List, JAWS, Harry Potter, War Horse, Superman, and Star Wars.  Such great movies.  It was so fun. 
 What has been really fun about it is that two other couples that we are friends with also bought subscriptions to the same series so we would go out to dinner with them and then to the concert.  It was great.  We felt so grown up.  For Saturday's performance we had seats in the balcony for the first half and then we were able to move down to seats right on the stage because there were empty seats next to our friends.  It was awesome (and really loud, we were right by the percussion people who are my favorite to watch because they play so many fun instruments) to watch the musicians get ready for their parts.

As part of the performance this Saturday they had characters from some of the movies in the lobby that you could take pictures with. It was fun.

Mark already bought a subscription for next year as well so we will go to the following performances:

The Music of ABBA September 28, 2013

Heroes and Villains November 2, 2013

Sounds of Simon & Garfunkel January 11, 2014

Rodgers & Hammerstein February 8, 2014

Odyssey: Epic Destinations March 8, 2014

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean May 10, 2014

It's such a great, pre-planned date night!

Little Ray of Sunshine

We have had such nice gloomy weather the past 2 days.  Yesterday when I went running I ran through sprinkling rain and then a nice mist.  It was so nice.  I was totally channeling the Northwest and so wishing we lived there. But for those of you who do not love cloudy rainy days as much as I do here is a little ray of sunshine for you.

I have been having the hardest time getting Lydia to stay still for pictures  (see below) and the other day it occurred to me that I would have a decent shot at getting one if I put her in her booster seat.  Worked like a charm. I love her pigtails. I have been putting two in just this past week. They are so stinkin cute! My Mom used to put my hair in pigtails all the time.  People often comment on how Lydia and Jared look like each other not Mark or I but when I see her in these pigtails I think we look alike.  Well what I looked like when I was a similar age.  I tried to scan a picture of me in pigtails as a little girl but it was not working and I don't feel like getting frustrated right now. And she is cuter anyway! Despite her being frustrated with her lack of communication skills she is really at a fun age.  Her new favorite past time is squeezing our nose and waiting for us to say "Beep".  She gives super sweet hugs, often she will come up to us and hug us really tight around our legs I love it. She loves to run around the house and is getting ready to go to Nursery. Mark actually took her last week for the last 25 minutes or so.  He said she loved singing time and did really well playing/cleaning up. Our nursery is pretty small right now so the leaders have been asking us when we will bring her in but she is only 15.5 months. I think she will be happy to be in there and we will keep taking her so she can get used to it.

My Mom sent us "Are You My Mother"  a few weeks ago.  It is one of my favorite children's books and my kids both love it. Jared asks to read it every day before his nap.  He has now taken to calling me "Mother" instead of Mommy only he pronounces it "Muh-der" It cracks me up. Its so formal.

 

Jared has become very aware of emotions lately, especially mine. When I am frustrated he often asks me if I am and then says "I'm sorry you are frustrated Mommy." Or "Mommy I love you."  He is really sweet and I feel like he is always looking out for me.  I don't really know how to explain it. My Mom said my oldest brother Derek was like this.  Always aware of how she was feeling and wanting to help her. Maybe it has something to do with Birth Order or being the first son? I don't know. I think I would enjoy reading a book about birth order.  I certainly don't want Jared to think he is what is frustrating me. Obviously it is him or his choices at times but most often it is not. By the end of the month I should be back to watching the other little boy 2 days a week instead of 5 which will help me a lot. 5 days or 40 hours a week was just too much for me. I just felt stuck and like I wasn't getting enough time with just my kids which I know is weird since I am with them every day. It's hard to explain.

Now I have two kids who love to watch the garbage truck. I love these kids.



My one good thing about wind

Colorado is way more windy then I thought it would be.  I knew Idaho and Wyoming were windy but I did not know Colorado was. March-early May are quite annoying because you will get warmer days but then this wind comes down from the North and majorly drops the temperatures. But with wind comes kite flying opportunities which is what I think wind is the best for.
We had a warmer and not super windy day last Friday so we decided to spend some time at the park. Mark's school had yet another teacher development day but this time he got to leave around 1:00 instead of the normal 3:30 (Not that he gets home at 3:30 but that is when he can leave. He normally gets home around 4:00-4:30. My favorite part about Mark being a teacher is the early end times; way more then the summers off because they are daily thing not a random 2 month thing. End tangent.)

We headed to the park enjoyed our snacks, the sunshine, and the perfect kite breeze.

 

 

 

Lydia was happy to follow Mark around while he flew the kite. She ran all over that slowly turning green field. Colorado Springs (and most other places in Colorado) have been in drought conditions for as long as we have lived here (2008 WHAT!?! 5 years!! Its been 5 years since we came hom from Egypt...CRAZY.) so the city is on water rations. Parks don't turn really green until closer to the end of July after there have been some decent summer rainstorms. It is so weird to me, especially coming from California.  The grass here in springtime looks like the grass in California in the winter.  But our summers are so much nicer then California summers.

 

 

It seems like Jared has been trying to climb up slides forever.  This day he finally did it and was beyond thrilled. He was so proud of himself.  I know he has done it a few other times but this day he could consistently climb all the slides at that park. Even the tall curvy one. It's really fun to see your kids accomplish something (even if it is just climbing a slide, which I really didn't encourage because he will only be told not to once he gets to school, I speak from hours of recess duty experience) they have been wanting to and working on.

 

 

Lydia loves swinging.  We never did the infant swing thing so its a pretty new thing for her especially since she had to wait through this winter to experince it. I can't believe it is already the first week of May.  One more month and 2013 will be about half over then only 4 more months till September and you know what that means.....  FALL! Yes, I totally just skipped that whole summer season. But I will have a good attitude and I will find fun things to do!