Halloween

Seriously...how cute are they? And wasn't Clifford a clever costume. She had known she was going to be Clifford since March of this year.

And what else do we have...a baby-eating Tanasaurus!

Just too cute!



How can you not think this is adorable?




















I'm telling you , hghghuuuh?

humming bird

grandparent ideas

so i saw the cutest ideas for grandparent gifts on the news the other day. you can find them all here, but you can see one project i've completed below; the all about me brag book. waaayyy cute! you fasten/staple brown paper lunch sacks together (one for each child you have) and decorate the fronts of them. then you create inserts to slip inside of the corresponding child's bag, with a current picture, what size they wear, likes/wish list, etc. and send them out before christmas or birthdays or what-have-you. or you can incorporate other information onto them. here is the first set i have completed:

here's the second one:












and here's one of the inserts (i did this in my picture program...they have different projects/cards you can print out):









way cute, huh? lots of great ideas on there...and grandparent's day is right around the corner(Sept. 9th)!

babies...

i love this picture!

elizabeth's 1st day of school :)

so...can you tell how excited she was? there was nothing i could do to make her look at me. in the end she was crying because she didn't want to pose for a picture. and i quote:

"i hate school"

i explained that "hate" is a very strong word and should rarely, if ever, be used and then i asked her how she could hate something that she'd never even tried before. she then informed me that she just knew she wouldn't like it...how can you argue with that logic, right? so we went into the classroom and her teacher mrs. white read the kissing hand by audrey penn, which i'd never heard before and thought was very nice and very perfect for the 1st day of school. she insisted on sitting on my lap during this time (elizabeth...not mrs. white), which was completely understandable!


she warmed up a little and finally made her way to her seat to color while the parents went through their orientation!!!

doesn't she look lost?

after parent orientation the kids were playing on the playground. we peaked out the window and she'd found her friend molly so it was all better! she'd come out of her shell by then. this is the two of them running around like hellions:


now her claim on school is "it's really great and i love my friends" so we're on the right path!!!! hopefully this will last for 12 - 18 more years, but i won't hold my breath!

bff

i love you!!!

stick

you served us well...

trip to fairplay, co

this is the beautiful cabin we stayed in over the weekend...














this is the view from the front porch...

it was soooo relaxing!

we went up with good friends of ours, rich & krista and their kids molly & charlie. the cabin is rich's parents who went with us as well. and we can't forget nana martha! she is what allows the parents to get away from their children (i would say she's a glutton for punishment but she loves it!) we had tons of fun. the parents got to run off to breckenridge and lake dillon on saturday, which was some of the most fun i have had! we went paddle-boating; well, krista and i went paddle-boating and the boys fished off of their paddle-boat. seriously...this is what it looked like the entire time...

BORING!!!!

meanwhile krista and i went all over the freakin' place and even tried to brave some small, yet determined rapids. we tried to go upstream and the laws of gravity/physics did not allow this!

i know it doesn't look like much, but i'm tellin ya...that shit was tough to get up. the best part was when the current just whipped us around and sent us shooting back downstream. granted we pissed off some fly-fishermen...but it was well worth it! we had fun and we looked cute doing it!






AAANNNNDDD.....we fell out of the boat and mysteriously got pictures of this event:

lightning?

so we've been having some pretty serious storms by our house in the last 2 weeks and i thought i'd try to get a pic of the lightning...this wasn't working out so well for me. when i started screwing around with the different modes of the camera one of them included the flash, which had been shut off previously, and this is what comes through...3 stories up on the furthest edge of the spindle of the balcony...seriously!

(i had no idea she was even there)

meow

so we got a kitten a few months back (gabby) because who doesn't need some more irritation in their life? she plays non-stop...except for when we're at work; that's her sleepy time. her favorite thing to do is crawl into something noisy in our room at 5:30 in the morning. god forbid we shut the door...then she just gets one of the girls headbands and carries it to the door and plays with it 1/2-way underneath it; just enough for it to make noise (yes, she gets into the girls bathroom and takes the headbands out of the little headband-container and drags them all over the house).

i forgot what it was like to have a baby kitty because my kitty is all grown up; her name is phoebe and there's no messing around with her! she's a serious bitch...but she loves me! she sleeps on my pillow at night and nuzzles her head right up against mine! she's actually mellowed-out since we got gabby and has become more tollerable for humans. and even though she pretends to hate the kitty i catch her cuddled up next to her on the back of the couch licking her head.


and when the licking is all
done they're back to the fighting
because that's what cats do, right? they play constantly...except for when you're at work! they are cute though, i'm sure in a few years when gabby settles down she'll be just as cute as phoebe. and she'll actually let people pet her instead of biting them because she has 'play' on the brain 24/7. she's in attack mode at all times; always hiding in some dark corner waiting for you to walk by then KABLAMEE...she strikes and you don't even know it's comin'. it just wraps itself around your leg. luckily phoebs taught her how to play without using her nails; whew!

they're fun though.

now...if i could just get tana to stop dragging the kitty around by her tail i bet she'd say the same about us!

family share time!

i don't believe i have ever officially introduced my family to the super-highway soooo...here they are:

my girls tana (18 mos) & elizabeth (5)

and my man, mike...

aren't they sweet? i think i'll keep 'em!

but holy crap is being a family tough; it's a lot harder that it appears when you're growing up. it's a lot harder than people admit! nobody talks about all of the hard work that goes into a family and the peaks and valleys that you have to go through. and the ol' cheesy saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"...well fuck being stronger, i just want it to be easy!!!! i should be able to lift a freakin' house by now with all my strength! but as dysfunctional as we are, we're what works and i am thankful for that!

well...the girls went to the mountains with their nana martha , grama wilma, and cousins molly & charlie. they left this morning around 10:00 am and went to a cabin in south park to go fishing and hiking and the parents will be meeting up with them tomorrow evening. i haven't batted an eye...I LOVE THE SILENCE!!!! this is the first time tana has stayed away all night; i'm not worried, i'm not sad, i'm not lonely...

i just received a phone call from nana martha with a sobbing elizabeth in the background. she wants her mama. she doesn't want to tell me about the beavers and the flowers!!! she wants her mother. i should be saddened at this point, but again i am dysfunctional and for the 39th time this year i will be receiving the mother of the year award because...i'm irritated that i'm hearing crying when there's supposed to be silence! just one night!!! just one?!?!? why??? why??? whyyyyyyy???????????

anyhoo...she never stopped crying and nana martha was over it and just basically took the phone and they got on with their evening. i mean eventually she'll stop crying. she's gotta sleep sometime and crying makes you more sleepy than not crying! huh? whaddya think of that theory?! hahaha...better them than me! suckers!