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: