Spring Break in Colorado

WOW!!! What a great week!!! Where to begin?? First, thank you
to Donna and Gerald Lemons for letting us use their condo for our
little get away in Frisco, Colorado. The condo is such a beautiful, cozy
place in a darling little town. We loved lighting a fire and snuggling
down to watch a movie or read our books. Second, thank you to Angie
for sending us notes on all of the cool things to do while we were there.
She checked in on us each day to make sure we were having a great
time. Third, thank you to my Aunt Rosie, who also has a condo in
Frisco. She came up on Wed, after flying in from Florida. She took
us all over, cooked us meals, treated us for a dinner out and showed us
a great time.

We had so much fun sledding, swimming (yup, my Aunt took us to an
indoor rec center) and just plain ole playing in the snow. There were
FEET of snow on the ground. In fact, where the plows had scooped to
clean the roads, it made a pile so high that it covered the Wal-Mart sign.

We can't wait to visit during the summer and see what fun
we can have without snow!!


We spend most of our first day just exploring the
neighborhood around the condo. There are
bike/walking paths all over. This is on a bridge
next to the highway.

This little bridge is part of that bike trail and it
takes you over the river so you can get to the park.



They thought it was funny to go down
the slides and crash into the snow.


Ian is standing on top of a garbage can.
We didn't have snow boots and Wal Mart
didn't have any so I bought rain boots to
help keep their feet dry. It helped...a little.

This is the snow pile outside of the condo.
I could cook lunch/dinner and keep an eye
on the kids. I actually took this picture while
standing inside by the sliding door. They would
play until they were numb, come in, change
clothes, thaw out and back out they would go.
They had so much fun just playing in the yard.

Warming up by the fire after playing outside in the snow.



This picture doesn't really capture my first ski lesson.
Aunt Rosie gave me some pointers and then sent me
down a tiny hill on the cross country track at the Nordic
Center (where we were sledding). First try, OK. Second hill,
I lost my balance and went down on my back. Third try,
lost my balance, fell in soft snow, got stuck. Rosie tried to
rescue me and got stuck. A nice man and his wife stopped
to help. She fell and got stuck. The nice man had to pull
all three of us out of our snow sink holes. I had to lean on
my skis and crawl back to the track so I could stand up.
By the time it was said and done, my buns were numb and
my clothes were soaked. Aunt Rosie and I laughed all the way
back to the kids. She asked if I wanted to try and again but I
thought I had enough skiing for one day. :)


When we got back to the kids, they reminded
me of my promise to ride the sled at least
once down the hill. So, off I went. I got about
half way down when my sled flipped and I
rolled the rest of the way. For the record,
I had 3 successful sled runs after the first one.
It really was fun!


These discs just flew down the hill!

Sledding was by far the favorite activity. I think
we went 3 times. We borrowed sleds from the
condo (thanks again Donna and Gerald) and
one from Rosie.


Jenna is climbing the hill so she could
sled again. The hill was quite steep to it was
quite the work out getting back up. By the end,
Jenna would get half way up and then call to me to
come help her.

Ian and Jenna helped Aunt Rosie dig out her

shed. Ian thought it was funny when he hit

Rosie with a snowball. She thought it was funnier

when she dumped a shovel full of snow on his head.

This is the snow pile by Aunt Rosie's.

They made mini sled runs. On the

other side of this pile is the park

we played at earlier in the week.

Ian rode his sled right into the

wall of snow and flipped over.

He had a blast!

We went to Copper Mountain to watch

the skiers come down the mountain.

One afternoon, Aunt Rosie took us to the

Silverthorn Rec Center. (I borrowed this pic

from their website) Jenna LOVED going down

this slide. Most of the time, we went together

but once she did go down on her own. The first

time she climbed up, she was pretty nervous.

(I was already up there, waiting in line)Instead

of holding the rail and walking, she crawled all the

way up. This center has the slide pool, a kiddie pool

with a tiny slide, a deep pool, indoor and outdoor

hot tubs, a lap pool with a basketball hoop plus a

the regular workout stuff. It was quite the amazing place.

This is a picture I took from the front porch of

the condo. It was just breath taking. Every where

you looked, the views were just beautiful.

Easter Morning

Happy Easter! I hope you had a wonderful holiday.
Our day started with Easter baskets, of course. The
night before, Ian left the Easter bunny a note asking
him to please put any candy in the plastic eggs and
then please hide the eggs around the house. The
Easter bunny hid 20 eggs for each of them. The
bunny hid pink and purple eggs for Jenna and
blue and green eggs for Ian.


Here are the Easter "baskets" and a letter from
the Easter bunny.


That tricky Easter bunny.

Jenna found one of her eggs hidden
by the library books and laptop.

Ian is counting his eggs to make

sure he found them all.

An Eggs-travaganza

We were eggs-uberant when The Hurley Family and The Gang
eggs-epted the invitation we eggs-tended to help us start our
Easter celebrations early. We kicked off the party with some
pizza for lunch, followed by some egg coloring and finished
up with an egg hunt. We had 3 egg kits so there were plenty
of bowls for everyone and a variety of ways to add
finishing touches. The kids had a super fun time and
the moms were eggs-tatic there weren't any
serious injuries. :) The afternoon was eggs-actly what I
hoped for, a wonderfully crazy time.

Thank you to Peggy, Kyle, Trent, Logan, Mel, Lucas,
Maryssa, Tori and Noah for helping us celebrate
our first Easter in New Mexico!!!


Our egg warriors.
Tori, Lucas, Maryssa and Kyle are in the back row.
Ian, Logan, Crazy Jenna, Noah and Trent are in the
front row.
Not pictured, Super Mom Peggy and The Great
and Powerful--Melodie.


The controlled chaos of dying eggs with 9 children.
They eggs-ercised caution and no one spilled, dropped
or flipped any of our dye bowls. Well, eggs-ept me
when we first set out the bowls but that doesn't count. :)


Jenna, Ian and Tori were eggs-ited to finally be decorating
eggs.

Logan, Trent and Jenna dunking those eggs.



Lucas, Noah, Maryssa and Kyle working hard.



Maryssa was working eggs-tremely
diligently on her egg. She was using
the shiny foil to give her egg a
speckled appearance.

Here is a finished egg of Ian's. He also eggs-ecuted the
speckled egg technique. Didn't it turn out
eggs-tordinary?

Trent took some eggs-tra time to stencil some
designs onto his eggs.


Mel and Peggy saw a segment on the Today Show
that said to use rubber bands to make cool
designs on your eggs as you dye them. Here is
an eggs-ample of using more than one rubber band.

Kyle used the stickers from our camo egg kit and
one of the stencils to make his soldier egg. He later
add a pink beard to egg-centuate the face.


Jenna showing off one of her eggs-quisite eggs.


Here is an eggs-hibit of some of our final products.
These particular eggs are the eggs-lempary handiwork of
Lucas, Maryssa, Tori and Noah.

Here are Maryssa and Tori searching for their
6 eggs.

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be the oldest. We
let the kids start the hunt based on age so by
the time it was Kyle's turn to join in the fun, all
the easy eggs were found. We had to give him
hints to find his last three. I think if he had taken
off the mask, he might have had better luck. :)

Some of the boys crashed on the couch, eggs-hausted
after their hard work. They used this downtime to check
out their loot. You can see Tori and her famous
smile in the background.



John said that now he needs an Eggs-edrin because
I used the "egg" words eggs-cessivly but I thought
it was a wonderful eggs-cuse to be creative! :)

Thank You Miss Debbie and Mr. Gerry!!

The very best neighbors in the entire world,
Miss Debbie and Mr. Gerry, sent the kids gift
cards for McDonald's for Easter. I promised that
if they cleaned their bedrooms, we would go for
lunch today and they can use their "credit cards".
You should have seen how proud they both were
as they placed their orders and swiped their cards.

Here is Ian right after he placed his order. He
kept his gift card in his pants pocket. He got his own
tray and carried it all the way to the table all
by himself. He is just getting too big!


Here is Jenna ordering her lunch. She kept her
credit card in her new purse. She was so proud
to take it out and pay for her own lunch. Poor
cashier wasn't sure what to make of her and kept
looking at me to make sure she was alright.


The kids waited patiently for Mom to sit down so
they could dig in. Ian had his first experience with
a fast food restaurant not getting his order correct.
He asked for a cheeseburger happy meal but was
given a chicken nugget happy meal.


Ian, Miss Debbie and Jenna on our last
day in Florida. As was tradition, Ian
and Jenna ran outside to give Miss
Debbie her daily kisses and hugs as
she was leaving for work. We miiss you
Miss Debbie and Mr. Gerry!!!!

May The Luck Of The Irish Be With You!

Top o' the morning to ye, my lads and lassies.
As most of you know, I love doing themed dinners
and St. Patrick's Day is the perfect occasion to get
creative. (to be honest, I took most of these ideas
from my Celebrations cookbook that I got for
Christmas last year-Thanks Jennifer!). The dinner
was good but I must admit, the company was
even better!



Cheers!


A close up of the spread. We had a mix
of Irish food and green food for our
dinner. We started with Irish soda
bread. Then we had Irish beef and
carrot stew with green mashed potatoes.
To finish up, we had a lime chiffon pie.
I had green beer, the kids had green
Sprite and John had Guinness to drink.


These are four leaf clover ice cubes. (you have
to use a little imagination with these) I froze
Sprite, then laid lime quarters, froze them
and froze another layer of Sprite.


The kids had "fancy" drinks with dinner. I dyed
Sprite green and then floated one of the four leaf
clover ice cubes in it.


You can't have a big ole dinner without dessert!
I made a lime chiffon pie, although it isn't an Irish
dish, it meets the criteria by being green. It was
a perfect way to end the meal, yummy and low in
calories.

Blustery Day

Today was one heck of a windy day! According to the
weather experts, we were supposed to have sustained
winds of 30-40 mph. Where we were ONLY at 28 mph most
of the day, we did have a gust up to 46 mph. You had to
look at the ground as you got in and out of the car or your
face was hit with a ton of sand. I guess this
weather is typical of "spring". I tried to take some
pictures to show how you much sand was really blowing.

Here the sand is blowing across the road as if it is
snow. This is on the road into our neighborhood.

These mountains are usually crystal clear from our
neighborhood. You can see how fuzzy they look
due to the sand in the air.

If you look closely, you can see the sand whipping
against the brick wall.

This shows how much sand has blown through
the screen. Thank goodness my windows are still shut!

Proof of our nutty weather. In case the print is too
small to read...it says 31 mph as the current wind speed
with a gust of 46 mph recorded previously. I always have
weatherbug.com up on the laptop so I can see what is
happening outside. Yup, I am a nerd.

Every where we went today there were tumbleweeds
blowing across the roads. Some were the size of a large dog!
Here is a picture where some where caught in the corner
of a recently installed fence near our mailboxes.
John saw a car run over one and it burst into a million
little pieces once it was struck.

Although this has nothing to do with today's wind
speeds, here are my Captain Underpants. (This is
a series of books that Ian just loves to read). Once
I snapped the picture (OK...pictures), I was hit with
flying underwear. Tell me, where is the respect????