Colorado!

We got to take a wonderful family vacation up to Colorado to visit my sister Annie and her family. We all had such a great time and I so thankful that the kids got to spend time with some more of their cousins.

One of the first things we did, and one of the top things on the list that the boys wanted to do, was to go up to Mile High Stadium. Here are some pictures of all that excitement!

D, Ty, L, B and Gun

My cute little neice, Ab

KL

CK

One of the big draws to Mile High Stadium was going to the team store and taking advantage of the player's discount. They kids had a blast looking at all the fabulous Bronco products and dreaming off all the things they wanted to spend money on, and lamenting that I wasn't willing to spend.

L, Gun, Ab, and Annie
A had fun playing with the big foam hands. The only problem was that she wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good picture. Still, you can definitely get an idea of how fun it was.

Another thing we did at Mile High was to go and visit the Colorado Sports Museum that was at the Stadium. There was a little area that had lots of sports uniforms that the kids could try on. They had lots of fun with that too.

CK in skies

L, football or cheerleader?

A trying to figure out how to put on the gloves

L, Cheerleading it is, I guess.

Ab

CK

L: On second thought, maybe it is football after all!

B and A

KL

Ty, these are some sort of football pants/pads

Ty

We spent a day up at Estes Park. It is a beautiful little town about 1 hour north of Boulder. There was tons of snow which the kids were thrilled about, but we were less than prepared. I had actually brought 2 sets of clothes so that we could go sledding, after we had a chance to walk around the town and the kids could have some dry clothes to go home in. Well, as soon as we parked and they saw the snow, they were diving in, with their canvas shoes and everything. I especially kept telling L to stay out of the snow because she would get her shoes wet and her feet would freeze. I turned out for a little bit and then gave my attention back to her, only to see how she had rectified the situation. She had taken off her shoes so she could then run around in the knee deep snow in her socks. Hmmm... I wasn't too surprised when she started complaining about how cold her feet were a little while later. Still, they had a great time!

Annie pulling the little kids around on the sled.

B and A on Main Street in Estes Park

Dave, A, L, D, B, Gun, CK, KL, Ty

After walking around the town and looking at the shops, we found a nice hill to take the kids sledding on. It took a little effort, and I'm pretty sure it was private property that we weren't allowed on, but that's ok. No one got arrested and it was a wonderful sledding hill. Everyone had a blast.

KL and CK

KL, CK, Annie and Gun climbing up the hill

L met a nice little tree as she came down the hill

B, D and L

D and B. I just barely got of the way on time with this one!

Ty, KL, and Annie

Despite what it looks like, Gun was having fun, but here he is at the end of his rope for the day with Spencer.

As we were leaving, we had to stop for a herd of Elk. they were everywhere and were in no hurry to get out of the way of cars.

You can see how close they were.

On our last night, all the kids were just laying around watching TV.

I especially liked seeing Gun and D cuddled up together. My boys really had so much fun with their little boy cousins. As much as they love their baby sisters, they do love having little boys around.

L and Ab

The funniest thing about this picture to me is that these little girls are only 3 1/2 months apart!

About the only picture that proves that I went on the trip too. Here I am with my baby girl and my beautiful little sister. Not the clearest picture, but that's ok.

Thanks, Annie and Spencer for such a fun trip! Hope we can do it again soon! We love you guys!

Big Changes!!!

It is true that it has been some time since I've updated my blog. This isn't because I haven't wanted to, but rather that my computer hard drive has been so full that I haven't been able to download any of my pictures, so I couldn't blog about all the great things that have happened in our family over the last 4 months. Normally, I would go in chronological order to update, but there is one event that is just way to important to put at the end.

We are so excited to announce the arrival of our sweet new baby H. She will be 4 weeks old tomorrow and has completely changed all our lives for the better this last month. It truly is amazing how quickly something so small can make you forget everything you knew about how you lived your life before they arrived. I always wonder how I didn't miss the baby before. I just can't imagine not having her around now, and I'm so glad I don't have to.

H. Lew was born on January 30, 2012 at 7:44 am. She weighed 7 lbs 15 oz and was 21" long. She was due 2 days earlier, but for the first time ever, I was totally fine with her being late. I was actually hoping that she would be a little later because we were still trying to get moved before she came. That didn't quite happen, but that will all come in a subsequent post.

I had gone to bed on Sunday night, after D's Court of Honor, where he received his 1st Class Rank, with some pretty strong contractions, but I mostly thought they were Braxton Hicks. Though I do remember having one that was strong enough that Dave was trying to ask me a question and I didn't want to answer him until it was done. I woke up at about 2:30 that morning because my stomach was hurting. It took me just a second to realize what that meant. Just a few days before, Dave had asked me if I was having contractions. I told him I had them all the time, but I wouldn't worried about it until they were waking me up at night. Sure enough, this was the real thing. I got up and timed them for about 2 hours (while watching the newest BBC production of Emma) and the woke up Dave. All the while I had been timing the contractions up to this point, they had been about 6-10 minutes apart and not too terribly painful. When I woke him up, I was in the process of telling him that we didn't need to plan to leave to the hospital right away, but it was as if the baby knew her dad had been woken up, because just as I was telling him we had time, the contractions immediately jumped up to 2-5 minutes and the intensity increased dramatically. So off we went. It was once again a natural birth, but I think I was a little bit more "animated" than I had been in the past. My mom was there with the video camera again and as soon as the baby was born, she was so distraught because she had forgot to video it. I quickly commented that it was ok. There were many things we didn't need to record for posterity that time!

I have several pictures from the hospital, but they are on a different camera, so I will post those later, but here are pictures from her first few weeks home.

6 days old

12 Days Old: first non- sponge bath

Feb 12: 13 Days Old:

Daddy with 2 of his Sleeping Beauties

Feb 14: 15 Days Old: First Valentine's Day

Feb 18: 19 Days Old:

We just thought it was cute how she feel asleep folding her arms.

Merry Christmas!

I know it has been a while since my last post. I'll blame that mostly on my computer's memory. It is gone, so I can't download any pictures to blog about. I keep meaning to clean up the computer, but I just haven't gotten to that. Hopefully, once our house is done, I can move all of those files, and that will clear up some space, but until then...

Still, with Christmas just around the corner, I needed to wish everyone out there a very Merry Christmas! I hope you are all ready. I hope I am ready for that matter too!

I had a funny little story to share too. A couple of days ago, KL was being quite the stinker. Ok, she was being naughty. So much so that I had to break down and call the man in the red suit to see if she had officially been put on the Naughty List. Lo and behold, she had, but I was told I could tell her if she started listening to her mommy and started behaving, she could go back on the nice list. This didn't have quite the effect I had hoped for. She really didn't turn things around. A couple of hours later, we went down to our new house to show it to a friend of ours with Jill (my sister). Of course, as soon as we got there and stepped out of the car, I got a call saying that someone was coming over to look at our house in 10 minutes who was interested in renting it, so I threw the baby back in the car and tried to get KL to join me. She really didn't feel like coming, so Jill said she would bring her home. I said great and raced home to get it as clean as I possibly could--after all it was laundry day. Of course the guy never showed up, but oh well. At least I got a clean house out of it, right?

Well, after I left, apparently KL had some sort of shoe malfunction walking into the house and got upset and refused to do anything except sit out in a pile of dirt in the front yard and pout. Jill allowed her to do this until it was time to go at which point, she tried to gently coerce her to get in the car. At first, KL refused saying, "I only want my mommy." This sounded highly suspicious to me, but still Jill responded by saying, "Great! I am going to take you there right now." That got her and she said, "Actshawy, I don't reawy want my mommy." Ahh....that sounds more like it. Still Jill got her in the car and which point she sat down and started just glaring at everyone. Eventually, our friend, and KL's primary teacher, turned and said, "KL, you don't want Santa to see you like this." KL quickly looked up at her with all her attitude and said, "Well, my mommy alweady called Santa,and I'n alweady on da naughty list, so it doesn't even mattew!"

I am happy to report that she did finally do as I asked and clean up her room. We did call Santa back and he did confirm that she was back on the nice list, but I have still had to remind her about how close she is to the edge a few more times!!!

Merry Christmas!

Birthdays!

10 years can really go by fast, can't it!?!? It is just so hard to believe that my little twosome have it their double digits. They are each so special, and so different from the other. I love them so much, and just can't wait until they realize what a blessing it is to come to this world with each other!!

The twins had a busy birthday this year, but hopefully they still had a good time. We had a game for both D and B, so when those were over, we came home and opened presents.

Here they are together. Aren't they cute!?!

L:

D decided to give B a special present... a coupon book--complete with a coupon for a free hug. Here he is trying to deliver on that promise.

More Baseball and Basketball

It is true that I already blogged about the boys sporting adventures this fall, but I came across some more pictures, so I decided I should post them in all their athletic glory.

B, up to bat (pretty sure he hit a triple this time!)

D tearing up the courts:

Money Making Schemes

It is the dream of every young kid to have some sort of major sale, be it Kool-Aid, Lemonade, Garage, or whatever, that will rake them in an enormous amount of money that will allow them to go and buy that dream toy that their parents just aren't willing to pony up the cash for.

Well, a few weeks ago, B and some of his friends decided that they would try and sale all their prized possessions, in hopes of striking it big. They went and found a folding table and chairs and spent a few hours out in front of the house.

This was pretty much at their peak selling moment. Unfortunately, they didn't achieve their financial goals, but I think they still had fun.

Progress!!!

A while back, our house hit an absolute stand still. The lovely town inspector decided he didn't like my brother (he admitted this to another superintendent in the neighborhood), and as a result, they refused to let us pass a major inspection for over a month an a half. It was so frustrating, but eventually, we got our pass. It was such a momentous event, that the next day, we got donuts and had breakfast down at the picnic table across the street.

Here is A enjoying her yummy breakfast

B and L (our house in the back ground)

A, KL, L, D, Dave, CK

Here is our house...as it looked the day it finally passed its frame inspection

B, D, and A

A and Dave

After we had breakfast, we were walking to look through our house. As I got closer, I saw a little something walking along our back fence line. I could tell it wasn't a bird, because it wasn't going fast enough, and it never flew off. Sure enough, it was a little turtle!!

Not sure where it came from, but it got quite nervous when the kids gathered around to watch. As soon as I was able to get them to back off, the little guy high-tailed it back the direction it came from. Hope it found its home!!
I'm happy to report that the house is still moving forward and is being painted, even as I type this. It is so exciting to see the progress and imagine what it will be like to live in this beautiful dream house. We truly are blessed!!