simple life

Life is ordinary these days.  I consider that a good thing. 

This little girl is obsessed with helmets. If L even mentions riding his bike, Lady-LE takes off running to go get both helmets and demands that they be fastened immediately. And even though we do have tulips already in bloom in our front flower beds, we have had a few cold spells -- see the gloves? I fear that I have completely acclimated and have definitely gotten soft to any sort of 'winter' weather. When it's 45 degrees outside I just want to do nothing and drink hot chocolate. And those are the cold days! Sheesh I'm pathetic.

Speaking of staying inside ... we figured it was time to get Lady-LE her own chair. Definitely not one of those 'needed' purchases, but whatever purchase at Ikea is actually categorized by a "need?" Oh well. They love it, and thankfully don't fight over chairs anymore.

Lady-LE cried for the first couple weeks every time we dropped L off at preschool. I think she has adjusted, and really enjoys her alone time now. However, she is determined to be like other big kids, and loves to wear L's backpack around the house. And sitting at my desk is a new favorite while she colors and draws. This girl is crazy about letters and coloring, more so than I remember L at this age. 

L's first dental exam! He watched me throughout my exam/cleaning, and then it was his turn. He was surprising very calm and comfortable with the whole deal, and impressed everyone in the office with how well he behaved {me included!}. Oh goodness he's getting big!

While R was out of town for a conference, Mr. R across the street helped us fix L's bike so the chain wouldn't keep coming off {incredibly annoying, let me tell you}. 

Immediately L and his best buddy {son of Mr. R} jumped at the chance of using tools. They were so fun to watch as they helped and twisted and turned those wrenches. We just laughed watching them be so excited! 

Tools for the big boys.

And of course some for Lady-LE who wanted to join the party.

We love this "man of steel" - a major blessing to live across {and down} the street to such wonderful people. 

updates

I seem to have a feast/famine relationship with this blog as of late (trying to fix that, promise!).

This means that there is a whole slew of new posts I just published to catch us up from September thru December. However, I back-dated them. Which means that those of you who don't follow this blog through google reader will have to manually scroll back and find the new(ish) posts among the older ones. {this mostly applies to grandparents} Just read and scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the button that says "Older Posts" - do that as many times as you'd like. :)

New posts to come including Christmas celebrations and pictures of the new preschooler.

first day of preschool

This kid needs to stop growing!

 The balloon was actually from Lady-LE's first day in nursery yesterday in church. But I kind of like it - maybe I'll use a balloon in each 'first day of school' picture while the kids are younger? Either way, I think this little boy is my favorite. :)

 {those poor chapped cheeks and chin! That dry colorado air gets to him}

 He is ready for this change, and we are all looking forward to it. We have great friends who go to this school (none in our class though), and feel really good about the teachers/classroom/schedule/etc. 

It was R's first day off in a long time, and definitely fun to have him with us! 

Way to go L! You're such a big boy! 

christmas in colorado

We flew out to Colorado for Christmas this year, and loved being with family. It has continued to be challenging in some ways to live so far from family, and we really tried to treasure these days all together. 

 We exchanged cousin's gifts on Christmas Eve, to keep it a little special and separate from the mass of chaos that comes on Christmas day with 15 people's gifts. It was so fun to see the cousins be excited about what they got one another. Our gift this year was homemade PJ's (totally stole it from my own sister who did that for my side of the family last year - it's another feeble attempt to become more like her). They were a hit! All the kids loved them, and I especially loved seeing them all matching throughout our entire stay there. What a fun way to share something! 

We acted out the Nativity Story, and I think this really helped L fall in love with it. Don't mind our little scandalous-looking angel Lady-LE - she's not intentionally giving you shoulder, the dress just kept falling. :) 

 Another Christmas Eve tradition of reading a children's Christmas book with Nonnie. I think this is actually a tradition everyday to sit on the couch and reach books with Nonnie, and I am grateful for it.

 Christmas day! Sadly, no awesome pictures. At least from my camera. Church was beautiful in the morning, and we had the day pretty much covered with gifts and food and playtime. It was wonderful, and truly a beautiful day to share love throughout our family. 

 The day after Christmas we went out to play in the snow. Lady-LE was in heaven playing around and keeping up (or trying to) with the big kids.

 Oh my heart just melts!

 We ran and jumped and fell into the snow. Quite the turn-around from boy terrified of the snow here. Boy am I glad we're past that stage! 

 Kids with the finished Frosty - too bad you can't see his straw mullet-hair in the back. It was pretty sweet. And we followed this activity by teaching the kids how to have a snowball fight. Oh my goodness so fun!

 Everyone helped take down the ornaments on the tree. (basically an excuse to climb the ladder with permission)

 My kids didn't quite adjust to mountain time until the end of our vacation there. So I got to see beautiful sunrises like this outside. Positively breathtaking.

One thing that I LOVE about CO is that we always seem to get a few great-weather days to play outside in. Swings, slides, and playing chase. Perfect combination.

 L loved climbing up the slides and falling down. 

And we also got in a beautiful day at the zoo! 

 Up close and personal with the giraffes!

 We used to feed them crackers - but I guess they're on a new diet regime because we fed this lettuce this time around. I will never get used to the long tongues. Yuck!

You think the giraffe in the background was having a hard time chewing the lettuce? He doesn't look too happy.

We sure loved out time in CO this year! 

There's lots that I don't have pictures of - specifically the fact that my parents and younger sister K came out to see us while we were there! We got lucky enough to see both grandparents and spend time with both sides of families! Oh it was wonderful, and truly a blessing to have them come out. I'm grateful for G&C who were so accommodating and welcoming toward my family. We had a great time, and I hope to get more pictures from my sister and sister-in-law of the festivities. 

We love and miss you all already, and wish we lived closer and could do things like this more often! Thank you for making Christmas this year unforgettable!