Monday, November 26, 2007

Thanksgiving fun

Is Thanksgiving over already? And Christmas is less than 30 days away? Yikes! But I digress.

We had a great time with family. Elva, (Rick's mom) arrived Monday afternoon and then Jose, (Elva's husband) and then Susie and Ryan (Rick's sister and her husband) all arrived on Wednesday. Of course the week they decide to come turns out to be the coldest week we've had since we've moved here. We had two snowy days, although only about 2-3 inches total, but it was really cold!

On Turkey Day, Susie, Ryan, Rick, me, the kids and Kirsten all braved the frigid temperatures (19 degrees to be exact) to run/walk in the Turkey Rock Trot. A 3 mile fun run in The Meadows the housing development we'll be moving to in the early spring. Although it was really, really, really cold we had a great time. Aidan did great, he walked/ran almost the whole way with his Aunt Kirsten. I followed behind with Kellen in the jogger. Poor little guy was pretty cold even though he had his winter jacket and a blanket wrapped around him. It was hard for me to gage how cold he might be since I got pretty warm from running/walking the 3 miles. Plus, he's a silent sufferer. He hardly ever complains unless he really hurts.

Thanksgiving dinner was great! We had 11 people in our little townhouse, but thankfully for a big table all the adults fit. Aidan and Kellen sat at their own little table. Of course everyone ate too much, but what's Thanksgiving dinner for? Overindulgence, right? Oh ya, and to remember why we are so thankful to live in such a beautiful country and to be surrounded by our family. I'm definitely thankful for both.

So, what do you do in the snow? Go sledding! There is a great hill right around the corner from our rental where we spent about 2 hours sledding. As you'll see in the pictures, not a lot of snow, but definitely enough to make the sledding fun and fast! The kids had a blast going down the hill and I think Kellen was the only one who enjoyed going uphill too. He got a ride up everytime! Thanks Uncle Ryan!

I know I use slide.com too much, but there were too many great pictures from last week I just had to include most of them. Enjoy the show!

A napping era has ended...

I'm so bummed out, it looks like Kellen is done napping thanks to his acrobatic skills. He's now climbing out of his crib. Which, in a couple of weeks will be a moot point anyway since his big boy bed is scheduled to arrive. I was hoping because he's been such a great napper (2-3 hours on good days) he'd continue napping, but noooo, no such luck!

I knew my blissful, quiet afternoons would come to an end, but I didn't think it would end so abruptly. I'm now in mourning. I will post pictures of our Thanksgiving week with family soon.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Castle Rock Starlighting Event

In a previous post I mentioned that the town of Castle Rock was named after a large rock resting on top of a butte which the founders thought resembles a castle. Well, for 72 years the town of Castle Rock hosts a Starlighting event where a large star is lit on top of castle rock. Tonight was the night and it was really great to see the downtown streest closed off to cars and to witness a mass of fellow residents gather to watch the star light up and then to watch a fireworks display.

The town hosted quite a few events during the afternoon which we didn't get to participate in, such as carriage rides, hay rides, ornament decorating, and the downtown CR fire department hosted a chili supper. Following are some pictures I took, but unfortunately my flash isn't that strong so some of pictures didn't turn out as well as I would've liked.


Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Aidan's seeing orange....

As in an orange belt. Some of the kids from his TaeKwonDo class tested for their orange belt and he earned one too! He was very excited and proud of himself. We're proud of him too. Go Aidan!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

They're framing our house!

Our house is starting to take shape! They started framing last week so we stopped by after church to take some pictures! We can now tell where the front door is, all the windows on the first floor, the garage, etc. By next week, we hope the 2nd floor will be finished so they can put a roof on our house before the snow comes. Keep your fingers crossed that we have a mild winter so they can finish our house by the end of February!
Front of the house



Back of the house (all the spaces are where windows will go)


side of house

Saturday is a special day...

Saturday was another expedition day. I wanted to find out what the area had in the way of open preserves or state parks. It's exciting being in a new place and having the opportunity to discover new places, but it can be frustrating having to research a place everytime you want to go somewhere.




We decided to take the kids to Castlewood Canyon State Park which is actually pretty close to Castle Rock, but you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere. We entered the park on the westside and I was hoping the main road connected to the east/main entrance so we could check out the visitors center and learn more about the area, but no such luck. Kind've frustrating and dumb if you ask me. Anyway, we still found some great trails and beautiful scenery. Aidan wanted to keep exploring, but poor little Kellen and his little legs could only go so far. He was pretty tired after we were done with our hike.




Castlewood Canyon is home to an old dam that broke back in the 30's and caused the 2nd worst flood disaster in Denver. They still have the ruins and you can see where the dam broke. You can also get a pretty good idea where the reservoir was. It's now a nice meadow for horses. There's also some homestead ruins, but I was surprised to find no information posted about the homestead so we didn't know how old they were or who lived there. I assume the ruins date back to the late 1800's or early 1900's.



Saturday evening a family from Aidan's kindergarten class hosted a "Happy Hour" at their house. Which gave all those who attended an opportunity to meet the parents and the children in Mrs. G's PM class. Mrs. G was also there and I think the kids kind've got a kick out of seeing their teacher outside of school.


Rick and I were surprised by how many families are new to Colorado. Most of the families have only lived in Colorado for about 2 years. I'm sure Coloradoans are getting tired of the influx of families from other states, but what else do you expect when your state is so beautiful and has so much to offer? We had a great time chatting with the parents and need I say the kids had a blast playing with each other?

Sunday, November 4, 2007

I've been tagged...

Uh oh, I've been tagged. I knew I shouldn't have read my friend's blog today.



For those of you who don't know how this works, here are the rules:

A: Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.

B: At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and post their names.



#1 - I love the outdoors! I love hiking and camping with my family. I also love taking my kids outside to play. At the park, in our backyard (when we had one), to the beach (when we were near one) or to the mountains.



#2 - I'm a very emotional person. I hate it too. Almost anything can get me to cry. Although I have to say I handled our move to CO really well. I only cried once!



#3 - I love my family (immediate and extended) and being close to them. I love that I'm near my sister and dad and step-mom again. I love that my mother-in-law and my mom and step-dad will be moving to beautiful Colorado soon too. Anyone else want to join us??



#4 - I like to travel and check out new sights. Even though traveling with kids is a lot harder than just traveling with my husband, I still love to take them places and experience new things.



#5 - I'm a control freak/scheduler/anal retentive you name it. I need to know what to expect in my life. I think that's part of the reason why I had a such a hard time when Aidan was an infant (besides the fact he was colicky) I had no control over my life. I think I've gotten a little better since having kids, but I still like to keep my life in order.



#6 - I have a HUGE fear of heights. I have a goal to learn to ski/snowboard this year too. I know this doesn't seem like it coincides with having a fear of heights, but I am afraid of the thought of being on top of a mountain and having ski down it. But I will tackle this!



I tag...Tara, Lesa W., Lori W., Kristen T., Annie E., Chelsey G. (Is this enough enticement to keep you blogging?)

Friday, November 2, 2007

An awesome resource

For several years now I've had this heavy weight on my shoulders regarding our last will/living trust. Everytime Rick and I would travel without the kids I would worry that if something were to happen to us who would the court decide would be their guardians? I didn't want them to decide, but I also hated the idea of spending a couple thousand dollars in attorney fees getting our living trust set up. However, there is an easy and much cheaper way to do it. It's called LegalZoom.com. Just log onto their website, answer some specific questions regarding guardians, beneficiaries, etc and they create the appropriate documents. Once you receive them you have them notarized, witnessed and funded (if creating a living trust). We saved a ton of money this way! And I can sleep better at night knowing my kids will go to appropriate family members in case of our demise. I know this sounds very morbid, but I just had to share. Yikes, that just sounded like an infomercial too.

http://www.legalzoom.com/

Halloween part deux

The fun never ends on Haloween. (Neither does the candy...unfortunately.) My dad and Valentina called on Tuesday to say they wanted to come and spend the rest of the week with us and my sister. They arrived on Wednesday just as we were getting ready to head to downtown Castle Rock for some trick-or-treating on the street.

The kids had a great time and Aidan couldn't get us to move fast enough to get to the next balloon-decorated store giving out candy. I seriously think he thought he'd miss all the excitement (and the candy) if we didn't rush from store to store. I have to say downtown Castle Rock is really great. Trick-or-treating was a great way for me to see many of the unique stores in town. It's not quite at the caliber of downtown Los Gatos or Palo Alto. But I do think it was fairly comparable to downtown Willow Glen and bigger. There are two main streets (Perry and Wilcox) plus several side streets that make up downtown. However, I digress, back to Halloween.

It wouldn't be Halloween without bundling up in our heavy coats to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods in the evening. Unfortunately we only had 2 trick-or-treaters - Aidan and Kellen so we have a TON of candy I've got to get rid of and fast before Rick and I eat it all and gain about 50lbs. each! Thankfully I have a sister who works in an office so she'll be taking it with her next week.