Birthday Weekend and a Hike

I had a great birthday last weekend. On Saturday, the four of us went out for breakfast, watched the TCU game in the afternoon, and then Greg's family joined us that evening for dinner. I volunteered for something for the boys' school on Sunday and that evening the 4 of us went out to the Melting Pot for dinner. It was a much better experience than it was 2 years ago when Conny and I took the 4 kids. The boys really thought it was cool to cook their own food and they totally loved the chocolate fondue.

Luke requested a picture of just me with him and Ryan after he saw the pictures of Greg with the boys on opening day.

Ryan was really good with the fondue - he had a great time cooking his meat and he loved the dessert.

Luke was a big fan of the chocolate.

Luke and his Daddy and below me and silly Ryan.

After a busy week for me at work and Greg out of town, we took the opportunity this morning of having the time and good weather to go for a hike. We drove up to Boulder and hiked an easy nature trail in the foothills.

Luke spent much of the hike consulting with the map.

Luke also wanted to take a picture of me, Greg and Ryan.

Sweetest boys -they are doing such a great job with hikes. Last summer we often didn't make it more than a quarter of mile before they started asking to be held - today Ryan spent most of the hike running and Luke collected dozens of rocks.


Thank you everyone for a great birthday. Thank you Jonny and Jenny for the subscription to Cook's Illustrated (and I loved the appropriate birthday card) and Wayne and Linda for the new beverage thermometer (for my morning mocha) and the gift card to Sur la Table. Thank you also to my sister for my super cute purse and to my parents for the Wii Fit. Thank you to my sweet boys who gave me a new backpack (because I've been using the same one since the 9th grade) and to my sweet husband who got me a Kindle.

Opening Day Weekend 2010

Time for the 5th annual NFL Opening Day Weekend picture of Greg and his boys.


2009

2008

2007

2006

This last one is for Ryan and Luke who wanted to take a picture with their Daddy on the swingset.

No Free Time Lately

Since school has started, we've had something going on every weekend. The boys' school is in the process of improving the playground. So a couple of Saturdays ago, we spent the day painting the fence. Today we spent the day covering up the existing pea gravel and putting down new rubber mulch. It looks great and I'm excited that the boys will no longer be coming home with rocks in their pockets and shoes.
Last weekend (Labor Day) we had our last few days at the pool for the summer-so I took the boys all 3 days. Greg came with us on Saturday, Jenny and Tommy joined us on Sunday, and on Monday we went to the end of summer pool party for our neighborhood. I love how much they love to swim - Ryan loves to swim more than anything else we have done with him and he has improved so much over the summer. Luke started to confuse swimming with treading water in the last couple of weeks - so he had a hard time trying to swim while keeping his legs down vertically-but he has done great, too. Ryan asked me yesterday if we could go to the pool today - I told him it was now closed and he quickly pointed out that we could go to an indoor pool. I guess we'll do that in a few weeks-that would probably be a good activity on a Sunday football day. I think we'll also do a round of swim lessons later in the fall - they can start at level 2, they almost have all of the skills for level 3-so hopefully we can do that next summer.

Soccer ended 2 weeks ago - the boys didn't have a very motivated team this year-they were all much more interested in playing on these rocks than playing soccer most days.

Recent things:
Tonight Luke had a little meltdown at the dinner table and responded disrespectfully to Greg when he told him to calm down. I told Luke he needed to say yes Daddy and Luke shrugged and said, "I have issues." He said it in a way to excuse his own behavior - Luke definitely has some issues, but I told him that we all have issues but that is no excuse.

Both boys give me a daily guilt trip for no longer being able to pick them up from school. Luke even told one of the other mothers about it and she told me he acted heart broken when he told her.

We are planning on taking the boys to a TCU game this year. We had initially planned on taking them to the TCU v. CSU game in October, but now we think we're going to take them to the Homecoming game in Fort Worth. I think they'll have a ton more fun at that game. TCU games are very family friendly-they even let the kids run onto the field with the football players at the beginning of the game. The boys are excited about it and asked me several times today when we're going to go. Greg asked them a few weeks ago if they wanted to go to a Broncos game or a TCU game, they both said TCU - smart boys.

Luke spends his days at school drawing pictures-he comes home with a portfolio every day. Last week he came home with this one below - it is a laptop computer. He also made 2 paper cell phones so we could have a phone conversation with each other. Ryan has been drawing super cute pictures of all 4 of us on a boat - he even includes a telescope, the sail, water, and himself driving.


I'll try and do a better job taking pictures and blogging - things should calm down some in the next few weeks.