Easter Egg Hunt and Sheep

Today was a gorgeous day to spend outside, which is what we did. We finally made it to our neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt this year - for some reason we have missed the last 2 years (out of town, I think). The boys had so much fun - there were about 1000 eggs for about 3 dozen kids. There were so many eggs to grab that the boys ran past the vast majority of them before picking any up. After our egg hunt we went to the Littleton Historical Museum for the sheep shearing. It was really pretty cool to see them shear the sheep, weigh the wool, spin it into yarn, and dye the yarn (which you could then purchase if you were into knitting). They also had a sheep herding demonstrate with sheep dogs. The command for stopping the dog after it has herded the sheep is "that will do" - just like in the movie Babe.

Getting ready for the hunt to begin.

And they're off.



I didn't take many pictures at the museum - but I was impressed with how close these sheep were willing to get to us.

After the museum, the boys wanted to go to the nearby park - we told them they had only had a few minutes, so off they ran.

It was a great day to get out and have fun. Tomorrow, we will be spending it working in our backyard.

Kite Flying

I found miniature kites on sale at the grocery store this week and I got of the boys their own kite. It was quite windy yesterday after school, so we attempted to kite fly in our back yard. We were only moderately successful. The wind stopped gusting once we wanted it to, but the boys did get their kites to fly, just not as long as they would have liked.




Story on Luke:
Luke is a very intense little boy. He is also incredibly intelligent and creative; as a result, he can also be very emotional at times. Lately, he has become a Negative Nellie with a lot of things. He can have a great day, but if one bad thing happens (i.e. Ryan looks at him funny), he dwells on that and blocks out all of the good stuff. He has started asking Ryan several times a day, "Bro, are you my friend?" Ryan is rather tired of hearing and answering this question, so he doesn't always respond with a "yes." When this happens, Luke gets all sad and mopey. I've started to work with him some on his emotions and recognizing things that make him happy and sad. We end the day talking about 5 good things that have happened - sometimes it is hard for him and sometimes it is easy. I have also tried to help him funnel some of his feelings in a journal. So the the 2 of us went to Barnes and Noble last weekend and he picked out his very own journal so he can draw about his feelings. His first entry was about a boy at school poking him in the back and how that made him sad. His last entry was a picture with flowers and a bumble bee, because it makes him feel happy. Hopefully he can learn to work through his feelings and understand that it is ok to be sad sometimes but it is also important to remember and think about the good things during the day.

An example of his unique creativeness below: He found the box of toilet bowl cleaner that was sitting by the trash to go outside. He wanted to turn it into a backpack and become a robot. He asked for my help to take his karate belts to tie it to his back. Later, he created gloves out of old socks and taped buttons to his "gloves" and his shirt.


Story on Ryan:
Ryan is a very sensitive boy. He can get really sad about movies and stories, but he confuses being sad sometimes with being mad. We watched the movie My Dog Skip last week and he has cried several times since then when he thinks about the movie. The first day he cried he said he was so mad and started acting up. But once we talked about why he was mad, it become clear that he was actually sad because of the story in the movie (which is sad, the boy grows up and goes to college and the dog dies of old age). He is still our little performer and jokester. He loves to make people laugh and he is the first to recognize when somebody else is unhappy or needs some extra help.


I love my unique little boys - it would be boring if they were exactly the same.

Catching Up Part 3: The Rest of Spring Break

The boys and I were on our own after Nana and Grandad left on Wednesday. We spent Wednesday and Thursday hanging around the house and then we went to the Littleton Historical Society on Friday. Greg came home Friday afternoon and we took our annual pilgrimage to the car show on Saturday. I have gone the last 2 years in hopes that it would eventually result in a new car for me (especially when Greg would ask what I thought of certain vehicles) - I know better now and spend the time rounding up the boys and kicking them out of the cars when an adult would like to look at it.

The Littleton Historical Museum is just a few minutes from our house and has 2 working farms from 2 different time periods (1860s and 1890s). I can't believe that we had never been there before. They had 6 baby lambs on the 1860s farm and the boys enjoyed the blacksmith demonstration in the 1890s farm. The above statue is at the museum and I wanted to get a picture of both boys sitting next to the statue, but Ryan was a little freaked out by it and would only get as close to it from the tree.

The farm had a ton of old tractors for kids to play on. We'll have to go back this summer when the crops are growing. We also might take them sometime this month for the pumpkin planting. If you help plant a pumpkin in April and come sometime during the summer to weed and irrigate, you can can take your pumpkin home in October.

The 1860s farm also has Littleton's first one room school house. Luke wanted to pretend he was the teacher.


I found these 2 pictures below on my camera (plus about 2 dozen others). Apparently the boys got a hold of my camera one morning and had quite a photo session.



The quilt for the Silent Auction at the end of April. I volunteered to do this just last week and I only had a few days for the teachers to help me get the kids to draw a picture on a 6 inch block of muslin. I didn't get everyone, but I did get one from most of the kids in the 2 primary rooms. This never would have been done without my mom's help - she did most of the sewing and I did most of the cutting. It was a fairly quick project to do with 2 people.

Close up of the boys' artwork. Luke drew the tree (a variation of the school's logo) and the MSKC (the school's initials with an interesting looking S). He also drew the picture on the bottom right and Ryan's sweet picture of the himself driving some sort of vehicle is next to that.

Catching Up Part 2: Nana and Grandad

The boys had a wonderful Spring Break with their Nana and Grandad. They flew in Saturday evening and Ryan must have asked us at least 50 times on Saturday if it was time to pick them up from the airport yet. When Ryan saw Grandad, he ran as fast as he ever has straight to him.

The boys had a birthday party on Sunday and Greg and Grandad took them to the party. Grandad had a good time sliding down the giant inflatable slide with 3 children latched on to him.


Mom and I worked on a quilt for the boys' school auction for most of the visit. Grandad kept the boys entertained by playing with them, doing a craft project with them, building them a pirate's cave and taking them to the zoo.


Craft time.

Mom was incredibly kind to help me make a quilt in a 2 day time period. It turned out great.

Luke before the zoo. He wanted to take a notebook so he could draw pictures of the animals. Dad got a great picture of him with the boys at the zoo, but it is on his camera, I'll have to post it when I'm able to later. The boys had the best time with Grandad at the zoo. Luke declared it "the most ginormous fun day, ever" when they got home.

Grandad found 2 boxes and created a Pirate's Cave for the boys. One box came from the new attic ladder we put in and the other came from Greg's surround sound system. Dad spent several hours after bedtime 2 different nights to create this great little playhouse. The boys were so excited and they've had such a good time playing in it.


It was a wonderful visit and I am so grateful that my children have the opportunity to have a great relationship with both sets of their grandparents. We sure do miss Nana and Grandad when we have to go long periods without seeing them, but Ryan and Luke love them so much that it makes each visit even that much more special. The boys are blessed to have grandparents that can be such good examples of how to be great, loving and caring people.

Catching Up Part 1

We have been busy with our every day routine lately. Greg has been out of town some and I've been sick, as well. In the middle of everything we had Spring Break and Nana and Grandad came for a visit.

It has been very windy the last couple of weeks, so spending time outside hasn't been at the top of our priority list. However, the boys and I did go to our neighborhood park one day and attempted to fly a kite. I discovered that it is a lot harder than it looks like, but I also think that it has been 25 years since I last tried to fly one. The main problem was that there was too much weight at the top of the kite so it just wanted to dive. I got a new one this week, so we'll have to try it again. Despite the lack of success in the kite flying department, the boys had fun playing on the playground.




We also enjoyed a visit from Tim, Stephanie and Mackenna - the kids thought it was cool to sit on top of the playhouse.

Sick Little Boys

Greg and I have told several people how the boys have not been sick at all this year, despite being in a school of preschoolers with a bunch of crud going around. I guess it had to happen sometime (warning - stop reading if the word throw up grosses you out). They had a great day on Sunday and had spent the vast majority of the day playing together and creating their own crazy scenarios. Luke started complaining about his stomach hurting at dinner and at about 10:30 he came out of his room crying and said he threw up in his bed. He then threw up again on the way to the bathroom and then again in our bed while we were cleaning up the mess. The two of us were up about every hour all night running to the bathroom. I heard Ryan crying at about 4:00 and when I went into his room he told me his stomach was hurting. I took him to the bathroom and he threw up in front of the toilet. We've been incredibly fortunate that we have rarely had to deal with vomiting. It has been over 3 years since either boy has thrown up, and they were staying with my parents when that happened. They spent yesterday with Greg laying around the house feeling better stomach-wise but they both had a fever. I stayed home with them today and they are definitely feeling better - they had quite a bit of energy and I had to force them to rest at times. They will be heading back to school tomorrow and I will be heading back to work.



In completely other news, Blue Bell ice cream has arrived in Denver!!! The boys and I had to get out of the house tonight, so we headed to the supermarket to see if Blue Bell was really there. I walked down the ice cream aisle and didn't see it at first - I guess I'm used to seeing half of the ice cream section taken up by Blue Bell - but I found its little section. I got my absolute favorite - Cookies and Cream - and I promised the boys they could have some when their tummies are feeling a little better. I am going to have a bowl tonight.

Snow Tubing

After swim lessons yesterday morning, we took the boys to Winter Park to go snow tubing. I had hoped to take them skiing this year, but Greg isn't quite ready to commit to that not knowing if the boys could really handle that much snow and cold. So we decided to ease them into this year by riding an inner-tube down a mountain for a couple of hours. They had so much fun. The first time we rode down, I had Ryan with me, and I had that roller coaster feeling - which is fun but I thought that it would be too much for them - it was not, they loved it.

The boys were too young to ride by themselves - even though they really wanted to - but they had fun taking turns riding several times with each of us.


View from the top of Greg and Luke heading down.

View from below of them coming down

We rode a toe cable lift to get back to the top.

One of their favorite things to do was to race each other to the inner tubes and jump in on our way to the lift to ride back to the top - just like nearly everything, they turned it into a contest.






We had all had a great time - it is so much fun to do stuff like this with your kids.