A Beautiful Day for a Hike...

One of the biggest parts of cub scouts is getting hiking miles. Every month there is an organized "pack" hike, as well as a hike that your den organizes. When you hit 50 miles, you get to choose a pretty sweet hiking stick. Well, Mac and Nate are a ways off from achieving this goal. We're not the best at prioritizing them. However, the boys are now eager to get a hiking stick...so we'll be going on more hikes. :) The boys and I hiked at Gateway park up the Poudre Canyon today. It was a beautiful day.


We hiked up to Seaman Reservoir. Here's the kids that made the hike in Pack 90.


There's my handsome fellas! They got their cub scout jackets for Christmas. Patches they've earned our sewn on the back.


We went on a trail afterwards to a "scenic view". It was a bit sketch and the boys were way ahead of me. I had to take some deep breaths!


We made it down though...and I think Nate was happy about it. :)

After we got back to town, we hit TCBY for some frozen yogurt. It was a great afternoon! I'm loving the warm weather, although I could use one more dumping. We'll see if we get it!

Oh What Fun...

We had a great holiday season. As usual it went by fast and there were things I had meant to do that didn't happen...but it was good anyway. Here's some pictures.


This is Mac's guitar performance at the CSU's Lory Student center plaza. It started outside with temperatures in the 20s.

There's our little elf in the middle.

He's been taking guitar since August, and it was pretty impressive watching how far these kids have come. Mac loves it! He teaches his chords to Sam, who's also learning. After performing at CSU, they made another stop on their tour at a senior assisted-living center before heading back to school.

Papa Monte and Grandma Kathy came to spend Christmas with us. They got in the morning before a snowstorm. Lucky for me, Papa and Elly shoveled the sidewalk and driveway and still had energy to work on a pile that still hasn't fully melted in our front yard! :)

The kids got quality Coco time. Mac is constantly looking at our local animal shelter for our dog. We've yet to find the little one to be our dog.

papa helped Mac build a bird house for Cub Scouts. Well...he actually sort of got carried away and built it, but we'll keep it on the downlow with the den leader.


There was a lot of cookie making...


Grandma and Papa Eliason joined us for Christmas eve. Here they are opening presents the kids bought for them at the Kid's Giving store out church does.

Christmas Eve Service

A little more cheese...

Sam and I were there too...

PaPa and Sam got the job of putting together the Green Machines on Christmas eve. It took a bit, although the building of the trampoline by Uncle Nick and Sam in single digit weather still remains the biggest Christmas eve project.

The boys still have yet to use them as our temps have been pretty chilly and we have a lit of ice packed in the parking lots they'd use them on.

Almost done!

While they worked on the green machines, Grandma cleaned up an Imaginext Castle I found on Craigslist for Mac and this dollhouse for Elly. Got this for $15! Even has an elevator...what a deal?!

The finished job left by Santa.

Christmas morning. The kids opening their playdough from Aunt Kristina, Uncle Jay, Morgyn, Carter and Gracelyn

This is all Nate wanted for Christmas. An Eric Decker jersey...too bad the Broncos lost. What a couple heart-breakers with our Seahawks and the Broncos huh?! Major bummer...

We also did some sledding. It was cold...Cocoa's ears almost froze! The kids had a blast!

Nate did some shreddin'...

We loved having Grandma and Papa here during Christmas. It made it extra-special for all of us and helpful too! I got some good time when they first got here, then when Elly got sick with a cold, we could take turns finishing up shopping and Sam and I got to go to a Christmas party since Elly was happy to snuggle with Grandma. Grandma and I hung around the house finishing up projects while Papa and Sam were able to get the boys out to a rock-climbing wall and a date with Papa at IHOP. It jsut went by too fast!


After Grandma and Papa left, I had to think of some other quiet activities to keep them busy without extra company. Discovered they could do these latch-hook rugs.


They also got some wrestle-time with Sam.



And Nate and Elly did some tricks in the backyard...

We had a very chilly Winter break. It was a bit hard to get outside too much with elly being sick, then Mac after her, but it was still nice. We managed to get some sledding and ice skating in. Elly and Nate also got a sleepover at Grandma and Papa Eliasons when Mac was sick.

Here's a little video of Mac to end with...

Catch up from Halloween 'til now

I know...it's sad, but true...I am so far behind on blogging. We did just get a new camera though on Black Friday (actually using cyberspace on Thanksgiving), so I'm hopeful I'll be able to keep you all updated a bit more frequently. Here goes...


Let's start with Halloween and our little sometimes-princess. Elly was Cinderella...and the only picture of our children we got. We've only had Sam's phone for a bit and he's not quite as photo-happy as me. Mac was a bat, because I wouldn't let him be a scary vampire...and Nate was a Seahawks football player with hurt feelings. Kids at Bauder preferred his classmate as a Bronco and Nate got tired of the Bronco cheers in the Halloween parade. Sticks and stones....


Next was Mac and Grandma Debbie's birthday. Grandma and her two sisters, Aunt Mary and Aunt Laurie drove up from Denver to have breakfast with the kids on their birthday. They added a lot of cheer to our early morning!


Then...the birthday party! Mac wanted a carnival themed birthday. We transformed the basement into a carnival and had way too many kids at our house. I decided it was our last hurrah for birthday parties for the boys. Our plan is to take the boys somewhere fun with a few friends for birthdays from now on...for sanity sake.




Happy Birthday Buddy! More on Mac later. Sam is going to do a blog on Mac's first hunting trip. Spoiler alert...Mac did AMAZING. Can't wait for you to see that one!


Let's see...next we'll go to our annual Christmas tree hunting extravaganza


Notice the snow boots...no snow. It was crazy. We hiked quite a ways though since there wasn't snow holding us up.


We first passed this old homestead. Mac and Elly decided to stay here with a gracious friend of mine, while we hiked further to look for our tree.


Nate got the honors.


Sam got the tough part. We did A LOT of hiking! The kid did amazing!


Time to decorate the beauty...


Elly's branch...


Elly's turn to put on the star.


Look at that beauty!


And now...for our most recent decoration...


That's right folks...it's the Grinch! Papa Jim made this for us! Amazing work!


I'm waiting for our house to now be listed in the newspaper for decorations for all of Fort Collins to come see. Okay, not really...although I'm sure at some point the boys will get our lights synchronized to music and we'll make the list. We'll keep you posted o that one....

Flag football!

Wow...it's been a really long time. I'm hoping to have some short and sweet ones so I can catch up.

Nate just finished up his first flag football season. He wanted to play Fall baseball, but knowing some buddies were playing flag football, I talked Nate into giving it a try. I like baseball...but he was getting a bit fanatical about it. Well, now he's fanatical about football. :) Not only did he love playing with his friends, but he'd be running routes with Sam in the backyard any chance he'd get. Now he's not sure if he likes football or baseball better. That's a lot coming from a kid who's been swinging a bat since he was two (probably earlier!).


He's going with the Clay Matthews look...


Conspiring on the sidelines...

These last two are videos...I'm having camera issues at the moment, which would be only having a phone to take pictures...doesn't work too good for action shots. So this first one is Nate scoring a touchdown. He loved running and "juking" defenders!


His last is playing quarterback. When asked by his coach what his favorite part about the season was, it was playing quarterback. I loved that he had to yell to his team to start the play. Nate's pretty quiet, and the first time he did this the coach got on to him for not being loud enough. From then on out he was loud and clear...good to hear him pipe up in a populated situation. :)


He says he wants to play tackle next year...I don't think mom's up for that just yet.

Elly's first day of school!

It's official...I have all three of my kids in school. Granted, Elly's only in pre-K for 3 hours 3 days a week, but it is crazy that school has started for my youngest kid. I'm excited for Elly to have her own thing for once (she's been a tag-along to the boys way too long) and I know my time alone will get filled up fast, but I am also a little sad that this is the precursor to kindergarten and each school year after that. Once the school years start, time just seems to fly. Of course there's many exciting and fun things with the school years, it's just a new season of mommyhood.

Back to Elly...
Elly was a little bummed when we went school supply shopping and her list contained napkins, plates and cups instead of all the cool notebooks, pens and pencils the boys had on their lists, but she was excited for her pink backpack.

She had no hesitations, just said "bye mom" when it was time for me to go, and went on playing with her playdough.

Elly is going to the same pre-K program the boys went to. It's lots of fun and I'm excited for her to learn from Mrs. Kirk. I'm curious how she does. She's definitely got a little more spunk with the boys and sits still way less than they did at her age. However, she's got some skills hidden up her sleeve. Look at this worksheet!

She wanted to improvise and give the empty tree one apple, but in the end decided to just go ahead and follow the directions, "'cause Mrs. Kirk would like that.":)

Her teacher gives the kids a handful of worksheets each time. You're not supposed to force the kids to do it, but they do get prizes for doing them...so Mac, maybe did one sheet each time, Nate, did every single one right away, and I figured Elly would be more like Mac. However, she wanted to do homework like her brothers. She didn't bust through them, but she did a couple. I think with Elly, it's just going to be more if she thinks it's worth her while to sit down and do something...'cause playing babies and swinging on a tire swing can sometimes trump sitting still!