We were home for New Year’s.  I made the traditional herring salad and rolie polies.  We put up decorations and had our own little party.

We had a fun time.

New Year’s Day, Davey’s cousin came over to visit.  We’d not seen her in quite awhile, so Davey was so excited to have her over.

They made pizzas together.

They decorated cookies.

David took a lovely shot of the cookie decorating.

Each day has also included walking Buster.  He has been with us for a month how, and he is growing so fast.  I took this picture almost a week ago, and his legs are already longer.  It’s not easy to photograph this little guy.

Davey always has to carry something on our walks.  He pretends with his chosen objects and becomes involved in some big imaginary story as we walk.  On this day, he’d chosen a few tinker toys.

We’ve had a really nice break.

Happy New Year!

It’s been a great Christmas.  We spent Christmas Eve with our friends across the street.  Great food and great company for Christmas Eve.

Yesterday, the three of us had a really nice day at home.  We opened presents, built Legos, David labored over a transformer for a very long time, I took Buster for a walk in the snow, we had Christmas lunch, I baked a cake (because I’d forgotten to make a Christmas dessert), we facetimed with my family while we opened our family calendars (an annual tradition), we talked to sweet baby Lila via facetime, I knitted with my new Signature dpns (love them!), and we just had a nice day.  One of my favorite Christmases.

Here was Davey – just out of bed.

He quickly woke up though. They enjoyed the finger light rings.

I can always count on him for expressiveness too (I believe these socks glow in the dark!).

And when the opening was all over – it was time to play (and luckily for me, he was playing while sitting in some beautiful light!).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

My birthday was on the 20th.  I’ve written before about how Davey loves a great celebration.  The first thing I heard when I woke up was Davey saying to David in a loud voice that maybe he thought was a quiet voice, “I want to give her her candle!”

Davey loves to pick out candles.  He will smell every single one of them as part of his selection process.  So he’d carefully chosen one for me.  It is a nice one.  I’m waiting for my cold to completely go away so I can enjoy the scent.  Then I will light it.  He also picked out my card:

When I opened the card, I found that it played “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” – a great old 80s Cyndi Lauper song!   We thought that was pretty fun.

We’d gone to a Firefly Handmade Holiday Market in Boulder last weekend.  So many great arts and crafts there.   I talked to an artist about his work, and then David got me one of his pieces for my birthday.  The artist (Jamie Lang) creates bricks from adobe. Then he does photo transfers of photos he has taken onto the bricks.  There are layers of wax involved in this process as well.  I really liked this one.  It’s created from a photo he took of a Nebraska church.  I love it.  I don’t know if this photo does it justice.  It was really interesting to talk to this artist and to learn about his process.

David and Davey also made me a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.  David worked very hard to get the cake baked and iced.  David and Davey are having some serious discussion about their icing approach here.

It looked (and tasted) great! Davey was going in for a lick here.

What a nice 45th birthday.

Today we baked cookies.  Davey and David helped with some decorating.  Davey opened an early Christmas present, and he and David played with it for awhile.

Now it’s time to get Davey to bed.   He has been so excited about Christmas.  He asks about 10 times a day:  “How many sleeps Mommy?  Then how many?  Then how many?”  He can not wait!

We are getting some snow here today.  It kind of paused for the moment, but it is so windy outside.  I have never experienced a blizzard, but I can imagine how that wind combined with heavy snow could be impossible.

David took Koko and Buster out this morning to play for a few minutes.  I asked him to take some pictures.  I’ve got a cold and didn’t want to venture out.  Davey and I were watching them from the window.

Buster exhibited signs of his part Siberian “Huskiness”.  He loved the snow.  He was trying to gobble it up.

He also desperately wanted to play with Koko.  Koko desperately wanted to not play with him.

Buster was in constant motion.  I guess that is to be expected from a 10 week old pup!

Koko is a very old girl who is not getting around very well anymore.  She’s never been great in the snow though.  Her fluffy fur is not made for it.  She is meant to sit in a castle and command her minions (You can ask her).

In contrast, Buster is a ball of goofy pup who is going to thrive on snow play.

I do love a goofy dog, but I also love my regal girl!

We have a new member of our family.

This past Tuesday, we went to the Humane Society of Boulder Valley.  I’d been keeping an eye on their available dogs for awhile, and on Monday, I saw a puppy that I thought might fit well into our family.

So Davey, my mom and I went to go meet him.  We loved him right away.

We put a hold on him and waited for David to be done with work so that he could come meet him.  He loved him too.  Next thing we knew, he was home with us.

When we adopted him, his name was Andy.  We decided we weren’t crazy about Andy for him.  After that, he was Patches for several hours.  Merle (he has a red merle coat), Bandit, and Roger (after Mr. Rogers Federer) were also briefly discussed.  We finally settled on Buster. I think it fits him well.

We introduced him to Koko not too long after we got home.  I need to get some pictures of them together.  I’ve not been too successful yet. I couldn’t keep them together for long.  Buster wants to get in her face and she wants to avoid him.  She is very tolerant for the most part.  She lets him jump up in her face and on him.  But then, she will decide she has had enough.  One snarl of the teeth, and Buster knows to vamoose.

Buster and Davey are getting to know each other.  They have a great time chasing each other, but Davey is not overly thrilled with those sharp little puppy teeth.  Neither am I!

His first night was a little rough.  He had a nervous tummy and so couldn’t stay in his crate.  He and I finally settled down in the basement, where he finally settled down at about 3 am.  Poor thing.

Since then he’s done pretty well at night.  He is getting used to his crate and is listening pretty well.  We are not used to have a dog who might actually do what we ask.  Koko has never been what you would call an obedient dog – or anywhere near that.  Timber was a little better, but he was pretty stubborn too.  Even Daisy was not the greatest listener.  This pattern would suggest something about the owners as well I think. 🙂  But obedience training classes are in his near future, and we will try to get him trained well.   He is also progressing on his housetraining.  He seems like a pretty smart little guy.

His coat has these red merle patches.  He has one very blue eye and one kind of brownish-gray eye.  He also has a really sweet nature.

He’s in his crate giving me the big puppy eyes right now.

But in the time it took to take and upload that picture, he has fallen asleep again.

Sweet boy!

So this is not the greatest of pictures, but there are three things in it that I like very much.

The first of course is Davey.  Self-explanatory.

The second is the humidifier you can kinda see in the background. Since we moved here, we’ve enjoyed dry air.  However, it is really dry.  Now that the cold winter has hit, we were waking up with painful and sniffy noses, and headaches for me.  Everyone has told us “you have to run humidifiers”.  So I got us fixed up.  I put one in Davey’s bedroom and in ours.  We could still use one downstairs, and we will do that soon.  But having moisture in the air when you sleep is miraculous.  We are all feeling the difference already.

The third is the line of blocks on the floor.  Davey was creating a “love sculpture” for me.  It has to be a very long line because he has lots of “words of love” to say.  It is very sweet.  He also made me a shorter one to take to school with me.

Then today, he sent David to school with this sculpture:

This sculpture also had a specific purpose.  Davey was very excited about “Derby with Dad” day at prek today.  The dads go and they race Derby cars I think.  It’s getting ready to take place in just a few minutes.  So Davey wanted to help David be on time and he said, “Daddy when the propellers start spinning” that is when you need to leave RMCAD to come to Derby Day.”  So David took it with him to school. Such an imagination.   I love it.

Last week was a big week for us.  First we had David’s birthday.

David has been rediscovering his love for superheroes.

Then Halloween.  I didn’t take any pictures the night of Halloween, but I have a couple of the young Jedi.  We took this at his Little Gym Halloween party.

He had fun with a much more dramatic pose as well:

Next came Davey’s birthday.  He turned 5 on Saturday.

He is Mr. Expressions!  It’s a lot of fun to watch him!

He gets really excited.

Davey worked hard to blow out his candle.  Even though there was just one (a big 5), it didn’t quite want to go out!

This year we got a Costco cake.  It was bigger than what we needed, but it was really good with this vanilla mousse filling in the center.  Of course, Davey just removed all the icing from his piece of cake.  He enjoyed it thoroughly.

We had friends to celebrate with us, and Davey had a great time. You can see how hard he’d been playing by the looks of his hair in this picture!

And finally, Davey finished up his 3rd soccer season.

He always enjoys the “medal ceremony”! (such a funny little pose!)