Category Archives: Family

Minikickers, Fall, Yarn

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We’ve had another busy but good week.

Davey has been going to a weekly soccer camp.  It’s been in addition to playing on his soccer team.  He has really enjoyed it.  It’s just been 45 minutes on Tuesdays, and they play lots of fun games with the soccer ball.

 

He received a certificate at the end, and he enjoyed this “ceremony”.

 

 

 

He also has been having fun playing with his “village”.  He requests yarn from me and then hangs long pieces of it all over his village.

 

 

He’s up here with me right now cutting those long pieces of yarn into short pieces of yarn.  He’s working on his scissor skills.

The trees have been so pretty.  I went for a short walk around the neighborhood the other day after I dropped Davey off at pre-k.  Everything is very golden here.

 

I didn’t get a great picture, but I noticed that the mountains are getting snowy again.

 

And then finally, Davey and I have been working on a knitting project.  It’s Halloween related so I am trying to get it done before Halloween, but there’s not been a lot of knitting time lately.  Here’s a sneak peek.  I can’t wait to finish this!

Cottonwood Farms – Pre-K Field Trip

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Yesterday, we met Davey’s class at a pumpkin patch.  There were farm animals to see, a hay bale maze, a corn maze and of course pumpkins!

Davey posed on a pumpkin for me – kinda.

 

Davey saw the corn maze, and he wanted us to go through it.  “I know we are terrible at corn mazes,” he said, but he wanted to try it out anyway.  We are pretty bad at corn mazes, but we went in with confidence.

 

I don’t know if Davey actually remembers this or if he just remembers the story, but a little while later, he said, “I’m looking for Boy Scouts” (We relied on boy scouts to get us out of our very first corn maze a couple of years ago.  He wasn’t even quite 3, but maybe he remembers this:  “Save Yourselves“!)

It’s not looking too good here either.

 

Fortunately this maze was not nearly as large as the Denver Botanical Gardens maze, and we found our way out.

So we checked everything out.  Measured Davey:

 

And of course I have a fondness for sheep.

 

Davey joined his pre-k friends in the hay bale maze.  He had a great time despite realizing he is fairly allergic to hay.

 

Davey and one of his friends had to check out the friendly big black dog too.

 

We had to go pick a pumpkin of course.

 

Which Davey and David promptly took home and carved.

 

One of Davey’s teachers kindly offered to take a family picture of us.

 

Fun day.

Oh!  “Happy I Love Yarn Day!”

As Seen on TV…Press Dough!

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Press Dough!  Davey had seen this commercial a bunch of times on Sprout.  He loves to play with Playdoh, and so the idea of playdoh as real dough that you could bake and eat?  Sounded great to him!

He kept asking me to get it for him, and so I did.  As an added bonus – “if you buy now!”  – we got 2 for the price of one!

So it finally arrived, and Davey was ready to try it out.

I may have not gotten the dough just right.  I refrigerated it for awhile so it would get firm, but it still wasn’t easy to work with.  I’m no expert with cookie cutters; I sometimes find it hard to use them myself.  He liked the flour shaker which the instructions insisted was very important.  We were supposed to liberally sprinkle the molds with flour.

Davey liked playing with it for awhile, but it was kinda hard to get anything to work quite right.  It was kind of a mess.  Davey is definitely not a tidy kid much of the time, but he (like his daddy) does not like a mess.  This was a little messy!

It was his first experience with the “as seen on tv” product.  Not always quite what you think it’s going to be.

I think he’s back to Playdoh.

Koko wanted to check this all out too.  I think she smelled the dough.

 

Koko may be an old girl, but her nose still works like a charm.  I had to get the crooked mouth face.  She’s been doing that forever.

Fall Soccer 2012!

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We’ve started back into soccer again.

 

Davey really enjoys soccer.  One of the British coaches who works with our soccer program worked with Davey’s team yesterday during their practice.  He got the parents involved too.  The parents and kids took turns pretending to be “stinging bees”.   They had to avoid being “stung by the ball”!

 

We were practicing together with the team we were going to play, so they did a 1 on 1 activity where they put two boys against each other.  Davey worked so hard here.

 

They actually went back and forth for quite awhile.

 

After all that play, Davey was ready for a water break.

 

Davey had fun with the regular soccer game as well.  They ran and ran (I love this pose!).

At the end, it was time for the parent tunnel.  The little boys all ran through, and you can see Davey getting a pat on the head from another parent.

 

Then it was time for snacks!  We went out for pizza for lunch, and then Davey came home and played with neighborhood friends for most of the afternoon.  Pretty fun day for the Wee Tot!

Is it Halloween yet?

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Davey and I are ready for Halloween.  It’s September 15th, and we are ready to put up our Halloween decorations.  We’re going to try to hold out until October 1st.  I can’t remember when we put ours up last year, but I do know we were the first in the neighborhood…by a couple of weeks!

We did buy some Halloween cookie cutters yesterday, and we made our first batch of Halloween cookies.  Davey helped me cut some of the dough out, but then he decided to take leftovers and play with them.  Next thing I know he has gotten the toothpicks and is totally absorbed in some story he created with the dough and toothpicks.  It’s not real pretty, but he had the best time:

 

He had fun decorating too!

A Good Week

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Last week was a good week.

On Friday, my cousin had her baby – a little boy.

On Thursday, my sister-in-law had her baby girl.  (I’ve still got to ask if it is ok to post pictures on the blog!)

Everyone is healthy and doing well!

Davey started preschool this week.  He loved it.  He loves making new friends, and he couldn’t wait to show us the letters and sounds he learned on the first day.

 

 

Angry Birds Cupcakes Extravaganza

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A few days ago, actually last weekend – where did the week go? – David, Davey and I made “Angry Bird” cupcakes.  Davey has been all about the Angry Birds lately.    Sometimes I play on my phone and he plays on David’s phone, and we sit side by side with our Angry Birds.

So last week we decided to make Angry Bird cupcakes.  We found some guidelines on pinterest. Davey carefully reviewed the website.

Constructing the faces required several ingredients:  food coloring, sprinkles, candy orange slices (those should not be anywhere near me.  I can’t resist them), mini marshmallows, marshmallows, and mini-chocolate chips.  We were supposed to make the eyebrows with skinny black licorice whips, but none of us like black licorice.  I kind of wish we’d gone with it anyway though, because achieving the “Angry Look” is pretty key to a successful Angry Bird cupcake!  We made do with mini chocolate chips.

So I got everything all set up.  I used white cake mix for the cupcakes, but I made homemade butter cream icing.  we had to dip the cupcakes into sprinkles after we added icing.  That’s quite a few sprinkles.  Of course, Davey had no problem with mega sprinklage.

Once we got started, Davey really enjoyed supervising and taking pictures more than the actual decoration.  I think he got a great shot of David at work (I knew I was going to need David’s abilities to pull this off.)

David was in charge of red angry birds.  (Notice in the picture above that the little icing swiper had already made a pass at the birds.)

David took this task seriously.

I really liked the pigs:

I picked out the best of the lot for a final picture.

(The plain green one with the marshmallows is the “nest”.)

Pretty fun project!  Davey loved the process.  Davey loved the icing.  He always loves the icing.

The Wee Tot Finds Armor

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We’re having a fun Saturday.  Davey began his day with the monthly Home Depot craft.  He and David built a miniature goalpost and painted it.  We were all covered with paint when he was done.  No, not all of us.  David avoids it much better than I do.

Then we accompanied David while he went to get a haircut.  David had to wait for awhile so Davey and I walked to Dollar Tree.  We hadn’t been there in forever.  They have smaller carts there, so Davey really enjoyed pushing our cart around. But then we hit the Dollar Tree Jackpot.  Armor!  Davey was so excited.

It’s still sweet Davey underneath!

 

When we had to wait for David for just a bit at the barber shop, Davey carefully removed his armor and put it in the chair beside him.

 

He says he wants this to be his Halloween costume.  We need to fashion him a Roman skirt thing David says (I have no idea what this is called).  We’ll see though.  He may have other ideas as we approach Halloween.  We are moving full tilt into Fall/Christmas Celebration Discussions!  (Halloween, David’s birthday, his birthday, Thanksgiving, my birthday and Christmas).  He was also very curious about this whole Labor Day thing.  He wants to know how we should celebrate it, why we celebrate it, etc.  He loves the idea of adding another celebration to the schedule!

and finally Crested Butte

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We spent part of a couple days in Crested Butte.  We’ve been to quite a few beautiful places in Colorado now, but Crested Butte remains one of our favorite places to visit.

We began with breakfast at Paradise Cafe. I guess it’s been around for almost 25 years.  We enjoyed it!

Davey had pancakes and scrambled eggs.

 

He was happy with his breakfast! Davey is kinda particular, so I’m always happy when he digs in and enjoys a meal!

 

It was not an ideal day for wandering around Crested Butte.  A little too rainy, but we don’t see much rain around here, so it was kinda nice.

 

There’s a really nice toy store in Crested Butte, so we spent some time in there, and then we decided to head back to the cabin.

We returned to Crested Butte the next afternoon though, and it was a much nicer day. (We ate at Brick Oven on this day, and Davey thoroughly enjoyed their pizza as well!)

He went back to the toy store.  In this picture he is playing with some building toys called Jawbones.  We got him some and he has really enjoyed building with them.  He and David have built several things since we got home.  There are wheels and hingy type pieces.  Really neat.

 

I liked this shot of him walking down the street too.  He’s getting so big.

 

There is an awesome playground in Crested Butte as well, and we spent a good while there.  They had this digging toy thing.

 

There was a little girl on it when we arrived.  Davey played on the nearby swing and waited patiently – for probably ten minutes – for her to be done.  He didn’t pressure her nor did he really give any indication that he was waiting to get on it.  It was sweet.  As soon as she left, he was on it instantly!

He dug and spun and pivoted and dug sand for a long time!

 

He loved it!  Then he met twin boys from Austin, TX.  They were almost exactly the same age as Davey.  He had a great time playing with them.  Davey loves to meet new kids. Our cabin was right above the playground, and he always kept an eagle eye out to see if there were any kids!  If there were, off he’d go.  “Mommy! Kids!”

It was a fun trip.  I’m so glad that I can blog about it. Here’s my plug for blogging. I already really enjoy just looking back at my blog from the last couple of years.  I’ll go back and read some random day about something we did.  Often, I’ll have already almost forgotten about whatever it was we did on that particular day.  It’s a nice way to tell our stories.

 

Hanging out in the Mountains

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We had several days of just hanging out.  We fished a little with David, but sometimes when he was doing this:

and this:

Davey and I would just hang out at the river.  He loved to play with grass, flowers, rocks, trees, anything in his path.

 

Sometimes I built things with him, but other times I watched him play while I knitted.

 

Davey in action:

 

and of course in the squat position that he can hold forever.

 

And then running again!

 

Davey also always wants to have a “picnic”.  It can be very simple.  Just some M&Ms and a “pretty sun” can suffice.

 

One day we went on a short hike behind the cabins.  I have to say that Davey was “Mr Cranky Pants” deluxe, and he didn’t really want to go.  But then he began to have fun.  We didn’t go far, but it was an uphill climb. Ok well this picture is the view looking back down!

 

We had a pretty view though once we got up a ways.

 

Davey would run down and then back.

 

He’d come say hi.

 

And then off again.

 

We’d been talking about not being on our phones and computers while we were on our trip.  We’d talked how it was nice to get away from the technology for just a little while.  So then Davey and I turned around, and we saw this!

 

: )