Since Aaron works from home now its easier for him to take the kids out with him on occassion to look at houses.  He invited Abe and Breanne to go with him this time, but Abe said he’d rather stay home with me and take a walk to the Lake with Ali.  He is such a cool little guy.  I love spending time with him and seeing him be such a sweet brother to Ali.  Abe and Breanne are close in age, so they tend to fight almost as much as they play happily together, but Abe and Ali, being 4 years apart, are much more peaceful together.  Abe totally babies her and it is SO sweet!

Aaron went mountain biking in Fruita with a bunch of friends this weekend, so I was on my own.  Friday afternoon I met some friends at the Lakeside Amusement Park in Denver.  It was a pretty low-budget place, but fun for the kids!

Breanne riding the Frog Hopper with Kaylee Stout.

Abe waiting in line with his buddy Ethan.

Our friend Eric was in town again with his sweet camera.   He was kind enough to shoot some pics of us.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Standley Lake behind us; just around the corner from our new house.

Woa, moving is busy.  Here are a few pics of what we’ve been up to lately.  We’ve mostly been busy moving out of our old house or into our new house, or fixing things in our new house, but we have been making time to have some fun with the kids too. 

Our friends Jamie and Layne Caldwell came to visit and we took all 6 of our kids (all under age 5) bowling at the CU student center.  It was a riot!  The Caldwell twins kept running down the lane every time we turned our heads.  Here is Aaron rescuing them one of the times.  The kids LOVED bowling.

Breanne swinging at the park on a random day when I was trying to finish packing up odds and ends from our old house and the kids started to get really bored, so we ventured out.  It was a bit chilly and the only coat I could find to put on her was this baby one piece.  She didn’t mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ali, you could at least tell me if your tired…I’d be happy to put you in your crib.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Owen Stout’s birthday party. Fun times with friends!

 

 

 

Abe: “Here Owen, let me help you open that!”  

Abe decided to give Owen an Optimus Prime Transformer, and then decided he REALLY wanted one for himself and proceeded to ask me for ways to earn money.  It took him about a week, but he earned his $10 and got his new toy yesterday.

 

 

 

 

Last, but not least, Breanne got another haircut since her bald spot filled in enough to cut the surrounding hair shorter.  She LOVES it!  And so do I.  :)

 

Just transferred the pictures from my phone and here’s what I found:

Breanne found this “hat” in Aaron’s swim bag.  I wouldn’t mind it if she wore it for the next few months while her hair grows out again from her personal hair-cutting incident. 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what happens when I take the kids to the park all morning and then back home to play with their friends all afternoon without rest.  We took their friends home and on our drive back to our house, Abe and Breanne were both OUT.  I guess I better be more aware especially on long days like this because it looks like Abe didn’t even get his seat-belt all the way on!  

 

 

 As I’ve been getting organized and packing boxes for our move, we found this little guy in our crawl space.  PLEEEEASE can we be finished with the rabbits?  We’ve seriously been battling them for the entire time we’ve been living here.  It wouldn’t bother me so much if they just lived peacefully in our crawl space and I had to do nothing more than vacuum up rabbit poop twice a year but the problem is that they can get in and then they cant always get out.  Many of them end up dying in there.  Every spring we find 3-5 rabbits, some dead, some alive in our crawl space and every spring we try a new approach at keeping them out, which obviously fails. We’ve cemented holes from the outside,

 boarded holes from the indside, sprinkled red fox urine and some crazy garlic cayenne pepper concoction I read about online around the perimeter of our house and yard, we’ve put chicken wire around our yard, and caught and released probably 15 or 20 rabbits from our crawl space, but to no avail.   After finding two live rabbits and two dead rabbits over the past week of packing our crawl space, Aaron decided to take a new approach.  He bought some of that expanding foam material at Home Depot and sealed every spot that could possibly be a hole in our crawl space.  I don’t really have much hope in it working, but we cant bear to just stop trying.  I guess we’ll just have to warn the lease-to-own tenants about the problem and advise them to check for dead rabbits every so often so they don’t start wondering what that rotting, horrid smell coming from the crawl space might be.  Yeah for wildlife!

**UPDATE**We just cleared out the remainder of the “stuff” from our crawl space today and packed it over to our new home.  The icing on the rabbit frustration cake is that apparently they decided to make my trophy box of running memorabilia their pee spot.  I was tipped off when I noticed the lid on my trophy box was yellow and warped.  I’ll try not to gross you out too much but sadly, all my nostalgic running medals and memorabilia is either changed color from the chemicals or growing some sort of disgusting pee mold hair…and I wont even attempt to describe the smell.  I washed a couple or really meaningful pieces, but the rest is all in the garbage now.  Less weight for the move, I guess.

“Nothing is as constant as CHANGE.”

After three and a half years in our wonderful neighborhood and ward in Superior, it seems clear that its time to move.  A house in Wesminster that we’ve owned for a year and a half recently became vacant after the tenants decided not to exersise their option to buy.  We were having a hard time finding any rent-to-own tenants that would pay enough rent to make the property cash flow positively so we started looking at other options.  We realized that the property would actually work perfectly for our situation right now because there is more sq footage in the basement than our current house and if we finished the basement and double insulated the rooms then Aaron could work from home and save on office rent.  We decided to put a  Rent-to-Own sign in front of our current home as well as the vacant home  just to see which one we could occupy first, for the highest amount.  It only took 3 days and one showing and we had a much higher purchase price AND monthly rent agreement along with a deposit on our current house in Superior…so I guess that is our answer.  I will miss tons of things about my current home; mostly good friends an neighbors we’ve made.  But the good thing about moving is that we’ll see Aaron a lot more since he’ll be in the basement and we’ll save lots of money every month.  We’re moving just 10 minutes south of here in Wesminster (right by Standley Lake, for those of you familiar with the area).  Its a nice area and hopefully I can find some good running routes around the lake.  The home we’re moving into is currently having the basement finished and a few rennovations upstairs, so we have a few more weeks to enjoy living in Superior, and then its on to a new adventure!

Goodbye fun neighborhood and good memories on Weldona Lane…we will miss you!

Hello home office and “unknown” new things on Owens Drive! 

We went to Utah for Emily’s wedding and had a fun time celebrating Breanne’s Birthday with cousins, visiting family, and just playing! Look at that beautiful couple! 

 

 

 

Ashley gave me that sweet flower power outfit for Ali.  She and Eden are sporting some homemade clothing that their Grandma Nancy made over 30 years ago.  Sweeeeeeet.  Theo is in the middle…”gimme some room women!” These three will be good pals in a couple years. 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandma Aly and lil’ Ali.

 

 

 

 

Birthday Girl!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abe and Zachary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve started reading the Book of Mormon more consistently every night with our kids.  At first I thought Breanne wasn’t really listening because she just seemed to be in her own world flipping pages of other more interesting books or humming songs as we read.  The other night she proved me wrong when before we started reading she asked, “Are we going to read about the Olive Tree again tonight?”  

Aaron: No, we finished that Chapter last night.

Breanne: But Jesus is mean sometimes.

Aaron:  No…..Jesus is nice.

Breanne: But sometimes he cast-es us into the fire.

I’m finally getting around to posting about our fun vacation to San Diego last weekend.  We went to Sea World, the Beach, Wild Animal Park, and Legoland.  We also visited our friends the Sterneckerts and went to the Point Loma Navy base to check out the submarines.  The weather was PERFECT and we had a blast spending quality time together as a family.

 

 

Wild Animal Park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also watched the finish of the Tour of California where Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis, Dave Zabriski, and other big names in cycling were racing.  The kids loved the free yellow chalk and it took us forever to walk back to our car after the race because they had to stop every five steps and color on the sidewalk.  

 

 

Breanne and Veronica Sterneckert were fast friends and enjoyed spending a few evenings playing and giggling together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legoland was the kids favorite.  There were tons of cool artistic lego figures, great rides, and a cool 3D movie.

 

 

 

 

Abe’s first big roller-coaster.  He was pretty excited.  After the big drop he was telling me how much he didn’t like the big drop because it made his bellie tickle…but after a few more mild roller-coasters he caught on and started LOVING IT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Souveniers to remember their trip by.  Yeah!

I finally got around to taking some shots of Breanne with her new hair-do.  I am glad we were able to salvage it after the self-cut!  Our friend Ashleigh does hair and she came over that night and worked her magic.  Thanks Ashleigh!

 

On another note, Breanne is starting to potty train!  Yeah!  Go Breanne!  She turns 3 on March 16th, I’m hoping she’ll be diaper free by then!

 

“And here we have some boondoggle key chains. A must-have for this season’s fashion.”

-Deb