Rodeo Parade and Rodeo

This year we were invited to be on my company's float in the rodeo parade. The theme was Bring Your Wild Bunch so we made cardboard cutouts that looked like various bugs and animals. And we had a cow (the son of one of my coworkers) sitting at the back. Of course everyone thought it was the Chick-fil-a cow so the kids watching would get super excited. Oh and we had to dress like rodeo clowns. I don't think I will share those pictures here...... :) It was fun for me and Hailey. She got the pageant wave down pat by the end! Emma didn't smile because she was a little scared to be riding on this trailer with no real seat or stability like a car and Eli and Kayla apparently didn't realize just what they had signed up for to begin with! It has to be said that it was their idea to do it! I was asked, I asked them and they both got very excited, said yes and promptly got to work on their costumes.

We were given tickets to the rodeo by one of my coworkers that plays a big role in the rodeo even taking place here. I had taken Kayla and Eli only once before and they were both too young to really remember it. They have also changed venue's since then so it is much easier to see the whole thing now. For some reason this town decided to have our rodeo indoors in an arena for a few years but changed it to an outdoor stadium. Which makes a lot more sense! Anyways, I took my 4 kids plus my neighbor's 12 yr old son who was visiting from Houston, TX for the summer. The kid lives in Houston and his dad has never taken him to the rodeo! I couldn't get over it! But I was glad to help him experience his first rodeo! Oh and I didn't mention that our seats were in the front row next to the shoots for bull riding. The kids all had a great time and loved seeing the fireworks at the very end (we didn't get any on the 4th because of budget cuts). It rained on us for a few minutes but the majority of the seating is covered so the little girls and I just moved back a bit. The big kids didn't care that they were getting wet! and the funny thing was that at one point Hailey was on my lap to where she could see the crowd on the opposite side of the arena and started doing her little pageant wave!

Manitou Arcade

I had today off so I took the kids to Manitou to the coolest arcade this afternoon! It's still called the Penny Arcade even though the price is far from that. But what makes it so cool is that they have some super old games and some brand new games. They have this bank of "rides" that I swear are some of the same that I used to ride in when I was little. Like the helicopter that goes up and down...I'm pretty sure I rode that in King Soopers! And they have a "boardwalk" that all of these rides are on with a little creek that runs below it. Of course that kind of freaked out the kids a little bit!

Still alive!

I knew it had been a while since I had posted last but I didn't realize just how long! Sorry about that! So here is a quick update (no pics because they are on my computer and I am doing this from JR's).

Kayla is all done with school. She now gets to move on to 8th grade. She is switching schools for 2 reasons. The first being that her old school closed it's doors for good on May 28th. The district has been shrinking since the 70's and had to take some drastic measures over the next few years to clean it up a bit. Her school was in an old building with A/C in only 1 room (the computer room for obvious reasons) and they felt other facilities were in better condition so hers was one to go! The other reason for her switch is because she decided she wanted to be in the IB program which is housed in one of the other middle schools within our district. This is a challenging program compared to the one she was in these last couple of years but she says she is up for it!

Eli is done with school too. Fortunately his school was one that was spared as they were cutting several elementary schools. They will actually be taking on most of the students from one of the schools that closed on May 22nd. He is now a 4th grader! Holy cow time flies! He is very glad it is summer because it means he gets to spend most of his time outside. He didn't get to do soccer this year because we totally missed the deadline...and then some...on signing him up. So he is waiting until fall to do that. Which he seemed fine with so maybe he was already ready for a break!

Emma is still a 2 yr old through and through. She can go from sweet to typical terrible two at the drop of a hat! Her favorite thing to do lately is play with her brother. She can't seem to get enough of him. Even though she fights with him alot! :) Even tonight, she was invited to spend the night with Nana and then backed out at the last minute because she wanted to see Eli. The other thing she likes to do is play outside. She has made friends with the little girl next door and always asks for her. Trouble is, the girl lives with her dad so she isn't always with her mom and Emma just doesn't understand that!

Hailey is huge! The last time she was weighed she was 25 lbs! Not fun to carry around for long periods let me tell you. She finally started crawling about 3 weeks ago and is now already pulling herself to a stand. She will get brave and cruise along a piece of furniture on occasion but that doesn't happen often. Tonight she was standing up holding onto me and would let go for several seconds and just stand there. I think she thought she was pretty cool because she kept doing it over and over. So I suppose it won't be long before she is walking too! Yikes! She can say mama, dada, Elijah (which sounds kind of like e-da-da). She will try to say Emma but it usually comes out mama and we are trying to teach her to say lala for Kayla. She waves goodbye and will clap her hands when you say "yay Hailey". She is starting to get cuddly. She will lay her head on my chest and I hug her and say "Oh sweet Hailey, I love you" and rock her back and forth. She says some gibberish after I do that and I think it's her version of "I love you". It's too cute! I love this time when you get to watch them develop a personality. She is a happy go lucky baby (most of the time) and will give you the cheesiest grin! I will have to try to get it on camera at some point because it makes me laugh every time.

Anyways, that's all I can think of at this point. I'm quite sure there is lots more....it may or may not make it onto here! We will see! At some point I will try to get some pictures on here too! :)

Updates on the family

Long time no blog! It's been longer than I realized since I had posted anything on here. Sorry about that! :) I don't seem to have much computer time at night these days. Anyways, here are some random updates for you.

Kayla made the honor roll at school this semester. We went to the awards ceremony at her school a few weeks ago to see her get it. She also just had her science fair last week. Her project was pretty cool. She would have the person sit at her desk and give them a sheet of various math problems, and while you were doing that she was also playing different songs and telling you the name of the song. Afterwards, you had to name the songs in order. Basically it was testing multi-tasking. And guess who did better?! The younger ones! The adults didn't do so well at that!


Elijah has been working at mastering his Lego Star Wars game on his DS. :) He hasn't had a whole lot of exciting things going on. Our main focus with him right now is organization and mastering his routine. He is an extremely smart kid, just lacks what he needs to help him along!

Emma is...well what can I say....Emma. She is deep in the throes of being 2 for sure! The things that come of that girls mouth sometimes either causes our jaw to drop on the floor or we double over in laughter. Like, for instance, when she told Kayla and I that boogers don't taste good, food tastes good! Very wise little girl. :) She went through a short period of time while she was sick getting out of bed every night several times a night until she would finally crash out. Thankfully that was short lived! She is doing great potty training. We still put her in a diaper at night and sometimes at nap time too. She also has to be in a diaper if we are going to be in public doing anything that will distract her. She tends to forget to go potty and she has a fear of big toilets. So we are working on that part with her!

Hailey has come leaps and bounds over the last month. She can now roll over front to back and back to front. She had mastered back to front long before the other direction. Which is strange because going front to back is way easier! She can sit up on her own for quite some time before she topples over. She babbles a lot now too. Her first "word" already was dada. Of course! And I swear it has sounded like she said Elijah and Kayla at some point too! We recently started feeding her baby food again. Oh and she had her very first ear infection last month...not fun! Her weight is...drum roll please...22 lbs! My mom had her at the UPS store recently and the lady behind the counter didn't believe she really weighed that much. So she put her on the scale there and sure enough that was her weight!

Kayla's new 'do

As you saw from the Christmas post, we gave Kayla a certificate to get her hair done by my friend Sue. And Kayla being a 12 yr old girl desperately wanted to get it done before she goes back to school next week. Fortunately we were able to get her in yesterday to do it. She has seriously changed her mind a ton of times on what she wanted to do to her hair. One of the last ideas was to put red on the tips of her hair so that if she didn't like it she could just cut it off! Rather clever I thought! But in the end she decided she wanted red "highlights" and found a picture of a hair cut and style that she liked. It turned out super cute and Sue did a great job and did it just like the picture!

Kayla (with a bonus Eli) before...

And Kayla after....it is hard to see the red in this pic (or maybe it is just my computer screen) but I think she looks like a totally different girl! And I think this fits her personality way better.

Christmas '08

This year, Christmas actually seemed a little more relaxed than years past. Not exactly sure why since we still did the same routine. We open presents and have breakfast here at home and then sometime in the afternoon we head to Nana's house for more presents and dinner. My dad lives close to her so we usually go to his house to visit after dinner. Naturally, the kids had a blast and got lots of cool things. Emma is getting more into opening things and was trying to help Hailey with her stuff too. Anyways, here are a few pictures from the day.

The tree after Santa's visit

The stockings were laid out on the couch with care...we have a chimney but it is downstairs and we don't use that area!

Kayla's ultimate present....a gift certificate for Tangles Salon and Day Spa to get her hair done by my friend Sue

One of Eli's ultimate gifts from Darlin...it has this little alien with a UFO that sounds like the Jetsons vehicles!

Eli's ultimate, ultimate gift...a Nintendo DS. This is the first game system we have purchased for any of the kids!

Emma with her baby doll from Santa. Whenever you would ask her what Santa was going to bring her, the response was always "Santa's gonna bring me a baby doll"! So naturally that was what he had to do! The funny thing was that I went out one night to buy this thing and promptly showed JR and the big kids because I thought it was too darn cute. Eli is getting to the age now where he isn't sure if he believes in Santa or not. So he immediately looks up at me when she opens this thing and says something about me getting it but how can it be from Santa! Oops! And the really funny thing about this doll is that it says 5 different cheers and my 12 yr old has all of them memorized and moves to go along with them! I swear Kayla plays with this doll way more than Emma!

Hailey with her cool Peek-a-blocks from Darlin

Eli with his Nerf Vulcan from Nana....he also has a Nerf bow (he calls it his big, bad bow) so I have seriously been dealing with not just Eli playing with this thing....his father has been playing too! They love to have wars with them and we all get stuck in the middle! I even got ambushed one day by JR when I came in the front door.

One last little gift from Santa! This was at the end of the day when we finally got home from Nana's. Hailey under the tree with a portion of loot collected throughout the day!

Family game night

Kayla's school had family game night last Tues that we went to, of course! They had several different areas set up throughout the school with different activities/games going on. Of course Eli wanted to do rock band but it was way to chaotic with too many older kids (obviously) in it. So he is working on getting Nana to understand just how bad she needs that game! :) Anyways, the kids got their faces painted, bowled, did the cake walk and attempted to climb a wall! Eli decided he was going to be brave and try to climb the wall in their gym. I have no idea how tall this thing is but I would guess it to be around 15 feet. He got the lesson, climbed a couple feet and then was done! That was high enough for him! But I was proud of him for even doing that. Let's face it, the poor kid comes from a family of chickens when it comes to heights!

Eli with his spider and Kayla with her Santa hat

Eli starting his climb.....

And Eli finishing his climb!

Kayla getting ready to do the cake walk. Yeah, I made her do it which is why she has attitude. I did do it with her for 1 round but we had an extra ticket!

Pardon the photo quality...apparently I can't even remember to bring my camera anywhere anymore so I had to use my phone!

Turkey hands

Kayla decided that it would be fun to trace her and her siblings hands yesterday to make a bunch of turkeys and make a cute little sign for Thanksgiving. She traced everyone's hands and had them color their own turkey. Well everyone but Hailey anyways. Kayla colored hers for her. Then she made up a little sign to stick them on and hang on our front door. It turned out really cute!

Leaves!

Today was yet another gorgeous day here in beautiful Colorado! According to my computer the high was 72. Remember, this is Nov 2nd! The only way you can even tell it's fall around here is because the yards and now streets are starting to fill up with leaves. So the kids decided to make the most of it and went outside to play in the leaves. I swear this is the only time of year you will find kids everywhere WILLING to do some yard work! The kids would rake the leaves into a pile and then jump into them or throw them at each other. I think I will be picking leaves out of Emma's hair days! And you should have seen the tub at bath time! I don't know where she was hiding them!

Kayla jumping in

Emma "jumping" in. She is a little too short to jump so it was more like a run.

Eli jumping in. I LOVE this picture. It shows his care-free nature and the smile on his face is priceless.

Eli, Cassidy (lives next door), Kailey (lives across the street and I'm not entirely sure I spelled her name right!), Emma, Kayla and Hailey. The were taking a candy break here!

While this nice weather was good for Halloween and this whole weekend....enough already! We need snow!

Happy Halloween!

So despite the fact that I live in Colorado, have lived in Colorado for almost 31 yrs now (I was around 5 mo old when my family moved here) I just didn't feel like it was truly Halloween in Colorado. You see, Halloween to me always meant that it was either snowing, had been snowing or there was still ice on the ground from a snow fall a couple of days prior. Heck for years we would have had a snow fall by my birthday on the 18th! This year, we haven't even had a single snowflake hit the ground yet! Weird, very weird. As a matter of fact, it was so nice last night that JR and I only had to wear sweatshirts (matching I might add!) and the kids were fine without having to have layers on underneath the costumes! And typically, here in Colorado, we have to plan costumes for getting at least one warm layer under whatever you wear!

We usually trick-or-treat down our street and then one other street to the east of us. Don't know how we started going to the east except for maybe that you have to tackle a hill, albeit a small one, to go that direction and we didn't want to bother! Anyways, we obviously had Hailey in the stroller because I wasn't too interested in carrying her in the Bjorn. I debated on whether Emma should even participate since is only 2 and won't be eating most of the candy she gets. But I figured since she was able to say "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" that she could go ahead and do it. We started her out in her stroller but as soon as she got out at the first house, she didn't get back in! I think she walked about 3/4 of a mile once all was said and done! And we didn't even do both sides of the other street because it was so late! Of course, Kayla and Eli could have kept going. But every year we go to Nana's house so she can see the kids all dressed up.

Eli's costume from the front view.

And then the side view. That is a green glow stick in the jar to make it look like his head is in formaldehyde. However, it fell out a couple of houses down the street so it was in his candy bag the rest of the time.

Here are all 4 of them all dressed up and ready to start walking! Or riding! Kayla is dressed up as one of those High Voltage boxes, Eli is a man carrying his head in a jar, Emma is a dalmation and Hailey is Tigger.

This was some hard work for Hailey! She had to take a nap after a while!

All in all, it was a good night. Nice weather. Happy kids. Well until the end of the night and Emma was up past 8! JR did have to run back home halfway through to poke some more holes in Eli's costume because it was fogging up from him breathing!

Halloween Partay!

We had our annual Halloween party at work last night and as usual it was a blast. The kids always have such a great time at these things. They had a dessert contest again this year so naturally Kayla and I had to participate in that! The sad part is that Kayla made a cake that dropped right as she was about to put it on the table at the party! So I let her submit my ice cream cake. See what a nice mom I am?! My original intention was to compete against her! :) So she took 2nd place again. She rocks! And I rock! :) The girl that won made these really yummy chocolate chip pumpkin bars. They didn't do the costume contest like they have done in the past. But all the kids ended up in some kind of ribbon.

I forgot to get a picture before we left the house so this was the best I was going to get at the office. As you can see, Emma was a little distracted. This picture doesn't really do Eli's costume justice. I will try to get better pictures on Halloween. Emma is a Dalmatian from 101 Dalmatians, Kayla was a fairy, Hailey was Tigger and Eli was a headless science project!

Mrs. Claus put Hailey to sleep! Eileen is who we can thank for doing these parties.

Emma's bff Morgan as a giraffe. Emma just loves to see Morgan and that was all she could talk about until we finally left the house last night!Eli getting ready to hit the pinata. He had to shed his entire costume just so he could play games. Trick-or-treating will be fun for him!

Track Banquet

Kayla is officially done with track for the year! They had a pot luck/banquet and award ceremony for all of the girls. There was lots of yummy food to start and then a quick ceremony afterward. Here are a couple of pictures.

This is the girl that lives across the street from us, Megan. She is a 6th grader so she got her letter this year.

Kayla getting her certificate and bar for her letter.

Emma's new boyfriend. She was holding hands and kissing him by the end of the night!

End of Fall Soccer

Phew! We made it through another season of soccer with Eli. I have to say that I think I prefer fall soccer over spring because it was way warmer! We only had to deal with 2 cold days whereas in the spring, just about every game was freezing! Anyways, this was another great season for Eli. He definitely stepped his game up this time around. At this age group it is no longer coed which of course he liked! And because this is basically for fun and not true competitive soccer, I couldn't tell you how many games his team won or lost!

This team actually had a party for the end of season and it was held at Mr. Biggs. Kayla is the only one in the family that had ever even been there and that was only a couple of months ago for a birthday party. We just don't do that stuff a lot because we are a big family and it isn't cheap! So the plan was to go there, have dinner at their pizza buffet, get trophy's, eat cupcakes and then play! The cupcakes were cool because they were shaped like a soccer ball (all cupcakes stuck together like a cake). So after the coaches were presented with their gifts and the boys got their trophy's we were let loose to eat. I was so into making sure I got Emma food that I didn't really pay close attention to what Eli was doing. Lo and behold, the kid wasn't in the dining room....he had taken off to play! So it took a bit but we did finally catch up to him! Of course he was playing hard and having a good time with his soccer buddies! Emma had a good time too because there is a part of this building called Lil Bigg Town. It has a whole bunch of sections focused towards role playing different scenarios. And of course Emma's favorite was a big sand box. Kayla's favorite was the go cart's. She rode on those a few times. I forget about the patience a child will have when it comes to that kind of stuff. The girl waited in a pretty long, very slow moving line to do that each time!

I took a few pictures but the place was dark enough for my camera to not like it! Any pictures I did get have glowing eyes! The one good one I did get was this one with Eli and his trophy!

Oh yeah and Daddy and Hailey stayed home because Hailey had the stomach flu that passed through all of us a week and a half ago all the way through last week! So they hung out and some precious daddy/Hailey time!

Bear Poop

So I think it's safe to say that all these trips to the zoo this summer have paid off in teaching Emma about animals. And the proof......

She was helping me wake Kayla up in the morning and I told her to give Kayla a kiss. She leaned in, stopped and came walking towards me with her nose scrunched up. I asked her if she gave Kayla a kiss and she said "no, she smell like bear poop"!

That woke Kayla up because it had us laughing so hard! Emma is a prime example of kids saying the darnedest things!

Zoo with old friends

As I am sure you have figured out by now, we love the zoo! I think we have the best zoo out of all of the zoo's I have been to. And it's great exercise because there are lots of hills to walk up and down. It is in the mountains after all. So this trip to the zoo was with a friend of mine since 6th grade and her 5 kids. It was an overcast day so it kept it pretty cool up there for us. I took some pictures of all the kids together (minus one) and some cool pictures of the 2 grizzly bears wrestling. That was pretty cool to watch because they reminded me of teenage boys horsing around.

From the left: Christian, Zander, Allorah, Gabby, Sam, Kayla and Emma

This was inside this tree thing that has a bug display and let's you see a better view of the Pumbaa's (warthogs)

Here is a picture of the bears playing....couldn't get any closer because of that head..... :)

This mountain lion was not happy...you can't really tell by this picture but it was growling and hissing. There was a docent down below (outside of the cage) and I am guessing it was talking to her for some reason.

The hippo....it was eating but you can't see it's food.

They have a carousel at the zoo. This thing is from the 1930's and they restored it in the 1990's. I am not kidding you, this is the fastest carousel I have ever been on! So this was Kayla checking out what is holding her on it before the thing started.

This is Emma....by the look on her face she is only just now processing what she is about to do and isn't too sure of it.

I stood between the girls while the thing went so that I could hold on to Emma. And let me tell you, it isn't an option to hold on. If you don't you will go flying off!

So if you did the math, and read my note, you notice that there is no Eli. He and JR went to an air show at the old airport. Too cool!