One Random and Focus on the Family

11-21

Alanna has been wearing this "pack-pack" around lately... and when it's combined with a pair of binoculars as it often times is, she looks like quite the little adventurer!

11-22

Naturally, the night before one of my doctor appointments, it snowed and made the roads all slick. :S We left almost 2 hours before my appointment time and made it there with 10 minutes to spare. I took the kids' picture quickly as we were leaving since we don't keep snow very long around here. It looks so wintery and pretty!

After the appointment (which went well; the baby cooperated really well for the 3D ultrasound! We got to see him/her for probably 25 minutes on the screen before having the world's fastest check-up. We took home a little movie of the baby along with several pictures!!), we took the kids to Focus on the Family to run around for a bit. The basement of the visitor's center is completely for kids - and completely free. We hadn't been there in so long! Honestly, I think the last time we were there was just a few weeks after Alanna was born. It's really close to my doctor's office, so we'll have to go back on another appointment day.

Chronicles of Narnia Room

Padded playroom :) They had climbing structures (much like you'd find in a shopping mall) that the kids had fun playing on. We were the only ones in there for quite a while.

One of the largest rooms has a stage (along with a few rows of theater style seating), so Matt and Alanna threw on some dress-up clothes and posed for a picture. I thought it was such a good idea to put the whole outfit on a glorified scrub top that was open in the back. Easy on, easy off, and so fun to play with! We also put on quite the puppet show but I didn't take pictures of that. Though the weather wasn't awesome, we still had a great day in the springs.

Christmas Shows

We watched Rudolph last Tuesday evening - or, should I say, Matt watched Rudolph with the kids. I was finishing up some baking. :) Anyway, ever since then Charlie now calls Rudolph, Rugolf. It's hilarious! I held up an ornament tonight while we were decorating the Christmas tree and asked Charlie who was on it. At first, he said Bambi. Then he changed his mind to Rugolf. So cute!

We also turned on The Grinch tonight, and after the first 5 minutes, I asked Charlie if he liked the movie. He said, "Uhhhh... not really." So honest! I love it! I asked him if he wanted to watch The Grinch or decorate the Christmas tree, and he chose the Christmas tree. Fine by me! We all decorated the tree this evening which is a whole separate blog post. It was a really fun day!!

What's it called?

Charlie:
Granola bars are gorilla bars :)
Old Navy is Old Maybe
Music is muskit (I hope it stays this way for a while!)
The game Memory started out as Numbery and has now changed to Membery
Smoothies are still smovies
"Mommy, you're boddering my sister!" (boddering = bothering; and for the record, he said it while I was rinsing Alanna's hair in the bathtub and she was fussing about it.)
Me, pointing to a picture of a green olive: "Charlie, what's that?" His response: "M-nem?" (M&M)
"Are you getting things morganized?" (I have a student named Morgan... seems logical that it's then called morganized instead of organized, huh?)

Alanna:
Polka dots are poke dots
Envelope is enplope
Look at me is ook a me
Get down is de gown (she says it the exact same way Charlie did!)
I pointed to a picture in a book and asked Alanna what the kittens were eating, and she replied, "M-nems!" Apparently my kids like M&Ms!!! :)

Jesus Loves Me

I'm sitting close to a certain 2-year-old girl who, instead of eating lunch, is singing Jesus loves me. Sweet as it is, she needs to EAT already. I believe the phrase that just came out of my mouth was, "Jesus REALLY wants you to eat your peas!" Alanna's response was, "ok!" :)

Next up, she just said, "Ook a me," (which is look at me) as she sticks a pea up her nose.

Prayers, please.

Camping with Charlie and Hunting

I haven't posted anything for a while so I need to do a little back a couple of things I have yet to share.  On September 6th Charlie and I went for a little camping trip at Deer Haven just outside of Canon City.  I didn't expect to do anything epic, but I wanted the trip to be quick, simple, and most importantly, fun for Charlie.  We left just after dinner and set up camp at a spot just of a dirt road on BLM land.  We had enough time to see the sunset, have a campfire and s'mores, and look at the stars before it was bed time.  However, we did have one interruption when a heard of cattle came meandering through our campsite at one in the morning, but other than that it was a great trip.

 

Charlie enjoying the fire.

 

 

 

 A little cereal in our PJs the next morning.

 

I also went mule deer muzzle-loader hunting and second season elk hunting this year in the Sangres de Cristo mountains.  I went both seasons with my co-worker Dave.  Deer hunting, we packed in a four or five miles into the wilderness area and hunted four days.  I saw nine deer, but anything within shooting range was a doe and I had a buck tag.  Elk hunting, we horse packed in four miles and hunted for three full days, but the only elk we saw was a cow the day before the season opened when we were packing in our gear.  I have still yet to harvest a big game animal in Colorado, but I guess there is always next year.

 

Packing in our gear.

 

 

 

 Dave Gilbert on a beautiful Colorado day.

 

 Our elk hunting camp on the only relatively flat spot we could find on the side of the mountain.

 

 Fall colors in Colorado.

 

November Snapshots

11-9-13
Playing chalk on the driveway. I started this by making a small segment of road, an intersection, a car, a bike, and some trees. I went to the grocery store while Alanna was napping and came home to an entire map on our driveway! Matt added in tons more roads, mountains, a zoo, construction vehicles, a lake, and a playground at a park. Boom. I just got trumped.

11-10-13

Clementines and AFV.

11-11-13

I ran over to Pueblo with the kids on Veteran's day since Matt was out grouse hunting with Dave. I had to pick up Alanna's 2-year pictures so we made a stop at the Pueblo Zoo while we were in town. It was a beautiful day and the zoo was nearly empty since school was in session. The zoo has camels, lions, elk, bison, otters, zebras, a sun bear, and a petting zoo/farm area among other things. It was seriously so nice out that day and we had a great time running around. At the elk exhibit, the bull was bugling a bit and standing really close to the fence, making Charlie a little bit nervous. He stood really close to me and didn't want to stay for very long at that exhibit - which was fine since things started to get a bit PG-13 with the elk anyway. :/

11-13-13

Packing our Operation Christmas Child boxes! I scored a bunch of little things at Michael's for $0.25 a piece and took Charlie with me to the Dollar Tree to finish shopping for what we needed. We had a fun evening together, just the two of us. I had a list of the things I wanted to put in the box, and he helped pick out the items. The goal was to start exposing him to the world of giving, and I think that he understood to the best of his 3.5-year-old ability. After we shopped, we went out for hot chocolate at Hastings. It was a nice mommy/son date!

The kids helped pack the boxes the next day. The amount of things that can fit into the box is surprising! I only had to take one thing out of the package to make it fit, but other than that, we judged pretty well while shopping. We did one box for a boy and one for a girl. I took the kids with to drop off the boxes at church and Charlie kept asking questions about where the boy and girl lived, how the boxes were going to get there, where they were going, if we were going there too, etc. He was definitely curious!

And just because Charlie was looking so sweet while sleeping the other night, I snapped this picture. It's rotated the correct way on my computer so I don't know what happened.

Not to be left out, here's big bro's little sis.

Happy Golden Birthday, Alanna Faye!!

11-2-13

Happy birthday sweet girl! Alanna opened one gift in the morning; a doll stroller from us. (See Charlie's hand on it? :)

Checking out her birthday cake!

Where's the little girls amidst all those gifts?!?

This little mommy got right to work with her new baby dolls and accessories.

Matt set this up and I think it turned out really well!

PRECIOUS!!

She's pointing to the candles.

Ice cream cone birthday cake and birthday cake flavored ice cream! Here's the difference between first and second birthdays: spoons and napkins. Or mackins, as Alanna calls them. :)

We had a fun day together just hanging out at home and playing. Alanna definitely understood that it was her birthday, and I think she felt extra special on her day. I hope so, anyway. I'm keeping the blog post brief (...or am I?!) since I'll put together a Shutterfly book all about her birthday with tons more pictures and all the details.

One thing I do want to make sure I remember is just how difficult of a day Charlie had. I totally did not see that coming! He got through it, but there were several rough spots throughout the day. It IS hard not being the center of attention, but that's life, right?