Saturday, April 24, 2010

Busy, busy!

Sorry about the break in blogging! Life got uncommonly busy and we're just starting to catch up.
Olivia and I have been busy helping out at a neighbor's home daycare. She is a surrogate mother, pregnant with twins. Her surrogate contract specified that she could hire someone to work her daycare if she went on bed rest. Which she did, 2 weeks ago! We spend around 30 hours a week at her house. She has 2 boys of her own (ages 4 and 2), plus 4 daycare kids that come at different times during the week. Most of the kids are 4 and 5, which is nice. They looooove Olivia and Avry. It's been good for Olivia, although she hasn't really been napping over there. She loves the dress up clothes at their house:

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She had the babies last night, so I'm not sure how much longer we'll be there. It's definitely been nice to have some extra money for all the traveling we're planning for this summer!

Our latest Craigslist find:

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She loves this trampoline! It's the first thing she runs to in the morning (note the morning hair and blankie):

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Nice way to burn some energy!



We've had a few days of cold weather and even some snow yesterday. Normal spring weather around here, but we would have loved to work outside today. Instead, we shopped for shoes for Michael and made a trip to Costco. We went to Murdoch's first to look for shoes. It's kind of like a feed and tool store wrapped up in one. You can get tools, boots, clothes, even animals. We were showing Olivia the baby "chicks," when a worker informed us they were actually baby turkeys. Whoops.

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Her language is exploding. She talks all the time. I don't always understand what she's saying, but you can now pick out words and get the general idea. Like this conversation we had in the car today:



Every time that Avry comes over or we go to the daycare, I have a little talk with her about being "nice" and "sharing." (We're still having major issues with sharing!) At least she's talking about it, even if she's not quite doing it yet!

Michael finished another project last week (he's on a roll!). He re tiled the guest bathroom! His first tile project. Of course, since the tile was new, we had to paint the walls and get a new light fixture (still waiting on that!). I have looked and looked, but this is the only "before" picture I can find. It's from our first showing of the house, before we bought it:

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EVERYTHING was white. Vanity, floor tile, and shower tile, all white. The walls were light green. The picture is pretty forgiving, the walls were pretty bright! Here's after:

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Nice! We need to add one more layer of paint and hang a light fixture before it's completely finished, but I love how it turned out. Up next: the deck! The dogs have pretty much destroyed it, plus we need to add a fence. Right now it's open right up to the pond. Not very kid friendly!

One more video- I was cooking dinner one night, when she saw the lemon juice. She pretty much demanded to try it!



Last, but not least, a very happy (belated!) 6th birthday wish to Maggie!

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We hope you had a great day!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Sesame Street Live!

Tickets to show: $90

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Cotton candy and assorted other snacks: $20

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Elmo balloon: $10 (yes, TEN dollars for a balloon. I'm a sucker.)

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Watching this reaction (sorry it's so dark- look for her white shirt):



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Priceless. ;)


And one more video, because it's funny.
Eating pudding:

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Easter 2010!

We've had a fun filled Easter week! Tuesday our Mommy's group had an Easter party. It was the warmest day this week- 78! Olivia was a little apprehensive of the games at the party:

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She was supposed to be hitting a plastic egg across the room with the spoon. She decided that wasn't very fun, ha!

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I attempted to dye eggs with her Thursday. She wasn't interested, until I pulled out the stickers. This girl loooooves some stickers! However, she decided putting them on the door was more fun:

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On Saturday, our community association had an Easter Egg hunt. Now, there are approximately 80,000 people that live in Highlands Ranch and at least half of them were at this Easter egg hunt. OK, that might be a stretch, but there were well over a thousand people. We live about 5 minutes away from the rec center where it was located. The signs for the hunt said it started at 10:00 am sharp, so we left at 9:30 am. We ended up parking over a mile from the hunt. By the time we parked, got her in the stroller and walked to the field, it was 10:00 sharp. As in, we were walking up when they said "Go!" and let the kids loose. We quickly got Olivia out of the stroller, walked to the start, and... all the eggs were gone. Seriously. I was amazed. A few people saw Olivia (and lots of other kids!) without eggs and gave her some from their kids baskets (empty). I didn't get many pictures there, obviously. At least it was a pretty day!

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Today, Olivia woke up to her Easter basket:

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2 chocolate bunnies, a bunny necklace, sidewalk chalk, and sunglasses. The Elmo is there, because we also got her tickets to Sesame Street Live next Sunday! She went after the chocolate first. That's my girl:

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We made it to church, but she would NOT stay in the nursery. Wouldn't even get down in the nursery, so she ended up with us in the service. She did pretty well, but halfway through the sermon she started talking, so I took her out. We ate lunch at church and then she got to participate in yet another egg hunt:

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She's just not into it. There were eggs EVERYWHERE and she walked right by them to look at a picture on the wall. She ended up with a few. Hopefully she'll be ready next year!

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She might not have been interested in looking for eggs, but she quickly figured out how to get them open! She ate so much candy today! A definite sugar high!

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That was our Easter! How was yours?