Back to school... for everyone

This was a month of first days of schools!  Kara had her first day of first grade on Thursday, August 18th.  Kara is really excited to start another year of school.  Emily had her first first day of school this year on August 31st.  She is starting preschool at the Rec Center, which meets for a few hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.  That means...  Mom actually has time to herself on a regular basis!  So exciting!

Mimi came out to visit us for a couple of weeks this month.  We got to hit all kinds of sites around the city.  We hit the Celestial Seasonings factory, Denver Museum, which was awesome as always, the Hammond Candy factory, the Denver Aquarium, and afternoon tea at the Huckleberry.  It was quite the whirlwind visit!

Kara started playing soccer with some of her friends from teeball.  So far she's having fun, but it's mostly just a bunch of the girls running around after the ball.  But she's having a blast!  Kara also lost her 3rd tooth.  We think she looks pretty cool with the gap in her smile.  :-)

Link to pictures

July 2016

The summer is just flying by.  It seems like every weekend is jammed packed with activities, and we still aren't getting everything done that we want to.

The first weekend of July, we headed down to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to check it out.  While we were there, we got an annual membership to the museum. If anyone wants to meet up there, let us know!  Both girls had fun, though Emily was ready to go back home well before Kara had seen everything she wanted to see.

Kara stayed up for the first time this year to see the fireworks on the 4th (they start around 9 pm).  Emily went down at her usual bedtime (and thankfully stayed asleep through the fireworks), but Kara stayed up and watched Zootopia with Mom and Dad.  There's a local fireworks show that we can see from our backyard.  After the movie, we got ourselves set up in the backyard and enjoyed the fireworks show.  We eventually got Kara down to sleep around 9:30.  We paid for it the next day, though, as Kara was quite grumpy and moody since she didn't get enough sleep.  Maybe someday we'll be able to do exciting things with the kids without worrying too much about sleep.

We went up to Breckenridge for several days later in the month (separate blog post to follow soon).  We attempted to do our annual backyard camp-out the weekend after we got back, even getting as far as getting the tent set up, but Kara had a bit of a melt-down as were getting everything ready.  It was probably too much excitement.  We'll try again in August.

Kid quotes:

- After dinner one night, Emily chose jelly beans as her dessert (the girls get a small dessert if they eat all their dinner). Mom said Emily could have 3 jelly beans since she's 3 years old.  Emily grabbed 4 jelly beans, and Dad pointed out that Emily was only supposed to get 3.  Looking very innocent, she quickly popped one into her mouth and showed dad the 3 left saying, "look there are 3."

- After our 4th of July grill out, Mom said, "Wow, I am stuffed!"  Emily promptly replied, "We don't having stuffing, we have bones inside!"

- We've been having some minor issues with rabbits eating things in our garden.  Emily noted, "Something's eating our plants like bunnies... or sharks..."

Link to pictures

Breckenridge 2016

Breckenridge was a bit of a blur this year.  We went up the first part of the week this year, instead of the last half of the week like we usually do.  Our plan was to head up Sunday after Emily's nap.  Unfortunately, Emily decided that she wasn't going to take a nap, so at 3, we just packed everyone in the car and headed up.  We hoped that maybe she would sleep in the car (she didn't) or at least that she'd be tired and sleep when we got there (that didn't happen either).  After we got there and got unpacked, we grabbed dinner at the hotel restaurant and then tried to get the girls to wind down for bed.  After a quick bath, we tried to put the girls down together in the same room (gotta give it a try).  Kara was actually pretty good and tried to go to sleep.  Emily, however, kept popping out of bed to check on Kara and everyone else in the other room.  Around 9, we gave up on the experiment and moved Emily to the other room.  Emily just didn't sleep well at all that night, tossing and turning, and waking up hysterical in the middle of the night.  So, our trip didn't get off to the best start...

Sleeping, in general, was a bit of a struggle the whole time we were up there.  Mom swears that the people in the unit above us were doing construction with power tools and work boots every night until 11 pm.  Luckily, Kara and Emily generally slept pretty well after the first night.  Mom and Dad, however, had trouble sleeping every night.

We didn't get a lot of hiking in this year.  We went on a short hike near the lodge the first morning, but that was about it.  Kara was really enthusiastic about hiking, and Emily was a trooper.  We hiked until Emily said she wanted us to carry her, and then we just headed back.  We did get a lot of pool time in.  We went just about every morning.  Kara had a great time practicing her swimming skills.  Emily mostly enjoyed just being in the water and occasionally jumping in to Dad.

We also made our annual trip up to the top of Peak 8 to check out the Breckenridge Summer Fun Park, which was a bit of a bust.  We bought the pass for Kara this year, so she could do just about anything.  She did the bungee bounce and the alpine slide (with Dad).  We also bought a limited pass for Emily.  She got up on the trampoline for the bungee bounce, but decided she just wasn't into it and backed out once they tried to put on the harness.  Unfortunately, the roller coaster they have up there and the zipline were both down, so all the kids funneled into the kids ropes course.  After waiting in line for over an hour, Kara got to go down the kids zipline (which was about a 15 second ride).  By that time, it was almost noon, and Emily was done.  We just headed back to the hotel and took it easy for the afternoon.

We ended up cutting the trip a little short.  We had planned on staying Wednesday night and heading back Thursday morning, but since Mom and Dad were sleeping so poorly, we just headed back home Wednesday afternoon.  The drive back was uneventful.

Link to pictures

Goodbye to Great Grandma S and Great Grandpa H

It has been a pretty rough month for Mom and Dad's grandparents.  Dad lost his grandmother, Great Grandma S, who died on June 18th.  She had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years, and couldn't put two words together towards the end.  While she was still mentally with us, she adored Kara.  We had given her pictures of Kara as a baby that consistently got lost (which was one of our first clues her mental facilities were degrading), though she used to tell us that someone was stealing the pictures because Kara was just so cute!

Mom lost her Grandpa, Great Grandpa H, who was also suffering the effects of Alzheimer's.  He broke his hip in June and never quite recovered.  He suffered a stroke on the morning of July 10th and died later that day.  He only met Kara and Emily a couple of times, but he thought they were both pretty awesome.

Link to pictures of Grandma S



Link to pictures of Grandpa H

Rough Start to Summer

We've had a pretty rough start to summer.  Kara had a make up T-ball game the first week of June.  About halfway through the game, she started complaining to Dad that she was feeling hot.  He thought she was just a little warm because it was hot outside and told her to drink more water.  When we got home, she still said she was hot.  Come to find out, she had a fever of 103°F!  She was supposed to have another game that Saturday, but her fever was just not going down and she developed a pretty rough cough.  We took her to the doctor's office after about 5 days of 100+°F fever where she was finally diagnosed with pneumonia.  Once we got Kara on some medication, her fever went down after a couple of days, and she started feeling much better.  She was supposed to go to music camp the second week of June.  Camp Oonie Koonie Cha is a music-centric camp for kids.  The theme this year was the Old West, and Kara really didn't want to miss it!  Fortunately, they had some openings the next week, and Kara was able to change weeks when she felt better.  Kara had a great time at the camp and intends to do it again next year (the camp next year will be jungle-themed).  She also attended a rock-themed birthday later in the month where the kids could get on stage and sing Karaoke.  Kara had a blast getting up and singing songs (there were a lot of Taylor Swift songs and other singers Dad has never heard of).

Emily's also had a rough start to summer.  Early in June, Dad took Mom out for a nice dinner for her birthday and left the girls with Grandma and Grandpa S for the evening.  Soon after Grandma had put her down, Emily got her foot stuck in one of the slats on her toddler bed.  Apparently, she got it really stuck, and it took quite the effort for Grandpa to get her foot out.  After that, she refused to get back into her toddler bed, so Dad had to take the bed apart that evening, and Emily just slept on the mattress.  Compounding Emily's issues with her bed, she simply hasn't been sleeping very well recently (even before the bed incident).  At least twice a week, she'll wake up crying hysterically in the middle of the night, and no matter what Mom and Dad do, she won't calm down.  We're thinking this is just a phase, but we'll see...

The weather, in general, was quite warm for the month of June, but not too hot.  We got out the sprinklers a couple of times.  By the end of the month, things were looking up, so let's hope we continue to have a fun summer into July!

Link to pictures