Colorado River

My sister Kara came to visit a few weeks ago. The Colorado River runs right through town, so we drove the 10 minutes it takes to get there and had a great time playing in the water, sand, and mud.
There were a lot of fish jumping in the water. Thomas kept missing them, so he and Jackson sat down and watched until he finally saw one.

Nicholas is doing the actions to "The Wheels on the Bus" go open and shut...his favorite part!

We saw a few little toads; Kara caught this one and let the boys touch and hold it. They LOVED it!

Say Cheese!

Jackson and Thomas were the first ones awake a while ago and this is the result of their time together.

I hope these made you smile! They sure make me smile every time I look at them!

Playing in the Rain

Thomas and Nicholas LOVE umbrellas. They get them out of the coat closet constantly and beg me to open them. I always say that I can't open them unless it's raining outside. Yesterday it started raining and they both ran for the umbrellas. They were so excited to be able to open them. It rains fairly often here, but it is usually at night. These are a few pictures of them playing in the rain.

June

I just finished my pictures from June, so here are a few fun things we did that month.

We went to Fillmore to visit my family. There is a skate park that the boys love to play on. We brought cars for them to race down the jumps. They had a blast.




Jackson and Thomas
















My mom (Isn't she beautiful?!) and Nicholas.











Later that month we took a trip to a lake (I forgot the name) with Jackson's parents and his brother and his wife and 4 kids. Jackson's dad brought the sail boats. He actually made the one with the white sail. He is amazing! We all had a great time taking turns sailing around the lake.





Thomas and Bubba (Jackson's dad)










Jackson




Nicholas on the shore

A Few New Pics

Nicholas climed up in a little cave while we were hiking the other day. He looked cute (of course) so we took out the camera and as soon as we did he started saying cheese, can you tell?

Jackson passed his Real Estate exam in Colorado and has started working with a really fantastic broker, who's getting older and wants to pass all of his knowlege on to someone. He wants an apprentice he can pass the business on to. Over the past 3 months he and Jackson have been working together to see if it would work out for us. So far so good. If you hear of any businesses who want to relocate or expand into Grand Junction you know who to call. He's still taking loans on the side when he can get them.

The nesting urge is growing as we get closer to the due date. Our bright white living room is now a cozy cream, well almost. Thomas and Nicholas have chosen to sleep on the floor until we get them a bunk bed to share after Estella arrives. I'm reading a somewhat psycho book right now called Demons. Dostoyevski, the author, is facinated with the psychological refelctions of his characters, but I don't really get to know the characters as much as I would like to.

I'm Behind

I am a bit behind with my pictures. These are from March. There is a little alley behind our house that leads to a big, steep hill. We decided to have a little adventure and see what was down the hill. There must have been a fire right there within the last few years, because all of the trees were black and if you touched them, they left black charcoal marks on you. It was really neat, though, because it was really easy to walk around because the fire had burned all the short weeds and bushes. We had a lot of fun down there until the weeds started growing tall. Thomas had to go to the bathroom really bad just when we got there, so I let him pee on a tree. Nicholas thought that was very interesting. It was so cute that I couldn't resist a picture!

Recent Happenings

Wow...we have had a bit of a crazy time lately. Just when you think you have everything figured out, everything changes and you are back at square one. We have had job changes, career searching, insurance issues, deployment threats, and rental house theft all in the past few weeks. Things are beginning to work out and I am very grateful for that. Here are a few recent pictures. These first few are of a lightning storm we had here a few days ago. That is our house with the lightning behind it.















Here are a few that same night as the lightning of Thomas on his trike and Jackson and Nicholas.

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This is one of my favorite Thomas faces with the raised eyebrows. He does it often














A neighbor of my sister in law was throwing away a perfectly great swing set. When she saw it she asked them to hold on to it until we could come get it. They did and here it is in our yard. We LOVE it! The boys think it is so great.

Nicholas climbing up the slide.
Thomas's favorite swing is that two person one he is on in this picture. He can really get it moving!

We are loving it here in our new house and neighborhood. I am starting to feel a bit better now (pregnancy wise), and hope it continues to get better and better!

Easter Week

I am still getting used to this...so the pictures went on here a bit differently than I imagined. The first is of us on Easter Sunday. The second two are of a hike we took. Jackson's sister, Julia and her two boys were here in Grand Junction for the week before Easter. We decided to go on a hike, so me, my two boys...Julia, her two boys...and Amber (my sister in law) and her one boy and two girls packed a picnic and set off. It was such a blast. We did make one mistake, though. We hiked too far before we stopped and ate lunch. By the time we started heading back, all the kids (and the moms) were tired! There were three of us moms and there were 4 children that needed to be carried most of the time. By the end we were proceeding like this. Julia and I would get as many kids as far as we could and then one of us would stop and rest with them while the other went back to help Amber carry the other two. It was long and tiring, but well worth it and we will know better for next time. The favorite thing for the boys to do was to send "boats" (little sticks or leaves) down the stream. The also LOVED climbing up the big dirt hill as far as they could and then sliding back down. Everyone was full of dirt when we were done. It was great!

Zoo Fall

We had our first head wound this weekend. We are lucky it wasn't very bad. Jackson needed to tile the bathroom floor Saturday, so I took both boys and met some friends at the zoo. Thomas was riding in a wagon with two other two year old boys. Thomas was sitting in the very back of the wagon. The dad that was pulling the wagon said, "Everyone sit down." I'm not exactly sure what Thomas was doing...standing or squatting...but he definitely wasn't sitting because as soon as the dad started pulling Thomas fell backwards out of the wagon and landed on his back and head on the rocky pavement. I turned around just in time to see him laying on the ground, so I quickly passed Nicholas off to someone and picked Thomas up. His head started bleeding a bit, so I pressed my hand on it and found a bench to sit on. People started bringing me all sorts of things...rags, ice, boxes of raisins and crackers. It was great. I held a rag on there tight for a while until the bleeding slowed down enough for me to look at it. It wasn't bad at all and Thomas wanted to get down and run around, so we just stayed at the zoo for a while longer. It was pretty scary for me to see blood coming out of Thomas's head. I don't want to see that again, but have a feeling I just might have to sometime.

Nicholas has been a fuzzy monster the past four days ever since his 6 month shots. Shots didn't even phase Thomas, but they really do a number on Nicholas. He has had a fever and has been acting like he doesn't feel well at all. He wants to be held and walked around constantly...and still isn't very happy. I am really missing my sweet, smiley, happy Nicholas. I can't wait for him to recover.

Beginning

I decided to try out blogging. I was a bit sceptical of it until I read an article in a magazine about how it really helped a mom keep a record of their family. I have a journal...well several actually. One for me, one for Thomas, and one for Nicholas. It seems that I have a really hard time getting motivated to sit down, pull out a pen, and write in them. I have a much easier time sitting down and the computer and typing...maybe because I am on the computer at least once a day anyway. Another reason I wanted to try it is that we have a lot of funny things that happen around here and I want to tell everyone about them. The problem is time. I don't have enough time to write everyone an individual email, so maybe I can just send everyone a link to this and they can read it if they want...and not if they don't. We'll see how it goes.