A True Colorado Experience

Ohhh my gosh... finally! I've posted the pictures of our trip up to Farish. What a hidden gem! We drove about 45 minutes from our house up into the mountains (for those of you who are familiar with the area, or want to google map it, it's not too far from Woodland Park - the town, not the zoo you Seattlites). It's a resort type of place that has meeting facilities, and also overnight camping and cabins and is available only to military. We went up with our good friends and neighbors Spiro, Andrea and Yanni (who is about 5 months younger than Haley).

Jeff has gone up there to play since he was a cadet, and was reintroduced to it only a couple days before we went up, by a buddy who took him ice fishing for the first time ever. Yep, he's picked up another hobby (don't tell my garage or basement, I don't know if they can take another one).

We checked in at the front office and spent $15 to rent a pair of skates each for Jeff, Haley and me, and also rented a purple toboggan. Kale was left out of the skates because he's only been walking for a bit more than 4 months, and snow boots are tough enough for the guy. Haley played with her skates for about 15 minutes and decided it just wasn't for her yet (never mind the smallest pair they had was about 4 sizes too big for her). The best part of the day was that we were the only ones on the ice... that meant lots of "rule" breaking and fun for the kids. We brought the toboggan out and hauled the kids all over the place.

Haley had taken her turns being swung around on the toboggan, and decided she wanted to take a turn pulling Mommy (Daddy helped push).

Daddy pulled both of us on the saucer around the ice, but we took a self portrait before we got going.

Spiro wasn't a fan of the skates but he was a great train engine. He's got a hold of Yanni's sled, who's holding Haley's sled, who's holding Kale's sled. I think the kids could have done this all afternoon.

Like I said earlier, he's only been walking around for about 4 months and that ice stuff can be kind of tricky. This was about as high up as he could get himself without help. But how cute is that hat?

Never one to miss a photo opportunity, this is likely a sneak peek at our 2010 Christmas card. This place is so gorgeous and quintessential Colorado we just couldn't resist a family photo (especially when there's another family there to take the picture for us).

We returned the favor, and by favor I mean my daughter was standing behind the camera making faces at Yanni to make him smile, he was more than happy to make them back at her... Duh! Andrea said that she didn't even know Yanni was making that face, she was laughing at Haley. We took a bunch of pictures of their family, but this one was my favorite!

This is a picture looking down through the ice. The little white circles are bubbles that got stuck on their way up. The cracks are everywhere, but not in a dangerous kind of way, moreover they just showed us how deeply frozen the ice was. Jeff said that where he was fishing (only about 100 yards from where we were skating) it was about 24" deep. It was truly beautiful. They had swept and slightly groomed a circle for skating and an oval for broom ball. We mostly hung out on the oval but the family pictures were taken on the circle.

After we were done ice skating we snuck into the cabin kitchen and used their stove to heat up some soup and chili, fed the kids their PBJs. It was great, they had a bunch of large tables that were able to seat all 7 of us. When we were done there, it was on to the sledding hills. They have 3 of them up there - 2 for sleds, and 1 for tubes. We tried the sledding hill first but after Kale and I rearranged a hay bale going way too fast, we moved to halfway down the tube hill. It was perfect for the kids. We also took the dogs up with us and they had a total ball running all over the place up there. I think they forgot that they don't usually run that much in a normal day. They were spent and slept the whole way down.

Jeff was getting ready to do a run down the hill and the kids were hanging out on a hay bale. Haley had to give Daddy a kiss before he went.

My favorite picture of the day and it's not even my kid! Yanni was having so much fun sledding down the hill and I was at the bottom to take pictures of the smiles when they landed.

Kale was super duper tired at the end of the day and wanted to hang out with Daddy. Daddy was happy to give him tickles that perked him right up.

We thought I could get the same reaction out of him and this is the best I could do without a binky in his mouth.

In the spirit of the Vancouver Olympics: Someday when Haley is competing in the 2022 Winter Olympics as a figure skater, this is going to be one of those pictures they show before she skates - her first time ever on the ice. But we have a lot of work to get to that spot. Doesn't she look like she knows what she's doing though?

On our way home, Kale never even made it to pavement before he fell asleep, and Haley wasn't long after. They woke up once we got home, so we popped in a movie, found a "gaga" and "gagi" and cuddled them up on the couch.

It was a really great family day and one I hope we're able to repeat soon.

Kale's first major art project...

So I have to get a confessional out of the way right now... I owe you all a post about the great trip we made up into the mountains, but that's going to be a lot of picture uploading and I'm lazy. I'll get there I promise, the pictures from that trip are so cute, you're going to D-I-E.

Anyway, onto the topic of this post. Haley has always been my artsy fartsy kid, she loves to color, paint, sculpt, you name it. Kale likes to eat art supplies and just hasn't shown much interest, beyond what it tastes like and what it would look like if he threw his medium across the room (he likes to throw things). Chalk it up to being a boy, or just not that in to art, whatever - your reasoning is as good as mine.

Well, all that stood true till this afternoon. I thought he was peacefully out in the playroom while Haley and I were in the family room working on her letters. I was wrong. He was in his favorite forbidden place... the office. He found a yellow marker and went to town! He made up for 19 months of disinterest in art in about 20 minutes... yeah I would have thought it would have taken longer than that either (goes to show how much I learn everyday in this mom job). Being his first major art project, and that I couldn't keep it forever and ever, I took a picture... actually I took three because that's how many I needed to capture the whole thing. Here it is for you to enjoy too:

Maybe paper just wasn't the material he wanted to work with... maybe he wants to be a muralist. Maybe I should paint the office in that chalkboard paint. I give up.