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.

Our December & Christmas

I told you I would add more about Christmas later, well later is finally upon us. This year Jeff and I made the decision to stay out here in Colorado and enjoy (for the first time in 6 Christmases) waking up in our house, just our family. Let me tell you, it was great! Just as we hoped it would be. The kids (and by kids, I mean all four of us) were allowed to hang out and play with all of our presents, we had no where to go, and nothing to do. In fact, we stayed in our new Christmas Jammies all day long! A really nice, family centered Christmas celebration. In the spirit of just enjoying Christmas morning we didn't take a whole ton of pictures and rather just lived in the moment, so for this post, I decided to tell you all about the month of December in the Roberson house, and not just Christmas Day.

This is Atlas giving you an editorial picture of how drastically his life has changed in the past 6 years (most of the time he doesn't look so much like we need to talk him down off the ledge, this is just a moment for him). Where once he had blankets and beds to cuddle up on (and hump) anytime he wanted, he now must find room on the floor amongst the crayons, sippy cups and kids' blankets.

My "helpful" cookie helpers. We needed to make a batch of cookies for Jeff's Det's Kids Holiday party and they wanted so bad to be my sous chefs (or whatever you call an assistant pastry chef). The looks on their faces will give you exactly an idea of how helpful they were. While the recipe does not call for any nuts, you can see we had plenty on hand.

In case all of the blue stuff, and dinosaur pajamas in this picture weren't enough, Kale proves to us daily that he is made of slugs, snails and puppy dog tails every time he looks out his front window. He is beyond excited to show us all of the bulldozers, front loaders, concrete trucks and other construction equipment that visits our ever growing block. It'll be a sad day (very soon) for him when all of this stops, we only have a couple of houses with exterior finishing left, but hopefully spring and warmer weather comes soon so we can walk around and see what's happening on other blocks.

In the middle of the month our little man had a bout of the sicks and was up at 10:00 one night with bowls. Kids or not, I don't have to tell you what that means. He and Jeff each had their "Ats" and were bonking each other in their makeshift helmets, part delirium, part the fact that he just likes to head butt things, this was great entertainment for our sick little man.

This year I thought I would go cookie crazy and made batches of Chocolate Crinkles (that came out flat... WTF?!), Gingerbread (yeah, when the recipe calls for you to grease the cookie sheet, you should listen, Betty Crocker knows her shit), and a quadruple batch of sugar cookies. These are my ever present cookie helpers and also my dual 30 pound weights. This right here is why I work out - this is what I have to keep up with.

I got about 2 cans of frosting into the batch and said SCREW IT! We ate what we had frosted and I didn't pass a one out and I don't feel a bit guilty about it (except when I look in my dining room and see the 4 gallon size bags of unfrosted cookies... I bought 3 cans of frosting today at the commissary). Anyway, Haley came in to help me sprinkle, this year was a little rough, she had a difficult time keeping the top of the sprinkles off of the frosting, but by next year, she will be good to go and will officially have her position as the 5th generation of sugar cookie makers.

Haley in her Christmas Jammies right before bed in front of the tree. Kale was a lot tired by this time so we didn't get him in front of the tree (where he wasn't melting down).

Here is Kale's picture in front of the tree, no more presents left and you can't really tell that the lights are on, but he is happy and has his "MoMo" (his name for anyone that resides on Sesame Street).

Daddy was helping us make Kale smile for his pictures and decided to jump in the picture with him, which led Atlas to jump in too. My favorite part of this picture is Atlas' tongue about to clean Kale's face in one fail swoop.

Haley was beyond excited to see that Santa had come through with her Strawberry Shortcake Berry Cafe, he also left her a letter in return, ate the cookies, drank the milk, and fed the carrots to the reindeer (BTW, she was VERY perturbed that they were messy reindeer and spit a bunch of their carrots all over the snow in the front yard... I mean really!).

The Dude-a-Man in his Cozy Coupe, a.k.a The Drive In Movie Theatre, and the one thing he doesn't HAVE to share with his sister (which makes her want in it even more). He LOVES it, and lives in it.

Enjoying driving his cozy coupe. For the most part he is a pretty happy driver.

But sometimes he gets cut off, and he gets a little angry. I don't know if an 18 month old could utter the letters W-T-F, but the picture definitely says that.

So that's our past month and closes out our 2009. January and 2010 has already been an adventure (at least for Jeff) and maybe (for once), I'll get him to post some stuff on this blog and tell you about his trip to Tokyo, Japan. A belated Merry Christmas to you and we hope 2010 is good to you!

Getting ready for Santa and his Reindeer

I know it's been a while since we posted stuff, but what can I say... The holidays are hectic. We managed to slow down just a little bit (and by we, I mean Jeff and I, not so much Haley), and prepare for Santa and his reindeer's arrival. Here's a video of Haley explaining it.

Kale's Evaluation

It's 10 degrees outside (which is a 25 degree increase since about 7:30 this morning), there's snow on the ground, the sun is shining and chicken and dumplings are simmering on the stove. What a beautiful day for an intervention. Of the developmental kind that is.

Today we had a team of 4 women come out and assess Kale for early intervention services. A nurse, a speech pathologist, a developmental expert and a case manager all came by to watch our Dude play. As I suspected with 4 brand new people in the house, he didn't utter a single word (except for his favorite UH! sound), and save for once when he told the nurse MINE! when she asked for the toy he had (a developmentally appropriate response, especially for a kid with a 3 year old sister). They said he was right on target for all of his skill and abilities for a typical 18 month old except for that darn speech thing. Apparently a kid his age should have roughly 15 words and is beginning to combine them into two word sentences - we don't have 2 words that would go together to form any kind of coherent sentence, unless you consider MINE! HO! HO! (Kale for "My Santa toy).

I'm pleased with the outcome of this because it looks like we will be having a specialist visit us at our house twice a month (possibly until he's 3) to work on his vocabulary and speech development, particularly his "expressive" words. I know that it won't take him long to catch right on to this speech thing and before we know it we'll be telling him to hush too.

The Dude-a-Man get's down

So the last post was all about Haley, in fairness, it was time to put one up of just Kale. Lately the kid has really wanted to dance, and when that urge comes up, it's hard to suppress it. It's okay buddy, we understand. So, here is some choppy video of that. Also, every time we have a camera out, he thinks it's time to pose so you'll see some video of him "Cheesing" - there's no doubt, it's the cutest thing on the face of the planet. Like I said, it's choppy, but, I'm sparing you some Dramamine needing footage, some screaming children, and other kinds of useless-cute only to parents-debauchery, you should thank me. Enjoy!

Cross that off the bucket list... oh, wait!

One thing that I've always wanted to do was run a triathlon, now, we're not talking anything about the Iron Man, that's just madness, who would really want to swim 2 miles, then bike over 100, and then, just for good measure, run a marathon! Really! But the sprint ones are always something I thought I could do if I could only get into running. Well about 4 months ago I ran a whole mile for the first time since, oh, about 5th grade. Game on! This month our gym hosted an indoor one and I finally had a goal. I managed to pick myself up a training buddy, Ashley (a friend that we knew when we lived in California and happened to run into again out here, who, coincidentally has run a few of these before), and off we went. For about two months I hit the gym daily, doing rotations of biking and running, swimming, and Pilates (because I want my stomach to be flat one day).

Saturday was the big day and I had big goals! The swimming was only 200 yards so I was hoping for a 2:15, then there was a 10 mile bike that I wanted to do in 30 minutes and the 3 mile run that I wanted to do in 35 minutes, I also had goals of placing in swimming and running the entire run (walking is for wusses).

I am proud to say that, while I didn't make my goal time (as you can see in the picture above I did a 2:45), I did win the women's swimming by 26 seconds... Ya'll TWENTY SIX SECONDS!! That's no small amount of time when you're talking about just 200 yards. It's nice to know that competitive swimmer is still in there somewhere. After swimming we hit the bikes for 10 miles. I had a good lead in my heat but my transition was less than stellar (it's no small feat to put workout pants on wet legs, plus get your shoes and socks on.

Again, I missed my time goal on the bike, and did about 32 minutes for 10 miles, not fantastic but a really good starting point. And now I know where my weakness is and am implementing a few spin classes into my routine. Live and learn right?

After the bikes it was on to the treadmill for 3 miles. I ran a pretty steady 5.5 mph and finished it in 32 minutes, three minutes under my goal time, and I'm proud that I was able run the entire three miles.
Ashley, my training buddy and I with the final times. I pulled in a total of 1:15, Ashley was 1:13 and we took 11th and 9th place. Not too shabby!

Now, onto the next goal. For sure (as of right now) the Tri for the Cure August 1st (a 750 swim, 13 mile bike and a 5k), and I'm also hoping to be able to hit the Seattle Rock n Roll half marathon. Oh, and the Briargate Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning, and by next summer we will have shirted in the Jack Quinn's Running Club, we only have 2 more left till we meet the requisite 10 5ks. GO ME!!