We're back, sorry for the delay.

Hey there everyone

So it's been almost a month, but we have good excuses, really. We just got back from a trip to Thailand that ended up being a little longer than expected. They had a coup, closed the airport, and rather stranded us there - though that sounds a lot more dramatic than it really was for us- we basically just spent an extra week on the beach.

Grandpa and Farmor were there of course, and Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Jacob and Leo came too. So it was a fantastic chance to spend 2+ weeks with the family. Thais really love children, and particularly little blond kids. Travelling with Daniel and Rachel was like being part of some rock star entourage - heads turned everywhere and going through the airports, random people came up to say hi, rub their heads, etc.

We'll let the pictures tell the story, but have a few anecdotes of note. By swimming every single day, Daniel regained his confidence and skill in the water, and by the end of it said "I learned my swim lessons!". We also had the following exchange for the ages:

How old is Jacob?

Jacob is 9

How old is Leo?

Leo is 4-and-a-half

(pause) ...When am I going to turn Brown?

Rachel has really matured quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, her vocabulary is huge (though sometimes only understood by us), but her most memorable development is that if she wants something, she sings it to the tune of Queen's "We will rock you".

We will, we will

Eat din-ner!

We will, we will

Take a Nap!

We will, we will

Go Simming! (swimming)

Flights were long, but the kids were superstars, and once you're in Phuket, life is pretty mellow, so we're nice and relaxed. Flashback 2 years in the blog if you want to see what it was like with just Daniel. Breakfast (Watermelon Juice! Chocolate Milk!) fed into swimming (beach!), lunch, nap, cocktail hour and dinner on the beach. Repeat as needed.

Sorry for the lack of updates here - it just didn't seem all that wise to post something that effectively said: "we're not home". If we don't get around to posting before the holidays, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Love, A.D.R.E

He's an animal...

Friends

November is just flying by, and it's hard to believe the year is almost over. This has been a fun month for Daniel and Rachel, though there haven't been a lot of "gosh, we have to capture that for the blog" moments.

Last weekend, we took the kids to see Madagascar 2 at the local theater, followed by dinner. It was Rachel's first time at a movie theater, and she did pretty well. Daniel was totally into the story, and has been pretending to be Alakay the lion ever since. We thought he said that girls have no brains and he was very insistent on this fact, only to discover that he meant that girls have no manes, which was in fact an accurate observation lion-wise.

Daniel also revealed that he's been cataloging what he's not allowed to do yet, with the following (verbatim) sentence at dinner: "Someday, when I'm a grown-up, I can drink Pepsi, and Diet Coke, and Wine, and Coffee and Beer"

Rachel's still our little turbo-toddler. Anything Daniel can do, she wants to do too. She has 2 teeth coming in up front, and those have been bothering her enough to make our otherwise unflappable little girl cranky. She's gotten a lot more verbal lately, and will let you know what she wants by forcefully saying "yes!" or "no!" when you ask her a question of what she wants.

There are early signs that Rachel has inherited some of Anida's, desire for order - when playing mr. potato head, she wanted to build one head with nothing but eyes, and one with nothing but ears....



During the summer, we did a "family walk" around the neighborhood after dinner most evenings, and with the darker fall season, that turned into "dark family walk" where Daniel and Rachel get to carry flashlights. Good fun. There's also been several trips to the local rec center for Simming! Wawa! (Swimming in the water)

At Daniel's playschool, each kid has a "Beary special day" where their parents can come to the classroom, and they get to present a poster of things they like, and their favorite book. Then they get to take the classroom Bear home for a week. Daniel's was 2 weeks ago, and for his poster he chose pictures of shrimp (his favorite food), "bob the builder" and "diego" (his favorite characters), blue (his favorite color) and various pictures of us. He uses the phrase "that's my favorite... " a lot, which it probably is at the time, but the favorites have a tendency to change a lot.

He also got his report card, and as before, he's doing great. No behavior or developmental issues to note. He's apparently little mr. social at daycare, making friends with everyone. When we all went to his Beary special day, he was showing off Rachel to his friends - pulling her from one to the next "Owen, this is my sister", "Samantha, look it's my sister" - he was very proud of her, and it was fun to see. (this is notalways the case).

And just in time for winter, Daniel's finally figured out how to use his Razr scooter. Oh well, spring will be here soon enough.

And that's about it for now. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving everyone. We'll be back with lots of updates soon.

Love. A.D.R.E

Milestones all over the place

Friends

We have some milestones to mark:

Daniel turned 3-and-a-half on the 29th

Rachel turned 21 months on the 30th

As of today, Daniel is exactly twice as old as Rachel.

We're biased, of course, but we think we have the perfect kids. Rachel has always wanted to play with Daniel, of course, but it's just in the last couple of weeks that Daniel has started seeing that he can have fun playing with her too. So now they chase each other around the house, and Daniel has taught her such fine games as "Scream Go-away at the cat" and "Pretend to use a chainsaw on Elmo". She's just happy that her brother likes to play with her.

Daniel is very proud to be three-and-a-half and not just three anymore. He's not tall or large for his age, but he's been on a little bit of a growth spurt lately as evidenced by all of the clothes that don't fit anymore. He's little-Mr-Social at playschool, and even though we've been bragging about his verbal skills for years now, there have been some really amusing exchanges recently.

Daniel does not like nap time or bedtime, and plays all sorts of games to delay the process as much as possible. He'll take multiple trips to the restroom, insist that he can't tuck himself, ask for more books, suddenly discover that he's hungry, or scared of an airplane noise or that it's too dark in his room, or that he has "just one more thing to tell you" or that his water bottle needs to be topped off - etc, etc. This can go on for a while. A few evenings ago, it had been quiet for a while upstairs, but his light was on. On peeking in, Anida found him in bed surrounded by a pile of books - with a big grin he said "I'm a book monster" and kept reading.

For most spoken words, he can tell you what letter it starts with (c and k get confused) and if you ask him "can you name some words that start with letter..." he has lots of examples.

Rachel refers to herself as "Me!", and so when she wants an adult to do something, it's "Me Go!", or "Me Carry", or "Read me!". It's only in the last couple of days that she'll say "Atchel" for her name, and that is far from consistent now.

She'll count to two, correctly identifying if something is in a quantity of one or two. Those gaps in her teeth are finally filling in on the bottom, and she'll walk up and down stairs without holding onto anything.

Ownership concepts have come in, in that she'll say "Mine!" of things she has or wants (Mine Doll!) or doesn't want Daniel to take away. Rachel is the mellowest, most easy-going kid you've ever met - nothing phases or upsets her - until it reaches a threshold, and then it's like a switch was flipped. So her moods are binary - there's no middle ground, but mostly she's very easy.

This evening, while trick-or-treating, she started saying "Thank you much" rather than just "thank you". Everyone thought that was adorable.

And that'll have to do for a 21-month and 42-month update.

Love. ADRE

Haloween 2008 - Dora and Diego

Friends

There will be several postings today to catch up with what happened in October. Daniel and Rachel are going out as "Dora the Explorer" and "Diego" today. When Daniel first heard that Haloween was coming around, he was excited to be a pirate again. However, when it was explained to him that he didn't have to be the same thing every year, he wanted to be Diego.

Rachel didn't voice an opinion this time, so she became Dora. We don't actually have the Nick Jr. channel at home, so their only exposure to Dora and Diego comes from library books and videos. Still, they're excited. They'll be at Eric's office this afternoon, and then go around to the neighbors this evening.

More updates below.

Love, A.D.R.E

October Update

Friends

With October all but over, it's time to look back at a fun month where we did a lot, but blogged about very little of it.

We briefly mentioned the medieval-themed town fall festival in a previous posting, and here are our brave knights who just completed their training. The swords have been very popular toys ever since and they're nice because you really can't hurt anyone with them.

Then it was Beer Festival time, and the house was a zoo for 4 days. We had 14 people staying here, and both Daniel and Rachel had a blast playing with Zoe and Sean for the weekend. The kids played in the leaves, and ran around the house. Daniel was impressed that Zoe knows how to take pictures herself, and they had fun making pancakes together.

With 10 adults and 4 kids, the little ones got a lot of attention, and really enjoyed that - and the adults had a great time too -> probably the most successful and fun GABF weekend yet.

Immediately following the GABF festivities, we were all going to go on a trip with the Pastas up and around Wyoming, but Eric had to travel for work. So he didn't go, but everyone else did. Rather than try to tell the story again, I'll just cross-link you to the Pasta blog.

Pastas in Colorado Part 1

Beerfest and Friends in Colorado

Kids take a serious bubble bath

Wyoming Trip Part 1

Wyoming Trip Part 2

Wrapping up the trip

The family was back in Colorado by the following Friday, and then Miss Monica came back through Denver. So everyone was busy as bees for the first week that Eric was gone. The second week was a little calmer, and everyone was happy when he got back.

Last week, we drove up north to Miller family farm with the Backers. We'd never been up there before, but they have a lot of different activities for everyone. There were dirt-bike tractor races, a corn maze, the entire cast from the "cars" movie made out of old cars and more. As part of admission, you get to go on a hayride through the fields, stopping to pick vegetables that you can bring home. Rachel was entranced with this carrot, and we ended up with 20-30 lbs of carrots, beets, potatos, Onions, squash and leeks. Soup-time!

And that's skimming over a lot of details - October was a busy and fun month.

Love,

A.D.R.E

Why are you putting me in the trunk?

Friends

Daniel took his first field trip with the playschool group. To get there, one of the other parents helped out by driving there in her oversized SUV with three rows of seats. Daniel ended up in the back row, and so upon being placed there, he proceeded to ask "why are you putting me in the trunk?" and "if I'm here, where do the groceries go?"

ADRE

More fall Fun

Friends

Daniel has a new love, his bicycle.

Now, the original plan was that he was going to get a bike for his 4th birthday in April - eg: after this winter. But then Eric found a guy on craigslist who had two 12" bikes for $25. So he called the guy and agreed to pick up the bikes that evening up in Thornton (about 20 miles north).

To shorten a longish story, Daniel was ecstatic about the deal, so he came along for the ride, and then Hank the jerk didn't show because he sold the bikes to someone else.
Daniel was confused, but not whiny. But still, it's not fair to ask a a 3-year-old to go on a 60 minute drive to get a bike and then it doesn't work out. Luckily it was still possible to get a new one that evening. Daniel jumped right on, and mastered pedalling and braking like he'd been doing it for ever. For the next several days, it was hard to get him off the bike as he zoomed around the cul-de-sac. As part of the deal, the tricycle is now Rachel's - Daniel has no interest in it anymore.

Speaking of Rachel, on the same evening that Daniel got he bicycle, Rachel decided to walk backwards for the first time. She was *very* excited about this, proclaiming "backads! backads!" as she shuffled along backwards. This has been repeated many times since then.

Let's see - what else? Oh yes, in the last post, I promised pictures and video from the day out with Thomas, and while the video isn't all that exciting, if you pay close attention around 35 seconds in, you'll see the gang sitting in the first car. And the inflated guy in the hat is "Sir Topham Hat" for you non-Thomas-literate. I'm sure that meeting him was a great honor.

This posting was almost labeled "the internet sucks" for the combination of the bike fiasco and sumsy-gate. You may remember that Daniel was within a sticker of earning Sumsy the forklift at last post. And when he reached that goal, we discovered that Bob-the-Builder legos are pretty much only available online, and have delivery times of a week or more. So Daniel got to place the order on eBay, but then he wanted to go down to the UPS store immediately to pick up his present - because the "UPS guy" brings everything from the internet. We had to print off a map of the USA and plot Sumsy's progress from New Jersey to Colorado over 4-5 days to resolve this, but ultimately, he was happy when she arrived.



















What else? Well, we went to a high school football game, which was a little too intense for everybody, and the annual fall festival for our local town which was very nice. Rachel decorated a pumpkin, and Daniel had a dragon painted on his arm. There may be pictures of that in future posts.

Starting tomorrow, the house fills with visitors in town for the GABF. Should be fun.

Love, ADRE

Fun in the Fall

Friends

It's been a good couple of weeks since last posting, and there aren't a whole lot of updates, but we do have some.

Yesterday was just gorgeous here, and with that, Daniel and Rachel first helped with yardwork, and then stripped down and played in the water from the sprinklers.

Daniel picked weeds and twigs out of the grass, and Rachel filled her little wagon with these inedible apple-like things that the previous owner must have planted. All in all, a very successful cleanup effort. Rachel was trying to push her wagon through the grass, and having some trouble with that when Daniel went over and said "Rachel, it's hard to push it in the grass, let me help you move it to the sidewalk" (no exaggeration, this is how he speaks these days) and then did so.














He was equally helpful in getting Rachel to try the sprinklers in the series above, but she didn't enjoy it as much....


That quickly passed, and everyone had a great time running, chasing and splashing in the water.

We also went to see Thomas the Train as he came to visit the Denver area, and that was a big hit, like it was last year. Rachel got into the action, calling Thomas a "tain!" and Sir Topham Hat a "guy" - which is the name she has for all of the Little People figures. There may be pictures and video of that later.

Language-wise, Rachel has had a significant burst of energy in the last 2-3 weeks, focused on tying two and three words together to make her point. We get a lot of "Papa Book Cheh!" (Dad, sit in this chair and read a book to me) and she's started to realize that "pease!" (please) gets her better results. When climbing up on a ladder in the first picture of this blog she said "hold on tight". Hard consonants tend to get skipped, but it's getting easier to understand.

Daniel's enjoying school, and has started drawing parallels between going there and Eric going to work. The other day he asked Eric "Do you get to do a drawing before lunch at work?"

Daniel has just about earned his second toy for completing a set of tasks. There's a grid full of stickers on the fridge, and once it's all full, he gets "Sumsy" the forklift from Bob the Builder. He's very excited about this.

Rachel took a trip into the pediatrician because she kept saying "Ear Hurt", but there was nothing wrong. For her trouble she got a flu shot though, and spent the next couple of days a little under the weather. Other than that, we've all been healthy since the last report.

And that's about it for this time around. There may be pictures from Thomas, stay tuned. Otherwise, the next major event around here is the annual "Great American Beer Festival" when we host about 15 friends (many of you who read this regularly) for a long weekend. Should be fun.

Until next time.

A.D.R.E.

August Update for Rachel

Anything YOU can do, I can do better....

Yes, it's true that Rachel is tall for her age, but a careful observer will note that the taller pirate has 3 knees...

In the last month, Rachel has been on all of the same trips as Daniel has, and she's been a great traveller. She had fun playing with Sean, Grandma Babe and the cousins, and has warmed up significantly to Grandpa and Farmor during their visit.

Her vocabulary has just exploded since last time - particularly her ability to string together multiple words - "eat cereal" for example. If you're forced to guess what she wants, she'll shake her head "no" when you get it wrong, and respond with a violent "yes" nod when you figure out what it was she wanted. Most of the time, though - it's clear as day - this is a girl who knows what she wants.

Favorite new words are "Wa-wa" (Water) and "Da-pa" (Diaper). Rachel will now tell us when she has a dirty diaper, and shows interest in sitting on the potty, which offers some hope that we'll be a diaper-free household sooner rather than later.

Rachel has ALWAYS loved the swing more than Daniel did, and there's no adult that can keep up with her demands for "Mo!" (more) pushing. She's also started to demand that she get to "Wok" (walk) rather than ride in the stroller.

All insects are "bee!", all farm animals start off as "cow!" until proven otherwise. She'll now recognize horses/ponies/donkeys as "ho-see!". When reading her favorite books, she will now complete out the sentences or correct you if you read it wrong. Books about Maisy the mouse are particularly popular.

Up in Vail, Rachel got to ride the Pony on a few occasions and thought that was just the best fun, once she got used to it. Lot's of "Mo!" and "Mo Ho-see!" to be had. Daniel also got to ride, even though we didn't include photos of that on his blog.













The pictures above show us at Piney River Ranch (looks fake, doesn't it? It's not), Rachel riding on Pebbles the Pony at Piney, the gang outside the condo in Vail and well - farmor doing what she does best.

Rachel carried this book over to Grandpa, snuggled in, pulled his right arm over her like a seatbelt and demanded "Book-ee". Grandpa thought that was OK....

There's been some teething pains, runny noses and the likes, but other than small things, August was a great month for Rachel.

Hopefully before October....

A.D.R.E