21monthsapart

Catch-up time (the pre-Christmas edition)

2011-12-19T11:21:00.001-07:00

Friends

Well – it happened again, didn’t it? We went off and let almost two whole months pass by without updating the blog – and it’s not like things didn’t happen in the meantime.

So – we didn’t win the trip to Iceland, but thanks to everyone who voted for us. We won’t be doing that kind 0f a contest anymore – it’s too easy to cheat by buying “facebook likes” online, and that’s probably what the winner did. Enough belly-aching, we still have the cutest kids around!

In any case – you’d seen a preview of the Halloween costumes in a previous post, but here’s the actual official photos of ladybug girl and “Ninja-Zombie” Daniel. It was a warm night for once, and so we had a good time wandering around the neighborhood.

In late October, we took a trip down to Phoenix to meet up with the Pastas – it’d been a whole year since our last vacation with them, and that’s just WAY too long. Now, I say that we went to Phoenix, but in reality we probably didn’t venture more than 3 miles from the resort the whole time we were there. We’d deliberately chosen the place for the pool/water park that was attached to it, and that’s where the kids stayed for 3 days straight. It was great.

We did go on one hike up to the top of a local mountain, which was a nice break, but other than that – swimming, more swimming, water slide, lazy river, swim, repeat…

Then – it was November. And while there was nothing particularly “big” that we did in November, it was the month for visitors. Aunt Erin and Chloe came to visit for Thanksgiving, and they brought pre-Cousin Macy and pre-Uncle Shane with them. So there was lots of playing and running around and everyone had a good time. Also, Craig came to visit, and both kids enjoyed that immensely (of course, the route to Rachel’s heart goes via reading books to her, but it wasn’t just that..).

The cousins will be arriving from Norway in just a couple of days, and they’ll probably look at the sad dusting of snow that we have and wonder why they are here… So for the record – it DID snow in November. And there were snowball fights, and the kids did go sledding. Actually – it was great, unlike previous years when the hill was too much for one or the other, this year they slid down, hauled their sleds up and repeated the process. Rachel is a little daredevil on the slopes.

Oh, that whole “pre-cousin” thing that probably had you confused two paragraphs ago? Yes – Aunt Erin got married and Daniel and Rachel were part of the ceremony. Rachel was the flower girl and Daniel the ring-bearer, and they managed to pull that off without a fight, so everyone’s happy about that. On the trip down to Houston, Rachel got to be the pilot… (aren’t they handsome and adorable?) Imagine if we could get them to dress up all the time…

And – well, that takes us to just over a week ago. Since getting back from Houston, we’ve been wrapping up the school year. (Rachel had a program – we might edit and post the video), and Daniel had a little class party. The Christmas tree is up, the house is decorated, and we’re ready for the Norwegian invasion which starts tomorrow.

Oh, and we did go skiing on Saturday, and both Daniel and Rachel did really, really well. We weren’t so sure how it would go, because last year’s skiing experience was – marginal. But this year we’re ready – and Daniel did so well on the school hill that he graduated to the “real lift”. Rachel is still learning to stop, but that’ll come.

(Could Daniel look any less concerned about his sister getting eaten by a T-Rex?)

Christmas cards are out. If you’re actually reading this and you *didn’t* receive a Christmas card, then we need to update our list, dear anonymous internet user…

Regardless – Merry Christmas to all of you.

Love, ADRE.

2011-10-25T12:21:00.000-06:00

Friends

So we need your help. Specifically, we would like your vote in the current photo contest that Icelandair is running between now and November 8th.

The theme of the contest is to take a picture which shows the link between Denver and Iceland, and the winner will get tickets to Iceland for two.

We'd like to win. I think we have an excellent chance at it -> most of the other photos don't conform to the rules of the contest, and - well - we've got the cutest kids on the planet.

But it IS a popularity contest. The winner will be the photo with the most votes, and in these days of social networks, we're up against people with thousands of friends on facebook.

So if you would, please, take a second to vote for our photo (facebook account required) by clicking on this link then scroll down to our photo and clik the "Like" button. Won't take you more than 5 seconds.

Then, and this is the part that would REALLY help - if you would encourage your friends on Facebook to do the same, that'd be much appreciated. hey - if you're not on facebook, you can still encourage others to vote by sending them an email with this link:

http://www.icelandair.us/specials/pages/us/denver-photo-contest/vote-img/item548506/

Having the direct route from Denver to Iceland will shave 3-4 hours off our trips to Norway, so we're super excited to have Icelandair flying from here.

Thanks in advance,
Love, ADRE

It’s October

2011-10-19T21:22:00.009-06:00

Friends

It’s just been a beautiful fall here in Colorado this year.

The weather has been gorgeous, and the trees are a more vibrant yellow and red than I can remember for years. We’ve had a couple of cold snaps, and even a little snow, but on Saturday it was 83 degrees out and fabulous.

We took a little bikeride over to the reservoir next door, and Rachel showed that she can bike as well on gravel and dirt as on pavement. Once we got to the lake, we gave the new family kayak its maiden voyage, and it’s clear that that’s going to be a lot of fun come next summer.

Aunt Erin and cousin Chloe were visiting from Houston, so there was a lot of playing in the back yard, frolicking in leaves, climbing trees, etc. And in the evening we went to the firstbank center to see Anida’s second public roller derby match. It was a halloween themed match, so Daniel and Rachel previewed their upcoming costumes.

For the record, Daniel is a Zombie and Rachel is a ladybug.

Other random updates include:

- We went to the circus, and had a great time. It was a fun show for all ages, but there’s just something magical about watching the awe on a childs face.
- We had a sleepover with the Backer kids here
- Swim Lessons have started. This is going to be a breakthrough session for Rachel on the freestyle, and I’m confident that she’ll be swimming well by christmas. Daniel’s group seems mostly focused on the breaststroke.
- Daniel was the first kid in his class to complete the library reading challenge of reading 1200 pages, and as a result there was a little celebration at school today. He got to tell his class about some of the books he read, and got to “Swing the flying pig” which is a great honor… It was fun, and it’s fun that he loves to read as much as he does. He’s also showing an interest in math, and is using Eric’s old “Little professor” calculator to practice addition and subtraction.

- Rachel is taking an “art” enrichment class after her pre-K, and is bringing home some really impressive drawings. If I remember to, I’ll try to scan some in so I can post them.

- Halley is about 2.5 times as big as she was when we got her. Sam seems to have accepted her as inevitable, which is a little different than embracing her.

That’s about it for now. We need to get better at bringing the camera along when we do things, because it seems that when it’s time to blog about what we’ve been up to, we’re always missing pictures. In any case – we hope everyone is doing great.

Love; ADRE.

Stuff from September

2011-09-27T21:43:00.001-06:00

Friends

Just as we’ve done for the last 3 years or so, we decided to take a trip up to Miller Farms where you might remember that the routine is that you pay $50 for the family to get in, and then they have a play area with tractors, cars, trains etc – but the real attraction is that you jump on the back of a tractor-drawn wagon, they haul you into the fields and you can pick as many vegetables as you want.

We’ve gotten smarter about this, so unlike previous years, when we went so late that most of the produce was borderline,this year we hit the jackpot. The kids love the games, and actually have a good time harvesting carrots, potatoes, etc.

And so we ended up with about 100 pounds of: beans, summer squash, carrots, corn, acorn squash, basil, tomatillos, 4 kinds of tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, banana peppers, rellenos, eggplant, 3 kinds of onions, potatoes, beets, watermelon, cantaloupe, okra, pumpkins and indian corn.

Oh, and a black kitten – 5 weeks old at the time – now named “Halley” (it’s a cat-woman reference, and if you’re groaning, you should have heard some of the other ideas.

She weighed in at less than a pound when we got her, though she seems to have doubled in size in the last 2 weeks.

Samson is – less than excited about the new addition, but he’s warming to her. He no longer marches out of the room when she comes in.

And – well – Delilah isn’t with us anymore. Probably ought to have a whole posting dedicated to that. The kids have actually taken her absence pretty well – they got to say goodbye, and be part of burying her in the back of the yard.

So that was the trip to Miller farms. And then this last weekend, we took a trip up to Winter Park. We’d scored a deal on slopeside lodging, and it was the last weekend of summer activities, so we just bought passes for that and played all day long. There was miniature golf, and a climbing wall, trampolines, a maze, a zipline and some other stuff, but the big hit for everyone was the alpine slide. You can see the track under the picture of the ski lift – basically it’s a one-person luge on wheels. We probably went down the hill 15 times – Daniel got to drive his own, Rachel had to share with an adult, but didn’t mind at all. Great fun.

On the way home, we caught the leaves changing color, and did a little hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. All in all, it was a great way to end the summer. Oh, and we did a quick check of the cabin we’ve rented for Christmas, when the Norwegians will be joining us! It should be great fun.

Favorite quote from the weekend:
We’re playing “I spy” as we drive up the mountain, and first Daniel chooses something really obvious (like “I spy something with snow on”) and Rachel gets it immediately. Then the roles are reversed and Daniel immediately gets Rachel’s clue. So we say “wow, you guys are mind readers”. Rachel promptly broke into tears and refused to play anymore, because Daniel could read her mind, but she couldn’t read his…

School is going well for both Daniel and Rachel. More on that some other time. Hope everyone is well.

Love, ADRE.

Rachel Bikes

2011-09-27T20:59:00.001-06:00

Friends

This is the kind of milestone that just can’t be celebrated without video, but it’s taken a couple of weeks to find the time to get it converted from a high-def movie to something that can actually live on the web.

So without further ado: Rachel without training wheels!

Recorded September 10th, 2011.

Love, ADRE.

Skippertak

2011-09-06T23:52:00.001-06:00

Howdy, everyone…

I’m not even going to try to make excuses for the poor blog performance in 2011. It’s just embarrassing. I think I’ll blame facebook. Or maybe some other site for the distraction, but really – there’s no excuse. However, you may notice that all of a sudden – at least the pictures are up to date. Not a lot of witty, clever commentary or little memorable quotes from Daniel and Rachel, but the broad outlines of our last six months are finally online in this and the preceding 5 posts.

The Norwegians have a word for this. It’s “Skippertak” – which for all intents and purposes just means “the extra effort you do to finish a lot of work that you’d been neglecting”.

So over Labor Day weekend, we went camping again. We didn’t have a reserved spot, which is a bad call on the busiest camping weekend of the year, but nonetheless we managed to get a place up at Turquoise Lake, in a tent-only camping ground that we’d noticed longingly when we camped there last summer among the RVs.

It was a very nice weekend. The weather cooperated, though it was a bit cold, with frost in the mornings (there seems to be a theme to our camping trips in 2011), thought that’s sort of to be expected at 10,000 feet above sea level.

We did the usual camp activities with hiking, fishing, campfires, UNO at night and all the usual activities.

This time, we brought the kids bikes, and Daniel had a great time mountainbiking the trails we hiked along.

The lake was nice enough that Rachel and Eric waded in for a bit, though only Rachel was brave enough to actually lay down in the water.

Now we’re back in town, and back at school again, and summer is winding down. We have a trip planned up to Winter Park in a couple of weeks, then really nothing extraordinary planned between now and Christmas break – though we’ll probably come up with something.

Here’s hoping that it’s not another six months before the next skippertak.

Love, ADRE.

August 2011

2011-09-06T23:32:00.001-06:00

Yowza! It’s August already, and that means it’s back to school time. These would be the official pictures of Daniel’s first day of First Grade, and Rachel going into Pre-K.

Daniel’s new teacher is Ms. Wilkins – and he’s having a fairly good time so far not being a "Kindie” anymore. He was a little insulted at the initial reading materials that she pushed his way, but that’s since been replaced by “Find an appropriate book” which lets him read at the more advanced level.

Rachel has only had a couple of days of school so far, but she’s back with most of the same kids and the same teachers as last year, and that’s a good thing. She’s excited to get to play "on both playgrounds”. Over the summer, Rachel’s started to read a few things, and her artwork has just progressed incredibly. If the blogs hadn’t been so far behind, I might actually scan some of it, because it’s really quite good.

There was, of course a lot of August that didn’t get captured on film. Once we got back from Norway, Rachel had “Chemistry Camp” that ran for half-days at the Museum of Nature and Science. It seemed to consist entirely of making tasty things and eating them, and as the Chemistry major, I’m not sure what to think of that, but she had a good time and while she was there, Daniel played with Sam.

The following week, they switched roles, and Daniel and Sam went to “Pirate Camp”, while Rachel and Tyler played. It seemed to go well, and all of the kids enjoyed themselves.

August was actually fairly busy. We went hiking again at Roxborough, and this time the kids really rocked the trail and completed the “Moderately difficult South Rim trail in good spirits, even though Rachel fell and scratched herself quite a bit.

Then there were additional trips to Pirate’s Cove, Putt-putt golf, and of course – Derby.

Anida started playing roller derby about a year ago by going to some practice sessions. One thing led to another, and she was invited to join the Denver Roller Dolls this spring, was selected onto the “Green Barrettes” team and has been working her way up to her first public bout at the Firstbank Center on August 27th under the Derby name of “Enyo Phace”.

There were some last-minute skills and qualifications that she had to prove to the league, so August was pretty busy with practices, meets, tests and and Derby events.

However, it all paid off, and we got to see her compete for the first time in the league championship, which the Green Barettes won.

There was a LOT of derby in August. September has been a bit calmer on that front so far.

July 2011

2011-09-06T22:58:00.001-06:00

July - ah, yes – July… Another fun month

As in June, we did a few other things, but the camera only made it out for two major occasions – the renaissance festival down in Larkspur, and the annual trip to Norway and Sweden. Of course – between the two, that covered almost 3 weeks of the month.

Not captured on film –> watching the fireworks on the 4th of July, putt-putt golfing on the weekends and going swimming at Pirate’s cove.

For the last couple of years, we’d been wondering if we should take the kids to see the local renaissance festival down in Larkspur, and we decided that this year, both of them were old enough to appreciate it, and also that they’d probably have the stamina to handle the heat and crowds. And it was fun – Rachel dressed up as a princess, Daniel did his pirate thing. Sure, it was hot. And it turns out that the humor in the “Puke and Snot” show is a little more adult than we remembered, but there were jugglers and jousting and big cats and all sorts of eye-candy and/or weirdos. I’m not sure we’ll go back next year, but it was fun.

And then, of course – there was Norway and Sweden. How do you sum up 2+ full-speed weeks and do it any sort of justice? You can’t, really. We went, we had fun. Of course – there’s more to it than that. As usual, the kids were excellent travellers, and tackled the trip from Denver to Oslo like it was old hat –> which in a way it was, seeing that we took the same route there as last year – via Toronto and Copenhagen. The layover in Toronto was fairly long, but the nice people at Air Canada let us use their lounge, so we relaxed well.

As usual, we transitioned fairly quickly from Oslo to go down to Stugan – the family getaway on the coast in Sweden, just across the border from Norway. And there the days just sort of floated together in a summer ritual of crab-fishing, rock-climbing, some swimming (not so much the kids), fishing, berry-picking and playing with cousins Jacob and Leo.

We did make a small excursion from Stugan down to visit Aunt Majan and Benny – partly to see them of course, but mainly because Mormor (Eric’s grandmother) was down there as well for a few days. We had a nice visit, developed a severe envy of their gardens and really enjoyed seeing Mormor for the first time in over a year.

Since we were passing through anyway, we stopped off in Gothenburg and stayed for a night, visiting the famous entertainment park Liseberg for a day. It was a lot of fun – though certainly more than a little crowded due to a large soccer tournament being held at the same time.

All in all, it was a great trip, very relaxing and enjoyable, and we’re looking forward to seeing the whole gang again Colorado for Christmas.

June 2011

2011-09-06T22:16:00.001-06:00

June – ah, June. There were a lot of things that happened in June, of course. School was out and summer activities started. Rachel had gymnastics, and Daniel went to soccer for a few weeks and both enjoyed that. However, when looking back at pictures from June, it seems that we only took out the camera for two occasions – Camping in Yellowstone, and a visit from Farmor.

Those of you with really good memories will remember that this is actually Daniel’s second trip to Yellowstone, though he doesn’t remember the first one. On a map, it looks so reasonable to zip up there from Denver, and it’s only about 400 miles into the 600+ mile distance that you find yourself thinking “This is a trek”. Still, the kids did super on the trip, helped in no small part by the audiobook of “The little house on the prairie” which they’ve been reading through.

Mid-June is shoulder season for Yellowstone in the best of years, and 20110-11 was the coldest, snowiest winter in 35 years. So when we got to our reserved spot, there was over 6 feet of snow, and the staff rather uselessly said “Here’s a shovel, the site’s there somewhere”. Luckily, we were able to snag one of the last sites at a campground at a lower elevation – but there’s no denying that it was cold.

The sights are amazing of course, and we got to see old faithful erupt, and lots of the other thermal features of the park without the summer crowds. We saw bison, elk, bears, moose and bald eagles up close. The only big animal that we missed was the grizzly. In the evenings, we went to the ranger talks, and those were really interesting and fun, and Daniel completed the “Junior Ranger” program, and is now an official “Junior Ranger” with the badge to prove it. They wouldn’t let Rachel participate due to age – even though she did all of the same work, she’s an un-official “Junior Junior Ranger”. There was a lot of driving to get there, and yes – it was cold, but this was a great trip.

And then, at the very end of June, Farmor came to visit for a week, which was great fun, and an excellent preparation for our big trip in July….

May 2011

2011-09-06T21:46:00.001-06:00

May was gorgeous. Just gorgeous. And as a result, we spent most of the month outside in one way or another.

Daniel had been campaigning hard for a skateboard, since his classmate Brody who lives in the neighborhood has one. So for his birthday, he got to go to the skateboard shop and pick out one.

Not surprisingly, he picked the black and red one with a skull on it. And like most things with wheels, he quickly took to it and has been zooming around the cul-de-sac.

May also had the end-of-school activities, field trips to the reservoir, and field day competitions. Everyone participated in the the egg carry, bean-bag toss, races, etc.

Rachel got invited to Greta’s birthday party at a park in Denver. She won the “pin the tail on the donkey” competition. No prizes were given for “Twister” and it was universally agreed that 4-year olds can’t twist. She also got a chance to go to “Build a Bear” at the mall and redeem her gift certificate from aunt Erin for her very own creation – “Brownie” the dog.

On a random Saturday in May, we decided to head up to visit Buffalo Bill’s grave, just outside of Golden. Somehow, we’d never been to the actual museum, which is VERY well done, and worth the trip. The reason for mentioning this story? Well, as soon as we got back, Daniel dug out his cowboy hat, and wanted to ride around on his bike doing “Buffalo Bill tricks”. It being 2011, he still had to add the bike helmet. Oh – and Rachel is a master at the scooter – she’s pretty darned fast when she gets going on those strong little legs.

And yes, it was the spring of Roller Derby and skating. With Anida practicing to make the league, there were plenty of trips to the local skating rink, and also around the cul-de-sac. More on Derby in a later post, but suffice it to say that Daniel and friends have gotten reasonably confident on skates.

And finally (for May) – the big end-of-Kindergarten concert. Daniel actually had the starring role as – well – the little Eskimo boy who gets to fling a spear at the teacher. It was quite memorable, and I have all 28 minutes recorded in high-definition video. One of these days, I’ll figure out how to upload it without complete loss of quality and/or upload time.

April 2011

2011-09-06T21:09:00.001-06:00

So many pictures. So many stories to tell. And so many things that we never actually got a picture of. Oh well.

April was a great month. Lots of fun.

April was the last month of Rachel’s Dance class and there was a little performance at the rec center. She enjoyed dance class, but not as much as gymnastics.

We went hiking several times this summer, and the season started out in April with a trip to Roxborough State Park. This time, we let Daniel and Rachel carry the camera and take the pictures. With the result that we have hundreds of pictures of the ground, rocks and adult knees – which I suppose is what the world looks like from that height. We also have pictures of every rock and ball of fuzz that they found and documented in good explorer style.

At school, the big event that we got pictures of was the egg drop. Each kid got a chance to design their own device that was supposed to protect an uncooked egg when thrown from the roof of the school. After experimenting a bit at home (all failures), Daniel went with a hollowed-out pool noodle that was duct-taped together. Unlike many of the other designs, his was truly his own. And – well – it didn’t work.

And then, of course – someone turned six years old. He was properly celebrated with presents at home, and a bowling party for a few of his friends. And no birthday is complete without the obligatory marking of the wall.

Three Months of Pictures

2011-03-30T13:47:00.018-06:00

My how time flies! We've had a busy, fun-filled first quarter. Both kids are growing so fast - physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Here are pictures to highlight January, February, and March. I tried to put the descriptions next to the corresponding picture, but it doesn't look like Blogspot is going to display it that way. Perhaps the expert will come fix it, but until then, this will have to do. Sorry.

We've gone bowling.

Rachel has started a dance class.

Daniel has had many field trips with school. This one is to the Colorado Livestock Show.

We've had a few snow days. Daniel loves to shovel.

Rachel turned 4. She had a Princess Castle Cake (which Anida had fun making) and a gymnastics party. She is flying high!

We've gone to a hockey game, roller derby bouts, and a parade. This is Daniel looking very handsome at the hockey game.

I'm not sure which part of the parade Daniel loved more: seeing the Storm Troopers and TIE Fighters or Anida skating with the Denver Roller Dolls. Our dear friends that moved to Seattle came for a visit and we met them at the local amusement center for some bumper cars, laser tag, and scrambler action. Rachel loved the scrambler. Anida got scrambled one too many times and was glad some taller girls volunteered to ride along with Rachel instead. Daniel preferred the laser tag and bumper cars.

Rachel does NOT like to get her hair done.

Farmor and Grandpa came for a visit. They took on three days of duty so that Eric and Anida could take a mini-vacation to celebrate their 10 year anniversary (which was nearly 9 months ago). Everyone did great.

Rachel loves her scooter and Daniel loves his bike. We spend a lot of afternoons in the cul de sac doing tricks.

Rachel had her first Beary Special Day at preschool. She did a great job being the center of attention.

Daniel looking tough and showing off his new hair-do. He had two birthday parties to go to on this day. The second of which was a pool party. He almost didn't swim out of fear of messing up his hair. But ultimatley, fun won.

That sums it up. Both kids are just doing great.

Daniel is enjoying school but not so much the homework. He is excelling in both reading and math, getting the highest possible marks on both. He likes to draw and color pictures, ride his bike, pretend play with Rachel, hang out with his friends, read and play the KINECT.

Rachel is doing great in preschool. She can clearly write her name, count to 100 with just a little help, and put the alphabet in order. She is very impressive on her scooter - our stroller days are gone. She likes to dance, swim, do puzzles and worksheets, be read to, and pretend play with anyone who is willing.

We hope all is well with all our blog followers.

Love, EADR

December 2010

2010-12-28T21:46:00.001-07:00

Friends

There was some jetlag after Thailand. It was easy to get up in the morning, but not so easy to stay awake in the afternoon. The day after we got back, Daniel went to school all day – then he insisted that he be allowed to go buy some Bakugan with money from Farmor. He made it to the store and home, but then fell asleep on the bench in the laundry room before he even got his shoes off.

Once everyone caught up on their sleep, December got busy. There was an elaborate Christmas concert at the Presbyterian church that Grandma Babe invited us to. There were camels, and pageantry, and crafts and storytelling. The concert itself was promising, but with no naps, both Daniel and Rachel made it clear that they’d rather be somewhere else.

Rachel went skating for the first time (Daniel had been earlier), and she had a great time with that. Later, we all went roller skating, which was initially frustrating for the kids, but Daniel had enough fun with it that he persevered, and by the end of it, he could skate some on his own. So there was a follow-on trip with friends.

Rachel’s school had an end-of-semester program, and there were several nice songs. I have some video of the event and once I render and post it, you’ll see why I was able to brag that “my kid can sing faster than yours” to the other parents… She did great, though – and it’s clear that the preschool program is rewarding to her and that her teachers love her.

For the first time in 458 years, there was a full lunar eclipse on the solstice. And we were lucky enough to have a clear sky for the event. It was pretty amazing – the pictures don’t really do it justice, but we got the full red moon in the western sky, right above Orion. Very nice – we woke the kids up to see it, and while Rachel mumbled a bit and went back to sleep quickly, Daniel thought it was neat, and stayed up/out for long enough to see the gradual end of the eclipse.

We wandered over to the local store to pick up a Christmas tree, then carried it home and decorated it. Daniel helped Eric bake some of the traditional cookies from Norway/Sweden, and both kids got to decorate cookies over several days. The UPS and Fedex guys showed up on a regular basis delivering packages, and finally, it was almost Christmas.

Rachel picked out a remote controlled car for Daniel and Daniel picked out a battery-operated dog for Rachel. They were supposed to keep the gifts a secret, but they were so excited that they just couldn’t help but tell each other. Anida happened to catch the moment when Rachel found out she was getting the dog, and apparently she flopped onto her back and kicked her legs in the air while giggling like crazy.

When asked what they wanted to get Anida for Christmas, the suggestions ranged from “A box of Jell-O” to “a new ipod”, but eventually turned into making her some drawings. Eric got decorated underwear that is sure to result in some raised eyebrows if he ever gets into an accident while wearing it.

The night before Christmas, they each got to open one present each. Predictably, Daniel chose the Remote-controlled car, while Rachel opened the Dog from Daniel. When we put batteries in Daniel’s gift, it didn’t work at all, and he was pretty sad about that. However, a quick trip down to Radio Shack and it was exchanged for a slightly different model. Which also didn’t work… Until Eric tried a different set of batteries and discovered that it’d been the supposedly-new duracells that were to blame the whole time. Props to Daniel for dealing with the disappointment in a mature way.

Christmas morning was great fun. The kids woke early, but not too early and went down to see what Santa had brought. Rachel loved her dog, her scooter, costume, puzzles, Legos and books while Daniel really got a kick out of the Spiderman outfit, the Legos and the Star Wars toys.

It was a beautiful day, so after breakfast, the party quickly moved outside where the scooter and RC car were put to good use in the cul-de-sac. We’ve had no snow so far this winter so even throught these were “summer” toys, they got immediate use.

And then later that day, Aunt Erin Steven and cousin Chloe came to town. Daniel and Rachel have had a lot of fun playing with Chloe, and are – as I type this – at the “Zoo lights” exhibit with her – which is why I’ve had time to post the blog updated.

We’ve had a fabulous 2010, and hope that all of you are well. Best wishes for 2011. I might get a video posting in before new years, but if not – Happy New Year.

(and yes, my resolution is to be more timely with the updates)

Love, ADRE.

November 2010

2010-12-28T20:29:00.001-07:00

Friends

We know that the first 2 weeks in November happened – we just don’t have any photographic evidence for it – so this posting should more accurately be titled “Thailand 2010”.

We booked this trip almost a year ago, and had been looking forward to it ever since. Daniel definitely remembered quite a bit from his last trip in 2008, while Rachel’s memories were much vaguer, and largely influenced by the pictures she’s seen.

So right around November 15th, we jumped on an early-morning flight to San Francisco, then caught flights onward to Hong Kong, Bangkok and (after a night in an airport hotel) Phuket. It’s a long way there from Denver – 24 hours of travelling, but the kids are superstars. Cathay Pacific turns out to be a very kid-friendly airline, with great entertainment and goodie bags for children. The kids meals were apparently constructed on the theory that “put everything on there, and they’ll find something they like” – if fully consumed, each meal would probably have been 4,000 calories.

And so, for a little over two weeks, our lives revolved around the pool, the ocean and the beach. And it was great. Daniel spent so much time with his snorkeling mask and fins on that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get a picture of his face.

Farmor and Grandpa were there too, of course. And for the first 4-5 days, we were also joined by our friends Juliet, Andy, Declan and Fiona from Denver. Declan is a year older than Daniel, and the boys had fun hanging out together. Last time we were here, Daniel enjoyed looking at all of the frogs, and this time he figured out that he could pick them up.

Caffeinated beverages are not on the approved list, which has left Daniel thinking of “Coke” as this highly desirable forbidden fruit. So, when we turned our backs for a second at the Loi Krathong celebration, he saw his chance to order a coke from a waiter, and had this monstrously large grin on his face when he actually got to taste it.

One day we took a speedboat tour to the Phi Phi islands, visited Monkey Beach and did some snorkeling. Daniel thought it was amazingly cool to swim around and look at the fish, coral and other sea life. Every few seconds he’d stop, yank out his snorkel and yell “Papa, did you SEE that?” Rachel and Anida found a different methodology – Rachel rode on Anida’s back while she swam across the coral, and when there was something interesting under them, she’d have Rachel peak down into the water to see it. And that was “cool”. Every time the kids found a treasure on the beach – whether it was a leaf, a crab or a shell, they wanted it photographed.

There were elephants of course. Lucky and Lily came by a couple of times every day, and we got to feed them and ride them. Daniel had homework, so there was some reading and he also wrote a sentence or two in his journal on most days. Grandpa celebrated his birthday again, and Eric and Anida ran the “Fun Run 6k” in association with the triathlon (which we did NOT participate in). Good food and drink, wonderful surroundings, good people and family to hang out with – this is an excellent bi-annual tradition that we hope to repeat for thanksgiving of 2012.

And then it was back from Phuket to Bangkok to Hong Kong to San Francisco to Denver. Kids were awesome as always – no drama – just went with the flow. It’s a rare flight we take when someone doesn’t approach us afterwards to tell us how impressed they were with Daniel and Rachel’s behavior.

And that was November. It was a very good month.

Love, ADRE.

October 2010

2010-12-28T19:19:00.001-07:00

Friends

Friends?

Anyone there?

Yoo Hoo?

It’s a new all-time record for a delayed blog posting, and although the title says October 2010, you all know that this didn’t really get written until after Christmas. Sorry. Stuff happened – and we didn’t take the time to stop and write down what was going on. So tonight is the night – we’ll cover off the highlights from the last 9 weeks in three posts.

I’d promised an update on Rachel in my last posting, and the really big development this fall is that she’s matured enormously from a social perspective. She’d been a little shy and withdrawn, particularly at school and around kids she didn’t know. Now, however – it’s like she found a big pile of confidence. She'll engage other kids at the playground, she’s the social center of her preschool class, and she’ll say what she means and disagree with her brother.

One by one, the “Rachel-isms” are also disappearing, and since this is the closest thing we have to a permanent record – the two that we didn’t want to forget about are:

“Aminals.” For some reason, Rachel swapped the M and N for well over a year.

“I am not TIE-WED” – Rachel still uses W in many places where conventional wisdom would suggest an R, but they are gradually disappearing.

And one that showed up this fall was the statement: “Who could not like ice cream?” with “Ice Cream” substituted for many other things that she couldn’t believe weren’t universally loved.

Rachel has been going to gymnastics once/week all fall, and has great balance. She seems to really enjoy herself there. And though I can’t seem to find any pictures from swim lessons, she’s been doing very well there too. By the end of the fall term, she could swim somewhat unassisted between platforms in the pool, and will be starting next term at “Level 4”, which we’re all happy about.

And she’s our little artist. To show all of the variations of her work would require many, many pictures. Suffice it to say that she’ll draw/paint/stamp/sticker/glue/sprinkle with great enthusiasm several times a day, and that she can go through art supplies like no-one else.

Recently, she’s started focusing a little more on coloring in the lines, and the idea that something “looks like” something. But the abstract period is not over – it’s been supplemented.

So then there was the rest of October. I last posted on the 18th, and we were getting ready for Haloween. Before that happened, we had a couple of truly gorgeous weekends, and the kids played in the leaves.

As previously disclosed – Daniel went out as “Captain Rex” while Rachel and Anida were cats. For once it was a nice, warm evening, and we trolled around a couple of blocks in the neighborhood collecting way too much candy. The kids took turns ringing doorbells, had a good time with it.

We had decided to let them eat as much candy as they wanted to, with the idea that the rest would get thrown away. The latter part of the plan didn’t happen, but Daniel did get to discover that too much of a good thing might not feel so good.

And that takes us to the end of October around here.

Love,

ADRE

Pumpkins….

2010-10-18T23:07:00.001-06:00

Friends

There are THREE postings this evening, and in earlier posts (which, ironically, you’ll probably read AFTER you read this one), I promise to provide a general update on activities over the last couple of weeks.

And then I discover that I can’t find the other camera. And what to do? I can either break my promise to post an update, wake someone up and ask where the camera is, or force you to suffer through a no-picture blog posting.

The choice is easy… But I’ll try to make it up to you with this video of Daniel and Rachel describing their pumpkin masterpieces.

For Daniel, it’s all about what’s happening at school, and things have been going really well, both socially and academically. He’s making friends, and seems to be one of the more popular kids. Playing “Star Wars” in the playground unites all of the boys, and recently we’ve started to hear that “girls are stinky”.

He’s had his first set of assessments, and is doing well across the board, but is extremely strong in reading – as his teacher Mr. M says –> he can read anything, but doesn’t always comprehend what he’s read. That’s apparently normal, though, so we’re asking questions along the way to encourage him to think about it.

We’re back in swim lessons, and so far, it’s like something just ‘clicked’, because he’s been extremely focused and strong. I’ll have to get some video, because words alone don’t do it justice.

Halloween is coming. Daniel will be “Captain Rex” from Star Wars. Rachel – well, Rachel deserves a post all onto her own, but I’m going to write it when I’m less sleepy, and hopefully find some pictures. Until then.

Love, ADRE.

It was the summer of the bicycles around here

2010-10-18T22:26:00.001-06:00

Friends

In earlier posts, I’ve mentioned how much the kids have enjoyed their bikes this summer, and bragged about the 10-mile bike ride we took.

The quality of this little video isn’t the highest, but I think it does a good job of capturing the fun that both Daniel and Rachel have when they’re out riding.

Daniel has been into “Stunts” for a while now, and so you get to see him ride around with his feet on the steering wheel, etc. Rachel’s tricks are less elaborate, but she’s having a great time being “Lightening McQueen” and racing around.

As you might imagine, it’s also been the summer of scrapes and bruises.

Bikes are ridden to school, to the store, to the playground. We need to get or build some ramps for next summer, but I think the season is just about over now.

Oh, and that 10-mile ride? Completely obliterated by our 17.2-mile trip to downtown Denver on Sunday. It’s mostly flat, with a gentle downhill slope -losing 470 feet of total elevation going from here to Confluence park, and a fairly easy ride along good paths. Daniel got a flat tire about 0.7 miles from REI, but was able to get there, and we had them fix him up with a thorn-resistant innertube while we ate lunch. Great attitude and listening, and a fun outing for all. We took the light rail back home, though.

That’ll have to do for the bike update. Now for a more general “what’s new around here” posting.

Love, ADRE.

Can you tell what’s changed?

2010-10-18T21:50:00.003-06:00

Friends:

OK, take a quick glance at the two pictures below and see if you can figure out what’s different between them.

If you said: “Daniel seems to have lost his shirt!” then you are the master of the obvious. Congratulations.

Yes, we lost our first tooth last night, and we’re VERY excited about this. It had been loose for a little over a week, and was gradually getting wiggled looser and looser until, finally, it came out after dinner last night.

Under the pillow it went, and this morning, Daniel came into our room with a disappointed look: “The tooth fairy didn’t come…” which was more than a little surprising to the tooth fairy. So we convinced him to go back and look, and sure enough, he returned with the $1 coin held high.

There’s apparently some bragging rights at Kindergarten associated with losing your first tooth. It’s a status thing of sorts.

By dinner tonight, he was scheming to see if he could trick the tooth fairy into giving him more money by putting pictures of teeth under his pillow. His cleverness was admired, but he was cautioned that the tooth fairy might not be amused by being tricked… Ultimately, he decided it wasn’t worth risking the next $19 in semi-guaranteed funds on a get-rich-quick scheme.

The first photo, by the way, is Daniel’s official kindergarten picture. We got extras to share. The original has nicer colors than this scan, and if you’re reading this, you’re most likely going to be getting a copy in the mail anyway, so I wouldn’t bother trying to print it.

It’s another evening of multiple blog postings. Next up – a set of video that I’ve really been wanting to share.

Love, ADRE.

The “Other” Camera…

2010-09-19T19:53:00.001-06:00

Come to find out, we do have pictures of Rachel’s first days at school. Here she is exploring her new preschool room at Open House:

Here she’s on her way to the first full day:

Oh, and there were pictures of our family trip to Elitch Gardens (the local amusement park):

Fun in the fall

2010-09-19T19:24:00.001-06:00

Friends

We’ve had a couple of fun weeks, just settling into the fall routine.

Rachel started her pre-school (sorry, no pictures of that), and is loving her new teachers. She goes twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then on Tuesdays she’s been taking nastics (that would be gymnastics) and going to the library for story time. We regularly have 20+ library books at home, and both kids have their own library cards, so that’s a good thing.

The picture is from a little backyard BBQ we had on Labor Day. Nothing too fancy, just Harrison, Carly and Eli bringing their parents over for the afternoon. This was also our first attempt at a pure “kids table” and it worked out pretty well. We also went over to Grandma Babe’s place on Labor Day weekend for one last dip before they closed the pool.

The “Big” update since last time has got to be that we flew down to Texas the Friday after labor day to return to the Hyatt at Lost Pines. You may remember that we had so much fun there in April with the Pasta family that we decided then and there to return for another visit with them.

The resort really caters to families, with a nice kids-depth pool and beach, a water slide and a lazy river that you can float around in a tube. Bikes to borrow, Disney movies outside at night and of course – S’mores every evening at their firepits. We spent a lot of time in and around the pools.

Daniel mastered snorkeling on this trip – a skill that we think he’ll really enjoy when we return to Thailand later this year. He was zooming all over the pool with his head submerged. Rachel is getting pretty close to swimming unassisted – she was bouncing off the bottom of the pool and occasionally planing out.

Of course Sean (and his parents) was there as well, and it was fun to see them picking up the playing effortlessly. We went into Austin on a couple of occasions for dinner, and also in an attempt to see the bats (world’s largest urban colony), but the yahoos at the “bat hotline” had listed the wrong bat time.

All in all – just a great little vacation. Not so far away that you use up the weekend getting there and a great time with good friends once you’re there.

Daniel's still having a good time at school. He took class photos, did a couple of show-and-tells and has gotten into a good routine. We’ve has our first encounter with the “fad” of the year – silly bandz. Suddenly Daniel “had to have some” and was willing to spend his own money to get a few, so he’s part of the in-crowd again…

Swim lessons started today, and both kids had GREAT first lessons. None of the hesitation or fear of a new teacher we’ve seen before. The practice throughout the summer has really helped, and Daniel even got moved to a private class when it was clear he was outswimming the other kid.

And finally – we went to Miller farms yesterday and picked potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, beans, beets, basil, dill, kohlrabi, leeks, celery, pumpkins and probably a couple of other things. Probably about 100 lbs of produce we have to do something with. Kids had fun picking for a while, but it was probably a little too much, so they enjoyed getting to play a little after. In previous years, we’ve gone in October to pick pumpkins and only the root vegetables were any good, so this was a nice change. I might have a picture on my cellphone, but that’ll have to wait.

Until next time.

Love, ADRE.

Getting Better all the time

2010-08-30T21:47:00.001-06:00

Friends

So the last update had Daniel decorating the hallways at school pink on Wednesday, the first day of school. He stayed home in the afternoon, and so he missed the actual Kindergarten. On Thursday morning, he complained that his stomach hurt again, so we kept him out of Ms. K’s (that’s her and her assistants in the picture) KEP class, and sent him to Kindergarten.

He didn’t want to go, but afterwards, was pretty happy about what had happened and excited to tell about the day. So we figured we might be in decent shape for Friday.

That’s NOT how the day started. Again he didn’t want to go to school. He wouldn’t ride his bike, had to be driven in a stroller and threw a fit over going into KEP. Luckily, he settled down quickly, and 10 minutes after being dropped off, they called to let us know he was doing fine. Again, at the end of the day he was smiling and excited about the day.

And here we are, after day 4. He still expressed that he’d rather hang out at home and play with Mama, but he went, had a good day, and I think we’re going to be on a good trend. It’s been a larger adjustment than expected, but he’ll be fine.

Little Ms. fabulous went off and got a haircut, and decided to show off her goofy side. She has an amazing sense of humor, and really likes the slapstick humor.

Rachel has a really good vocabulary, and if you go back to the posts when we were amazed at Daniel’s language skills at 3 and a half, she’s right there with him. Sure, she has some letters that she enunciates a little less clearly, but her logic and reasoning skills are amazing. The other day, she said “I have a big brain” and pointed at her tummy, and we came to realize that we’d never told her where the brain was…

Oh, and it may curse the whole deal, but just in the last week or so, we are ready to declare an end to pull-up diapers at night. This is huge – she’s been out of the daytime ones for months, but this would be a complete success.

Over the weekend, we went hiking out at Golden Gate Canyon. A moderate out-and-back 4 mile hike, with about 800 feet elevation gain. The first 1.1 miles took 90 minutes, but it got faster once it leveled off. Daniel and Rachel got to take turns taking pictures when we stopped.

Rachel hiked the whole thing without needing any help, and earns the “super-hiker” award. Daniel neglected to hydrate properly, and had to ride on shoulders for about half a mile. Still –> it was a nice day out, and good fun.

And that’ll have to do for now.

Love, ADRE.

Kindergarten starts

2010-08-25T19:36:00.005-06:00

Friends

Today was the big day

[Queue dramatic music]

The first day of KINDERGARTEN…..

And we were ready. Daniel had been somewhat nervous about kindergarten throughout the summer. Partially from the unknown, we think, but also partially because some kid scared him about it.

But, over the course of the last couple of weeks, D was starting to get excited. He got to visit the school and see the classrooms, library and music rooms. He got to meet his new teacher Mr. M, and discovered that some of his playschool friends will be in his class and KEP (kindergarten enrichment program – kindergarten is otherwise just half-days). And during the 1-on-1 assessment, he had a great time, impressed the teacher with his reading skills, and generally aced it.

So we were ready.

And then Daniel woke up this morning and didn’t want to get out of bed. Said he had a tummy-ache and didn’t want to go to school. We figured the nerves were back.

But, no worries, we know how to get him refocused on having fun. So breakfast was turned into pink waffles and pink milk. This, in preparation for the lobster tail that was going to be for his celebration dinner (it’s pink, the food is pink, there’s a theme here – bear with us). Still a little bit of a tummy ache, which we wrote off as ""butterflies in your tummy” – a c0ncept he and Rachel thought was just weird.

Off we went, and since school is just a block-and-a –half from our house, we biked. Given the traffic with parents dropping kids off, it’s much faster, anyway. And we were pretty excited the whole way there, and amazed at the number of kids playing on OUR playground when we got there.

We barely had time to get a name tag and get in line for KEP before everyone marched into the school. Some kids were crying, but most were fine. Daniel had a slightly anxious look on his face, but walked on in. Anida didn’t cry…

And so we went home and to work.

About 80 minutes later, we got a call that Daniel had vomited, and was at the Nurse’s office. Given what he had for breakfast, it was quite a sight, I’m sure.

We’re still not sure if it was nerves, or whether that tummy-ache had been a symptom of a bug all along. He’s been home and resting ever since, with minimal appetite and still some claims of tummy aches.

So we’ll try again tomorrow.

Love, ADRE

We LOVE San Diego

2010-08-15T15:42:00.001-06:00

Friends

So we’ve just gotten back from a week in San Diego, and we had a great time once again. Not that anyone needs an excuse to go there, but the official reason was to celebrate Jan Robert’s 40th birthday, so we were also joined by Oystein, Kia and Zoe, Oystein and Jan Robert’s fathers and Kia’s mother.

All of us had purchased the “Go San Diego” cards, which provided unlimited visits to all of the tourist attractions in the area, and there sure are a lot – and they’re well-suited to children of Daniel and Rachel’s age.

First up was Legoland. Now, Legoland is just a great time. It’s designed for kids from 3-12, so none of the rides are really too big or too scary. Daniel has crossed the 42” mark height-wise, so he could ride everything (adults required occasionally), while Rachel was 40'” tall for most of the day and could ride most things. At the end of the day, she forgot to tip-toe, or maybe she shrank, because she ended the day at 39” tall and disqualified from some rides.

Oh, and to top it all off, it happened to be “Star Wars day” at Legoland, so the park was filled with stormtroopers and jedis. Very popular with one little Jedi –> unimportant for the other one.

This year, Rachel was old enough to drive, and ride all of the major rides, so it was a real upgrade for her from last year, when she was barely 2.

She was even tall enough to ride the “Dragon” roller coaster, while Daniel got to ride the slightly larger “Technic” one, and both declared that roller coasters were great.

The cars and helicopters were popular again, but like last time, it was driving the pirate ship (and spraying water on others) that was voted the best ride of all.

Seawold was a first for all of us, and it was another great day. The kids started off by feeding and petting the Dolphins, then saw the Shamu show. OK, it' was a little cheesy, but still fun for everyone. Daniel rode the ride that gets you soaked, which Rachel unfortunately wasn’t tall enough for. She is a GREAT sport about it though – she was a little sad about the few things she couldn’t do, but didn’t throw a fit, not even once.

Rachel LOVES penguins, so that was a natural next stop. Daniel and Rachel were both told that they could select TWO (and only two, and no complaining, and no going back) souvenirs from the trip.

Daniel chose a sword (naturally) from Legoland and a fighter jet from the Air and Space Museum. Rachel chose a Penguin from Seaworld (“Tenguin the Penguin”) and a flamingo (Sally, we think) from Wild Animal Kingdom.

Zoe is a few months younger than Daniel, and a lot of fun to be around. All three kids had a great time playing together at the parks and at the hotel swimming pool.

We went back to Seaworld on the last evening our passes were good, to see the “Shamu Rocks” evening show. It’s better than the daytime show, but unfortunately, Rachel fell asleep at 9:29pm, one minute before the show started, and so she missed that and the fireworks.

We’d been to the Wild Animal Kingdom park last year, but the kids were exhausted, and didn’t enjoy it much. It was different this year. By the way – the casual reader of this blog might remember that we all went to San Diego last April – but do you remember Daniel’s first trip there? I bring this up because we have pictures of that very same airplane tug in all three postings. Yes, the USS Midway is fun, but somehow, driving that tug is the thing that we keep coming back to.

Oh, but that’s not all we did. Oh no. We also went to the Zoo, the Art Museum, the Automotive Museum, the Air and Space Museum (All in Balboa Park, which is awesome).

We took a harbor cruise, went to the beach, went to the children’s museum, swam at the hotel pool…..

And so it’s not really surprising that everyone slept really, really well every night.

We had a GREAT vacation

Daniel starts Kindergarten in less than 10 days. That’ll probably be the next major post.

Until then.

Love, ADRE

The funnest summer EVER

2010-08-15T15:06:00.001-06:00

Friends

It’s been a really, really fun summer around here, and we wanted to share a couple of pictures from what we’ve been doing in July.

On hot days, the kids like to run around the back yard and spray water. I like this picture because it captured the spray in midair.

Our little city hosted its annual summer party again, and it was a good time. The kids rode carnival rides, made art projects and Daniel got to paddle a kayak. You might remember he did this last year too. Unlike last year, the fireworks didn’t get rained out, and we went over to Declan’s house to watch them from their front yard.

It’s been hot here this summer. Not as bad as earlier years, but many days in the mid-90s (that’s 35 celsius for you metric-folk), and so escaping to the mountains can be a great idea. One weekend in July, we headed up to Idaho Springs to visit the Phoenix gold mine. Daniel was gung-ho about the idea, but not so excited once we got there. I think he really wanted to ride a cart or train, and instead it was a walking tour. We also got to borrow washpans and pan for gold –> and I’m not sure how old you have to be to have the attention span for this, but it’s" “More than 5”. So they fed the chipmunks instead.

The Texas cousins came to visit, in two separate batches. Brayden and Kayla went hiking with the kids, went to dinosaur ridge and did some general tourism-stuff while visiting. Chloe joined the fun in the back yard with the slip-and-slide.

And just to round it all out, we went camping. We’d originally planned to go to Turquoise Lake over the July 4th weekend, but then we got the tickets to Norway that overlapped with that. So we were able to go a couple of weeks later. And it was a lot of fun. The kids got fishing poles and enjoyed trying to catch something (albeit with no real bait to speak of). We went for a little hike, roasted marshmallows, got dirty and in general had a great time.

The only downside was that we’d booked ourselves into a campground that allowed RVs, so we had a lot of mechanical noises, generators, etc – not the escape to nature that some of our other trips have been –> so we’ll avoid that mistake in the future, but it was still a great place, and we’ll probably go back there.

And that’ll have to do for the general summer fun posting. Next up, San Diego!

Norway and Sweden, Summer of 2010

2010-08-15T10:06:00.000-06:00

Friends

It’s going to be another one of those multiple-posts-in-one-day dealies. The Norwegians have a word for it, it’s called “Skippertak”, which basically just means –> buckle down and get it done. Today’s theme is summer, and some of the really, really fun things we’ve done.

At the end of June, and for 10 days thereafter, we went to Norway, but spent most of the time at “Stugan” or the family cottage on the Swedish coast. It’s always a very pleasant time.

Due to how we booked the tickets, Eric flew with Rachel and Daniel, while Anida had a more direct set of connections. It wasn’t bad going there, but the return trip routed Oslo-Copenhagen-Manchester-Newark-Charlotte-Denver for a total of 5 flights and 26 hours. The kids are travel champs though, so no biggie there.

Grandpa and Farmor are building a garage where Farmor’s flower garden used to be, so Daniel got to help dig up some of the plants for relocation to Sara’s garden.

In the day before going down to Stugan, we headed out to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, on the theory that Daniel would enjoy that. I think it’s safe to say that he was a little underwhelmed by the real thing.

Life at Stugan falls into a fairly predicable pattern. The boys fish for crabs at the dock and play on the beach. We take a trip or two around the area and go fishing in Grandpa’s boat. The boys caught some mackerel this time, and enjoyed eating that. This year, Daniel was strong enough to climb the cliffs on the North side of the cottage. There are pictures, but not on our cameras, since Anida couldn’t watch, and Eric was busy making sure he didn’t fall.

This year, Rachel was able to participate in the crab fishing, and was pretty good at it, though much less obsessed than the boys. The water was a little bit cold at the beginning of the week, but warmed up significantly. Rachel’s the only one of the kids that spent any real time in the water.

So it was a mellow week. We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with strawberries and a nice champagne, then went back to Oslo for a few days. As always it was nice to spend time with Jacob and Leo, and remarkable how well the kids play together despite the distance. Daniel picked up a Norwegian accent the way he usually does, and that lasted for a few weeks.

And that’s really the news from Norway this time around. We flew back on the 4th of July and watched the fireworks from above – though truthfully the kids slept for most of that.

Up next – random other summer activities.

Love, ADRE.

Star Wars

2010-07-04T23:08:00.000-06:00

Friends

The blogger editor ate my original text for this post about 2 weeks ago, which I have to say is a real bummer, because it was actually quite entertaining.

I'm over it now, really.

This is going to be a fairly Daniel-centric post, but I wanted to start with this picture of the kids enjoying themselves massively at a "Pirate concert" put on by a local library. Pirate Pete was the perfect match for their sense of humor.

The title of the post refers to the fact that letting Daniel watch the original, 1977 "Episode IV" of Star Wars has done nothing but pour fuel on the fire of his interest.

In this, what is thought to be the original "Star Wars"-inspired drawing from right after the artist's 5th birthday, we can see a re-enactment of the climactic battle scene from Episode IV.

Done entirely in the "Restaurant Crayon" style, we see some of the inherent limitations of the medium, in that only 4 colors are available and "Yellow" is so faint as to be useless.

The ships with a circular middle are TIE figthers, the red and green ones with oblong shapes are X-Wings. Blue clouds of debris represent exploded space ships, while the green cloud is the remnants of the recently exploded Death Star.

In this drawing, from late May, the Brown figure is Chewbacca, firing a blaster. Luke Skywalker is clearly identifiable as the guy doing battle with Darth Vader, and in the lower corner, Han Solo is assisting, using a blaster that mysteriously shoots two rays simultaneously.

On the left side, Daniel has cataloged the "valid" colors for light sabers, and on the right, one can see an X-Wing fighter shooting at a TIE-fighter, with the Death Star below.

The caption displays an increased level of confidence with his lettering, while indicating that the "R" is still challenging. Bidding for this priceless item of "Early Daniel" will begin at $100.... :)

Oh, did I mention that he's growing his hair out to "Be like Luke"? For those of you who may have forgotten, the hair styles of 1977 were - well - mullet-ish.

As I mentioned - this is "Rev 2" of what originally was a long, funny, serious update about Daniel, and I've forgotten many of the original talking points, but I do know that I highlighted that Daniel can read. Like, he really can read. We don't know exactly when this happened, but already in April, the Pastas pointed out that we might be shorting him when we said he just had awesome book memory. Since then, he's started reading signs, books-he's-read-before. Simple readers (with some encouragement), but the highlight was that he read a letter from Farmor just before going on vacation there. That he did without the assist that illustrations or context provide.

Playing preferably involves a lightsaber, or a sword. Pirates are cool, Star Wars is cooler.

And I'm stopping now before Blogger eats my post again. We're just back from 10 days in Norway, and when I get some posting energy back, I'll tell you all about it, but it was a good time.

Love,
ADRE.

Pictures from a Graduation

2010-06-07T22:02:00.001-06:00

Friends

So I promised you some pictures from Daniel’s graduation, and this also gives me a chance to try out this new blog editing tool, because the stock blogger one is truly bad.

So the graduation was staged as an olympic event, with various activities such as an obstacle course, hurdles, jumps, soccer, basketball, etc.

This was followed by an awards ceremony and a diploma.

And finally, a little video montage from the event. This might take a little while to download.

OK, that’ll have to do for now. Let’s upload this posting and see how it looks…

Love, ADRE.

2010-05-26T14:59:00.025-06:00

Friends

Summer is definitely here. Both Daniel and Rachel have finished their swim lessons and pre-schools and what used to be fairly structured weeks and days is now replaced with random playdates and playing outside.

Rachel's personality has really evolved since we got home from that little jaunt to Texas last month.

Specifically, she's really come out of her little shell socially. She'll now interact a lot more with her playmates from school as well as kids she meets in the park - even initiating the contact/conversations. For posterity, we'll record that she went on a playdate with Tyler, who has a crush on her and refers to her as "MY Rachel"

Our weekend routine consists of making pancakes or waffles for breakfast, and the kids usually argue over whos turn it is to help. Rachel has gotten pretty good at cracking eggs and mixing ingredients.

Rachel's preschool wrapped up with a little show, and unfortunately, this is the only photo we have from it.

As we've mentioned before, Rachel loves books, and so there's at least one trip per week to the library. She has her own library card, and can check out the books herself.

Rachel's task chart has been focused on the letters of the alphabet. She's mastered most of them by now, but still goofs off and occasionally pretends that she doesn't know them. Still, she's worked her way through to several rewards, and a trip to the ice cream store was one of them.

Somehow, Rachel picked up the word "Boring", and uses it frequently when there's something she doesn't want to do. She'll say "UGH, that's so Boawing" and stomp her feet, but most of the time, she still has a sweet, accomodating personality.

Rachel has always loved painting at the easel. She goes at it with great gusto, and usually has a story associated with what she's drawing. This one started as "trees", but migrated into being a "Zeebwa".

Take note of that smile - you'll probably be seeing it again, since that's the look we get if we encourage her to look at the camera.

OK, so I'd mentioned in a previous posting that Daniel has been a biking fiend this spring, and a few weeks back, we went for a bike ride in the state park next to the house. He just wanted to go and go, and with one thing and another we ended up taking a 9.8 mile trip to the beach. He didn't stop, and he didn't complain until his back started hurting around the 9-mile mark. Not bad for a 5-year-old!

(He slept REALLY well that night)

Another birthday, and another trip to the pediatrician to get poked and measured. The official stats for Daniel on his 5th birthday are:

36 pounds (15th percentile)
41" tall (13th percentile)
Skills are off the charts
(In other words, perfect)
Physical games are part of being a 5-year old boy, and it seems that no matter what it is, it has to involve a sword, a lightsaber or a gun. We had a brief period where he thought he knew Karate (one of his friends showed him some moves), and more recently Tae Kwon Do has shown up for the same reason.

With the warmer weather, the water guns have come into play in the back yard activities.

Star Wars is still the unquestioned champion of entertainment.

Daniel also had a class graduation, and I'll try to do a quick posting of some pictures from that after I get this one done.

Around christmas time, Daniel got a pair of Sketchers tennis shoes that had little flashing green lights. They are actually pretty cool. He had the first pair in his class, but by the end of the school year, there were 5-6 others wearing them. At this age, physical size apparently has nothing to do with influence.

So it's summer, and we're having a good time. Whether it's dragging our sister around the deck, splashing in the water, playing in the pool at Grandma Babe's house, it's all good.

And that'll have to do for this time. I'll try to post some graduation pictures next.

Love, ADRE.

Daniel turns 5

2010-05-02T19:58:00.008-06:00

Friends

Well, it happened - Mr. D is actually 5 years old. It's hard to believe that it's really been 5 years, but sure enough it has.

The little man was celebrated in two rounds - first at home on his actual birthday, and then today at the neighborhood park with his friends. We'd invited his preschool class and some other friends, and ended up with close to 100% acceptance rate, so with siblings and parents there were just about 50 people.

On Daniel's birthday, he went to lunch with Eric at a local Chinese restaurant, and had squid, which he then followed up with a birthday dinner wish of "Fish with their heads on". He does love his seafood.

On his birthday, he was allowed to open one package before dinner, and chose the one that arrived that day from Oregon. The monster truck was very popular, as were the books. After dinner he got to open the rest, and got a big kick out of the boat and legos from Norway. The cash he got from grandma babe is getting spent $1 at a time for matchbox cars...

And then there was the big 5-year-old party at the local park. Refusing to learn from last year when we just about gave all of the kids hypothermia, we scheduled an outdoor birthday in the spring. And it was looking pretty bleak a few days before the event, with possible snow predicted, but in the end we got lucky and it was high-50s and partially clouded.

Daniel wanted a Star Wars party, so that's what he got. Invitations went out to his classmates and a few family friends, and with better than expected response rate (and siblings), there were 29 kids who RSVP'ed and they all came.

Each kid got a jedi outfit and a lightsaber, took their picture with Yoda and then ran around the park for a bit.

Then there was pizza and "Yoda Soda" (Sprite with lime sherbert), followed by "Jedi training".

There were three events for the Jedi training. First to learn control of the lightsaber, the kids were given a balloon and asked to use the lightsaber to bounce it across a field....

In retrospect, we should have thought about the wind and the pine trees... Most of the balloons ended up blowing into a tree and popping...

Then there was teamwork training, where two and two jedis were tied together and had to do a three-legged race up the hill.

And finally, there was blaster training, where they got to shoot nerf guns at a cutout of Darth Vader.

Darth himself showed up at the end of training, did battle with the newly-trianed jedis, and lost... (though he'll go on record saying that he didn't feel he could use all of his powers against 5-year-olds).

And there was cake. And more swordfights. And a few tears, but no-one left unhappy.

And most importantly, the birthday boy himself had a great time.

All of the pictures we took at the event can be found HERE.

Happy birthday Mr. D - we love you.

Love, A(D)RE.

(This post was originally funnier and actually available on Sunday after the party, but blogger ate my text. The editor is grumpy).

Houston for a wedding and a little vacation

2010-05-01T20:58:00.000-06:00

Friends

So the weekend before Daniel's birthday, we jumped on a plane down to Houston to celebrate Anida's sister getting married, meet up with the TX side of the family, and also take a little vacation with our friends the Pastas.

What with one thing and another, we got a late start to the trip, then got stuck in security, so we made it to the plane with about 45 seconds to spare after a mad dash through the airport.

Daniel and Rachel enjoyed hanging out with their cousins Brayden, Kayla and Chloe before and after the ceremony.

We took advantage of having the kids all dressed up to get some nice pictures.

The next day after the wedding, we piled into our rented minivan with David, Barbara and Sean and headed on up to Bastrop, TX. There we stayed for a couple of nights at the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort thanks largely to some gift cards that Barbara generously shared.

What a nice place. In many ways it reminded us of the place we go in Thailand. The grounds were nice, the swimming pool was fantastic for the little ones and it was all-around relaxing. Thumbs up.

Daniel got to use his swimming skills in the pool and the kids area was large enough that he got some independence, while we felt like we didn't have to hover over him. Rachel also got confident that she could stand on her toes so they just had a grand time in there.

Daniel rode on the bikes they had for guests, and both evenings, we made S'mores at the outdoor firepits. The resort is right next to a state park, so we got some nice hikes in as well.

There are lots of additional pictures in David's photo Album - HERE.

On the way back from Bastrop, we stopped by the Blue Bell ice cream factor - which the adults enjoyed at least as much as the kids did.

(The airport and flight back were much less dramatic than the trip there).

In the spirit of keeping these short and hopefully not falling too far behind, that'll have to do for updates from TX.

Love, ADRE.

Activities over the last couple of months

2010-04-22T10:33:00.032-06:00

Howdy all

So it's time for another big batch of updates, and today we'll have four separate posts. First a "things we've been up to" posting, followed by separate posts for Rachel and Daniel and a Rachel birthday post. As I'm sure you can imagine, a lot happens in three months of blog-silence, so we'll do our best to not overwhelm you.

Back in January, cousins Brayden and Kayla came up to visit from Texas, and that was good fun. They stayed over at Grandma Babe's place, and so Daniel got to go for his first sleepover.

When they weren't doing that, they played, built things and read books at our house. Older cousins are the coolest thing around.

The National western stock show came to town, and this year Anida got to take the kids. As usual, Daniel had more fun climbing on tractors and other farm equipment than actually looking at animals, but Rachel got to ride a pony and had a good time at that.

In March, Grandpa and Farmor came to visit, as they usually do around March Madness. Daniel suited up in his Xavier gear (aka "the good guys") and took on all comers at driveway basketball. He's gotten decent at dribbling the ball.

As it tends to do in March, it alternated between sunny 70-degree days and snowstorms, so there was sledding and bulding of snowmen as well. Daniel wanted to put a beard on his snowman with red food coloring, but the end result was that it looked like someone slit the snowman's throat.

As a family, we all went up to Winter Park and spent a weekend at a Bed and Breakfast with a swimming pool, which was a nice break. One day we put both Rachel and Daniel in ski school, with the result that Anida got to strap on her skiis for the first time in 6 years. Good fun, though we made the tactical mistake of running into Daniel around lunchtime and that was the end of his willingness to stay in school. Rachel had a fun day on the bunny hill, but was most excited to tell us about the hot chocolate she'd had for snack.

We took a day trip down to Colorado Springs to go to the Zoo down there. Now, you might think that we have a perfectly good zoo in Denver, so why make the drive, but they have giraffes you can feed - which is actually a lot of fun.
Easter came and went. Rather than join the municipal easter egg hunt (which tends to last about 20 seconds while the big kids trample on the little ones), one of the preschool moms arranged a 10-family egg hunt in a local park which worked out wonderfully. All of the kids got to get something, and no-one was trampled.

We also had our own little hunt in the back yard, colored eggs and had Grandma Babe over for an easter lunch.

Some old favorites repeat themselves, of course. Both kids like to go to the children's museum, and occasionally to the "Monkey Business" inflatable playground. There have been a number of birthday parties, and trips to the zoo as well.

With the warmer weather, and new bicycles (see later posts), we've started taking bike trips as a family. Rachel can ride her own bike as far as the local playground, but jumps in the trailer for the longer trips to the reservoir.

By the end of the summer, I suspect she'll be pedalling along with the rest of us, though it can be hard to remember that she's still just 3 years old.

The way that Daniel and Rachel play together has evolved quite a bit over the last couple of months. Daniel has gotten a little less bossy, Rachel a little more assertive, and so it's balancing out. Sometimes they can play wonderfully together for an extended period. And sometimes - well - not. Particularly if one or the other is tired.

And that'll do for general updates for now. Next, the kids.

A Springtime Daniel Update

2010-04-22T10:33:00.018-06:00

There are a lot of things we could put in a posting about our almost-five-year-old, but it just wouldn't be right to lead off with anything except the new bike.

Daniel had pretty much outgrown his little 12" bike, although he was still having a lot of fun on it. On the larger wheels, he goes much faster and further than before.

We've taken several trips from our house through the state park, to the reservoir and back, and he just goes full speed up and down the hills with the biggest smile on his face you can imagine.

Daniel is sort-of reading books now. When he focuses, he can read simple sentences, recognizing a lot of shorter words and will sound his way through the longer ones. Some of it is memorization, some of it he guesses at, but there's no denying that he's really, really close to a reading breakthrough.

His favorite books have been the "magic treehouse" series for some time now -> he's read the first 28 adventures of Jack and Annie, and is apparently constantly talking about them at school. His teachers say there isn't a subject that he doesn't have an opinion on, and frequently starts a sentence with: "I learned that from my Jack and Annie books".

For those of you who are keeping track, Daniel did have another seizure here a couple of weeks ago. That makes 8 so far, and it'd been about 9 months since the previous one. So they're coming infrequently, and always triggered by a fever.

This was the first time we didn't go to the hospital at all, and it worked out OK, if a little nerve-wracking to do without the safety net of the nurses and doctors.

Daniel wrapped up the ski season with a third lesson, which didn't go all that great. He ends his first year of skiing knowing how to turn and stop, but not comfortable with going fast. That's OK, there's always next year.

In the last couple of months, Daniel's drawing abilities have really turned a corner, and it seemed to happen overnight. All of a sudden he's drawing recognizable people, houses, cats, dragons... He also writes his own cards and notes - you have to spell things out for him, of course, but you don't have to prod him anymore - he'll say "I want to write this.."

Daniel is now all signed up for kindergarten in the fall. It's hard to believe he's starting school already. He's ready for it, though.

Back in January, Daniel went on his first sleep-over at Grandma Babe's house when his cousins were in town, and most weeks have at least one playdate, either at our house or at a classmate's. Rarely does a play session last long before it somehow turns into a sword fight.

Speaking of sword fights, Daniel's birthday party will have a "Star Wars" theme to it, and 20+ kids will be running around the park with light sabers. We've bought up the entire local supply of blue pool noodles in order to make lightsabers for everyone.

On Tuesdays, Rachel has school, and Daniel doesn't, so it's Mama-Daniel day. On one recent tuesday they decided to go ice skating at the local rec center. Daniel was well-prepared with kneepads, elbow pads and a helmet, but quipped "Mama, I wish I had a butt-pad".

Like his sister, Daniel has a "Chart" of things we'd like him to work on, and upon completing it, he gets a reward of his choice. Past rewards have included various toys, experiences, etc. On one of his playdates at a friends house, he got to play with a nerf gun, and that's ALL he wanted.

We were pretty apprehensive, having previously laid down a "no guns, no shooting" rule. Not that that was working all that well - he would still make a gun from his index finger and thumb and run around going "piew, piew" until he got it trouble.... So he earned the nerf gun, played with it for awhile and got that out of his system, and now he doesn't rebel with the finger guns anymore, so this is all good.

Daniel has been taking Spanish lessons after school from Senora Cardoza, and that's been interesting. He knows colors, numbers and some other things. Some words he's learned are different than what is used in the Dora and Diego books, and when we asked about it, he said "Dora is just wrong".

Daniel and Papa got to go see Monster Trucks when they came to Denver, and that was a popular event. Much smaller than the Houston event from last year, but still fun. He particularly enjoyed the motorcycle tricks. Between the bike and his fascination with cars/engines, I suspect we're looking at a future gearhead.

Finally, Daniel's preschool class held a father-child ice cream social a few weeks ago. The dads got to come to the classroom, hang out for a while and eat ice cream. The highlight was that each kid had written a little essay about their father and what they liked about them, and the teachers made that into a laminated poster. I'll have to try to scan and post a picture.

And that'll have to do for the Daniel-specific updates for now.

A Springtime Rachel update

2010-04-22T10:00:00.007-06:00

Every Wednesday is "Mama-Rachel Day" when Daniel is in preschool, and Rachel gets to decide what to do all day with Anida. From her choices, we can get a pretty good idea of what would make up a perfect day.

It would involve books. Lots of books.

Almost every wednesday means a trip to the library to pick out new books. Rachel has her own library card and knows how to use it. She will frequently check out 20-25 books in a week.

Then, if she can convince an adult to read them all to her in a single session, taking occasional snack breaks, that would just be heaven. Grandparents are particularly good for this purpose, and have been known to read 10-15 books back to back before finally calling it quits.

More recently, Mama-Rachel day has involved going to the pool to practice swimming. Rachel is in her second set of swim lessons, and is working on the whole concept of kicking with straight legs and floating on her back. She's doing very well, and has a great time in the water.

Rachel has taken up the tricycle, and has started zooming around the driveway and cul-de-sac like her brother. She particularly enjoyes it when Daniel is in the mode to play bicycle with her. A few weeks ago, we decided it was time to get her a bicycle, and it didn't seem fair to give her the hand-me-down bike that Daniel outgrew, so a pink princess bike showed up. Probably a little too early - she rode around on it for a day or two, then reverted back to the tricycle, which is fine.

We've also put the training wheels back on Daniel's old bike, so that she has a smaller one to learn on.

Rachel dresses herself these days, and has a unique fashion sense. Most of the time she'll select matching tops and bottoms. Still shows a distinct preference for the color pink, and really, really doesn't like wearing jeans - choosing tights and a top or dresses.

Our little girl can be a little shy, particularly when first meeting people, but quickly warms up to them if she's not too tired. She's usually very, very sweet - she likes giving out presents, and will frequently give up her toys if some other kid wants to play with them. Still, she's capable of throwing HUGE temper tantrums/fits, and can keep them going for quite some time.

It's easy to forget that she's "Just 3", because she's about the same size as her older brother. Both of the kids have "Charts" where they can earn a sticker for completing certain activities, at the completion of which, they earn a prize that they select themselves.

Rachel's activities have been focused around getting dressed, helping with chores, avoiding accidents and learning the alphabet, a few letters at a time. For this, she's earned a trip to the ice cream store with Papa and the right to watch a Dora the Explorer movie from Netflix, both very popular. Rachel has extremely good counting, sequence and pattern recognition for her age.

Where Daniel was a whiz with the alphabet and letters, Rachel is showing a preference for numbers.

We don't have cable or satellite TV at home, so the childrens programs on PBS are the extent of what our kids know of television, and it's pretty limited what they get to watch.

A couple of times a week, they get to watch a show, and the current favorites are "Dinosaur Train" and "Sid the Science Kid". Rachel has a keen sense for when the show is about to end, and will inevitably say "Pwease, one more" as it starts wrapping up. The format of Dinosaur Train is that there are two episodes in a 30 minute show, so there she'll try to negotiate "Can we watch 2 shows"?

And that's about it for the Rachel-specific update.

Rachel is Three!

2010-04-22T09:48:00.009-06:00

Friends

So, Rachel has been three years old for almost three months now, but I'm going to call that "getting things in perspective" rather than apologize again for the tardy posts.

On the morning of her birthday, she woke up to find the floor of her room completely covered in balloons, which was a big hit - she ran into our room and said "There are BAWOONS in my woom".

Yep, still working on the "R" there, but definitely making progress.

Our little girl is getting big on us. As of her 3rd birthday she was:

37.87" tall (64th percentile)
33.25 lbs (75th percentile)
Which is, of course, perfect.
For dinner she got her favorite food of "Chicken Nuggets and Peas" accompanied by a pink puppy cake.

Norway 2009/2010

2010-01-12T11:26:00.008-07:00

Friends

Just before Christmas, we packed up and went to Norway to spend time with Farmor, Grandpa, Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Cousins Leo and Jacob.

As an extra bonus, great-grandmother "mormor" came over from Sweden, as did great-aunt (Oh, I bet she LOVES being called a great-aunt...) Marjan, great-uncle Benny and 2nd cousins Hannes and Manda. So it was a BIG christmas gathering.

Norway was cold, but not unbearably so. We'd barely arrived and settled in before Christmas dinner and everyone was at the house. Daniel and Rachel thought it was great fun to have their names on the gingerbread cookies that decorated the tree - and cousin Hannes impressed Daniel with his lego-building expertise.

I almost titled this posting: "Woodolf the Wed-nosed Waindewe", which is how Rachel would pronouce it. She can tell the difference when listening, so you can get fun exchanges like:

"Rachel, do you want to watch Rudolf"?
"Yay, Woodolf!"
"Woodolf"?
"No, Woodolf, not Woodolf"
"Woodolf"?
"NO, Woodolf!"

Anyway - Rachel dearly loves her cousin Jacob. While in Norway, she would consistently flock to him, and since getting home, she's been saying "I miss Jacob". By the end of the trip, she would consistently remember Michael's name, but for a while, he was "Dat Guy".

Leo and Rachel didn't "click" this trip, but that wasn't really a problem, since Daniel and Leo played quite well.

And another tidbit that doesn't really fit here, but has to be documented. Rachel loves carbohydrates. Bread, pasta, cereals -> anything with starch. While sitting at a Starbucks, she acknowledged as much: to quote: "Everything with Crumbs, that's what I love!"

After celebrating christmas in Oslo, we packed the cars and drove up to Renåfjellet where we'd rented a large cabin. We were super-lucky with the weather, and had fresh snow to play in.

The kids dug tunnels, jumped from the porch into the deep snow, went sledding all around the cabin. It was reasonably cold, so after doing that, it was nice to be able to come inside and take a nice warm bath, or even get in the sauna.

Daniel and Rachel borrowed cross-country skiis, and we took a couple of trips around the area. No speed records were set, but there was very little complaining, and for being his first time, Daniel did great. He was comfortable going across on the flat, and by the last time we went out, he had figured out how to go downhill - at least somewhat. Ups were harder.

The cabin was really nice, with plenty of space for everyone, a nice big open space upstairs for the kids to be crazy in (see video posting) and it was just nice to actually all be in one place rather than have to trek across Oslo to get together with the cousins. The only flaw in this cabin's design were the white cloth dining chairs - I think by the end of the trip, Rachel had stained every single chair. Here everyone's relaxing after a busy day

Farmor and Jacob.

For a 10-year old, Jacob has an amazing amount of patience and love for his younger cousins. And, as I said before, Rachel LOVES him (so does Daniel, but not with the same fervor as Rachel).

Sadly, all things must come to an end, and so it was with this trip too. This posting wouldnt be complete without a note on how good the kids are at travelling. Sure, they have plenty of practice, but even so they are just awesome - just mellow, go-with-the-flow kids. At the end of virtually every flight, some random stranger says "your kids are good travellers" when deplaning, and it's true.

Having the right distractions is key - here's Daniel playing his favority iPhone game: "Pocket God". Mostly he likes feeding his little electronic natives to the sharks, or spearing them, or striking them with lightening - so it's not exactly an educational game, but the humor is perfect for a nearly-five-year-old.

And once home again - there was Delilah - the current love in Daniel's life. Every night, she snuggles up next to him in bed, and pretty much sleeps on his face.

So that was Norway. An excellent time with family and winter activities.

Until the next posting (which I'm trying to write today).

ADRE.

A tale of four Christmases

2010-01-12T11:21:00.010-07:00

Friends

Christmas came early in 2009, and it came often. Because we were going to Norway, we arranged for Santa to come to Colorado early (he does that, if you know how to ask). So one fine December morning, we had Christmas at our house.

This was a big year for girly-stuff for Rachel, who scored a dollhouse, a farmhouse, some dolls, cribs, stroller and other random pink things (guess who's writing?). She was thrilled.

Daniel's takeaway was a robot (it dances, it whistles, it has a remote control), a space shuttle and a dinosaur hotwheels track. As he took it all in, he said "Papa - do you want to play Robot-Space-Dinos?"

Lesson for parents - unwrap and assemble toys first. With all of the twisty-ties and other packaging, christmas morning was an exercise in frustrated kids waiting to get to play, and a lot of paper and junk spread around.

Christmas #2 happened a few days later at Grandma Babe's house. She cooked a yummy dinner, and again, there were presents. The kids got a globe and stomp rockets.

Daniel is a master negotiator, who's learned that we won't tolerate him simply snatching his sister's toys away. So if he wants something, he'll work to convince her that some other toy is more fun. "Hey Rachel, is this a cool sword, or what?".

No dummy herself, when she doesn't agree, or doesn't want to share - Rachel will answer: "What!"

Christmas #3 was in Norway, where we got together with Farmor, Grandpa, Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Cousins Leo and Jacob, great-grandmother mormor, great-aunt and -uncle Marjan and Benny and Eric's cousins Hannes and Manda. It was quite the Swedish-Norwegian-American christmas feast.

In Norway, Santa comes during the evening after dinner, and will sometimes come in and say a few words to the kids. I guess he must have been on a tight schedule, because he just knocked on the window and left a bag of presents outside.

The Norwegian santa (and family members) brought playmobile toys. So Daniel found himself the owner of a boat and a submarine, while Rachel got a complete vetrinarian setup to go with her barn.

Here's Daniel and Grandpa discussing some of the finer points of playmobile. Or perhaps it's Lego - D also got a lego police helicopter. And it turns out that he's pretty good at following Lego assembly instructions. Sure, he likes to validate every step with an adult, but you can say "Daniel, make it look like this" and he goes and finds the right pieces, puts them in the right place and could (if he wanted to) build complex legos on his own.

And, as if THAT wasn't enough present-madness, when we got home from Norway, there were packages waiting. Aunt Erin and Chloe had come to visit while we were gone, and of course the mailman had done his part too. Daniel is very proud of his new Batman laptop. It has a number of activities/games, and he's gotten into a few of them - some are still beyond his interest, though.

Whew - with all of these new toys, it'll be a long time until anyone gets bored around our house. It's actually a bit overwhelming. Perhaps next year, we can consolidate everything into a single christmas.

Until next time.
ADRE

End of the year and some movies

2010-01-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

Friends

Happy New Year, and all that. It's finally time to catch up in blog-land. There are a total of three postings today (because, if you leave this alone for 4 months, the volume of things to talk about overwhelms one post). I'd tell you that my resolution for 2010 is to be better about posting here, but you can tell that I'm already off to a bad start.

In any case -this is the "videos" posting.

Daniel's preschool class held an end-of-year christmas pageant, and Daniel was a shepard. It's nearly 13 minutes long, of which Daniel's speaking role consists of the line "Where is he?" at around the 6:19 mark. The editor recommends the sequence starting at about 5:20 for those who don't want to sit through the whole video.

Rachel's been learning some tricks of her own, and she really wanted to show off this one - so without further ado -> Rachel, demonstrating the correct playschool method of putting on a jacket.

Jingle bells - with keyboard by Daniel.

This little book with a built-in keyboard has the most amazingly ear-penetrating, fake-synthesizer sound. But that's not really the point of this video -Daniel figured out that by reading the color-coded notes and playing them in order, he could play the keyboard. So that was pretty cool.

This little video is called "Energy Ball". It could also be called "Kids+Sugar+Cabin Fever=", but in reality, they are having a great time. Daniel, Rachel and their cousin Leo decided to literally bounce off the furniture at the cabin we rented for Christmas. After hanging out with Leo and Jacob for a couple of days, Daniel developed an accent that is EXACTLY like what you can hear Leo say in this video, but sadly I don't have any video evidence of this.

Some random updates that didn't fit elsewhere

2010-01-08T11:18:00.005-07:00

Friends

When you don't write an update for - um - nearly 4 months, then stories just build up. And then it's this overwhelming task to post, which causes further procrastination, etc. A bad cycle. And, with some of the former audience having moved to Colorado (yes, I'm talking about you, Grandma Babe), some of the pressure is off to provide updates. That said - we have this nice, almost 5-year-long diary of the kids growing up that I'm sure we'll look back on as a fond memory - so no more excuses.

Both of the kids have been taking swim lessons through the fall and again here in 2010. Daniel is working on technique and endurance, and Rachel is zooming up through the skills of floating on her back, blowing bubbles, kicking, etc. Her teacher loves her for her enthusiasm, and she's doing great. On the last lesson of the year, though - she must have swallowed a bit of water, so she complained that her "tummy hurts". When the instructor failed to take the warning seriously, Rachel had the most impressive projectile vomiting all over the pool. That shut down the pool for the day, so everyone else's lessons were cancelled. (Rachel was fine, it was just water)

We've had colds throughout December, and here in January, Rachel got RSV, so she was sounding like a harbor seal. Still everyone was in pretty good shape for Norway. Knowing that bad things can happen if Daniel gets a fever, we fought to get him vaccinated against H1N1 early, and that involved standing in line at a public vaccination for a while. He took it in stride. Rachel got hers a few days later at a similar event, and by December even the adults could get it. So no little piggies in our house.

Daniel is still a couple of inches taller than Rachel, but due to differences in their builds, they are within 0.5lbs of eachother in weight - and I won't be surprised if she laps her brother soon. They're frequently thought to be twins - though that impression doesn't last past Daniel opening his mouth. They have gotten a lot better about playing together - it's no longer Daniel dictating the game and Rachel just following, and he's adapted (sometimes) the idea that she has opinions too.

From preschool, Daniel has developed love for all things Star Wars - even though he's not allowed to watch it yet -> so he has these odd associations that he's pulled together from talking to his friends. He's constantly trying to validate his assumptions: "Can Jedi's die?", "Is Chewbacca a Jedi?" and "Carson says that there is a mom-Vader". After spending time in Norway with his cousins, he has a whole new lexicon to work with "Republic Battleship" is a favorite.

Leading up to Christmas, there were a whole series of activities related to the season. We went on a date with the Finch family and kids to see the Parade of Lights downtown, and while it probably made some impression, the cold temperatures made more of an impression. Then there was a Christmas party for our local city, which was popular - they got to decorate cookies and sit on Santa's lap (speaking of which - I'm not sure I've seen those photos yet).

Daniel is making some steps towards reading on his own - he can recognize short words, and sometimes sound out longer words, but he still prefers to have books read to him. His memory is so good that if you read a book to him once, he can "read" it back to you, so it's a little hard to tell when he's actually reading independently or just pulling things back from memory.

Rachel is about turn 3. She alternates between wanting to be a "Little gurl" and a "BIG Gurl!". She's really quite mature for her age - as I suppose most second children have to be to survive. It's worth remembering that at this age, Daniel still used a pacifier (Rachel never did), and her counting/sequencing skills are ahead of where his were at the same age - it helps to have an older brother! (that's my line and I'm sticking to it, Aunt Sara).

OK, no pictures makes for a boring post. Have a great weekend everyone. I hope to be back with more updates on a more regular basis than in 2009.

Love,

ADRE.

Most Excellent Milestone!

2010-01-06T07:21:00.002-07:00

We hope to get a Christmas posting up soon, but I just had to report on this morning's 'first'. Daniel fixed breakfast for Rachel and himself with NO help! They got out the cereal, Daniel got two yogurts from the fridge, asked Rachel which she wanted, poured Rachel's cereal, opened both yogurt containers, got spoons, then poured his own cereal. He didn't even spill! We witnessed it undetected from the laundry room. It was a GREAT moment!

Ten Weeks in Pictures

2009-12-04T15:49:00.015-07:00

It's been ten weeks since our last posting. Considering that life will not be slowing down anytime soon, we decided we could post some pictures of what we've been doing.

Daniel's First Time Skiing (Thanksgiving)

Rachel Picks a Sled

Rachel Loves Pie

Daniel and Rachel Posing before Dinner

Daniel's Homemade Batman Costume (He cut out the mask himself and lived in this for 3 days)

Rachel is a Princess and Daniel is Optimus Prime for Halloween

Farmor and Grandpa Come to Visit

Daniel's Beary Special Day at Pre-K

Rachel's First Swim Lesson

Rachel at the Children's Museum

Fall is here

2009-09-23T11:53:00.004-06:00

Friends

The calendar says that fall is here, and we've seen our first snowfall (though it didn't stick), so it's way past time for another catch-up blog posting.

Since last time, we've been sick. Every one of us has had this nasty cold that settles in the chest and makes you miserable. It's been going on for a month now,but I'm hoping it's on the decline.

We went camping again in August, and then over labor day weekend for a total of three trips this year. Each time, it got a little easier, more relaxed and more fun, so this is a trend we'll keep up. The kids were deeply envious of mom and dad's camelbaks, so by the last trip, we all had one, and were able to go on a really nice "moderate skill level" hike. So, sure it took 3 hours to go 1.6 miles, but it was fun.

We also took a weekend morning and drove up to a stocked trout pond. Daniel thought it was good fun to cast out his line and reel it back in - a 4-year-old doesn't really have the patience or attention span needed to catch something, but he enjoyed that dad did, and we cooked up the trout as a snack.

The other big event in August was that Grandma Babe moved to Denver from Houston. Anida flew down to Texas, and they drove the moving truck up here. Daniel got a kick out of "driving" the truck, and thought it was great fun to help Babe move into her new apartment. We're already reaping the benefits of having her here, from more time with the kids to a recently-instituted "date night" on Fridays (yay!).

Daniel has pretty much been living on his bicycle since the last posting - his favorite activity is to "Play Police" which involves riding his bike in circles around the cul-de-sac while chasing someone else - preferably an adult on another bike. Rachel has inherited Daniel's tricycle and recently figured out how to pedal, so she's mobile too.

School has started for both kids this fall - Daniel is in the preschool class three days a week, and Rachel is in playschool two days a week. The schedule is such that every week there's one day for Daniel and Anida, one for Rachel and Anida and one for just Anida... This seems to be working out out well. Both kids are also enrolled in the 'natics (gymnastics) class once a week, and Rachel in particular thinks that the chance to bounce, climb, balance and skip is just about the best thing in the world.

Here's Rachel on her first day of school. By coincidence, her class is almost all girls, which is exposing her to the girly-girl phenomenon for the first time. While her classmates were playing with the dolls, she beelined it over to the cars and trucks.

Rachel's language skills have blossomed in the last couple of weeks, and while her pronounciation of R and L is still frequently a W (Cherry becomes Chewwy, etc) she's easy to understand most of the time. This week marked a step forward in that she'd been trying to get Anida and Daniel to understand something she was saying, and when they just didn't get it, she switched words to get her point across, so she's grasped the concept of a synonym.

There have been lots of fun activities in the last month. We took the kids to see "Up" at an actual movie theatre, and had dinner at Casa Bonita (of South Park fame)- though the dinner is certainly less memorable than the cliffdivers, puppet show, magician, etc. We tried miniature golf again, and Daniel did much better this time, at least when he was focused.

This will be the year for ski lessons for Daniel, though I certainly hope to have another blog posting before that's a reality.

Love,
ADRE.

Today was a day for milestones

2009-08-09T20:56:00.003-06:00

Friends

Today was a great day - and I actually think that you should just let the video tell the story. It's only 2 minutes long, but because I wanted to keep the quality high, it might take a few minutes to download.

Rachel's milestone for today was that she mastered the "F-words". Now that might not sound like a desirable achievement, but until today, she would consistently say "S" rather than "F" at the beginning of words. Firefighers were "siresighters", Four was "sore" and "I passed gas" was "I sarted!" Not today -> all of a sudden, it seems that a switch flipped and we now have "F".

I'm going to finally get around to writing the vacation update blog once I post this, so right after this posting is another set of updates.

Love, ADRE.

August. really?

2009-08-06T22:11:00.009-06:00

Friends

How did we get to August? I mean, really - what happened to June and July? Time is just flying by. Two weeks of that time was our vacation in Norway/Sweden/Iceland, but before getting to that....

Back in the beginning of July, Daniel had another seizure. Yes - it had been about 10 months. Yes - we thought we might be done with them.

It all worked out fine in the end, but there was some additional drama when the doctor at Children's Hospital screwed up the dosage of the antiseizure medication, giving him 500% of the correct dose. So that bought him an overnight at the hospital while he worked it out of his system. The effect on Daniel was as if he was very, very drunk - he lost enough control of his muscles that he couldn't really stand, but he could still ask the pretty nurses to dance with him, and tried to impress them with his knowledge: "Did you know....that.....I....can count to...........40?"

By the 4th of July, he was back to normal, and we got to see the fireworks show and that made a big impression.

Then it was time for our summer vacation. The flight to Norway via Minneapolis and Iceland went without a hitch - we have some of the best little travellers ever. It was considerably easier than 2 years ago when we took the same route and there were delays. Once in Norway, we rested up for a day before zipping on over to Stugan - the family cabin on the Swedish coast. The weather was kind of bland for the first couple of days, but quickly got nicer. As usual, the boys spent their days catching crabs, while Rachel was much less certain that she wanted any part of that. Rachel did, however, have a complete crush on her hero Jacob, and wanted nothing more than for him to play with her (which he did - showing himself to be a very mature 9-year-old).

Daniel and Leo really bonded on this trip, and played wonderfully together. There were trips in Grandpa's boat, strawberry picking at the local farm, but otherwise just a lot of hanging out and having fun.

From Stugan a quick trip back to Oslo, then onwards to Iceland for a 4-day stopover. Iceland was a fantastic experience this time around, and defied a lot of stereotypes. It was warm enough for shorts every day and due to the economic meltdown there, it was cheap.

We got to see puffins this time, got to go whale-watching, see the sights from last time in sunshine rather than rain and have a relaxing soak at the blue lagoon. Equally nice was the municipal pool 3 blocks from our B&B, where all of the outdoor pools were maintained at very pleasant body-temperature water, thanks to Iceland's access to geothermal heat. The highlight from the last day was the Reykjavik zoo and park, where the kids play area was simply fantastic - Daniel just about peed himself when he found the Caterpillar sand scoops that used real hydraulics to lift and move dirt. Daniel got a viking get-up, and Rachel got a puffin, which she insisted was a penguin, so his name became "Penguin the Puffin".

Back in Denver, we've had the local city summer celebration day (slides, carousel rides, and Daniel got to paddle a kayak), which was nice.

The local HOA party where we met some new neighborhood kids, and otherwise a number of get-togethers with friends. I hate to skim over these, because they were a lot of fun, but that's the price of updating so seldom.

And that's the historical timeline update. Next, some anecdotes from the last 6 weeks.

Love, ADRE.

Anecdotes from the last couple of weeks

2009-08-05T22:14:00.001-06:00

Friends

There are some things that have to be written down just so that they are remembered, without necessarily fitting into any of the previous posts.

As you probably inferred from earlier postings, Daniel has been able to earn a quarter here and a quarter there by helping out around the house. He used this money to buy himself a "recycling truck" which has been his pride and joy for the last couple of weeks. That's the background for the following exchange from last week:

Daniel wanted to watch something on TV, but had been a pill about it, so we'd said "no", and asked him what he might do to get what he wanted, thinking that he'd answer something like "I could ask nicely" or "I could calm down", but what he said instead was: "I could give you some money..."

We've been spending some time with a Realtor lately, so it probably shouldn't have surprised us when Rachel asked "Are we going to look at pwopaties today?" - Anida is convinced that we have the first 2-year old to use "properties" in a sentence.

We're actively trying to phase out Dora the Explorer and Diego from our media picture, because Daniel and Rachel have both really outgrown them (but they don't know it). The new hit is "Super-WHY" from PBS which is great in that it teaches word recognition and intro to reading.

I really ought to do a dedicated Rachel update because she passed the 2 years and 6 months mark at the end of July, but I just know that if I postpone, it won't happen. So in brief (hoping that I'll eventually flesh out).

Rachel is certainly developing and showing a personality of her own. For a long time, she's been the quiet one - happy to be included in anything that Daniel does, and without strong opinions of her own. That phase has ended.

We now have a confident, self-assured toddler who wants no advice from anyone. "I can do it mySELF" is frequently heard if you try to dress her, and she recently started to refuse to wear diapers/pullups "I'm a big gurl, I wear PANTIES!"

Speaking of which, there has been progress on the potty-training front, and we have more successes than failures these days -> it's just that the failures are so - well - messy. Nonetheless, there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh, and Rachel can count to 20 and is very proud of that fact.

Sliding and Swinging are still some of her favorite activities, and she loves to color and paint - just loves it.

And that'll have to do for now. Until next time.

Love, ADRE.

Events from the last month

2009-06-16T22:36:00.012-06:00

Friends

Is anyone out there reading this still? I know that after failing to post for 5 weeks, we don't deserve an audience. So this is really for posterity and those of you who are really into delayed gratification.

Anyway - a lot of little updates from the last 5 weeks. The first one was that we packed up the family and flew off to Providence, RI to attend Eric's 15th college reunion and meet some old friends. This was a fun trip.

Both Daniel and Rachel thought it was a hoot to see Dad's old school.

The hotel had a nice swimming pool where Daniel got to show off his swimming skills, and the Alumni field day had a lot of activities for the kids. The magician was at the exact right level for Daniel to really enjoy, and since he thrives on attention from older girls, the soccer clinic run by the Brown women's soccer team was right up his alley.

Rachel boogied to the sounds of Dave Binder, and they both thought the idea of free, unlimited ice cream was the best thing ever.
The Brown graduation procession is a pretty special event where alumni and faculty line the streets of College Hill while the graduating class walks by, then the alumni file past the graduating class. It was a little too much for Rachel, but the crowd went wild for Daniel sitting on Anida's shoulders. They screamed his name and he gave high-fives all the way down the street. (really, I'm not making this up).

Meanwhile, Daniel had a graduation of his own, or at least a last-day-of-preschool. We brought in the pinata that didn't get used at Daniel's birthday due to weather, and the whole class and Rachel got to beat on it.

Next fall, both Rachel and Daniel will be enrolled at the school, and we're pretty sure Rachel is excited.

Post-school, Daniel's enrolled in a theatre arts session at the local rec center, and Rachel goes to a drop-in gymnastics session at the same time. They both seem to have a good time. Outdoor pools are also being frequented.

Anida declared that the infant swingset that Eric built about 3.5 years ago was no longer up to the task, so we disassembled that and over the course of a weekend built a much larger one. The trapeze hasn't yet seen a lot of action, but that will probably change, and Daniel likes the fact that the swings hang low enough that he can get himself on.

The local motorcycle/ATV store was running a "family day" that we just randomly found out about, and so Daniel got the chance to dress up in full dirtbike gear and zoom around a dirt track with an instructor on the back of the cycle, which he thought was good fun.

Whew. Let's see -> in addition to the above, there's been a trip to see "Dora" at the local theater, some trips over to the local beach, and we now have some water guns for battles in the back yard. Yes, indeed - summer is in full swing.

Rachel's molars are popping through, and we took Daniel for an appointment with his foot doctor (all is good, nothing to do). There are some videos that we might get around to posting - ignoring the blog for a month makes this a big batch of summaries. Short version -> we're doing great and having a good spring/summer.

Love,

ADRE

I don't like camping

2009-06-16T22:24:00.008-06:00

Friends

So last weekend we made good on a longstanding plan to take the kids camping. Anida did all of the research, planning and packing, and on Friday afternoon we piled into the car and drove up to the mountains.

And everyone had a great time. The post title came from Daniel saying the following on the last morning:

"I don't like to be cold. I don't like to be dirty. I don't like camping because it makes me cold and dirty".

Which didn't stop him from continuing to play in the dirt, learn how to throw a frisbee and in general have enough fun that he says he wants to go camping again.

There were marshmallows. There were s'mores. There were hotdogs over an open fire. And yes - it was cold. Even in the middle of June it gets cold at night at 9800 feet.

Both Daniel and Rachel had fun exploring, going on (very short) hikes and throwing things in the stream nearby.

The mosquitos mostly feasted on Rachel and Anida and left the boys alone. No major hiccups with regard to the trip, except that the coffeepot broke in transit, and we nearly ran out of matches because the "waterproof" matches turned out to also be nearly fireproof.

So we'll do it again.

Until next time.

ADRE

Random Updates on a Sunday evening

2009-05-10T23:41:00.003-06:00

Friends

There are a total of three new posts this evening, so don't stop once you're done reading this one -> a lot of little updates that didn't fit anywhere else come first.

Eric usually takes Daniel to swim lessons while Anida does other things, and so she hadn't actually seen first-hand how good of a swimmer he's become until today.

And it was a good day for it too. He got to swim across the whole pool on his back, show that he can breathe properly, but the best part was that he got to jump from the diving board a couple of times. He was proud as a peacock over that one.

Daniel's been spelling out words as he sees them written on signs and buildings, but we didn't actually know that he had cracked "the grownup code" of spelling out things in conversation that we didn't want him to hear. That illusion was shattered at dinner on Friday, when Anida said jokingly to our guest "If you do that, I'll have to kay-eye-ell-ell you", and Daniel said "Did mama just say "kill"?

Oops. Oh well. Could have been worse.

Most of the Rachel updates are two posts down, but we had a similar exchange at dinner yesterday, when Eric - in frustration that Rachel kept making a mess at dinner, referred to her as "a little oink", to which she immediately said "I'm not a pig".

OK, note to selves - kids are listening more than we give them credit for.

Rachel scored major points with Anida for saying "Tank you for washing my pajamas", and then proudly took her clean clothes upstairs.

And that about does it for now. Since these posts appear witht the newest one first, keep reading for 2 additional updates.

Love, ADRE

Swine Flu stinks...

2009-05-10T22:37:00.009-06:00

Friends

We were going to spend a nice long weekend at a resort in Cancun with the Pasta family, but given the hysteria around Swine Flu in the last couple of weeks of April, we changed destinations at the last minute.

In retrospect, that decision is looking a little wimpy, but at the time it seemed prudent.

Thankfully, we were still able to pull off a trip to San Diego, which turned out to be a very good trip.

Legoland was a huge success, and everyone had a good time. Daniel was tall enough for the rides that he wanted to ride, and Rachel had plenty to do too.

The highlights were driving a lego car, riding a pirate boat (where you could spray other boats) and putting out a "fire" (which the Pastas, to their credit, did faster than we did).

It was just a lot of fun all around.

On Saturday, we saw the San Diego Zoo in the morning, and the Midway in the afternoon. The Midway was the bigger hit of the two, but Rachel liked the Panda exhibit and proclaimed "I have one of those at home!" We wrapped it up with a chance to play on the sandy beach at Coronado.

The days were full of excitement, and we didn't have any problems keeping everyone entertained, but we might have worn them out a bit. On Sunday, we hit the San Diego Wild Animal park, and when we walked in the front gate, Daniel took one look and exclaimed in disgust "This is s ZOO". We didn't last long at that park, but went back to the hotel for a dip in the pool before going over to Jan Robert and Lia's place for a nice BBQ.

Monday was another full day of entertainment, with a harbor cruise, a ride on a double-decker bus, a drive along the coast and a chance to see sealions in La Jolla. If it sounds like we were busy, we were. The kids had a blast, and so did the adults. Sure, it was a little more work than sitting around a pool in Cancun, but not a bad vacation by any stretch of the imagination.

Tuesday, the Pastas had an earlier flight than us, so we parted ways at the hotel after breakfast, with the intent to return to Legoland, but the big L was closed. So we regrouped and went to the Birch Acquarium, which was very nice, and then played some miniature golf at Boomers, before heading back to town for the trip home. It was our first time playing miniature golf, and Daniel can whack the ball pretty well.

Next stop will be Providence, RI where we're all going to Eric's college reunion, then later in the summer it'll be Norway and Iceland.

Hope everyone is doing well. Will try to do one final posting here before calling it a night.

Love, ADRE.

A long-neglected Rachel Update

2009-04-29T15:49:00.006-06:00

Friends

This little video is over a month old, and just fell into that pile of "things we need to post" before getting lost in Daniel's birthday.

Rachel, like her brother, has an amazing vocabulary, and has started to say some really funny things. The other day, Anida turned on the radio and the commentators were talking:

"Dat's a talking Song!"

Most of the time, she's easy to understand. She substitutes "s" for "f" at the beginning of words, so that "Firefighter" becomes "SiAH sitAH". "L" or "R" at the start of a word becomes "W" (I like it is I wike it and I ripped the book becomes "I wipped it"). We understand 99.9% of what she says, but occasionally, she'll rip out one that has us scratching our heads. "I wanna cosa cousins" turned out to be "I would like to close the curtains".

Rachel LOVES to read books, and one of her favorite activities (if not the top one) is to have books read to her. Dora and Diego are good standbyes, but she's recently discovered the Gruffalo books. She gets a kick out of painting, and now really knows her colors (the much earlier post on colors turned out to be a fluke, but we forgot to tell everyone that, which in turn caused our friends to think that their son of the same age as Rachel was a slow learner. Sorry, Sean).

Most of the time, she plays well with her brother, but when they got into it (usually Daniel's fault for getting in her face), Rachel had this nasty habit of biting him - hard. Thankfully, that seems to have diminished. A few weeks ago, Anida witnessed Rachel getting so provoked by Daniel that she grabbed a (clean) diaper from the pile in the bathroom and screamed "I hit you with a diaper" while actually swatting him with it. It's funny what constitutes progress these days.

Rachel has inherited Daniel's old tricycle, and has just figured out how to pedal it. She's not shown the same enthusiasm that Daniel did yet, but that might change. The swing is still her favorite. She'll hold on tight and as that you "Push me Hi-ah, please"

And that's about all for the Rachel-specific update. A more general posting coming momentarily.

Love, ADRE.

Daniel turns 4

2009-04-29T15:46:00.007-06:00

Friends

Daniel turned 4 today, and the celebrations capped what has been about a week of birthday-related things.

The video is from his party at the park. In addition to our close friends, we also invited all of the kids in Daniel's preschool class, and quite a number of them turned out. So it was a bit of a madhouse, with roughly 25 children and and the same number of adults.

Everyone had fun running around, and we have some video of that too. When it was time for sandwiches and cake, the temperatures fell pretty quickly, and we had a bunch of cold little boys and girls. So the party ended pretty quickly after the cake was served and consumed.

Today began with the rest of us waking up Daniel with breakfast and presents in bed. Then Daniel made us all dinner (Shrimp and Mac'n'Cheese) before we all wandered down to the ice cream store for some dessert. All in all, a very pleasant way to celebrate a birthday.

Daniel got some really cool presents, and we'll talk more about those in a later posting, as it's getting late.

Happy Birthday, Daniel. We love you.

A.D.R.E.

I'd like you to meet Bennett

2009-04-09T20:08:00.003-06:00

Friends

Through reading a friend's blog, I learned of the passing of Madeline Spohr, a little girl with hundreds of friends who never met her, but knew her through the blogosphere.

Like so many of the bloggers who linked to Maddie's page, I know this boy that I've never met, but I feel like his story needs to be told and shared. He's not my kid, but I want to use the little soapbox that is our blog to tell you about Bennett and what he means to me.

This is Bennett's page and story - the short version is that he's 5 years old and needs a new kidney.

I've never met this boy, nor have I ever met his family, but - well - in a way, he saved my son's life.

Bennett has ARPKD, which is a genetic condition which causes failure of the kidneys. It's a death sentence if it happens before birth.

Without kidneys, there's no amniotic fluid, without amniotic fluid, the lungs don't develop, without lungs, well - it'd be like stopping development at 20 weeks - it's universally fatal if it happens in utero. Except that Bennett's mother wouldn't accept that. She underwent a series of injections of saline into her uterus during the pregnancy, and despite being told by every doctor but one that it was hopeless, Bennett survived and today he's 5.

He's the only one.

He's a miracle.

Our first son, John Connor, also had ARPKD, and the input we got from the medical profession was unanimous - he was not going to survive.

I found the ARPKD support group on Yahoo, and through it met Bennett's mother who told me her story. Armed with that, we found a doctor who was willing to try the amniotic fluid injections on Anida. Did it work? Up to a point. In the first couple of weeks, we saw his lungs grow significantly. But you're not really supposed to stick needles into the amniotic sac, and in our case, the weakening caused it to rupture.

Still, the help he got for those couple of weeks gave John Connor a fighting chance at life, and when he was born at 29 weeks old, he fought valiantly for 29 hours before he just couldn't do it anymore. I owe those 29 hours to Bennett.

I can't give Bennett a kidney. He needs someone with blood type O. What I can do is to help spread his story, and that's where I'm asking for your help. I am not asking that you make my cause yours, but the more people that know Bennett, the greater the chance that a kidney donor will be identified. If you would, please take a moment to read Bennett's story, and then consider if you have a way of helping or passing it onto others.

Thank you.

Eric

A series of random updates

2009-04-05T23:37:00.007-06:00

Friends

You could think, looking at the pictures on this entry, that we've had 4 seasons in 2 weeks. There was a blizzard and a heatwave, and that's just Colorado for you.

It took until late March, but we finally got enough snow to go sledding in the neighborhood. Daniel was a huge fan - Rachel a little less so.

Farmor and Grandpa have gone back to Norway after almost 2 weeks here. The kids got very used to having them around, and as usual, the days after they left were a little unbalanced. As Rachel would say "Dat not wight" (that is not right).

Daniel broke from his firefighter routine briefly, so that he could be a pirate wandering around Roxborough State Park, and impressed with his skills on the Razor. Rachel showed her artistic side on the deck and went for the nightly "family walk" with Grandpa.

First Daniel got a cold, then Rachel (and farmor), so we've been coughing a bit around here.

Daniel went to the Denver Auto show with Eric and the boys (Harrison, Harrison, Stu and Eli) and you know that your brand is in trouble when a 3-year-old says "These are all rental cars" as he approaches the Chrysler booth.

Finally, Daniel had an awesome swim lesson today. He was a great listener, and swam about 1/2 of the pool length with no assistance, and about 1/3 of the length on his back. His new teacher was very impressed. Oh, and he's been doing a heck of a Manfred Mann impression. We should have better video, but here is what we have.

Until next time.

Love,

ADRE.

SNOW DAY!!!!!

2009-03-26T09:09:00.004-06:00

We're having our very first school closing because of snow today. Thanks to Daniel's clever suggestion, we've established a tradition of drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows for breakfast on SNOW DAYS. The conditions are expected to worsen throughout the day, but so far, it's brought nothing but fun for the kids.....

It's spring, how did that happen?

2009-03-24T19:15:00.011-06:00

Oh, where to start? Six full weeks of updates to do in one big, honking post, so if you’re interested enough to read this – strap in. The short version is that we’re doing great.

Last we checked in with Rachel, she’d just turned two, and started going to gymnastics. It’s still one of her favorite activities, and she’ll ask if she can “Go ‘natstics?”. The big news in the last couple of weeks is that she has graduated out of her crib and into her “big girl bed”. She’s as proud as can be over this upgrade.

In the last six weeks, Rachel’s verbal skills have taken a huge jump forward. Her pronunciation of words has become clearer to other people (previously we were the only ones fluent in her dialect) and she strings together more of them at a time.

A couple of weeks ago, Daniel did something funny, and she said “Daniel, dat’s siwy. Dat’s REWY SIWY” (silly and really silly, respectively). If you say something that’s incorrect, she’ll say “Dat’s not wight” or “Dat’s wight” when you get it right. Right now we’re working on correcting her “Me want X” and “Me do Y” with “I want X”.

As long as she gets things her way, Rachel is a total sweetheart, but her feelings can get hurt fairly easily, and we’ve had a few incidents of her just throwing herself flat on the floor/ground in utter hysterics because she didn’t get the answer she wanted. Then it passes, and she announces that “Me happy now” and gives you one of her fabulous hugs.

Rachel’s pretty close to Daniel’s height right now, having gone on a bit of a growth spurt. People on the street frequently assume that they are twins. This doesn’t seem to bother either of them.

Since last time, Daniel has been a firefighter. That’s not much of an exaggeration. He got a firefighter outfit from farmor, and has since wanted to wear it to the store, to school, in the car and around the house.

The day before fire safety day at preschool, we overheard him preparing what he was going to say. “…and the most important thing is to not play with matches…. Now, who has a REAL firefighter jacket?”

Preschool had a spring program last Friday, and Daniel’s class had a couple of songs to sing, which was nice. He clearly loves the social aspects of going to class, so that’s been good for him.

Daniel has been helping out more in the kitchen as well. He loves pretending that he’s a waiter and setting the table for dinner, and on a couple of occasions he’s made cookies with Eric. He can mix the dough, roll out the cookies and most importantly knows that knives and a hot stove are not toys.

It’s a new session at swimming lessons, and Daniel has a new teacher. Last time he lost his teacher, it was traumatic and set him back 3 months, but this time he hasn’t missed a beat. His form is great, but he’s still not so clear on the whole “needing to breathe” thing.

Daniel loves his sister, and is generally very protective of her. When she visits at preschool, he shows her off to the other kids, and they have started to play more together (albeit with Daniel largely setting the rules of engagement, and Rachel just happy to be invited along.) It’s not always perfect, and they do occasionally blame the other for meltdowns, but it’s usually good.

Grandpa and Farmor are visiting, and Daniel has re-taken-up basketball (now he dribbles) and has added golf as part of his bonding exercise. It’s great fun.

I’ll try to add some more pictures and video as time allows.

Until next time.
Love, A.D.R.E.

Rachel turns 2

2009-02-04T19:36:00.008-07:00

Friends

A month has passed - where does the time go? And so much to tell. Our little girl went off and turned 2 years old, which just doesn't seem possible. She was well celebrated with a "Dora the Explorer"-themed party at home. Carly, Eli, Declan, Fiona and Harrison were in attendance. Between celebrating early with some friends, Grandma Babe coming into town early, and Grandpa coming in late, it was a full week of partying.

With a milestone birthday, come the measurements.

Rachel weighed in at 28lbs 4oz, (70th percentile)
She measured 34.875" (88.6 cm, or 80th percentile
Head circumference was 19" (70th percentile)
Cuteness at 100%

So we're still tall, slender for our height and have a big noggin. By the approximation that she'll grow to twice her 2-year-old height, she's destined to be about 5'10". Most of the time, Rachel is one happy little girl - it takes a lot to shake her off her rocker, so she'll be fine, fine, fine, fine - until she's not, and when she's not happy - she's really not happy. She has an unfortunate tendency to bite Daniel (hard) when she feels threatened in any way, but we're working on it, and Daniel is showing more patience than you honestly would expect from a 3-year-old.

As yes - Daniel has had some fun moments of his own in the last month. Probably the most impressive development is that he's made large strides with his swim lessons. He can now plane out and swim with both his arms and legs - face in the water, and he'll do this for 8-10 feet at a time. He just needs to remember to breathe, and he'll be off to the races.

Daniel has always had a knack for memorizing his books/stories. Long ones too (He'll read the entire "Gruffalo" book to you if you flip the pages). But he's started recognizing whole words and reading based on word recognition, which is huge. He read all of "Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear" to Rachel the other day.

Daniel has always been good with words, and he's turning out to be a social guy. Our friends the Dows came through town during the weeklong Rachel celebration, and Dan said it best: Daniel will never know a stranger. Favorite toys vary by the day and week, but trains and being a firefighter are the current hits. Farmor made him his very own firefighter jacket.

Rachel has started going to a gym class while Daniel is in school, and has taken to that like a fish to water. She climbs, bounces, balances, slides and has a fantastic time. And no update on Rachel would be complete without mentioning that she sings all the time. Mostly variations on "twinkle twinkle little star", but there are others.

As alluded to above - Grandma Babe came and visited for a week or so. Grandpa was in town for just a few days. So the house has been full of visitors and actually feels a little empty now that everyone is gone.

And that'll have to do for now. Hope everyone is well

Love, ADRE.

Monsta Cucks!

2009-01-09T14:29:00.009-07:00

Friends

The flight to Houston was delayed. And then delayed again, again and again, and by the end of it, we were 5.5 hours late, and arrived at Grandma Babe's house after 4am. Not a single whine from the kids over this - we have amazingly good travelers.

Houston was a long series of gatherings and parties. Kayla and Aunt Erin celebrated birthdays while we were there, there was a belated Christmas celebration, and of course New Years Eve. So it seemed to be an endless series of partying, presents, food and fun. All of the cousins had a great time together.

New Years Eve was celebrated with the Pasta family, and we left our camera behind, so you'll have to look for photographic evidence on their blog when Dave gets around to it.

Rachel started to ask "Why?". She says it a lot.

Now, you might be a redneck....if you take your extended family to a Monster Truck rally as a Christmas gift.

Yes, it's true - on Saturday before coming home, we took the cousins, aunt, Babe and the Pastas to see "Monster Truck Jam" with 75,000 of our closest friends at Reliant stadium.

And it was a great time. Daniel was so enthralled that he just about forgot to breathe for 4 hours, and the next morning, Eric had to lay down on the floor and pretend to be the cars that "Taz" the monster truck smashed.

He was concerned though -> "Won't people be sad when their cars get crunched?"

It was a bit loud for Rachel even with earplugs, and so she had to be calmed down and as you can see in the background, she slept through some of the show.

And that's about it for our Houston adventure. We had a good stay, and in just a couple of weeks, Grandma Babe will be up in Denver for Rachel's 2nd birthday.

Until next time.

Love, ADRE

Christmas Chaos

2009-01-09T14:02:00.008-07:00

Friends

So we'd been back from Thailand for a few days - mostly enough to eliminate Jet Lag in all of but Rachel, when we went to a pre-Christmas party held by the neighbor of a friend. It turned out to be a great time - Santa showed up, sang some songs, told some stories and then had time for all of the kids. Daniel had the routine pretty much figured out, but was a little more bashful with Santa than his parents (where he had his wishlist down to a well-rehearsed litany).

Rachel wasn't so sure about this guy in the red suit, but since all of the other kids had talked to him, she did too. When Santa asked her what she wanted, she didn't hesitate: "Peasants!" (presents) is what she asked for.

We had a planned trip to Steamboat Springs for a long weekendd before Christmas but with the delay in Thailand, we cut that down to 2 days. It was cold, but good fun. We brought sleds (fun, but brief) and went for a dinner sleighride. Rachel slept through the whole ride, which was a shame.

As for skiing - Daniel wasn't too excited about it, so we spent some time watching the other kids in ski school. By the end of it, he seemed interested, so we might try to get him into a lesson before the end of the season.

Christmas morning, both kids were in fine shape to open presents. Daniel got the skid-steer loader he'd been eyeing for a while, and along with the Pirate ship and Diego gifts (camera and legos), those were the big hits.

Rachel got a bunny doll, some legos to call her own (though Daniel decided he needed to show her how to play with them) and an easel (a joint gift, but Rachel got more excited about it) to play with.

And since it was cold and generally disagreeable outside, having plenty of new toys to play with and books to read was a good thing. In the days after Christmas, we took the light rail downtown to explore, went swimming at the local recreation center, went to the zoo and saw the zoolights with friends and generally got ourselves ready to go to Houston for New Years. (see next posting, which it's time to write now)

Love. A.D.R.E.

We're back, sorry for the delay.

2008-12-14T13:40:00.003-07:00

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...

2008-11-17T11:46:00.008-07:00

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

2008-10-31T12:15:00.009-06:00

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

2008-10-31T11:52:00.009-06:00

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