Christmas 2011 in pictures

 

Happy New Year, everyone!

As we mentioned in the last post, we were waiting for the Norwegian invasion for Christmas in Colorado.  In a nutshell – that’s what we’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks.  It’s been great.

Daniel and Rachel helped make the pepperkaker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farmor and Granpa showed up the day before Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Jacob and Leo were due.  Unfortunately for them, they missed a plane, got stuck in a snowstorm, landed in Colorado Springs and had their travel extended quite a bit.  They finally made it – about 15 hours late.  We passed the time with boardgames and other fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the cousins were here, the real fun could begin.  The same storm that they got stuck in on the way dumped about 8 inches of snow on us here in Denver, so not only did we get a white Christmas, but we also got to go sledding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since we were heading up to the mountains on the 25th, Santa was nice enough to show up 12 hours early (by Norwegian standards) or 24 hours before the regular US tradition, and we celebrated Christmas with presents on the morning of the 24th. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandma Babe joined us for Christmas dinner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solvista

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cabin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner sleigh ride

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dogsledding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time….

Catch-up time (the pre-Christmas edition)

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.

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

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.