Welcome Back to Winter

Just for fun, I took some pictures that pretty much defined our week:

The kids spent Tuesday on a "too cold for school" day.
We watched movies, played legos and liv dolls and ate breakfast at 11.

Wednesday it was still below zero at going to school time, so the district canceled school again. We spent the day doing much of the same thing as Tuesday.

On Thursday the kids went back to school
and
I drove around town doing errands in the
blustery snowy "not supposed to snow" day.

Friday it snowed on and off all afternoon.
And today was picture perfect dropping fluffy, yummy big flakes.

Winter has welcomed us to Colorado with open arms.
And we are so happy it has graced us with some real winter weather.

Tidbits of Life

The "little" kids love their short walk to and from school.
Especially when there is ice to crunch along the way.


Found a new hair stylist...finally!
I needed it.
She gave me great tips on how to care for my locks in the dry mile high city!
And she gave me great tips like Hair spray is no good here because it drys and then flakes off. Who knew!!
I am super happy with my new light layers though!!

The Unpublished Scrapbooker

In an effort to overcome some of my shyness with my craftiness,

I have created this spot.

{The Unpublished Scrapbooker}

Come join me and see some of my endeavors.

Seeing the sunshine behind the clouds

‎"Sometimes the best lessons we ever learn in life are the hardest times we ever go through." ASD

Today may have been one of those day,

but sweetheart it isn't the end of the world

and

if we don't learn anything from it then

the heart ache and hurt and tears

were all for nothing.

2011- ENJOY LIFE

This is my

New Year's Resolution:

***********

***********

There are so many aspects that I can enjoy:

Enjoy Life-when Bill has to work late take advantage of the one on one time I have been given with my kids and BE grateful that he has a job to "be late" doing.

Enjoy Life-when I don't want to exercise be reminded that I have a healthy body to use to exercise.

Enjoy Life-when it is snowy and cold or too hot to handle, enjoy the warmth or coolness my house has to offer!

Enjoy Life will be all about just that,

good with the bad

and

making Lemon-aide out of the Lemons.

2010-It was a good year!

First day of school in January @ our new school in Scottsdale.

Spending the evening in Gold Canyon with my parents.

Mom and I tore up the joint with our piano duets!

Camping in Payson, AZ

Family Pictures at my Grandparents Ranch.

It's a century farm now and I LOVE that place!

Wedding in Wyoming = Great road trip across the west!

Celebrating 15 years of marriage.

Not too shabby for two young kids!

Dad teaching me how to make prickly pear jam and syrup!

He's amazing!

Grant playing Pop Warner Football.

Starting weight 85 pounds.

With milk shakes,

french fries,

rice and

protein shakes we got him all the way up to 105 pounds.

Two weeks after he finished his season, he was back down to 90 pounds.

The last swim...closing a chapter on our lives in Arizona.

Bittersweet for sure!

Moving...again!

I know 10 addresses in 15 years is a lot of change!

How lucky we are to have kids that have handled our adventurous spirits.

Halloween 7 days into a new neighborhood.

We met lots of neighbors and really saw how really great our new pad is!

(Billie is a vampire princess,

James is a Ninja Warrier

and

Grant was too cool to go Trick-or-Treating this year,

so he was our military escort)

My parents were able to come spend Thanksgiving with us.

We fried our turkey and everything else we made was totally delish!

It was fun to have Bill's grandma (and his parents) spend Christmas with us.

We finished this puzzle in 2 days and it was really hard!

Dad and the kids headed to a Bronco game.

They actually won.

I guess my family is a good luck charm for others too!

Ending the year with a nice yummy snow storm!

This is an omen of good things to come.

Adjustment

We have been in our new place for 3 weeks. Parts of the house are totally unpacked and parts of the house are still filled with boxes. I set my goal to be unpacked before Thanksgiving. I will definitely reach it in the areas that are important to eat a meal! :-)

Lots of people have asked how the kids are adjusting and I have to say that at this point it appears to be the best adjustment we have had. The kids have had a lot of changes in the last 3 years. We were not happy with our first neighborhood school in AZ so after 2 years we found a wonderful charter school 20 miles in town that we commuted them to. They left all their neighborhood friends and had to make great new ones. Then we made the decision to leave our far west valley home and move closer to work so we could have dad home more often (his commute was 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours one way). Once again we decided to pull them from the Charter school we loved and put them in our neighborhood school. The kids made more great friends their and we loved that we lived in the same neighborhood as most of them, so we had lots of play dates and walk home companions.

We are 2 weeks into school here, Billie and James had 3 days of school before they went off track but so far Billie has been on the phone with one of her new friends everyday and they have all made friends with a couple of the neighborhood kids. I had parent/teacher conferences with Grant's teachers and he is doing okay too. We have some things to work on, but for the most part he is making friends and jumping right in.

I don't think it is ever easy to make changes in life. Changes make you reach, stretch and grow. About 2 years into our time in Arizona we started talking about moving back north near our families and snow and the mountains. We wanted to make the change before the kids were in jr high so that this could be our "last" change. And here we are (4 1 /2 years later) and this change is good. The kids will do more than survive, they will thrive. We have been able to visit with family and friends. And it is so nice to be within 6-8 hours of our families. Because really when it comes down to it, that is what it important in our lives.

Life is an adventure just waiting to happen.

You can either be the driver of your own adventure

or you can take a back seat

and let someone else do the driving.