The Hunt part one

Easter came early this year. Our town Easter Egg celebration was over a week and a half ago. It's a good thing too because although it was chilly, we just missed a dumping of snow that happened a week after the hunt.

The celebration was held inside with arts and crafts, Easter Stories, pancake breakfast and pictures with the Easter Bunny. The grand finale took place outside with a well organized hunt divided by age group.

The boys feel the same way about the Easter bunny as they do about Santa Claus. He's a great dude and all, but it's best if he just keeps his distance. We didn't push sitting for a pic with the guest of honor and chose to wave from afar and whisper thank-yous after the hunt.

Stay tuned for hunt number 2 which will take place on Easter during our 2nd annual Easter Beer/Egg hunt. I'm hoping the snow I mentioned that came our way this past weekend quickly melts because we have a tiny house and quite a few people that have RSVP'd. It should make for a very cozy event.









View of the field after the hunt....pretty spectacular view isn't it?




Post hunt sampling................

St. Daddy's Day

St. Patrick's Day will forever be known as St. Daddy's Day to Coop 'n Cruz since it is also Mark's birthday. For now they think everyone wears green and celebrates leprechauns in their Dad's honor and why not? Their Dad is worthy of all the hype in their eyes. For now we'll just go with it.

I picked up some rugby/football shirts for the boys when I was in Ireland last October. They seemed HUGE at the time but I wanted some wiggle room for them to grow into.

Fast forward to last week....I had forgotten all about them but happened to stumble across them in Coop's closet. It's a good thing I did because I couldn't even get Cruz's on over his head. It's big everywhere else. I guess Irish toddlers have large torsos and really itty-bitty heads. I was so bummed but luckily St. Daddy came to the rescue and ripped up some seams so Cruz could fit his large cranium through the neck hole.

We went to a BBQ at some friend's house where we enjoyed some wild game. That's traditional Irish fare isn't it?

Basketball

We made it through an entire season of basketball (Cooper's first) without even a mention on the ole blog. The season consisted of evert Saturday morning for the past 6 weeks and encouraged parent participation. In fact, parent participation was pretty much required. It was great for the kids to help build their confidence but made it difficult for me on the weeks that Mark wasn't here. I had to juggle Cruz and prove to the community of Estes Park that this White Mom can't jump. Basketball is not one of my strong suits that's for sure. Coop didn't seem to notice my lack of skills. He had fun and still needs to practice his dribbling (much like his Mom).

Cruz was a basketball crasher. The program was for 3 & 4 yr olds but he didn't quite get that memo. I couldn't really not let him play when they required full parental participation so I didn't really make him hold back. Luckily, the coaches were pretty cool about it and included him for the most part. For all I know people were calling us the basketball crashers behind our backs. Two kids for the price of one! Oh well, Cruz was the ball boy as far as I'm concerned.

Here are some horrible phone pics. Playing basketball and Paparazzi are hard to do at the same time. Especially with my skills.

















Notice in the last pic that Cruz even crashed the huddle.

Ski Day

We had a family ski day yesterday at Eldora Mountain. It's about an hour drive. With the time change and everyone else in town deciding they wanted to ski on a beautiful sunshine powder day, the process of getting there was a little stressful. But what isn't when you add kids to the mix? Once we got there, things fell into place quite nicely. It was still a lot of work but well worth it.

We decided to put Coop in an afternoon lesson which he loved. Cruz was basically a little poser. He was all about the gear (especially the helmet) but didn't want much to do with the skiing part. When Coop finished his lesson, he was all about showing us what he had learned. Thanks to the powers of peer pressure, Cruz decided at that point he wanted to give it a go too. His skiing consisted being held up down a little hill (read: snow mound) in front of the ski lodge. At least he felt like he was skiing and that's all that matters.

Some friends of ours joined us which made the day ideal. Each of us took turns taking runs and watching the kids and afterwards we were able to partake in the après ski part all together. Mark and I even got to sneak a run in just the two of us which definitely couldn't have happened if we went alone.

Mark and I both commented that it was wonderful just to even ride the chairlift in peace and quiet with the sun beating down on our faces. You know your life has changed when an "epic" ski day consists of 4 or 5 runs. It was epic in my book and you gotta start somewhere to get back in the game. It was definitely a start.












I love the next shot that our friend took because it has all four of us (if you look closely).

Winter Hike

We took an impromptu family hike around Sprague Lake last weekend. It was fun to play with snow, ice, sticks and SNOWBALLS. But what makes this trip so noteworthy is that Cruz hiked/walked the entire loop all by himself! It's a little less than a mile but was snowy and ice packed and he totally kept up. In fact, he led the way most of the trip.

For the times they are a-changin'.