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'.

School Pics

Our first ever school pics are in! The photographer did a great job getting all of the kids to smile. An added bonus; siblings were included. Of course they wanted the extra opportunity to make a buck but when am I going to have studio pics so readily available. I wasn't expecting to have Cruz photographed. Luckily, I actually got him dressed for the day. More times than not, he's still in his pj's when we drop Coop off.

The lady kind of combed Coop's hair a little DumbandDumberesque when I was chasing Cruz around the room but I still love them. Here's to many years of school pics to look forward to.

Rocky

My last post was all about spreading love, Valentine's Day festivities and rainbows & sunshine. Love, love, L.O.V.E!

Well, things took a sudden turn to the exact opposite of love. Not Hate, but pretty dismal.

Our Valentine's day started off pretty darn great. We had fun decorating for our evening event; The Square Dance I mentioned in my previous post. But we also had the impending doom and gloom of Mark leaving for two weeks and then it got much worse.

Poor Mark, always trying to do the right thing. I really must be mopey and miserable when I hear news that he might be leaving. In order to protect my emotions, he chose not to even warm me that he might be leaving for a prescribed fire in Oklahoma for 2 weeks. The news actually leaked to me through a friend. Oops, Mark couldn't win on this one. I'm only blogging about it because it was a lesson learned. He now knows that we have come to a phase in our lives where I can't be surprised about him leaving if he knows there might be a chance of it happening. Yes, I realize that it is sometimes beyond his control. Especially during fire season. I get that. But I need a chance to get my game face on, buck up and kick into single parent mode.

Mark left Thursday morning, and I did my best to make our Valentine's Day special. Truth be told, it was just an ordinary day but I was going to do my best to make it extraordinary. Big mistake.

Square dancing is not fun as a solo parent. The first hour started out promising. Arts and crafts, visiting with friends and then on to the dancing. It looked a little something like this.......




















Then things went downhill from there.......Cruz spilled 4 (yes, I said FOUR) glasses of lemonade all over the floor and he managed to test one the lemonade spouts behind my back while I was cleaning up the fourth consecutive spill (with very non absorbent-recycled-worthless paper towels). He turned into Chucky within a matter of minutes. I sat him down as I gathered my senses that it was time for us to call it a night and he looked like this.......




I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Cooper fell asleep on the car ride home (only about a 5 minute drive. If that). I put Cruz down right away and that was my Valentine's. Plus Cruz waking up every 2 hours. That is not like him at all. He is my sleeper.

Duh! Mother of the Year, right here. Yes, I was aware that Cruz had been draining snot for the past few days but other than him turning into an absolute monster and not sleeping at all, I had no clues anything was wrong. No fever, no remarks to tell me what was wrong. I just thought I was doomed.

Finally, a friend calmly mentioned that perhaps Cruz had an ear infection. What is wrong with me?! Why didn't I think of that? Sure enough, poor Cruzie had a double ear infection. I am an idiot. The doctor gave us antibiotics and numbing drops and we were on our (not so) merry way.

Fast forward 3 more days of living with Chucky, and today he finally woke up with a glimmer of his old self. I honestly was beginning to worry that it wasn't the ear infection but the dreaded 2's. I thought to myself, I don't know if I can survive this. It was that bad.

But here I am. Blogging about it and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I no longer want to rub it in with Mark and be the martyr. Marks's job requires him to travel. A lot. It's not his fault and he hates it just as much as we do. He learned that he can't try to protect me from the inevitable. He will be gone for long periods at a time and I have to accept it. It is what it is.
Also, kids get sick and they don't always warn you ahead of time. Was Cruz trying to protect me just like his Dad did? My guys are always looking out for me.