Happy New Year!

Happy 1/1/11!

We rang in the new year with our friends, Joel & Michelle, and their family as we helped celebrate Joels' mom's birthday. What a great start to 2011! 

Alex & Danielle were BFFs

Sporks forever

Happy birthday, Mary!

This is at the end of the night. The kids were beat, especially Alex.

Of course, Alex had just spent the previous hour doing this:

  Here's to health, happiness and celebrating milestones in 2011!

Merry Christmas!!

Many blessings to you and yours in the coming year!

Alex's 1st Christmas Program

Alex had been practicing for his first Christmas program at preschool since his teacher began teaching the music...back in October. We've been listening to "Go, Tell It On the Mountain," "I'm Gonna Wrap Up Myself for Christmas" and more for months. He sings with such exuberance and joy, it literally brings tears to my eyes. The last day of class before the big day, his teacher told him he'd done a great job of practicing.

As soon as his class entered the gym during the program, we knew there was no reason to break out the video camera. Wearing his rarely-seen, scowly grumpy face as he schlepped in line with his classmates, we knew two things: 1] he was mad about something, and 2] it was highly unlikely that this stubborn and dramatic kiddo would suddenly decide to perk up and sing.

The teacher's aide, who works in Alex's class, tried to convince him to sing with his friends, but he wouldn't. So, bless her, she sat with him on her lap. After the program, we went out to lunch, and he sang his little heart out for us. Goofball.

Hopefully, we'll get footage of him singing in the spring performance.

Zach: Music Program & Award

Zach was part of the all-school music program in November. The theme was 'From Sea to Shining Sea', with songs and dances from each of the seven continents.The kindergarteners were penguins and kukaburras, from Antarctica and Australia. It was cute!

In December, Zach's teacher asked us to come to the all-school assembly the next day. Zach received an award for "being an inquirer and for exhibiting characteristics of this IB profile." Basically, he got an award for asking lots of questions and researching something intently - dinosaurs, of course. It was super-cute!

All Caught Up - Whew!

About this time every year, I curse myself for not being more on top of this blog. I berate, bargain, plan and resolve that, next year, I'll do better. Instead of mentally writing and posting as things happen, I'll actually do it...in real life...on the computer...where people [other than myself] can read it. And somehow, every December, I'm scrambling to remember details about things that happened six months ago, and trying to update the blog before people get our Christmas card in the mail. [sigh]

The blog is updated, and the next posts will be somewhat current content. At least, the next few posts will be current - I make no promises to keep it up once we hit 2011. Well, no promises to anyone other than myself....

Alex's Preschool Adventures Continue

Some additional photos of Alex's adventures in preschool:

 

Hermit Park

We spent some time up at a Hermit Park cabin in Estes Park around Thanksgiving. The weather was fantastic - warm at first, and then breaking out into huge, fat snowflakes the morning we left. We brought Jack, and he behaved like the dream dog we wish he was.

We even got our favorite cabin:


Halloween 2010

For Halloween, Zach was a paleontologist and Alex repeated his stint as a firefighter. Zach had a party at school; we went to HP for the annual trick-or-treat bash, a soccer team party and a party for a friend of Zach's from school. It was awesome, and we got our money's worth out of those costumes.

 

 

 

Project One: 2010

This year, Project One was held in October. Our crew was assigned to help a woman who runs a daycare/preschool at home.

We trimmed a lot of trees and shrubs, stained some playground equipment, moved sand, raked leaves and a lot more. By the end of the day, we were exhausted, dirty and completely happy to have helped someone who needed it.

Misc. End of Summer Pictures

Family Photos

Our last professionally-taken family photos date from Christmas 200...7. Yeah, Alex was about 6 months old. He's changed a little in three years, so we figured it was probably time to get some new photos taken.

A friend and neighbor of ours is starting her own photography business, and we volunteered to help her build her portfolio. She did amazing work - captured the boys' personalities, and got some fantastic photos in less than an hour!

The top of our blog has several of these photos, so I'll just share a couple more:

 

Changes

You may have noticed that it has been a tough couple of years for the real estate industry. For me, the difficulty hasn’t been trying to drum up business; it’s been getting contract to close successfully. Between January and August, I had six contracts fall apart or nearly fall apart – from appraisal issues to pre-approved buyers unable to get financing to asset managers terminating because they were irritated by the buyer…for every contract that closed, I had two that didn’t. It became clear to me that something needed to change – I was working really, really hard, stressed out and irritable, and it was hurting my family. Plus, as hard as I worked, things outside my control were hurting the people I was trying to help.

Through several different forks in the road this summer, I ended up getting hired as a part-time ministry assistant at our church. I love this job. I love the people I work with, and the people I work for. I love Crossroads. I love working in a place where the staff meetings include prayer and singing together. I love knowing that we are helping to bring God and people together.

For now, I’m calling this a break from real estate. This break may be for a couple of years. It may be permanent. After three years of God prodding me in various directions, I’m learning that it’s best just to do what I do wherever he puts me, and to do it until he sends me onto a different path.

Bend it Like Beckham...ish

It's that time of year again. Time to break out the shin guards, see if the cleats still fit (they didn't - we had to remedy that one), and forget to put the camping chairs in the back of the car. That's right - it's time for soccer.
This year, Zach has been excited about going to practice and playing in games. Some of the same kids from last year are on his team again, as well as a couple of kids from his class; for Zach, soccer is more of a social sport than a competitive sport. He likes being in the melee, but he's definitely not there to score goals. Oh, well. As long as he's having fun and learning to be part of a team, we're good. Plus, he looks super-cute!

Robot Alex

Alex's newest dance moves...he calls it his 'robot dance'. It's pretty sweet.

Go, Rockies!

Continuing our new summer tradition of taking the boys to a Rockies game, we invited our parents to join us. We got to the stadium early enough to catch the end of batting practice. Our seats were in the lower deck along the third baseline, and the announcer invited kids in our section onto the field. Alex wasn’t interested, but Zach got to play a rousing game of kickball with a bunch of kids and Dinger the Dinosaur. He had a great time!

We ate hot dogs and a bunch of other tasty junk food, and got our photo taken with Dinger. Dinger autographed a photo, which the boys refused to put down for the rest of the day. Great memories!