At Home in the Mountains

Well I've missed a ton of things on here. Like practically Kelsay's first entire year of life. So I need to make a note for her right here: Kelsay, you were the best baby anybody could have wished for. We loved just about every minute with you except the ones when you were screaming your head off which were few and far between. You were the sweetest baby with a happy attitude and love of life that was a joy to watch every day. So I didn't write much about you, not because you were bad or didn't do cute things or because I didn't love you as much as Maddy. I didn't write about you because you were such a wonderful baby and I just didn't need an outlet to vent about therapy stress, or medical procedures, or worry, or update people on the latest diagnosis. I just got to enjoy you and not worry and it was special! Love you so much. Okay. Hopefully when she reads that 10 or 15 years from now it will help both of us not feel so bad that I didn't document h...

This is Maddy on her first day of Kindergarten. We had kind of a wild two weeks before she started. I was just going to have her go back to the Montessori school but she was going to have to go 5 days a week all day long. I was really, really concerned about this because when she went three days a week all day long, she was so exhausted. Even her teachers would comment on how exhausted she was by Wednesday. So I thought about it and prayed and decided to check into a school called Coram Deo. It is like the school that Abriella and Colby go to. They go to core classes two days a week and then can do optional electives on Friday. The Montessori was so good for Maddy academically that it was really a hard decision in that regard, but I new if she was going make it and love school we needed something a little more flexible with schedule. So I applied and got her an interview all within a matter of a couple of days. She had to do testing and it made me so thankful that we switched fro...

 After vacation, we came home. Had a few days rest, did a week of VBS and then took off to Farwell to do blackeyed peas. We picked a lot of peas. We ended up putting up 65 pints. We also got some green beans, corn and okra to take home.  Maddy loved the whole process. She was ready to move to Farwell and live on a farm by the time the weekend was over.

 Well, as usual, all my pics loaded up backwards again. This is a couple weeks after we got home. We decided to start Kelsay on solid food. Maddy gave her her first bite. It was carrots. She's not really a carrot fan. I don't know if it was the carrots or the gag reflex from Maddy shoving the food in. We tried prunes later. She was a big fan of those, just like her big sister.  Identical prune babies! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  After we got back from Minnesota, we went to see Aaron's family. The pic above is the night before we went home when we were back in Colorado Springs. Maddy was showing where she'd been in Colorado.  This was at the end of the trip as well. We spent the night at the ranch. Maddy loved feeding the chickens and gathering eggs. She also helped Aaron cut thistles to dry out and burn. She had a great time working.  On our way back over from the Western slope we stopped at Glenwood Springs to go swimming. Both girls had...

Here it is finally! I just got through an exhausting week of VBS after getting back from vacation. Maddy went to spend the night with Bethany last night and I slept like I was in a coma (Maddy is definitely the child who wakes us up at night...now we know for sure) so this morning I am finding a bit of time to complete another post. After the family reunion, we flew to Minneapolis for our first ever AMC conference. We were excited and nervous about how it was going to go. Basically hoping that we hadn't paid a lot of money for nothing. At least that was what I was thinking. Maddy was super excited to go to "her" conference as she called it. We got to Minneapolis about 8:30 in the evening. We rented a car and by the time we got to the hotel it was after 9. It was still light outside! We hadn't eaten anything and the kids were exhausted so we ended up ordering soup and salad through room service. It was a bit pricy but the price I'd expected from the menu was no...