At Home in the Mountains

Anyone who knows Maddy knows that instead of Mae, her middle name should have been Persistence. Maddy Persistence Fletcher. Kinda has a ring to it. For example, this summer, my cousin, Jessica, told Maddy that maybe if she rubbed two sticks together she could make a fire. Well, Maddy really wanted to make a fire, so she found two sticks and rubbed them together. FOR HOURS. Until she rubbed a raw place on her finger. Maybe persistence is too mild of a word for what this girl can do when she gets something in her mind. For the last several months, Maddy has been incredibly persistent in prayer. Her prayer has been "I wish everything I wish was real was real". This means that she would would like all the Disney princesses, Scooby Doo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Woody the Woodpecker to turn into real life people/animals on her doorstep. Tonight was no different.....well not at the beginning. She prayed the usual words. Then paused and added, "And I'm getting rea...

When Maddy was little she loved, loved, loved books. She still does, but it was just amazing at how young of an age she listened to the stories, looked at the pictures, imitated the pictures, etc. One of her favorites was Dr. Suess's ABC's and I can still remember Tricia reading it to her one time and she decided to put her hands in the air for "Hooray!" because the little character in the picture was doing that. When I had Kelsay, I figured she wouldn't care so much about books. Surely I couldn't have too kids in a row that were fascinated with books...could I? Turns out I was wrong. Kelsay certainly doesn't have the attention span to sit and listen to multiple books like Maddy did when she was Kelsay's age, but Kelsay is more mobile so has lots of other things to do. But she LOVES books. She goes over to the shelf with the board books...what sweet little girl to leave sister's paperbacks alone...and pulls them all off the shelf and s...

So many of you know from our Christmas card this year that we found some land in Colorado back in the fall. It all started when we were in Colorado for the summer and I decided that it was time for us to seriously start looking for the land that we'd been talking about for several years. I contacted a realtor about an 11 acre plot in the Black Forest area and things began rolling from there. We had several pieces of land here and there  that we had my Dad go look at for us. None of them seemed quite right. Then this place on Highway 67 just outside the Woodland Park city limits popped up and we were both like, I think this is the one! We had my Dad go look at it and he said it was a great piece of property. We also had Aaron's Grandpa go by and his words were "prime property". So we decided to put in a bid. The land was subdivided and listed as three separate pieces so our bid was for on of the pieces. However, the sellers came back to us and said they did not want t...

I wrote the following a month ago and just now got pics added so I could post. Go figure. Other than our crazy vacation to South Carolina, life has been pretty normal. Maddy has been thriving at school (other than handwriting) and Kelsay has been growing and learning new skills. Maddy's school has had several fun events that we've gotten to participate in. In September they had a grandparents day. We didn't have any grandparents in the area at the time, so our friend Dr. Rachel Griffith, or Dr. Rachel as Maddy calls her, came up to the school and did the activities with Maddy. She brought Maddy a beautiful yellow flower. I volunteered to pass out the cookies for that event so I got to see them a little bit when they came through the cookie line. I think Maddy really enjoyed that time with Dr. R. I forgot how standing in a line and greeting people with a smile gives me a killer headache. Haven't had to do that since a receiving line for a wedding about 12 years ago. ...