At Home in the Mountains

 Maddy got a bird watching book from Aaron's aunt called "Look Up! Birdwatching in Your Own Backyard". She loved the book and it has inspired hours of bird watching, drawing birds, and taking field notes.  The first bird she observed was a sparrow. She draws a picture of the bird, writes the date, day of the week, time of day, where she saw it, what it was doing, and what it looked like.  Notes on a grackle and a pigeon.  Notes on a coyote she saw on a news story on TV. Notes on her first cardinal that she observed. Here's to many more hours of bird watching!

Aaron wanted me to post about Gram's funeral so I will do my best to write a good post about that. One funny thing that I didn't expect was that Maddy looked forward to the funeral like a party. She kept asking all the time we were in Montrose, "When are we going to celebrate Grams life?" She thoroughly enjoyed the time in Colorado and all the funeral proceedings. We enjoyed too. It was good time together with family although we were sad for Grams's absence. All the kids, grandkids and great grandkids were able to attend. The weather was beautiful while we were there. It felt like April instead of early February so the kids played outside the entire time which was good because there was a lot of stuff for them to get into in the house since papers, photos and other things were being sorted through. Lots of cousin time as well. When we got home, Maddy's teacher asked her how the funeral was. Maddy said, "It was fun!" I think the teacher was kind of ta...

 We had so much fun celebrating Kelsay's #1! We were going to have her birthday party on the 7th, but with Gram's funeral, we had to move it back to Valentine's day. The Halls, Tammy, and Rachel joined us for the party. We had hot dogs, chips and fruit for lunch. We had regular toppings, toppings for chili cheese dogs and toppings for NY dogs which include sauerkraut, sautéed onions and spicy mustard. wasn'tAfter lunch we played outside for a bit and then went in for cake and ice cream. I made the cake from an organic European bakery cake mix from sprouts. Highly recommend. Everyone thought it was extra good. Tam graciously decorated the cake.Kelsay  sure what to think about the cake or the candle with the flame on top, but Maddy was more than happy to blow it out for her. I think Kelsay liked the cake but she,was so tired at that point it was hard to tell. We had to let her have a nap break before opening presents. She got a baby doll and stroller, a baby photo...

Maddy had President's day off from school, so we went to the Perot with the Halls. The Perot has a special Sherlock Holmes exhibit running through May so we went to see it. I highly recommend going if you get the chance. It is an interactive exhibit set up like a mystery game. You visit all the stations and interact with clues and evidence to see if you can solve the mystery. Jude and Kelsay didn't care about it at all but Maddy and Bethany enjoyed collecting the stamps and other evidence in their notebooks. Unfortunately, since Cindy and I were trying to keep up with them, we missed part of the information about how the exhibit worked. So, when we got to the end, we did not solve the mystery. I'd love to go back sans kiddos and try it again. We also spent a lot of time in the children's museum section. It is like a tricked out indoor playground. There is a construction themed playground area, campground complete with critters you might find on a Texas camping trip...

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...