Olivia

Can anybody argue against the fact that this is the world most cutest baby? Poor Bav...she's sick with a fever and has vomited once - my thanks go out to Bailey for cleaning that mess up for me while I was cleaning up Olivia and myself. Actually, seeing him do that almost made me vomit.

A little place called Aspen...

Or should I say a little place called Rip-off! Well, okay, it was nice but still, who would pay $14 to take a bus to see the most photographed mountains in the country (Maroon Bells), and who would pay $25 each to ride a lift to the top of Aspen mountain when there is no way there is a free candy store up there....I could go on, but it was a very nice trip none the less. We decided to camp there because there was a balloon festival there that weekend (which in Aspen's defense, was free...although it was actually in the town of Snowmass...details). Anyways, I thought it would be a nice end to the camping season and we both prayed on the way up there that the camper would cooperate with us, which it did! Yeah, finally a trip with all systems go! So here are a few photos from the trip...

When Babies Attack!

It seems that Olivia has been building up a taste for a certain kid in her class. It started off innocent enough...a little nibble here, a chomp there. So far she has bit this kid once when he snatched some food off of her lunch plate. Another time, they were supposed to be holding hands while out on a walk, and I guess she didn't want to. Well today we got a call from Ms. Mayra...Olivia had allegedly bitten this poor guy at least 4 times today, and then added another kid to her hit list for a total of 5 bites over 4 hours. I discussed this with the school director to see if they had any idea on how to get this to stop. They are going to just be diligent and try to intercept the biting before it starts, or try to see what is causing it to happen, and then have a talk with Olivia about conflict resolution and how you shouldn't bite, etc...I know Olivia...that will not work with her...she rarely listens to the voice of reason, especially since she doesn't understand more than maybe 150 words at the moment...I asked if they would be willing to just bite Olivia back (Tim and I nipped this biting in the bud when she started biting at home by returning the favor). The director almost fell out of her chair, oh gosh no, I could go to jail! So what can I do? At least she isn't biting me anymore!

Van Bore-ison

Tim and I were having a great time last night at our friends Octepenfest...great beer, great people, cute babies...we also had tickets (muy expensivo ticket) to see one of my favorites of all favorites, the Belfast Cowboy himself, Van Morrison later that night. So we left Annie and Olivia in the care of our great friends Tim and Erin (by the way, Olivia woke up this morning with her diaper on backwards...I'm not sure if that is a sign as to how the evening went or not, but onto the real story at hand) So we leave, we sing all the way downtown, we happily pay for parking, we enjoy a few before show beverages, we flirt, we make fun of the wide variety of fans....we enter the theater, we sit. Show starts promptly at 8...Van appears and starts a song that I'm not sure I know, I enjoy it. He has a very talented band. Next song...no, not sure I know this one either...still okay...can't really understand what he is singing...next song, no, next, no, next, no...well, at least the guy next to me is enjoying it (not Tim, the other guy) He asked me if I had a pen to write down the song set and randomly let out whoot of enthusiasm throughout the evening. 10th or so song in he sings a jacked up, technically an overly jazzed up version, but I'm sticking with jacked up version of Moon Dance. I get it...he's probably tired of that song, but I don't think anyone else is. He ended up cutting it off abruptly. Then more songs that I don't know...and now he is starting to sound like a cheesy lounge act. My mind is starting to wonder now and honestly all I can think of is what we could have done with the money we spent to see this guy. One high point for us is seeing him yell at his piano player to get on the trumpet...that was amusing. Last song is some rambling unintelligible song about getting a jelly roll (the whole time this is going on, I keep thinking yeah dude, I don't think anyone calls them that anymore). Then he walks off stage, I assume to go get a jelly roll (which kind, I'm not sure, he does look like he enjoys the pastry variety). He comes back about 10 seconds later and launches into Gloria. My heart rises. For one, I think this is it...here is the encore, this should be good, who has ever heard a bad encore? Then my heart sinks. Gloria is now 5'-9". Seriously, he changed the lyrics. The whole concert I was having trouble understanding what he had been saying, and here it is clear as a bell. In the past, I'd always thought to myself, yes, I can be Gloria...I'm 5'-4", this is perfect. Thanks a lot Van, there is no way I could ever grow 5 more inches, my life is ruined, that dream is over. Oh well, I rock out to the song...then it's over. He walks off stage. Lights come on. I look at Tim, he stares back at me. I start wondering what everyone is clapping about. That song might as well had ended like this..."And her name is G....L.....O....R.....I'll see you later." But no, he didn't even say goodnight to his audience. He just left. So then we left, somewhat speechless. There was a couple walking out singing one of this classic hits, and I couldn't help think to myself, Yes, that would have been great if he had sang that song, but he didn't and you guys are idiots. Wow. That about sums it up. Wow, but not in a good way, just an emotionless wow.

Foreign Exchange Baby

Olivia is talking up a storm these days. She's had her first sentence..."Tickle Mama", her first conversation...

Olivia - Food?
Mama - Are you hungry?
Olivia - Yeah.
Mama - What would you like?
Olivia - Ummm.....o-gurt (yogurt).

With all this talking, she has picked up an odd sort of accent. For one, the word diaper is pronounce "Die-pee-a", poopy is "poo-pee-a" pretty much every other word ends with "pee-a". Almost like she is trying to say words in Italian or something. She's so cute...we should take her to Italy and show her off to the locals.

This is just a side note...but what's up with our blog counter? Have we really had 11,958 hits?

A New Truck!

Not really...

Yesterday I drove a company truck home because I had plans to do a little night time inspection on E-470, boring work stuff, blah blah blah. So Tim picked up the girls and when I heard them pull into the driveway, I went out to greet them only to find Annie jumping around in the driveway laughing and yelling "You got a new truck, a new truck, wow!" I tried to explain to her that I was only borrowing it, but she was so excited...she asked if she could look inside. We climbed in, and you would have thought there were 27 clowns hiding inside there. "Wow! What's that? There's no back seat! Hahahahah! You can't have kids in here...can I go back there? Can I sit in your seat? What does this do? Where is the music? What's in there? There's no seats back here! WOW-WEE!" I was like yeah, it is one of the nicer and newer URS trucks and it doesn't start to shake when you go over 40 mph, but it's nothing to pee your pants over...by the way Annie, your not peeing your pants, are you? She was still excited about the new truck after her tour of the interior that we hung out in the bed for a while before heading in for dinner. I'm wondering if she gets this excited about a boring URS truck, what is going to happen when we really do get a new truck? One with (hopefully) a built-in DVD player, heated leather seats, dual climate control, optional 3rd row seating, moon roof!...WOW-WEE now I'm getting excited!

Reverting

I came down to the basement yesterday to find Annie in the process of dragging the baby swing out from the storage room. I'm still amazed at how her muscles managed to do this because, well...our storage room is kind of a disaster area and I'm pretty sure the swing was buried under more than a few things. And I'm lucky that she didn't run into a few Christmas presents I picked up over the weekend! She really wanted the swing so that her baby could take a nap in it. Then she wanted the bouncer seat...then she wanted the activity chair, or whatever you call that thing. So 10 minutes later...I look over and Annie has strapped herself into the bouncer chair and Olivia is happy as a clam in the swing. I guess everyone wants to be baby-ed every once in a while, which is weird for the girls, since they are baby-ed almost ever second of the day!

Girls gone crazy...

Olivia, Olivia, Olivia...she's crazy! On Wednesday she came home with a note from school saying she bit a friend after he took her toy. I asked her "Did you bite your friend?", she answers "Yah". So we had a little talk about what teeth are for, etc. So last night I picked her up and again, another biting incident. And to top it off, she turned around and whacked Annie on the head twice with a plastic baseball bat, and then while Annie lay there crying about it, she leaned in and bit her on the tummy...bad baby. Now I'm starting to feel a little embarrassed. This morning I asked her "Olivia, are you going to bite anyone today?", she answers "Yah". I'm starting to wonder about this child. The other day she walked into the edge of our patio table. When I asked her if she was alright, she laughed and purposely bonked her head into the table again, two times before I stopped her.

Annie, Annie, Annie...she's crazy too! But in a cuter Annie-style way. She's recently become very attached to her stuffed giraffe. She talks to it, gets it dressed in the mornings, tries to feed it vitamins, changes it's diaper (she's trying to potty train it right now), rocks it to sleep at night...she claims she's the giraffe's mommy. I guess her dream of having a baby finally came true, however now that I think of it, she told me she was going to get married before becoming a mommy, I'll have to ask her about that. I asked her this morning if she wanted to take giraffe to school for show and tell, she said "No! Giraffe is real, not a show and tell".

Postapalooza!

I guess I have been neglecting the blog for the last few weeks...so to kick off the holiday weekend with style, here is a bunch of post to get everyone back up to speed! First off, we just got back from Ohio where Annie was the flower girl for Bonnie and John's wedding. She had a rough morning of the wedding, so bad that she actually thought it would be a good idea to rip her dress. Luckily, the skirt was so full that you nobody could really tell, and she eventually turned things around in time to walk down the aisle and toss her petals. Great Job Annie! The reception was at my parents house and the tent and dance floor went up a few days before the wedding, so Olivia and Annie got to try out a few dance moves before the big day. I think the highlight for Annie was being able to ride in the Limo. It's getting a little late for me to be awake, and the photos from the wedding are still downloading from my camera to our computer, so I will leave you with two pictures of Annie in her flower gal attire.

Postapalooza

While we were in Ohio we hit the Allen County Fair. Talk about bringing back some childhood memories. I'm almost positive that all the same rides, and all the same Carnies were all there, same as back in 1992. We checked out the Rabbit barn (big hit with the girls) followed by the chicken barn, goat barn, pig barn, and cow barn where Annie narrowly avoided stepping into a very large cow pie. After that we filled up on the usual fair fare - corn dogs, greasy fries with vinegar, pork tenderloin sandwich, lemonade and of course cotton candy. We ran into a the most awesome balloon animal maker. She made Annie a monkey climbing a tree, and Olivia got a ladybug bracelet. Here is Annie enjoying a nice pony ride, Olivia not enjoying a pony ride, feeding the baby Kangaroo at the petting zoo, and Annie trying out a new set of wheels - only 13 more years until she can really hit the road!

Postapalooza

Annie practicing for her big appearance in Bonnie and John's wedding.

Postapalooza

Gotta Love a Messy Bav!

Postapalooza

August 15th - Tim's 33rd Birthday! Complete with a cake and another cake for Annie 'cause she spoiled like that.

Postapalooza

Whatda ya know! If you look hard enough for photos, you'll eventually find them...here are more photos from our Nuetzel-Nuetzel camping trip - see next post for details.

Postapalooza

Back in I think late July the Salt Lake Nuetzel's came to stay with us while they attended a adoption conference that was going on in Denver. We met them up around Steamboat for a weekend of camping. We spent part of the day trying to hike, and when that started to go South, we headed for the beach. You would think that a lake at 9,000 ft or so would be cold, but it was actually kinda nice. Mark and Piper got their kayaks out and I thought I had some photos of that, but they are lost on our computer somewhere. After beach time, we headed over to a park ranger lead activity. Did you know that you can catch crawl-dads with a piece of pepperoni on a string? Well, you can. I think everyone caught at least one crawl-dad...except me, although in my defense, I really wasn't trying too hard. Anyways, here is a photo of Olivia, Annie, Jonah, and Faith at our campsite, which was surrounded with wildflowers, a photo of the world's cutest baby, and followed by another photo of the cousins.

Postapalooza

Here is Annie back in early August with her best-est friend in the whole Bellview Park Petting Zoo. It was all we could do to keep her from trying to kiss this poor cow right smack on the lips. Notice the shoes on the wrong feet...and up and coming fashion trend.

We camped up in Leadville over the 4th of July and liked it so much that we decided to go back in August for the Leadville Boom Days Festival. This festival was definitely better than the 4th of July Fest they have each year...the parade for Boom Days had at least 3 more fire engines than the 4th parade, and they were throwing out better candy too. They also had a Money Sand Pit for the kids. Basically each age group got about 2 minutes to dig in the sand and try to find as much money as they could. I coached Annie prior to her turn, but I guess she wasn't really paying attention to my detailed instructions, because all she found was $1.25.

Photo of Tim and the girls on the World's Biggest Rock within 0.5 miles of our campsite. Looked bigger in person than it appears to be in this photo. Poor Bailey, he really wanted to climb up there too...but never quite made it.

Annie at the Money Sand Pit and her bag full o' a buck twenty five.