Birthday Girls and 10 Month Old Clara

My shared birthday girls turned 14 and 7 recently. My goodness the saying "the days are long, but the years are short" is so true! I can't believe how fast the past 7 years have gone by. It is weird to think that Nina is the same age that Sophie was when she was born, it just doesn't seem possible. On their birthday Nina wanted to get up early and go out to IHOP for breakfast (Sophie slept-in instead). Adrian came home early from work and we had a family party and Freddy's for dinner. The girls wanted to go in together for a birthday present and both got a Wii U along with some smaller presents. They both wanted the big chocolate layers Costco cake (yes! love that cake) so we had that and ice cream. After the party festivities Sophie went to Wolverine with Adrian. I think they had a fun birthday with the things they individually love.

Oh man, Clara was teething and had an ear infection on Sophie and Nina's birthday. Poor baby! She is usually so much happier to have fries at Freddy's! I think it was 2 days after this that her little tooth on top finally broke through and her ear infection cleared up soon after that, but it was a rough week!

How I love these girls. I think I put off writing birthday posts because I always find it so hard to sum anyone up in a paragraph. They are both so unique and beautiful in their own special ways, but since this is my journal I'm going to try to give a little snap shot of Sophie and Nina at 14 and 7.

Sophie is a great teenager. It is fun to get to know her as a real almost grown up person. She is brilliant, thoughtful, responsible, beautiful, reserved, and quirky. She loves math and science, especially robotics and some days wants to be an architect or some kind of scientist. She loves anime and reading epic fantasy series. Sophie, Adrian, and I like some of the same shows too. We watch Psych,Whodunnit, and Dr. Who together. (BTW, the finale of Whodunnit was hilarious with the zombies and I totally guess who the killer was during the first episode!). Sophie loves to ask questions and always has. She loves to figure out how things work. She also loves word definitions, especially words with multiple definitions. We had a long car discussion about the word "asylum" which led to a conversation about Edward Snowden in Russia. I love how quizzical Sophie is and hope she always has this thirst for knowledge. Have I mentioned how fun it is to have real adult conversations with Sophie. She is thoughtful and can be quite deep. She is still obsessed with Hunger Games and loves archery, though with high school starting and early morning seminary she's stopped her archery lessons to focus on homework. She is such a good big sister and can make Clara so happy even when she's grumpy pants - a seriously helpful quality. She is also sweet and patient (most of the time:)) with Ben and Nina. I often find her sitting in Ben and Nina's room in the evening chatting with them. It warms my heart. One of the most beautiful things about Sophie is her testimony. I love that she really lives the gospel. That makes me so happy because I know it's her relationship with Jesus Christ that is going to help her during these teenage years. She is excited to go to early morning seminary - how cool is that?! She is an amazing daughter. I love you Sophie!

Nina is my spunky, spirited, funny, social, beautiful, and sensitive girl. She adds a lot of FUNNY to our family. I cannot get over some of the things she blurts out at the dinner table, which is her favorite place to let us know new things she's learned or funny stories. It is also her favorite place to inform. She is our informer. Some would call it tattle-taling. It can be very funny or very infuriating to her siblings. Believe me nothing gets past Nina. Nina pushes limits a lot more than Sophie and Ben. I think she really wants to figure out the boundaries and spot the ones with wiggle room. Maybe she'll be a lawyer. She'd make a good one. She can argue a case very well at age 7 and sometimes I'm actually swayed as long as I see the merit of her side. I really think she might get her ears pierced soon, because she's laid out the case for how she will take care of her ears and she's responsible enough to make that decision. She loves arts and crafts. I love that she loves to paint! On our mommy-daughter/daddy-daughter dates she likes to go to "paint your own" shops. She will spend her free time at night before lights out drawing while Sophie and Ben always read. I encourage reading of course, but also want to give her freedom to do what she wants in her down time (oh man it's hard to not say "no, you have to read before you go to sleep - it's just what we do!"). She loves to dance and is always moving. When we all sit down to watch a movie or a TV show she is in the middle of the room dancing or tumbling, or climbing on the couches. I'm glad there are dance classes to funnel that energy into and she loves dance classes. She still loves to cuddle and have one on one time with me, which I cherish. She loves for me to read to her and she is a very willing shopping buddy; have I mentioned how much she loves clothes? She also always pops up at the counter when I'm cooking. She gets out her step stool, puts a dish towel around her waist and helps me measure things into the mixing bowls, etc. Thanks for being such a fun girl Nina - I love you!

And guess who turned 10 months on Sophie and Nina's birthday?! I won't ever forget the date of my girls birthdays (just have to remember the months). Clara is crawling all over the place and pulling up to standing now. She is loving exploring our house and for some reason absolutely loves our fireplace - it's gas and we don't turn it on, so it's not unsafe. She loves pulling on the mesh screen and looking inside at the fake logs. It's a funny little Clara thing. She also makes duck faces a lot to make us laugh and it is funny! I think she's going to be a little comedian, because she loves attention and making people smile. She still loves food - watermelon is a recent favorite. She loves to get out and about and especially loves being outside. She will actually clap and kick her legs when we carry her outside. She is such a sweet heart and it's so fun getting to know her personality more each day!

Estes Park Mini Vacation

We decided to take a mini vacation to Estes Park last weekend, right before school started, as kind of a last hurrah for summer. We got to our rental house, a little house built in 1909, on Friday afternoon and stayed until Sunday morning. It was a super quick trip, but we packed in a lot of family fun and it was great to have a electronics free weekend to reconnect as a family. It really helps to get away and focus on each other and having a good time. Here's what we did.

This is the little house we stayed in. It's called "The Nell". Isn't it cute! It had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a great deck off the back with spectacular views of the mountains and Elkhorn Avenue down below which is the main street of Estes Park with tons of cute shops and restaurants. Estes Park is nestled in the Rocky Mountains near the east entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park. Estes Park is beautiful!

Here we are on the deck in back of the house.

The first night we walked down Elkhorn Ave. We had dinner a little burger place and took time for some pictures by Big Thompson River. Notice we are wearing hoodies - it was cold in the evenings in Estes Park! Of course we should have expected that with it being in the mountains and all, but brrrr! It was so fun to go shopping in all the cute little shops. We found a magnet for our magnet board and an ornament with 6 bears for our Christmas tree. The kids and I all got Estes Park hoodies as well. Adrian abstained because he is not a fan of hoodies. What?? I know. Sophie got a geode (a hallow rock with crystals inside) at one of the shops and they opened it up with what looked like a big pipe cutter. It looked so neat inside. Sophie says the shopping on Elkhorn Ave. was her favorite part of the whole trip. It was fun. When we got back to the house we watched Oz the Great and Powerful and munched on cookies and fudge that we bought on Elkhorn Avenue. Oh man, those Grandma cookies were awesome! I want one right now!

Of course being in Estes Park, we had to go to the Stanley Hotel of The Shining fame. It is a big beautiful hotel built in 1909. The tours did not allow children under 5 so Adrian and I took turns on Saturday taking the older kids on the "History and Ghost Tour" of the hotel. I took Sophie and Nina and Adrian took Ben. It was an awesome tour! The ghost part of it was not scary at all. The day tours are very tame. You can go on a couple of different nighttime ghost tours which are suppose to be scarier, we didn't do that, but I would love to go back during Halloween time and take one of the night ghost tours with Adrian. We are weird like that! The history of the hotel was actually really fascinating and it's a beautiful place. F.O. and Flora Stanley, the ones who built the hotel, were such interesting people and so philanthropic. The hotel itself is just gorgeous inside with it's beautiful neo-Georgian style - lots of symmetry, columns, wood paneling, and Tiffany style light fixtures. So pretty! Of course there was some mention of ghosts and The Shining, but over all I just loved the parts of the tour focusing on the architecture and stories about F.O. Stanley and how he made his millions. He was such an inventive and ambitious soul and such an amazing example of The American Dream fulfilled.

More pics from the hotel. Isn't the staircase beautiful?! And for the horror fans out there - do you recognize that last picture?? Haha! It's actually hanging in the hotel.:)

After the Stanley Hotel tour on Saturday we went on a family hike around a picturesque little mountain lake, Lily Lake. It was the perfect easy hike for our family, only about a mile around the lake with a little venturing off the path for fun. The kids loved it, especially Clara who loves being outside. There were tons of chipmunks and baby ducks - very cute wildlife.

After Lily Lake we stopped by the Baldpate Inn to take a look at a local curiosity - their key collection. This hotel has a room filled with keys from all over the US and the world and they are strung up all over the ceiling and walls of the "key room". Honestly, it was kind of weird, but neat at the same time. They had old keys from the early 1900's, new keys, and everything in between. We wandered through for a little while before heading back to the house for Clara's nap time. During her nap Adrian and I took turns taking the kids out to the hot tub - which was one of Ben and Nina's favorite things about the trip. They had been asking when we'd get in the hot tub about every 10 minutes since we arrived at the rental house, so it was very happy for them to finally get in and of course they didn't want to get out. They were quite pruney when they got out.

That night we had hot dogs and s'mores (the house had a grill - yay), watched a part of the Judy Moody movie, and then played games. Clara went to bed sometime during the movie watching. We started Monopoly, but then Nina (who wanted to play Monopoly the most) went to bed and we switched to Risk. It was a pretty epic game of Risk between Adrian, Sophie, Ben, and I. I think it makes Adrian incredibly happy to have kids old enough to play Risk and I'm sure he's looking forward to future Thanksgivings with all of his grown children crowded around the table after dinner playing this game. He loves it! Me, not so much, but I do indulge him one or two times a year and play it. We played for hours Saturday night. We had to call it before the game ended because it was late and Ben won because he was closest to his goal at the time. Believe me Adrian did not want to stop playing! I think the kids had a lot of fun.

It was a great mini vacation!  All of us did not want to leave and wished we could have stayed for a week. Nina kept saying 2 days just wasn't enough to stay in "our cabin". I had to tell her multiple times it wasn't actually our cabin, but since we stayed in it I think she feels some kind of ownership still.:) We had such a fun weekend. How I love my people! It really is great to get away and realize what an amazing group of people make up my family. I love each one of them so much and I'm so glad we can have so much fun together. I think we need to go on more of these mini vacations!

Playing Catch Up: Holidays and Summer Outings Edition

The last post was getting super long, so I'm gonna put all the holidays/outings we've been doing in this post, in pictures with captions form again. We aren't doing an actual family vacation this summer, so we've decided to try to get to some of the places around here that we've been wanting to see. We're calling it our staycation summer.

First, Father's day! We made Adrian a big candy card with some gift cards thrown in. I also made him real bbq ribs and his favorite pasta salad for dinner.

The kids and I took a trip to the US Mint in Denver and it was pretty cool! Very neat to see all the coins being made and to hear some of the history from the tour guides.

Ben and I had a date to the late night premiere of Man of Steel. Can you tell he was pretty excited to see it?!

We went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs on the 4th of July. It is a GREAT small zoo. The giraffes are right there at eye level. Very neat - they are really pretty animals! Nina got to ride a horse for the first time. I posed with the kids in front of the bears. Clara fell asleep in the Baby Bjorn for a nice afternoon nap. All of us had a great time. It really is a very charming zoo in a beautiful location. I think we'll go back again.

Of course since we were in Colorado Springs we had to stop at our favorite BBQ place for dinner, Rudy's. Yum! Just thinking about it makes me crave some Rudy's brisket! Clara could not get enough of that corn on the cob.

Happy kids on the evening of the 4th. We finished off the day by watching A Capitol Fourth on TV since all fireworks were banned in our part of CO. The kids had fun hearing Adrian and I sing along to Neil Diamond (he sang on A Capitol Fourth).

I taught a little art class for Nina and some of her friends. We did pointillism paintings (though most of the girls gave up on making little dots with q-tips and decided to just paint with brushes) and Roy Lichtenstein-esque self portraits using dotted paper and primary color papers. I think the favorite part of the whole thing was decorating sugar cookies at the end (Ben snuck into the group for the cookies). It was totally fun and reminded me of the days I was a volunteer art teacher at elementary schools (my senior year in high school).

Playing Catch Up: The Last 3 1/2 Months

I can't believe it's already summer and that in just a few weeks the older kids will be back in school. Where has the time gone? We have been keeping busy! I'm not really prepared to sit and write all about the last 3 1/2 months, so I'm just going to catch up through pictures. That's funner anyway.:)

Speaking of sweet Clara baby, in May, at 7 months, she was blessed in church. Adrian gave her a beautiful blessing. It was a very special day. Doesn't she look like a little angel in her white dress?!

Would you believe that Ben and Nina had to wear jackets on the last day of school?? Crazy. This is the last day of 3rd and 1st grade for these two and Sophie had her last day in middle school. I can't believe in a few short weeks I'm going to have a high schooler (she'll be in 9th grade)! 

Nina had a dance recital. She took both ballet and tap this last year and the recital was very cute. I think her favorite thing, which she told everyone about, was getting a medal from her dance studio after the recital. She was tickled pink about it. I really think she likens it to an Olympic medal.:) This summer she's been doing swimming lessons and has been to 2 little mini poms clinics taught by a sweet teenager in our ward. She loves poms!! She'll be taking ballet and poms lessons this fall.

Here's a couple of Clara at 8 months! She is a sweet girl and this is the month that she got 2 little teeth on the bottom. She really loved sitting and playing with her toys. Every morning she would sit on a blanket and play with toys for quite a while. She still loves her morning play time though she's a lot more mobile now.

Ben had been playing lots of soccer since last time I posted as well as doing swimming lessons. He has decided soccer is his sport and he loves playing goalie. In the swimming lesson pic he is in the right bottom corner and Nina is in the middle with the pink suit. They have both been going to a private swim school with small class sizes and they've been doing great this summer.

Here's some pictures of Sophie this summer. She is much harder to get pictures of. She has been known to quickly leave whenever I get out the camera. This summer Sophie has been doing archery (how I wish I had a picture of her with a bow - she loves archery!) as well as lots of church youth activities like youth conference, hikes, and soon girls camp. I am so grateful for the Young Women program and all the fun things Sophie gets to do with the youth in our ward. It's a wonderful thing. Have I mentioned what an amazing big sister she is?? She is always willing to play with Clara, read Nina stories, and have chats with Ben about books (they both love graphic novels).

And here's some of Clara at 9 months. Oh my cute smoochy baby! Clara is crawling now, a mixture of real crawling and army crawling and it makes her incredibly happy to be more mobile. She has just long enough hair to do a tiny pony tail on top, otherwise her hair sticks straight up. She has pretty awesome hair! She also loves real food. I cut up little pieces of what every we are eating for her now and she loves it. The picture below is her eating macaroni and cheese which has got to be her favorite food so far (I try to give her healthier food most of the time, but we do have Kraft mac and cheese every once in a while for lunch). She doesn't really enjoy picking up slimy food like pieces of banana, she'd rather have me put pieces of banana directly into her mouth, but she makes an exception for slimy mac and cheese. The most wonderful thing this month is that Clara has started sleeping through the night. She will still wake up sometime around 6am for a bottle, but then she is back to sleep till 7 or 8. It's lovely. And she takes regular morning and afternoon naps. Lots of good sleep = happy baby. Yay!

As part of Clara's new mobility we made our den into a playroom. One long trip to Ikea, and some man hours later we had this:

Our happy new playroom. The kids love it. They all love to sit and play with Clara and the baby toys. It's awesome to have a dedicated space for all the toys too. Of course toys end up all over the house, but at the end of the day everything gets put away and I feel at peace in my toy free family room. The older kids have their dedicated game-playing/older-kid-toys zone in the basement - it's not finished but we've put some rugs down, set up couches, a TV, and it's all very cozy. Big shout out to Adrian for his hours of putting together the Ikea flat pack furniture! This is by far Clara's favorite part of the new play room, an improvised ball pit:

Up next: Playing Catch Up Holiday and Summer Outings Edition