We have been keeping up our crazy pace of life. After missing two Sundays of church someone asked me today if I had a "restful" break. I did not laugh out loud, but I was definitely laughing on the inside. The past two weeks have been anything but restful, they have been very full. The kids had a friend from Indiana in town for five days in the middle of June. They had an amazing time with him hanging out and going to a car race. This wasn't a normal car race, it was a race up Pike's Peak mountain. We decided to spend the night on the mountain, as our choice was get there at 3 am Sunday morning and get up before the race started, or go up Saturday and sleep in the car and a tent and be there for the race. As we waited in line Saturday to go up the mountain it was in the upper 90s and the line of cars was barely moving. We didn't make it far before our car started giving us trouble, like wouldn't shift into gear trouble, which prevented us from moving forward. We fortunately were near a neighborhood entrance, so after stopping on the road, we reversed about 50 feet and pulled off at the entrance to the neighborhood and waited for the car to cool down. After that, we decided the best course of action was to go down the mountain, rent a car and try again. Thankfully we were able to rent a 15 passenger van to hold all our stuff and us and we made it back up before 6 pm which was the cut off time to get up the mountain. There was a high wind warning that night and the boys (Damen, Kaleb and their  friend) had an adventurous night in the tent, as it almost collapsed several times and at one point Damen ended up outside of it? In the morning, due to the winds they actually postponed the start of the race and ended up shortening it because of the winds, but we're thankful it still happened.   

Monopoly in the car......

Monopoly in the tent.....

Just chilling after finally getting there. 

Such a beautiful setting!

Watching the race

Standing on the race track 😁

Because the race is up a mountain with something like 150 turns, you don't get to see much of it. They send the cars up one at a time, so you see a car once every 2-5 minutes. 

So there was plenty of time to chill and have fun in-between cars. 

Leaving the race...

Back at home, more monopoly 

After their friend left Tuesday, we headed to Maryland on Friday.....on a six am flight...maybe not my brightest idea, because I didn't think about the fact that we'd have to park and take a shuttle to the airport. I think I've been to the airport six times in the past two months, it's been crazy. I know the route well, fortunately it's only about half an hour away. Anyway, we went to Maryland for my grandmother's celebration of life. I got to see all my cousins, aunts and uncles and some of my mom's cousins and my sisters, their families and my parents of course. It was a really good time. 

Friday the boys saw this sitting out and thought "Oh, fancy fruit punch" the boys served themselves some (I was picking up the girls, who were napping at the hotel from the early flight when this happened) and Damen took a big gulp....only to find it was not a fancy juice, but sangria. Ooops.

I unfortunately didn't get pictures of people, but on Saturday we went on a hike to the great falls national park and had a nice dinner afterwards where we remembered my grandmother. 

On Sunday after a lovely brunch with family we headed down to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to visit the boys foster parents. It was a short but sweet visit. 

As you can tell, Kaleb is thrilled to have his picture taken, I couldn't get a smile for anything from him 🙄

We got back Tuesday and thankfully, the boys didn't have football this week. Evie prepared to head off to camp for four weeks and I dropped her off yesterday. On top of this excitement has been all the normal weekly fun of life....and a cold running through our house, that Evie brought back from camp training that she was at for 10 days. Definitely a full summer so far. 

 I haven’t blogged in awhile, as life has been insane. The challenges are real and the chaos is while, chaotic 😁 there has been trips taken ( Nathan and the younger three went back to Indiana for a show and to visit friends), Hannah went to Maryland to visit my sister, planning for fall and lots of doctors to try and figure out Damen’s spleen location and what he can and cannot do. Last week we had four dentist appointments, an eye doctor appointment and two doctor appointments.  We learned due to the location of Damen’s spleen, the fact that it’s healthy (which is a good thing!) and very little being known about the condition the doctors are unwilling to sign off on any sport with contact…..Although as one doctor put it, he’s already done plenty of things that could have caused his spleen to have issues and it has clearly had some trauma in the past, but it’s looking good now, so as a parent would I not let him do things? I don’t know, but as a doctor I have to say he can’t. 

This week we finished up the family dentist appointments, the boys had their first football practice Monday and loved it. Right now Damen will be working out with the team and doing everything except contact and will be helping to manage the team. After their 6:30 am practice, they went and got trained on lawn mowing which they’ll be working as a sub for this summer, they mowed 21 lawns! I enjoyed just having to mow one, ours and it taking all of 15 minutes! 😀

In other news Hannah’s goldfish, that has been in the family nine years (more than half of Hannah’s life!)and had lived in four states died Monday. It was sad, but also somewhat of a relief, as now it does not need to be calculated in to future plans.

Tuesday was more football, where Damen rebroke the finger he had broken a few months ago. We took him to urgent care on Wednesday, because Thursday was going to be a bit crazy, as Evie was supposed to be flying out to Indiana. Her flight out of Denver got delayed, which means she would have missed her connection in Chicago and they won't have been able to get her out until 3 pm the next day, since she's under 18 and can't get a hotel room or a rental car we opted for rebooking on Friday, where she got in about the same time without spending a night and most of the day in the airport. She did make it successfully to Fort Wayne yesterday with a layover in Dallas. She was happy to be able to go to youth group on Thursday and get it at an earlier hour to Fort Wayne than she was scheduled for on Thursday. Friday I got to sleep in until 6 am, after having to get up at 5:15 am on Monday and Wednesday to bring the boys to lifting. The difference that 45 minutes made was amazing. Damen opted out of football practice yesterday because of his finger, but Kaleb had a good time and helped move furniture around the school after. 

Today is a quiet day before the insanity begins again tomorrow, which church, picking up Evie from the airport, a graduation party and a house warming party. Nathan and I were talking today and he's like I just can't wait for life to pass in a blur, for things to be the same from day to day. We thought about it for a few minutes and we haven't gone longer than three years without a major life change (adding a kid(s), new job type, new state) since we've been married. It definitely keeps life interesting!

February was a crazy month. I'm thankful it's over. The last week has had quite the excitement. Last Friday Hannah drove over a screws and woke up Saturday to find a flat tire. We were able to get her new tires on Sunday, which I was super thankful for, as having one car out of commission with four drivers is hard. Nathan and Hannah did bring the tire in to try and get it patched, but because it was over ten years old they wouldn't patch it. Hence the new tires. Monday the girls and I went to a women's Bunco night, which was fun. Tuesday we met friends at the park in the morning, as it's been super nice here, sunny and in the 50s and 60s! Wednesday was when the real excitement began, it was a beautiful day, Hannah was at school, Nathan and Evie both at work, all the cars were gone, the boys went to work out, so I decided to take Charli for a walk. As I was walking I tripped over the side walk and landed apparently on my pinky finger, enough at least that it dislocated and twisted the bone. It looked terrible to say the least. I walked back home and my neighbor was out, I asked him if he could take me to the urgent car, it was that or walk, it's only about a mile away. He was able to and dropped me off....as I was getting registered I got a text from Evie - "Mom, I can't see out of one eye" great.....I couldn't do much, as I didn't have a car, but I called her and said to see if anyone had Excedrin. I'm about to pay for my appointment, but before I do, I asked if they had an x-ray tech in, as this is the same place I tried three times to get Kaleb's finger x-rayed, they said they didn't, but it wasn't a big deal, because they'd just send me somewhere else to get the x-ray. Hello, I don't have a car, I can't drive around places and I just need someone to straighten out my finger, I was sure it'd be fine. So I call Nathan, who was fortunately on lunch break from his all day meeting and asked if it'd be possible for him to come get me and take me somewhere else. He was able to work out the details and get someone to cover his meeting for him. He picked me up, then made sure I was all good at the new urgent care place and went and picked up Evie, who at this point had had her arm go numb and had a terrible headache. X-rays confirmed just a dislocated finger, so the doctor put it back in place and I was good to go. Nathan made it back to get me about five minutes after I finished and then I drove home so he could present on his meeting. We got home, tried to have a lower key couple of hours before heading to a Christian school open house that allows home schoolers to do extra curricular activities. We were going to Evie, Damen and Kaleb, but we felt it best given the day to leave Evie at home to get more rest. Thursday was our normal crazy of Ninja warrior and youth group and Friday Damen had an appointment in the morning and we hosted small group. I knew it was going to be a crazy week, I just didn't realize how crazy! Today has been a much needed quieter day where we have gotten some things done around the house. 

But the lesson learned is that Colorado is clearly out to get our fingers 😂 

 The past week has involved Hannah starting school, Evie, Damen and Kaleb starting tech week. Kaleb breaking a finger....seriously, we had no broken bones until we moved to Colorado, now Damen and Kaleb have both broken a finger. I'm thankful it's only fingers, and I'm sure they may be more to come. They both started doing a Ninja warrior class, that's how Kaleb broke his finger, week two. They want to play football this year, if they're breaking things just playing around, football should be fun. 

Evie officially got her license on Thursday, so she has been driving the boys and herself to tech week rehearsals, it's great! I've been able to catch up on some things and get things done around the house. Their show is this weekend and next weekend. 

Well that's it for now. I need to use the last little bit of time before everyone is home to get some other things done, so we'll keep this short. 

 The last four weeks have been a bit crazy. I can't wait for things to settle down into routine, at least in once sense......I don't like the consistent research, fighting, and trying to figure things out that I am still doing from the move. Progress seems so slow. I've fought to try and get Evie in state tuition for her college courses, when talking to the person at the college who has the ability to override the out of state tuition rate I was told by her that they discriminate against homeschoolers.....Thanks, ever so helpful. If Evie went to a public school she would be able to get in state tuition, but since she doesn't they wouldn't give it to us. Since the cost difference is $500 a credit hour, we decided it wasn't worth the $4900 it would cost for her to take her two courses and just wait until next year, which we'll still have to fight for because we didn't buy the house until August..... 🙄 but I did find a charter school that would cover all the costs if we enroll her there, however she can't have enough credits to have graduated high school, so I have to figure that one out, as I haven't actually done a transcript for her and I know she technically does have enough credit to graduate....so which ones I could and which ones I don't will matter. 

I still have been asking around for doctor recommendations, but haven't found one that will take the boys insurance yet, one was recommended, would take their insurance and was taking new patients, until you got to the scheduling, and then he didn't have any appointments available. I did find one that works for Nathan, which is great. 

And we have a car mechanic that has been recommended to us, as we have some issues with one of the cars we bought, hopefully that will all work out and it will be a quick and easy fix.

Then there's the activities for the kids......Evie has work, which since she's not going to be doing college courses, she'll just pick up more hours, which is great, since her goal is to buy her own car. And she was working through an application for a summer camp student leader in training program, which she's planning to do this summer for four weeks. Evie also passed her driving test on Friday for her license! We have an appointment (because you have to schedule those like a month in advance here!) for her to actually get her license on Thursday. It will be super helpful when she can driver herself to work!

We went to an open house for a homeschool program for the boys which is wilderness focused, but they weren't convinced it would be any good....then we tried a ninja warrior class, which Damen didn't really want to do and Kaleb was super excited about, Damen came out of it ready to do it and Kaleb isn't so sure it's what he wants to do. Moving is hard, losing friends and activities you loved is even harder. 

Hannah is starting a full load of courses on Wednesday. It was suggested to us she take the bus into class, so tomorrow I'm going to hopefully try that with her. We'll see, it can be super cold her in the winter, and it's about a mile walk from the bus stop to the school, so I'm not sure if it's going to work out or not. Her not having to drive nearly as much would be nice, but it wouldn't really save her any time since it's a 20 minute walk after the bus ride, but a walk is better than driving as long as it's not sub-zero. 

The crazy is continuing, and I just continue to press on and see what God has in store each day. There has been some crazy weather, like a couple days when we were in a cloud all night and in the morning, after the cloud clears everything was covered in crystals. Here are some pictures:

We also got solar panels installed, they went life on the 9th, we'll see how they work out. Right now they are covered in snow, so they aren't producing much....but we're hopeful they will cover a majority, if not all of our electric bill, which would be nice. The kids is in two weeks, so that means next week is tech week. We had some of the theater group over last weekend for an extra practice and everyone had a blast. The kids have been enjoying the people, but are super not thrilled over the quality of the show and are very much missing what they had in Indiana. Well, I think that's all for now. 

 

Merry Christmas!

 The past couple weeks leading up to Christmas have been crazy. Having to drive Evie to and from work regularly takes up more time than one would think. Also, Christmas shopping when trying to get a number of items without breaking the budget takes a whole lot more time. But we had some big scores from thrift stores (they are SO much better here than Indiana or Michigan!) and saved hundreds of dollars. The kids loved what they got and were actually quite content today in general. I think expectations were met, so that is good. 

Besides Christmas shopping, school and work I thought it'd be a good idea to throw in a doctor appointment for Hannah (just a physical) and her having her wisdom teeth removed last week as well. I picked a random doctor for the physical and it wasn't so cool.....the nurse asked if I was Hannah's mom and then was almost surprised sounding that she was adopted. I miss Fort Wayne, there were so many adopted kids there. The wisdom teeth removal was an adventure as well.....Hannah did not come out of the anesthesia well, but in her mostly unconscious state insisted on coming home. Nathan took her and stayed with her through the appointment, they said it all went fine and they successfully removed the teeth, but said she was very slow to wake up. Once she was awake Nathan said she kept repeating "home, home" until he finally asked if he could take her home. She needed help into the car and help into the house and we had to carry her down the stairs....a couple hours later she finally was able to communicate more and I let her go to sleep (they had said to keep her awake), before going to rest she said "I want to go to youth group tonight" I said "I know, you've told me about ten times already" she laughed, as she had no recollection of it. She did go to youth group and had fun, she even wrote an award winning story to go with cookies that Evie and their friend Lindsey had decorated. Since than she has not been super excited about doing anything, but finally today she was feeling slightly better and said things are hurting less, which is great. 

Last week we also were working on getting Evie signed up for classes at a community college for spring semester. The one closest to our house had her do an assessment test. Unlike the "assessment" test Hannah took which was like 10 yes or no questions for math, Evie did a two hour one and ended up four points out of three hundred away from testing into pre-calc. She did successfully test into college English, which is great! 

With all the driving around I did last week I saw nine cyber trucks. One day I saw four....various colors too, such as pumpkin orange and forest green, along with black and the standard steel. It's crazy how many there are around here, it's a running joke that I need to see my daily cyber truck now. I did see one yesterday and two on Monday......but none today. 

Let's see, what else has happened in the past two weeks.....Hannah finally got her Colorado drivers license! And I got both our cars registered that we bought in November. It seems like a never ending list of things to do. Oh, we're also getting solar panels and they are getting installed Friday... We went to our church's Christmas Eve service yesterday, I think I sang more Christmas songs last night than I do over an entire season normally.....it was very different than what we were used to for a Christmas Eve service, but we got to meet some new people, so that was cool. 

Well, I think that's all for now. Merry Christmas! 

Deep breath.......Thanksgiving was not very thankful in our house.....a lot of complaining and frustration and expectations not met (ie mom should make all the food for a full Thanksgiving meal without any help from the kids). But we made it through and went on with life. The next day was better, as we did a hot chocolate bar and watched It's a Wonderful Life, at least most of us watched it. The kids had never seen it before and one got bored and left. It's really hard to find anything that everyone is willing to do at this point, but we try. 

Nathan's parents gave us this slushie maker for Christmas.....we've used it a couple times already, that is something everyone has enjoyed. 

We have finished wrapping all our fudge. I didn't take a picture of all the ingredients this year, as I have done in years past. I also fix fudge making in in between things like school, small group at our house, a women's lunch at church on Saturday and of course church on Sunday. It's been kind of crazy around here. 

We also went out last night to celebrate Hannah passing her classes and finishing the semester. It snowed last night as well and was snowing as we drove to the restaurant. We've been told they don't plow here and we experienced that first hand yesterday and into this morning when I took the kids to theater and the roads still had snow on them. The sun did come out this morning and by the drive back the roads were clear. But you definitely need to know how to drive in snow. 

That's the short version of the past couple weeks. The chaos continues in the next few weeks, and most of it has nothing to do with Christmas....it's just normal life things....or not so normal like getting wisdom teeth removed, but it needs to be done at some point right? 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 This past week Evie started work. She is lifeguarding and enjoying it. Yesterday was slightly busier than the first two days, as kids are off school this week and there was a camp with 27 kids in the pool! I am thankful she is working pretty close to Nathan and will be on the noon-4:15 shift, which means I can drop her off and Nathan can pick her up, so I don't have to drive both ways. In January she will  hopefully be getting her license. The shift works well as she can complete school in the morning and then head into work and still have evenings free.

Speaking of evenings, the kids had a Friendsgiving at youth group this past week and all made their own food to bring! Evie made pumpkin pie, Damen made chocolate pie, Kaleb made homemade rolls and Hannah made whipped cream! I was super excited that they all put in the effort to make something and everything turned out really well. 

Friday night we had our first of what will be a weekly community group with church. It was a soft start with only three families, but there is lots of interest within the church. One of the people is an older woman who I asked what she would like my children to call her when I was introducing them to her and she said "Queen Mother" the kids rolled their eyes, but totally thought it was funny as well. 

The van is mostly fixed at this point, it's drivable now, which is great. We still need to take the door apart because there is an issue with the latch on that, but having three vehicles again is super helpful! 

Hannah has this entire week off of school for Thanksgiving and then has one day of class and finals, then she'll be done for the semester! 

It has been another busy week in the house hold. I’m really wondering if we’ll ever normalize out. The younger three saw two shows this past weekend. Beauty and the Beast on Friday, which I went to with them and then a Sherlock Holmes play put on by the theater company they are a part of. We really should have known better regarding Beauty and the Beast….the one they were in was so good, it would be hard for any kid’s theater program to match that….but this one unfortunately was not even close. I was hoping it’d be good because it was a theater group in our town…..but the one put on by their troupe they said was pretty good. Unfortunately they rehearsed on Thursday nights, so the kids couldn’t do that one because they have youth group that night. We’re still trying to figure out the next show for them. 

That along with all four heading out for lunch after church kept the weekend pretty busy. We were also trying to troubleshoot an electrical problem with the van we just bought, as the battery light went on when I was driving around last week. We got an alternator, as that is what Nathan thought it was, but then he second guessed that and today ended up stuck on the side of the road. He and the boys are now putting in the new alternator.

Hannah heard back from one of the animal hospitals she contacted regarding shadowing, so she’ll be doing that tomorrow. It’s one of the requirements for the vet tech program to shadow two vet techs for four hours each. 

Damen and Kaleb have gotten back into working out and tossing a football around since having taken a break when they were in Fort Wayne. Unfortunately Damen’s phone had an unfortunate encounter with a hard object resulting in the phone being rendered unusable. 

We also caught our first real drone show from our backyard. It was super impressive! There were actually two of them, there was a break in between, so we thought it was over but looked out a little later and a second one was going on. 

Oh, the other excitement of the week was Evie getting showered in glass. Thankfully she wasn’t hurt or cut at all! But Damen hit the lampshade and it broke all over Evie.

Here you can see the mess above and below is a shard that got stuck in the wall!

Snow! And Indiana

 We got our first snowfall of the year last week. It started on Thursday and continued on Friday. 

Thursday the kids headed to youth group and enjoyed packing shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. They had a lot of fun and made some new friends along the way. I am so thankful for our church and how the kids have connected with people there! 

Our flight for Fort Wayne departed on Friday. This lead to a long delay, but we made it out, which was great because there were a lot of flights that were canceled. Our flight was from Denver to Chicago, from there we picked up a rental car and drove to Fort Wayne. I was thankful we didn't have a connection, because I'm pretty sure we would have missed that. As it was we didn't get into Fort Wayne until 2:30 am. Fortunately that's only like 12:30 am Mountain time, so it wasn't too bad. But I did have to drive through a lot of fog and it was an unfamiliar fancy newish (2023 camry) with various bells and whistles that were super frustrating and I couldn't figure out how to turn off. Such as automatically turning on the high beams for me, brilliant in fog. Or turning them off when it saw a traffic light thinking it was another car. Anyway, we made it out of Chicago with lots of people passing us with their hazards on (what's up with that?!) and saw three deer and hit zero. We crashed in the hotel and then started bright and early visiting with friends. The boys let the hotel Saturday at 8:15 am and didn't return until Sunday at 11 am. Where they showered and crashed until 4 pm and then were not back at the hotel the rest of our time in Fort Wayne. They had a ton of fun with friends and had two sleepovers with very little sleep. Evie took an hour and a half nap Saturday and then was off to see her friends in Mill Girls for both the matinee and 7 pm show. The director was kind enough to allow her to hang out with people while they were eating between shows. After the 7 pm show we went out to Culvers and hung out with people there until almost midnight. Evie and I enjoyed having our own bed in the hotel room while the boys had a sleepover. Evie slept in on Sunday, while I got up and went and picked up the boys. Once I got back I got Evie "breakfast" made sure the boys were actually going to get some sleep and headed over to some friends for football. It was a low key afternoon with some cookie making, which was great.  We then picked the boys up and saw other friends for dinner, the kids headed to youth group and we hung out a little more after youth group and the boys slept over. Monday morning was low key with some other friends and just what everyone needed. We headed back to Chicago with the sketchy drivers (one person decided to pretend to shoot us making a gun with his fingers! And we nearly got into an accident as someone pulled out in front of us when they shouldn't have, I had to swerve and hit the breaks hard enough that the ABS engaged), and made it to the air port. Thankfully the flight home was uneventful and Nathan had picked up the minivan (the dealer was fixing a few small things for us) and picked us up in that. Having the extra room was amazing! Did I mention the minivan is from Honda of Clear Lake, as in Clear Lake Texas, right by our house when we lived there? We had actually looked at minivans they had when buying our first one. Such a small world  sometimes. 

Evie got this amazing picture with the big dipper out her plane window on the way home! 

We flew Frontier airlines, which is super cheap and I also appreciated because without paying for seats they seated me with my kids that were under 16. Which meant Evie could sit with the boys and I could take Evie's random seat with the scary strangers 😁 The kids enjoyed sitting together on the flights.

The boys after their first sleepover with their friends

Evie, at the show with friends

Snow!! There is still a little bit around here and there, but Charlie and I went for our Tuesday morning walk and even though there was some snow I was in a t-shirt and it was a beautiful sunny day!!

Nathan and Hannah made it through the weekend without us and Nathan at least was happy we were back, but I think that Charlie was the most excited that we had returned, she was jumping for joy when we came in! 

Today we were back to our regularly scheduled program and I was thankful for the extra vehicle and not having to bring Nathan into work before heading to theater with the kids. 

The vehicle shuffle

This past week has been another crazy one. We got all six of us to the dentist, and only one person had any cavities. The boys went on Halloween, and were like "why are we going to the dentist on Halloween, shouldn't we go after?" 

                               

Speaking of Halloween, Hannah went as someone working in a lab with her lab (lab) assistant Charlie. Evie was Red Ridding Hood and the boys were Men in Black. 

                               

They got more candy than any person needs, the above was after about an hour and a half, they then went out for another hour. They were super excited to be able to walk out the front door and go and not have any time restrictions. Both Michigan and Indiana had specific hours during which you could trick or treat. Needless to say they had a blast!

Hannah found a dog that had gotten away from her owners this week. She brought her home and tried calling them, but the call and text were not answered. I told her to just put her on a leash and go for a walk and she'd probably find them driving around slowly. It worked perfectly! 

In regards to the vehicle shuffle, we decided to just sell the RV to the dealership, since it failed to sell on consignment. This meant we took a pretty big loss, but we don't have to deal with it anymore. Since that decision was made we were able to get rid of the truck, so we went car shopping on Saturday. We traded the truck in because we didn't want to deal with selling it ourselves. What we learned though is if we trade in a vehicle that is worth more than what you are buying you don't have to pay tax on what you're buying. That was kind of nice. We bought a honda civic from one dealership and a honda odyssey from another dealership. We were able to drive the civic home and are waiting for a couple things to be fixed on the odyssey, but are hoping to get it tomorrow.  

On Sunday there was a thing for new people after service, so five of us stayed for that and all squished into the civic on the way home, it was quite comical. 

Today the kids had theater and while they are there Charlie and I go for a walk at a open space that allows dogs off leash. It's Charlie's favorite place to go, but after walking for an hour and a half she's quite tired. And she found the only puddle in the place and decided to lay down in it, so she was also wet. The boys got to squish in with her on the way home.

Charlie running free! 

The mountains are getting lots of snow! It has been so fun to watch them get more and more snow over the last couple weeks. They are beautiful! 

Fall Has come

After my parents left it took that next week for us to get back into the grove of life. Trying to do school again can be quite the challenge when you haven't done it for five days. Just yesterday, after just the weekend Kaleb said it was so hard to get back into school after having two days off. 

But we're starting to get back into things I think. This past week had plenty of fun sprinkled in. Evie's birthday was last Tuesday, she went out for breakfast with Nathan, we ordered some Chinese for dinner and had this ice cream cake: 

It had a chocolate chip cooking crumble base (without chocolate chips), vanilla ice cream, a chocolate mousse middle, strawberry ice cream and mangos. Yum!

Instead of youth group this past Thursday the kids all went to a local high school football game. 

It was a beautiful evening for it, a bit windy at first which made it cold, but the wind died down and we all enjoyed the game. 

We've also had amazing fall colors the past two weeks! It's been gorgeous and sunny!

The last of the roses are blooming.

On the 20th the younger three kids went to a friends hockey game and had a lot of fun watching the game and listening to the drama from the stands (some of the parents got very out of line). The boys also had the opportunity to go to a friends house this past Saturday. The kids have some real friends now, which is great!

I've been working on trying to build relationships as well. I've done a few walks with people, which is wonderful when you have such nice weather! Today I took Charlie to the open space off leash dog park and we walked for an hour plus, I think it may have been a bit too much for her, as she's been super calm/tired the rest of the day. But she did love it while we were out there. This afternoon I went for a walk with someone from church and I have another meet up tomorrow.

I've also been working towards establishing medical professions. One of my least favorite parts of moving. We have the dentist all set, Hannah and Nathan have already had appointments, the boys have appointments on Thursday and Evie and I have ours on Monday. Next will be doctors. 

Yesterday Evie interviewed for and got a lifeguarding job that's from noon-4:15 pm, which are great hours for the time being and will be an easy start, with not many people in the pool. She's waiting on HR to get her the paperwork, but it sounds like she'll be starting in two weeks. 

A busy week

 My parents arrived in town last Thursday and left today. The kids had their first worship at youth group on Thursday as well. They did great for the first time with no practice together. And they are psyched to do it again this week! The youth pastor also dropped off an electric drum set for Kaleb to use yesterday. He is loving it and has been enjoying playing again, as he had attempted to put his drum kit together on his own and broke some of it and it got kind of stalled at that point. 

On Friday afternoon the younger three, my parents, Nathan and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was spectacular. 

Here's Evie at 12,000 feet 

This is my favorite picture ever!!! It was taken accidently by Evie. The kids enjoyed riding in the bed of the truck, except when I was going "too fast" close to the edge that was a drop off. 😁

We didn't do much hiking, but we got to see lots of the park, which was great. 

On Sunday evening we went to a huge jack o-lantern display. There were over 7,000 carved pumpkins. It was pretty spectacular. 

My parents also enjoyed spending some one on one time with the kids taking them out for breakfast. On Saturday the guys went to a men's breakfast at our church. Damen and Kaleb were thrilled to be included in the men. 

Saturday, Sunday and Monday Evie had a lifeguarding course from 9-5 which added some crazy to the weekend. But she did great and is now a certified lifeguard. 

On Monday we enjoyed a slower day, and then watched the Bills/Jets game in the evening. Evie and the boys have really gotten into following football and enjoyed the opportunity to watch the game. Even in mountain time it went a little late for some of us who had to be up at 5:30 this morning to head to the airport, but it was good. 

My parents made it safely back home before I was done with all my running around for the the morning, which was kind of crazy to think of. It's great that there are so many direct flights from Denver! 

 This week our family went to a high school performance of Our Town. The kids weren't too impressed by it, but Nathan and I enjoyed it. Hannah ended up leaving halfway through because she had been at school, walked in the door and I was like "we need to leave now" since she wasn't really enjoying the show that much and we had taken two cars we let her leave. We still are working off of the truck and corolla, so going places as a family normally involves two vehicles because the truck is really tight for all six of us. We want to get rid of the truck, but need to keep it until the RV sells....that is only on consignment for another week, then we have to figure out what to do with it, which is probably put it in storage for the winter and try consigning it or sell it ourselves in the spring. But our prayer right now is that it will sell in the next week! 

On Saturday we had a family over who had just moved her from Oregon in August, Nathan and I enjoyed getting to know the adults while the girls played monopoly and went to the park and the boys played music and spent some time at the park as well. It was really nice to have some interaction with people other than family. We are still eating off of folding tables, because we gave our kitchen table away before moving, it was pretty well loved, and I've always wanted a larger table. No one seemed to mind that there wasn't a "real" table. I think the important thing is opening your house and showing the love of Christ. But, if you were wondering how unpacked, or put together our house is at this point....well.....it's pretty unpacked, but definitely not put together. But life goes on. 

The kids had their second class of theater today, they said it went better than last week, so that was good. They are trying to figure out what show they are going to do still, as they had less people sign up for the class than they were expecting. Originally it was going to be Oliver Twist, now they are looking at either Treasure Island or King Author type story. 

Since their theater class is about half an hour away and only two hours long I'm working on figuring out how best to use the time. Today we brought Charli with us and I took to her two dog parks. One was an off leash open space, so think several acres of field with trails through it. She loved it and did super well! I wasn't sure how she'd do since it was huge, but she walked about 20 feet in front of me and would stop every once in awhile to look back and see if I was still there. When we came across other dogs she'd say hi to them, and some times walk a little bit with them, but would always come when I called her. The other one was just a fenced in area, but it was actually grass instead of sand/gravel that a lot of the ones are around her. 

This evening, while I was picking up Nathan from work, the boys decided to get in a fight...as boys do....and we came back to Damen thinking he broke his finger. Now we have to figure out a doctor to go get that checked out. 

That's it for the update from here. Until next week.....

a rough day

Today was a rough day.....the kids had their first day of theater....there are only 10 kids in the production. Evie had a good attitude about it, but the boys were less than thrilled. I think it will be a good experience, as it's a straight show and they've never done one before, but Kaleb is saying he's done with theater and won't do it after this. They did say the people were all really nice though, so that's good. Every where they have been the people have been nice, which is great, it definitely makes this easier.

Hannah had a super rough day, first the dog day care told her they decided they wanted someone with more experience who could work more hours, so they weren't going to continue her employment. Next, the Bible study she's been doing (which she had told us on several occasions was a cult, some what as a joke, but I think also some what because something was off, she just couldn't figure it out), told her there is only one denomination, that her parents have been lying to her and she couldn't be saved by praying, and that her baptism didn't count because it was too long after she was saved, even though she wasn't really saved then and that she's going to hell. She also didn't do well on a biology test. All in all, no fun. She has started the job hunt again and we'll see where she ends up. 

One good thing from this past week is that the youth group is going to start doing worship at youth group, Damen will be playing guitar, Kaleb cajon, and Evie will be singing. They are super pumped about that. 

This week there is no youth group, but there is a high school play that one of the kids from youth group is in, so we'll be going to that. We're also having some people over on Saturday. So that is also something everyone is looking forward to. 

The boys have been enjoying throwing a football around.....they decided yesterday doing this in the house was a good thing.

This was the result, so they now have some wall repair to do 

This past week Nathan and I also got our Colorado licenses! You can't just walk into the DMV, you have to make an appointment and they have specific locations just for licenses, it's kind of crazy. Nathan and I were talking about licenses and I mentioned something about when it expired, and he said "Licenses expire? I don't think I knew that, I mean, it makes sense, I just hadn't thought about it" The only place we have lived long enough to have to renew our license is Texas, and that was quite awhile ago. But I thought it was super funny that he hadn't processed licenses expiring because we just haven't had to deal with it, I guess that a benefit of moving a lot? 😀

 The excitement in life continued this past week. Hannah had an interview at a dog daycare  place on Friday and was hired on the spot. She started training on Monday, and continues Wednesday and Friday of this week from 7 am -2 pm. It's definitely keeping her busy. 

Charli finally started going upstairs and downstairs. It took her a week before she'd do it and now she loves being downstairs with the kids. 

Evie and I also took her to the dog park yesterday. She had such a good time, there was only one other dog there, but there was lots of space to run and a puddle because it had rained the previous day. 

Saturday my cousin came over and visited for the morning. He was in town for work and wanted to catch up. I hadn't seen him in probably 30 years, but we had a nice visit. The kids were not so pleased with the fact that Saturday was taken up by a random person who was "old" and "not really related" to them because he's a cousin once removed, but that's okay. It was good to see him.

Sunday we did church and Sunday evening there was a connection group get together which we went to. I'd say it was a small group, but it wasn't that small. It was a good time, and there was another family there who just moved back to the area in August (they lived here from 2018-2021, and then went back home to Oregon and are now back), they have kids who are 17, 15 and 11. Our kids have gotten to know the kids at youth group and Sunday gave me a chance to chat with the parents, which was nice. 

Evie has also been enjoying our roses that are currently blooming in front of our house. They are quite beautiful. 

We also learned this week, as they put up signs that we are not supposed to be walking on the golf course....that is where we were taking our evening strolls, as it's a nice wide path...but as we are respectful of the rules we have stopped. We were wondering if the signs were put up just for us, but since the signs have gone up I have seen someone else walking his dogs and some biking on the path. 

We have also seen our local neighborhood fox several times this past week. At one point Evie and I were out in the back yard with Charli and she runs to the fence, we looked and the fox was just strolling down the golf course path. When it say Charli it veered off towards us, but then saw something and started hunting it and then pounced, it was so cute! It's also crossed the street right near me when I was walking the dog and once was in our front yard when Hannah went out. 

On Friday I took a walk with my friend Kristen from Connecticut. As we were walking she told how they had actually tried to come out to Colorado in 2012-2013 time frame, instead of 2016 when they did. When I heard that I was just hit again by the goodness of God. If they had come out here earlier we probably wouldn't have known them and wouldn't have had the connection out here that we have because of them. I'm sure they were probably more reasons than just us that God kept them in Connecticut, but maybe not. God does work in incredible ways and I am so thankful for his goodness to us. 

 

Or not.....

Last Wednesday we brought a dog home. Her name is Charli and she is five years old (or that's the best guess). She's super sweet and super chill so far. Almost too chill. Are yard isn't fully fenced and we were debating how to handle this with a dog, thankfully, she doesn't try to escape and really seems to understand boundary lines. We haven't had to use anything but name recall with her to keep her in the yard. She loves walks and is slowly adjusting to our house. We'll see how she does here. She has always had other dogs to play with in the past, so I am a bit concerned about her not having another dog. She was an owner surrendered rescue, her owner died and his wife wasn't able to care for her as she needed. 

The kids all love her and we're having fun being able to do things with her like giver her soft toys and play tug of war, that we weren't able to do with the Leader Dog (guiding eye puppy in training) we fostered a few years ago. That was the big excitement of the past week.

Elsa (our cat) has been doing well with the dog. As you can see in the picture below, she just plopped down next to Charli's cage. 

Although sometimes she still needs her space and will find new places to hid. Can you find her in the linen closet?

Evie also let her outside today, we've been letting her out supervised and following her.....she doesn't seem to know which house is ours. On multiple occasions she's gone to our neighbors porch and looked at me like, "well, aren't you going to let me in?" so she's definitely not ready for adventuring on her own, she's never lived in a neighborhood with houses so close together.....anyway, Evie lost track of her while she was outside, which caused a slight panic, but she had just hidden herself in the flowers in our backyard and when I brought Charlie out, she came out of the flowers and wanted to go back inside. 

This morning we saw a cayote, it was walking the path of the golf course behind out house and then turned and came right near our backyard. It was crazy. 

Evie did a swim test for a lifeguarding course she will be taking next week. They apparently just changed it so you have to do the swim test before you can sign up for the course as to not embarrass people and make the course go more smoothly. Evie was able to pass without much of a problem, but she wasn't a big fan of swimming with a ten pound brick! After the course she should be able to get a lifeguarding job without a problem. 

Hannah has heard back from one of the jobs she applied to, they asked about her availability, she responded and they have yet to get back to her a second time. She is really hoping to get a job soon. 

Nathan has an end of summer mechanical engineering group party on Thursday at work. Everyone was instructed to bring a change of clothes, as there will be water balloons!

The boys are keeping busy with school, working out and helping out with Charli. Today we all went on a walk to the grocery store with her. It's only about a mile one way, so it was a good walk. 

We're still waiting for temperatures to cool down, but it looks like this weekend the 80s may break and give way to some more fall like temperatures. In the meantime, Nathan and I have been doing nightly walks with the dog once it's dark and the temperature starts to drop.