February (so far)

We had a major snowstorm last Friday. It was crazy. Here I am snowblowing the next day. Craig let me do it since I really like using the snowblower :) Max loved getting sprayed by the snow, and that school was cancelled that day.

On Monday Craig and I went to the Mitt Romney rally at our alma mater: Arapahoe High School. I can't remember the last time I had been there. Tons of memories. Anyway, Craig was an usher so he got a cool blue t-shirt. It was a cool experience.

Max loves going to the library at school each week. Lately he's been checking out books in the "Captain Underpants" series. They are actually pretty hilarious. (As a side note, you may or may not have noticed, but Max has a patch over his left eye. The muscles in his right eye are weak, so the patch helps strengthen them. He only has to wear it for a couple hours everyday after school. He's pretty lucky as I had to wear tape on my glasses at school when I was younger.)

Daily Inspire News.com

I apologize for those of you who are getting notice of this website over and over again, but Craig and I really want to get word out about his new website that he and his dad have been working on called "Daily Inspire News" (www.dailyinspirenews.com). It's a website that only features positive and uplifting news stories. It's updated with new stories everyday so if you need a pick-me-up after watching/reading your typical news, the website will not disappoint! Our goal is to help restore people's faith in mankind and inspire us all to live better lives! (Could that sound anymore like an answer to a Miss America Pageant question? Probably not.) There are some really incredible stories on there, as well as some light-hearted ones. We hope everyone will find it worth their time. If you think it's great, we'd love it if you'd spread the word!

Back from the Dead

Yes, I took a long break from blogging. Life has been a little busy and crazy the past little while, but I'm back to do a little catch-up.

First of all, we moved to the best state in the whole, wide world: Colorado! It's kind of a long story, but we are here and really glad to be back home after 10+ years and hope to stay forever. We're house-sitting for a couple while they are on their mission for 6 months, so it's been really fun to be in a house and let Max run wild in their wide-open backyard. It's a little piece of heaven.

Only three days before we moved (yes, talk about stress!), I ran the Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon. It was amazing. I'm no speed demon, so it wasn't amazing in that sense. I gained so much confidence and felt so incredible pushing myself to accomplish the training and the race itself. I will always treasure that experience.

Before the race started I ran into (not literally, no pun intended) my friend Travis who I used to work with at Novell. He was so nice to wait for me for 20 minutes at the finish line!

About two weeks before that, I held my first piano/voice recital. Typical of me, I didn't take my camera. Most of my piano students were 5 and 6 year olds (including Max), so it was their first time doing any sort of music lesson. I loved watching throughout the past year as their little minds figured out how everything fit together and ultimately made beautiful music. A lot of them memorized their songs which really impressed me. Cute little buggers.

Speaking of cute little buggers, Max got glasses! He came home from school with a little slip of paper saying he should get his eyes checked, so we did and whudduya know, he needed glasses. He's got his momma's eyes, poor kid. He has been a good sport about it all, and looks pretty studly if I say so myself. He graduated from Kindergarten early to accommodate our move (since he would have only attended for 10 days once he got to CO), so his class took a picture with him on his last day. He misses them so much. His whole class wrote him two letters before their school year ended. He had the best teacher ever, Mrs. Houmand. We're so lucky to have always had amazing teachers for Max. So lucky.

So, as of now, we're just enjoying our Colorado summer and doing the things we love: spending time with family, going to the pool, and of course, going to Rockies games!

Max's First Karate Tournament

Waiting.

Totally nervous.

Warming up

Form: Taikyoku Shodan

Self-defense: Halting Ram

Halloween

Max's costume parade at school:

Side story: Max is pretty easy to please, and pretty creative. He loves to make things out of whatever he can find around the house. He once found a paint stick and wanted to make it his lightsaber. So I painted it blue and put duct tape on the end for the handle. When he told me he wanted to be Darth Vader for Halloween, I upgraded his lightsaber to a 5 gallon paint stick. It's probably his favorite toy. Little does he know a much better lightsaber is coming soon for his birthday... I love this picture. Max was so grossed out by the pumpkin guts.

A Tale of Two Teeth

Max lost his two front teef! It was such a relief since it caused quite a bit of drama at our house. He had already lost 4 of them before, but for some reason he was terrified with these last two and freaked out at the mere suggestion of helping him along. The first one was SO loose it drove us nuts. I thought if he just blew on it it would fall out, but he wouldn't consider anything. Craig bribed him with $5 to let us pull it out and I just chased him around the house and even kept him home from school for about an hour saying he couldn't go back 'til it came out, but nothing worked! It finally came out the night he wrote a letter to the tooth fairy asking if she'd pull it out while he was asleep so he wouldn't feel it. Like a messed up person, I went in after he fell asleep to actually see if I could "assist" the tooth fairy and fulfill his request, but he woke up and that was the end of that. I felt so bad. The tooth Fairy then replied that she would sprinkle some pixie dust to help it become looser. Luckily the darn thing just fell out in his sleep (and he didn't seem to have any recollection of me coming in that night)!

So there was one down, one to go. While we waited for the second one to fall out, we were visited by Nanny McPhee:

In the end, Max pulled the second one out and we were so happy! Isn't he so cute?

I even taught him "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" a while back, but it looks like he just wants them for Halloween!

Kids Run

Max ran in his first "race" his past Saturday. It was a 1-mile kids fun run for the children at St. Jude's Hospital. Max and I have run together a few times and he does well, but I was anxious to see how he'd do without me there pushing him on. Well, he did awesome and I couldn't help but feel so proud as I watched him reach the finish line. He didn't stop running the whole time and as you can see from the video below he pushed himself 'til the end. We tried not to be concerned about his time or what place he came in and tried to just focus on helping out a good cause, but in the end we totally were. There were only about 30 kids in the race, but he was the first 5-year old to finish, 9th overall and ran about a 7 or 8 minute mile (there was a little mix-up on the course so the timing wasn't completely accurate). I had to laugh because I asked him if he wanted to stop running at all and he said "Satan told me to stop, but Jesus told me to keep going"! He never ceases to make me laugh with the clever and cute things he says!