Friendly Faeries

It is amazing how often the kids dive into the dress up clothes when someone is over. Princess, faerie, pirate, cook, and angel are all universal kid games. Some friends prefer to play puppy more than pirate and to each their own. Teilee tends to try only to play dinosaur and it has been great expanding her enjoyment of some different repertoire.
Teilee had her friend Shamaiah over to play. Shamaiah loves to play princess or faerie. The last time she was over we ran out of time to venture to our Cottonwood Creek. A short jaunt down our greenbelt and you will arrive to a small weedy, grassy area with a huge cottonwood tree and a small creek running through.
This time I swore to the girls (who are good at getting promises out of me) that we would go. They donned their most appropriate attire and insisted on a few baskets to gather trinkets with, and we were off. Leave Landis in his nap and Daddy at home this was a girls adventure!


We found some lovely fishing sticks and began catching blue gill, trout, catfish, sunfish, big mouth bass, crappie. Then the ever elusive dogfish (that barked), catfish (that meowed, and cowfish (that mooed). Of course we practiced catch and release on a few. Some went into our fish basket for later dining.

We had a wonderful time, this is our little oasis. Quiet, somewhat secluded, and hidden. This was a great photo opportunity as well. The dark haired princess and the golden tresses of the faerie.

Trudging through the trees. This is one cottonwood tree with branches descending both sides of the path.


















We love having our friends to play, it is always an adventure!!




Shamaia is catching the Andi fish with her stick.

For the next visit she has made me promise we will bake cookies! Who am I to say no?

Water Play

I have some great pictures of some great experiences from this summer.

We have always ventured to this spot along the Spring Creek Trail. It is an educational art piece about the water cycle and we found it to be a quiet, secluded, refuge within our town. Little did we know that it held a fabulous surprise. One warm afternoon we were enjoying a picnic upon the stone structure when a few young boys came riding up. We were surprised that children of their age (around 10) would come here to play. As we were talking with them one child went and pushed what seemed to be a part of the artwork and low and behold water began spraying from the now evident fountain. The whole display suddenly made sense and we were quite embarrassed that we had not figured it out. We came back a bit more often to play in our own private water park.









The life cycle is described on the walls of this half moon shaped feature. At the end of the description is this fabulous structure. The water spills down and creates a pool where no doubt creatures gather to drink.

The button is difficult to push which is great for conserving water in a fountain such as this, but also makes it quite easy to surprise spray an unsuspecting relaxed daddy. :)












Teilee has absolutely no fear of the water and loves the spray. Landis would prefer to float dandelion seeds and sticks down the tile, rather than experience a single drop of water. If you look you will see the results of his dandelion water parade.




















What a beautiful place, and no doubt it will be one of our all time favorite places to visit in the heat of summer.

Judgment is quick, understanding is hard work

We don't like hearing about another's plight, we only want to hear how they overcame it. There is an extraordinary value in just listening to the suffering, that is underrated in our self serving society. We hear misery, sadness, frustration, difficulty and we expect the solution to follow. Ask the next homeless person you meet how they are, and I dare you to not tell your self how it could never be you (he/she made bad choices, should do this, shouldn't do this, is mentally challenged, etc....). Then ask your friend how they are....

Teilee's Blog

http://creativelittle.blogspot.com/?zx=583b20a4880c8ad

I thought it might be easiest to share this here. Teilee has started her own blog which she designed and named Creative Little. She wanted to have a voice in all that we do, and to share what is most important to her. It has been an exciting journey for me to hear what she has to say and I love that now you can too! She is working on her next post and likes to check in regularly to see who has commented and what they have said. It is another thing for me to keep up with but is a pure joy for me to watch her experience the best of our technology. It also provides me a way to show Teilee the rules of internet and how to use it wisely! Enjoy Teilee's voice.

Still Wheeling it

My poor son has what is most likely a sprained wrist. We are keeping a close eye to make sure that he is improving and that there aren't any other more serious issues. After a trip to the doctor we are pretty sure that he does not have a fracture. We may take him in again tomorrow for another round of x-rays just to make sure. It is just one of those things that happens, I had his hand while he was standing then he went floppy. His entire weight was on the wrist of the hand that I still had a hold of and bam he was injured. It is physically painful for a mother to watch her child in their pain but to cause the injury is an unexplained kind of hurt. Of course he is not a fan of the brace we force him to wear when he is likely to re injure himself. (Even telling him that his cousin wishes he had a 'robot arm' too hasn't helped.) None of this has slowed him down and he has relished in the extra attention (Teilee is getting jealous). I must balance my emotions with his need for normalcy but, 'my poor baby has a hurt arm'!!
As of Wednesday of this week he is fully recovered. We knew immediately after the first somersault of the day that he was okay.;)

This last week (July 27th-Aug. 1st) we were fortunate to have Papa come stay with us from Monday night on. He had meetings most of the days but was able to join us at breakfast and in the evening. Wednesday was Landis' birthday. We biked down to a free performance of some Grimms fairy tales and had quite the adventurous return trip in pouring rain. (Maybe pounding slamming rain is more accurate.) We topped of the evening with the blowing out of candles in Landis' birthday rice crispy treats Then Grandma Lee joined us on Thursday evening.
Friday my parents brought the kiddos to my Singing Sisters practice and were able to experience our almost performance ready set. I then had a meeting for Raintree Community School that afternoon to put the final touches on the planning for our silent auction. Then in the evening Teilee and Daddy left to take Teilee to Walking With the Dinosaurs (it was originally supposed to be a mommy daughter experience but it was Daddy's turn for a date and Mommy was really busy)! I came down with a migraine (the worst ever) and went to bed. Granma Lee and Pap took Landis grocery shopping in our other vehicle (with the newly working fuel pump).

Nick and Teilee ventured to Denver in the Suburban. The suburban has a busted key cylinder and we had made do for the last week just not turning the key off entirely and locking the doors with an extra set. On the occasion that you forget and turn the key entirely off you will spend anywhere from 15 min-1 hour trying to get it back on. Well, Nick stopped to get gas and whoops, he was stranded for about 30 mins. Right as he had got the burb started, Papa and Grandma Lee called. They were at the store (with Landis) when the key to unlock the doors had broken off in the trunk lock. Now they were stranded. Thank goodness for great neighbors. I called my friend/neighbor Rebecca and she drove down to the store to bring our extra set of keys. Then I went back to bed.





Saturday we were supposed to celebrate Landis' birthday with cake, gifts, etc... After losing my Friday evening to that migraine I was scrambling to get everything together for the auction (including myself). We had a mini celebration complete with a gifted moon pie cake (thanks Rebecca) for Landis and ice cream for the rest of us. Landis opened up his gifts from Grandma Lee and Papa, Rebecca, and Teilee. We have yet to have his entire birthday celebration but maybe soon.


I left late afternoon, right after Grandma Lee and Papa departed for the airport, to help with set up of the auction. The event started at 6:00 and we were just finishing when people started ariving. Then my choir began to assemble outside for the remaining moments before our set. We performed for 30 mins and I have to say that I think we did a great job! What an event, we even had someone bid on a timeshare vacation in Hawaii for $5000. We had a great night with some great performances and raised some money for our school.

Really all this busy craziness is typical of my life (hence the title of my blog) but I have to say it was great to have mom and dad experience some of it. We often set aside a lot of what we are doing to fully enjoy our visitors. We were not able to do that this time and it made for a bit of a frantic vacation for them, but was great for us to have help with the kids while trying to juggle our lives. I wish I could say I am recovering but this week has been just as busy as the last. This summer seems to be filled with an abundance of time consuming events and projects. I am actually looking forward to winter, or at least looking forward to what I perceive will be more time!

Chicken Buisness

On Nick's birthday his feathered girls gifted him with our first egg. We were unsure which chicken was laying but we had some suspicions. Throughout the last week our white leghorn began laying beautiful white eggs alongside the other anonymous egg layer. We were so excited to see all our care and hard work begin to pay out.



Today Teilee was peeking into the neighbors backyard hoping to spy a playmate to speak with and discovered, to her horror, our white leghorn in her final resting place. She screamed, cried, and was destroyed to see her precious Brachiasaurus laying dead in the grass, feathers strewn about the yard. A couple of the chickens were let out of the coop this morning and unfortunately we did not think much of it. The biggest danger of leaving them in the backyard was the damage they might inflict on my garden. Brachiasaurs, our fastest, noisest chicken, decided to teach us a lesson and flew over the fence into the neighbors yard. One of the dogs in the yard was probably overjoyed at the presence of this super fun new live toy. She was not mauled horribly or eaten so we were able to recover the 'body' where we plucked a few feathers for Teilee to remember her chicken by. Once Teilee was able to quit crying she decided she really wanted to leave the chicken somewhere that a fox could eat it. Despite loving that idea, for simplicty sake, I convinced her to bury the chicken in the greenbelt where a fox could dig her up but she would not attract unesecary human attention. Landis was so curious and kept asking if he could step on the dead chicken or poke her with a stick. He thought if he poked her hard enough he could wake her up.
RIP Brachiasaurus.

We are recovering from losing our Brachiasaurs and have now decided to take a few more chickens in before winter. Hopefully this week we will be able to rig up our coop to have room and provide some seperation from the other girls. Then we will be ready to go chicken shopping again. We had lost one other chicken previously due to it deciding to stetch its vocal chords and become a rooster. Now we are down to six chickens. Unfortunately the chicken we lost today was already an egg layer. However we are sure that the rest will begin laying soon.

We did learn who was laying the other eggs.
After all the excitment of the morning Teilee brought our small banam, T-rex, to the front door. Teilee bent down, still holding the chicken, and an egg droped onto the sidewalk. Yup, the chicken layed an egg while Teilee was holding it. What was great was that Teilee, our neighbors two daughters, and our neighbor Chris were all witnesses to the event. Crazy!! We pulled out the camera and recreated the scene for posterity. Most chickens begin laying pullet eggs, which are small early versions of the bounty to follow. The light brown eggs we were finding have always been small. I believed it to be normal that pullet eggs just stay small for a while. Now I know that they are small because they are from our small Banam. T-rex will always be our smallest chicken and will always lay small eggs. They are what Landis would call 'cute' eggs (anything small these days is 'cute'). 'Cute' eggs from a 'cute' chicken.

Picture Blog

Our trip to the museum. We really have a lot going on and I have a hard time keeping up with it all. I have not been so great about taking pictures but fortunately still take enough to document outings such as this one. We went to the Denver Museum's Free Day and man what a day. This really was Teilee's trip. Teilee loves her dinosaurs and the last time we were here was when she was about two. Her dino knowledge rivals the experts and she was schooling mommy and daddy on what dino was what. If we were confused, she set us straight. Watching her experience the hall of dino fossils was incredible. She was at home. Literally, she sat down in the middle of the floor pulled out her notebook and began to draw what she saw. I am not sure how long this fascination with dinosaurs will last but one thing is sure, we will enjoy the ride.


Here Teilee and I get to hold a tarantula. So those who think I am still skittish around the arachnids can now rest assured that we have made our peace.











Teilee does a little animal dance..



Landis gathers moonrocks.








Teilee rocks the astronaut garb.











Teilee and Landis outside of the museum for a little picnic lunch.






















Teilee holding a t-rex tooth.




Size comparison.
















While it was extremely crowded we had a great day and fulfilled a long standing desire to take the kiddos to the museum. After the Museum we stopped and said goodbye to our friends that were moving to Amsterdam. Their daughter and Teilee are the same age and are just so great together. Some bonds are just so deep and effortless. They don't see each other often, and now will see each other even less, but Teilee always thinks of her as her best friend.