Friends

It's hard to imagine that less than a year ago Jack's best friends didn't speak english. It was never an issue because he didn't know any better. I always wondered at what age speaking the same language is a must in order to be friends. It seems that language is a bigger part of play now for Jack. Him and his friends are always making up stories and setting rules for games. It makes me wonder what would be different if we were still in Switzerland and he had to play with his friends without speaking the same language. 

Jack and his buddy Brody climbing at the park

Jack with Liam and Jams

Jack had his first sleepover at our house. One of his best buddies lives in the apartment right above us so it was a good chance to try a sleepover. The boys had a blast and we set up a tent in the living room for them and they even wanted to share a sleeping bag together. Getting them to sleep was a chore as they kept coming in and asking for things (water, animal to sleep with, need to go to the bathroom, etc). But finally, somewhere near midnight both boys were out. The next morning Jack was up normal time (this boy rarely sleeps in) and he and Lily tried their best not to wake up the sleeping prince...

Rocky Mountain National Park

We have a goal to camp and hike in Rocky Mountain Park as much as possible this summer. It is just over an hour from our house and has some amazing trails. We tested a couple out this past weekend and found it is still pretty early in the season for hiking...we would have been better off to get snowshoes. 

First we did a short hike around Sprague Lake:

 You can see the trail was still covered in snow most of the way

 Then we did another short hike around Bear Lake which had even more snow.

As beautiful as it is in winter, I can't wait for summer! 

Soccer Stud

Jack started soccer lessons this spring. He is supposed to practice twice a week with games on Saturdays, but with all the crazy snowstorms we have only been able to have a few practices and two soccer games so far. Jack is not really into soccer yet. He hates having to wear his shin guards and the only reason we can get him to practice is because his friend Eva is on the team. And to get him to his games we have to bribe him with Chick fil A. 

But once he's playing, he seems to really enjoy it. Here is Jack's team "The Sharks"

Getting ready for their first game

Jack is after the ball

Racing against the white team

Half time in soccer means all the kids get to eat oranges. I guess this is some sort of soccer tradition...

Ready to play the next half

Jack and his friend Eva

Jack's 1st goal!!! He was so proud. 

He played a good game

Jack and Eva

Jack with his coach and some friends

I'm not sure if we will sign up for soccer again this summer. I really like that Jack can have the opportunity to play on a team, but he doesn't seem to like soccer that much. His favorite sport is swimming and he is really good at it, so we will probably stick with swimming as much as possible this summer. But we still have several soccer games/practices to get through and I'm sure once Jack gets his end of the season medal he may start to like playing on a team. 

Leftovers

Two days a week Luke spends the night in Colorado Springs. His work gave him a budget of up to $500 per month to cover hotel costs for these nights. That may seem like a lot of money, but it really comes out to about $60/night for a hotel which isn't much. The first month Luke tried out several hotels, the first was a budget hotel in his price range, but he gave up after hearing the man in the next room doing drugs. There were a couple other hotels he tried but none seemed to be within our budget. Finally Luke stumbled across a bed and breakfast that offered to give him a good deal to get right under $500/month. At first, it seemed really nice. It was a quiet old couple and the lady would cook breakfast for Luke in the morning. After a couple weeks, Luke starting getting sick of the breakfast (I guess she cooked the same casserole EVERY morning). Then, one night Luke had to work late and they told him they would leave him a key outside. Well, when he got to the B&B there was no key. He rang the doorbell several times and no one answered. He ended up having to drive to another hotel. The next day, the old man called me to try to get ahold of Luke (he doesn't have a cellphone) so I emailed Luke and told him to call the old man from work. Well, the old man apparently went off on Luke for not showing up the night before. He told Luke he needed to "get with the times" and get a cellphone so he could have called the house when the key was not outside.

But then it gets worse...

One of the nights Luke was in Colorado Springs, he went out to dinner and got some sort of crazy hamburger topped with pastrami that he could not finish. It was so tasty that he planned on bringing some home to me so he brought a to go box back to the B&B. Well, when he checked out the next morning he forgot his to go box. So after work (several hours later) he went back to the B&B to pick up the to go box before heading home. The old couple was surprised to see him and when he told them he was there to pick up his food, they warned him that it might be a 'little picked over.' To his surprise, they had picked all the pastrami off his sandwich and even cut it up... talk about weird... who eats a strangers leftovers???

Luke still has to finish out his month at the B&B, but he's not sure if he will keep going back...

Sibling day

In honor of national sibling day I thought I would post some pictures/videos of my two favorite kids.



Despite the constant fighting and crying, they really do love each other. Jack is a typical big brother and is always finding ways to get under Lily's skin. He likes to chase her and scare her, he thinks it's funny to trip her and put her toys out of reach. And in doing this, he is turning Lily into one tough cookie. She has given Jack his fair share of scratch and bite marks. No one will be able to mess with Lily once she is a little bigger.

But every once in a while, the crying and teasing and torturing stops and Jack and Lily have moments of pure love and enjoyment for each other.

Like when Lily will lay in bed with Jack at night and he will sing her a song. Or when she will bring him books and sit in his lap and he will read them to her.


Or when they hide together and he lets her share the iPad with him

Or when they just play together nicely...and all is well with the world 

Awesome biking skills

Jack learned to ride his bike with no training wheels this past week. We tried to take the training wheels off his 16" bike but it was too hard for him since the bike is pretty big. I went to Walmart and got a cheap 12" bike and he was riding with no training wheels after only 10 minutes. Way to go Jack!

Lily wanted a bike of her own, so I got her a strider bike and she loves it! 

Lily and her strider

Although, she does go pretty slow yet...

Cruising the lake

The Garden

Our apartment offers 10'x10' garden plots, so I decided it was time I learned how to plant food. I have never grown anything in my life so this will be quite the adventure.

The kids and I spent last week getting our plot ready. We spent several hours picking all the weeks and things out of our dirt. Jack absolutely loved it and already offered to pick weeds for our neighbors. Then the next day we went to till the ground with a huge tiller that was almost like a lawn mower. Come to find out, we could have skipped the whole picking weeds process and just tilled the ground first, then just pulled out the big weeds. Oh well.

Then we planned what vegetables we wanted to grow and went to buy seeds. Apparently there are only certain times when you can plant seeds so even though we had a whole list of seeds to buy, we only got a few that we can plant right now. So far we have planted carrots, broccoli, spinach and arugula. In the next few weeks we will add green beans and asparagus. And eventually we will also add tomatoes, cilantro, jalepenos, bell pepper and sweet peppers. I just hope something will grow. Jack is already looking forward to "his" carrots, so they better turn out. Otherwise I might just have to buy carrots at the store and plant them in our garden for Jack to find. :)

Getting the garden ready

Jack loves picking weeds

Lily loves dirt. She is not sleeping, she
is laying in the dirt. And then she
proceeded to eat the dirt...fresh
manure and all. 

First seeds planted