Ellie's Horseback Riding Camp 2014

For her birthday, Grangran and Papa gave Ellie a week of horseback riding camp in June.  She had the best time (despite the weather fluctuating between 90+ degree temps and tornado warnings :-/)

She just loved her horse, Piglet, even though poor old Piglet has seen better days.  He was 25 years old and looked like he'd rather be doing just about anything else besides hauling another kid around on his back all summer long.  No where was this more evident than at the 'Rodeo'.

On the last day of camp, family and friends were invited to see the kids and horses put on a rodeo.  Piglet's top speed was about .5 miles/hour and his general demeanor indicated he'd rather be sent to the glue factory than trot!  

Thankfully, Ellie didn't really notice that she had the laziest horse in the whole stable, so she had great fun.  She can't wait to go back next year!

 Is it just me, or does she look super grown up in this picture?!

 Poor old, tired Piglet.

 Luke thought the Rodeo was great fun!

 Not a bad view!

You can relive all the exciting action via this video!!

Llama Llama (or, Alpaca, Alpaca)

Some friends of ours have a little hobby farm outside of Denver with Turkeys, Chickens, and Alpacas!  They are so cute and win the award for Animals with the Longest Eyelashes.  They're really friendly, but want to sniff you before letting you pet them.

Here's Campbell getting to know one of the babies who had been born a couple months earlier.

Merry Christmas!

Stationery Card

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The Nutcracker 2013

One of our favorite Christmas traditions!

Our seats were a *tad* far from the stage this year, but I think we've seen the Nutcracker 6 times, so we survived :) 

The Colorado Ballet put on a beautiful show, although I think the girls thought riding the Light Rail downtown was a close 2nd!

Mohawk Lakes Trail

Playing a bit of catch up here (can you call it that when it's been 10 months since my last blog entry??), anyway, I'll just try to pick up where I left off and hit the highlights from the last several months.

Last fall my great friend Rachel came for a visit and we spend a girls' weekend in Breckenridge.  One of my favorite things we did was to take a hike up the Spruce Creek Trail to the Mohawk Lakes (Rachel and I didn't quite make it due to time -- we had spa appointments to get to... priorities :)).

Only 2 weeks later we were back in Breckenridge with my family and so much snow had piled up that even though we had plenty of time, we could only get within about 300 yards of the illusive Lakes.  Grr.  We tried to push on, but the trail was completely hidden and when we stepped out into a clearing (where we thought the trail was leading) and fell into waist-high snow, decided it was probably best to turn back.

(I was wearing a sling on my arm because I had to have a little minor surgery on my wrist earlier that week)

Oh well, maybe next time!

Happy Halloween 2013

Last year for Halloween we trick or treated (on a freezing night) with a "Peakcock Fairy", Pocahontas, and a Fox!

Garden of the Gods

Toward the end of summer, we were able to go on a fun hike through Garden of the Gods with my parents.  

It really is a stunning place and the view from the top of Pike's Peak is unbelievable (unfortunately my iPhone couldn't quite capture that distance).

It was pretty hot, so later that day when we got back and it started raining (always a welcome sight around here! and the girls cooled off by running through the yard!

Campbell learns to ride a bike!

Well, a bike without training wheels, that is!

Campbell amazes me sometimes, because although she's 2 years younger than Ellie, she winds up pushing herself to achieve many milestones right about the same time.  Our sweet (very cautious) Ellie had only just ditched the training wheels about 2 weeks prior and that little Campbell practiced day (and sometimes night) until she could ride a two-wheeler just like big sissy.

Here she is on the day she finally 'got' it:

And, as promised, the next day she got to go the bike shop and pick out a 'real' bike (aka, not the very cheapest one that Target sells) with a basket, a kickstand,  and NO TRAINING WHEELS!

Way to go, Baby C!

Happy 4th (In October)

Just trying to catch up on the blog here and thought I'd post some pictures from the Fourth this past summer.  Our neighborhood does a cute little parade where the kids decorate their bikes/strollers/wagons/etc and make a 1 mile loop that ends with some patriotic music and breakfast.  It's really fun and I sort of like to pretend, for the day, that we live in that neighborhood from The Sandlot (remember that scene where the huge dog runs through the block party and destroys everything?  I'm not sure why, but that just seems so Americana to me and I love it :))

Luke and Grayson (with minimal decorations.. the girls hoarded everything but one flag!)

Ready to ride.

Campbell decided to take a different parade route than the rest of us and scared me about half to death.  There were so many kids on their bikes and I lost track of her, thinking she was with Ellie.  When Ellie crossed the finish line, there was no Campbell.  After a little bit of a panicky search, she came cruising around the corner.  Apparently she followed someone else on a bike who went up another block before turning around.  She didn't even realize that she had been lost.  That girl.  She marches to her own beat.

Later that night went downtown for some fireworks.... Luke was very impressed.

We were also super-excited to have our good friends Laura and Shaun in town for the weekend.  They brought with them several kids from their church and after leaving our house, headed to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for a mission trip.

We Are the Fox Family

A couple of weeks ago it was our turn for Family Presentation at CC.  We decided to write a song about our family and here's how it turned out:

We Are the Fox Family

It was pretty fun and I'm glad I thought to ask someone to video it!

Giggle Box

This video was taken about a month ago.... baby giggles are the sweetest!!

Playing Catch Up (again).

Well, I'll not going to bore you with all my excuses about why I haven't been keeping up with the blog.  Life's just been busy lately and taking photos and then blogging them has fallen to the bottom of the heap.  Anyway, I've resolved to do better this year, because I really do enjoy looking back over the years at photos and videos of the kids.  At this rate, if I don't commit to taking more photos to have something to blog about, poor Luke may never have a non-cell phone photo of himself!

I'll try to do a brief catch up from fall and then if I can get my act together, I'll try to post some current pics of the kiddos :)

First up, I'll pick up where I left off (before Luke was born) with the house tour.  OK, so the outside:  it was rough.  This house was vacant for the better part of a decade before we bought it and no where showed it more keenly than the yard.  We bought it from a guy who flipped it and his strategy was basically to remove everything in the front yard (seriously, there is not a single shrub, bush, flower, tree, etc.) and leave untouched everything in the backyard (8 years can allow for a TON of overgrowth, let me tell you!)

Before we could really address anything, we had to clear out what was in the back.  In the process, we found a sidewalk (!) about 40 hornets' nests, a few families of mice, a snake or two (not earning their keep, since the aforementioned mouse problem was out of control), a clothes line, tons of old bottles, an old model airplane, and lots of other wonderful treasures. The family who sold this house tot he flipper had been the original owners and it seems (from both the condition of the yard and from talking to the neighbors) that they had been too frail to address the yard in any capacity for the last 15 years they lived here.

Here are some photos of the process of 'weeding out' the crazy brush in the back yard:

After we got most of the mouse/wasp/snake-harboring plants out of there, we addressed the problem of grass:  ie:  There was none.  It is dry out here, very, very, crazy DRY, and nothing grows unless it is watered.  Period.  We have had a lot of success at past homes in NC sowing seed and getting grass to fill in nicely, but it became clear that if anything was going to grow, we needed to install sprinklers.

So, we spent the summer and early fall saving our money and becoming more and more dusty from the barren wasteland that was the yard.  Here's some photos of what was going on back there:

We also discovered after finding a bunch of glass and other random trash in the yard and from talking to the neighbors, that these homesites used to be used as an impromptu dump in the 1930s and 1940s.  Lovely.  We have found all kinds of odd things back there, some with dates from almost 100 years ago!

Truly, the yard's only redeeming quality is a mature, established apple tree, which we do love and were careful to save :)

Finally in October we were able to put sprinklers in, which meant we could put some grass in.  I can't tell you how much it improved my overall mood!  I hate to sound so shallow, but I didn't realize how depressing it is to look out your window everyday and just see brown, dusty, dirty, trashy ground.  I had gotten to where I didn't want the kids playing out there because they'd come in hurt from falling down on the rock-hard ground, or filthy dirty, or carrying pieces of broken glass to show me their 'treasures'!

Here's some sprinkler installation and topsoil progress (we had to add topsoil over both the front and the back as the ground was just so hard and devoid of any nutrients after being neglected for so many years):

 

     

After all the hard work of removing the overgrowth, installing sprinklers, and prepping the soil, it was finally time for the grass to go in!  Yay!!!!!!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Finally, some green in my life!!

Daniel built a table for the patio (photos of the finished product to be added later... forgot to take them and it's now dark outside :)), and we bought some old wicker furniture off Craigslist and painted it and voila!  Our once-wasteland is now a wonderful spot for the kids to play and enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather.

Speaking of weather... the yard looked like this less than a week after these nice, green photos were taken:

This was on October 5th!!

(This is the trail that runs behind our house)

Campbell waiting for the first snowflakes to fall.

Gramps and Mimi sent an early Christmas/Birthday present for the girls:  A Playhouse!!!  They actually ordered it from a shed company which installed it for us.  The inside was very spartan, so Daniel spiffed it up a bit for them. 

First, we added insulation, so that hopefully they would be able to enjoy it for a larger portion of the year.

 Next, some drywall.

There's a skylight in it to help keep it warmer on cold days... how cute is that!!?

After a coat of paint and some clean-up, the girls were ready to move in!

 They put their kitchen in there and stocked the shelves with all their goodies (Campbell was pretending to have a baby in her tummy!  This was taken a day or two before Luke was born :))

 Aunt Deborah sent them some mirrored decals to decorate with and they had a blast adding the finishing touches :)  

Though we still don't have a single shrub, flower, or plant, we've really, really enjoyed the yard!  The grass and sunshine in the back have helped to provide endless hours of play for everyone and I have a feeling that playhouse will have to come with us whenever we move from this house :)