I Am A Blogging Slacker

Since I have not been very consistent with my blogging, here is a month-in-review.

Chef Ben in his Thanksgiving turkey hat.



My parents and my brother, John, came to our house for Thanksgiving. This is John getting ready to drink the whole bottle of sparkling grape juice.



Making apple turkeys.




Here are the kids on a cute bench at the mall.



I had a piano recital for my students last week. They worked hard on their pieces and did a great job!



Every year we grow paperwhites. We put the bulbs in a pot of rocks and fill it with water. In about 2 to 3 weeks we have live flowers in the winter. These are some of the prettiest paperwhites we have grown.



Because we have a vaulted ceiling, we decided to buy a giant Christmas tree. We had to buy additional ornaments and lights to decorate it because it was so much bigger than past trees. We also had to borrow a ladder to put the star on and to decorate the top 3 feet.

A "New" Table!!!

Awhile ago Ben's parents gave us their old table. It needed to be cleaned up a bit and so it sat in our garage as a daunting task needing to be completed. After a few months of sitting there I decided it was time to tackle the project. I stripped all of the old stain off the table set and refinished the table. It has taken me three months and hundreds of hours to get this project done. I am sooo excited that it is finally done! Here are a few pictures of our "new" 100 year old table.

Syrup Anyone?

When I came upstairs, David had prepared his own plate of french toast. His plate is three pieces of french toast and half a bottle of syrup. He only ate a few bites.

October Recap

We have had a busy October! Here are a few of the things we have been doing. The kids took all of the leaves from the front yard in buckets to the trampoline in back. They were entertained for hours!


We made sugar cookies and David turned the mixer on full speed, which sent a flour shower all over the kitchen, what a mess!


We went to Elitch Gardens, an amusement park in Denver. We had a fun time with shorter lines because of less people.




School was canceled on the day of the school Halloween parade and class parties. My neighbor and I threw a spontaneous party for the kids in the neighborhood. We ate snacks, had Halloween music playing, had a costume parade and told spooky stories. It was not quite as cool as a class party but we did the best we could.


Our kids loved Trick or Treating! They were pretty hard core and went to a lot of houses, which resulted in too much candy but a nice stash of chocolate for Ben and I to keep hidden and snack on when the kids go to bed.


I have been trying to spend more time playing with my kids. Jacob wanted to practice taking pictures so he took this last week while we were spending time together.

October Snow Day

This morning I woke up with a ton of things to get done because I had a very busy day. This is what my plans were;

1. P90X workout with friends from 9:00-10:00
2. Visiting teachers coming at 10:15
3. A friend from Jacob's school class and family for lunch and playing at 11:00
4. Drop Jacob off at school at 12:30
5. Visit teach at 12:45

I quickly got started on my day so I would be able to stay on top of everything. Then #1 Cancelled, #2 Cancelled, #3 Cancelled, #4 Cancelled, #5 Cancelled

My busy day has turned into a stay at home, do nothing day. I might work on scrapbooking or maybe start a new book. I just finished The Hunger Games and I loved it! Now I have to read Catching Fire. I highly recommend The Hunger Games if anyone is looking for a good book.

Who would have thought there would be a snow day in October? Not me.

First Kiss Day

Ben and I had our first kiss on October 4, 2001. Every year we celebrate first kiss day by buying our Halloween pumpkins. Since the 4th fell on a Sunday this year we went pumpkin shopping on Monday evening. It was the perfect day, I decorated for fall/Halloween during the day while Jacob was at school, David at a friends house, and Madeline sleeping. In the evening we went pumpkin shopping then came home to eat pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and candy corn. Yum.

Here are a few pictures of some of our decorations.









We hunted through the bin at Walmart to find the best five pumkins $4.50 could buy.



These are the best cookies! All you do is take a spice cake mix, a can of pumpkin and a bag of chocolate chips. Seriously delicious, you should make them.

Bubble Bath Anyone?

One of the joys of being a stay at home mom is letting your kids play in a bubble bath at 10:00 a.m. The boys had been using shampoo to create bubbles in the tub so I finally bought some bubble bath and they were anxious to try it out. Next time, I will take the bubble bath away after I put a bit in so they don't add too much like they did here. They all had a blast!

Welcome Fall!

We started five years ago celebrating the fall and spring equinox. Last night we had our annual fall party. It is always a family party even though the kids have had many friends who have wanted to attend. Each time we have a fall or spring party our kids get really excited. Last night we started with a poem about leaves and then assembled a pumpkin puzzle. Then we enjoyed a no-bake cherry cheesecake while we made "corn" by coloring and attatching popcorn.

Ben and the boys are working on the puzzle while Madeline just enjoys the time together.

Jacob working on his corn.

Yum, Cheesecake!


We ended by looking at scrapbook pages of our past fall activities and Jacob insisted on taking a picture.

Tough Times

Do you ever feel like this?



And then try to make it better with chocolate?



Only to find out chocolate doesn't help?



I hope your having a better day than Madeline!

Front Yard Landscape

This is what our house looked like when we bought it last year. We have spent the whole summer working on re-landscaping the front yard and we are mostly done.

First, we started by adding a rock wall. There was a big slope in the flower bed and rocks were constantly falling down the slope so we(Ben) dug the dirt into two tiers and now there is a flat bottom section and then a top section. The kids were a great help in bringing rocks over to place in the wall.

We started by thinking we could move all of the rock out lay new weed barrier down, rip out the plants and then put the rock back on. We spent three days trying to deal with the rock and it is the WORST stuff to work with so in the end we hired a guy with a skid loader and dump truck to come haul all of the rock away. Then we bought mulch to use instead of rock and I love the mulch look much better.

Here is a close up of the finished rock wall and some of the plants. You can't see the plants really well and they are all very young. I can envision what it will look like in the future with mature plants, that is what I am excited about.




This is the view from the street. We added more walkway to the front door instead of the two foot path that hugged the house at a 90 degree turn. We still need to plant some trees on the side of the house and about 10-15 feet to the left of the current big tree. We will also remove the big tree that is right in front of our house. We plan on doing that next summer. I am so glad to have this much of the project done.

Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon

This past Saturday Ben and I ran the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon. It was my second one and Ben's first. Of course he was faster then me even though I have been training longer and more frequently. It was a great race, much better then the one I did in June. The course had a few uphills but nothing too terrible. My friend, Michelle, ran with us and we all ran together until mile 7 then Ben took off. At mile 10 I was feeling really good and Michelle wasn't so I ran ahead of her. Ben finished in 2:04 and Michelle finished in 2:12, I would like to tell you what my time was but the official race report doesn't have my time. I am pretty upset about it. I emailed the race director and he is looking in to it, but I don't know if I will ever find out my time. I am guessing between 2:07 and 2:10, it would be nice to know for sure. We had a good time and Ben is already talking of running another one in November.