Weekend Review: Alone at Last

This is the first weekend in, I believe, 6 weeks we've been at home alone! We didn't do much. Just hung out and let the house fall apart around us. It was great.


Patrick is newly obsessed with his stamp collection and has spent tons of time working on that. We're both newly obsessed with the tv show Weeds (we rented the first two seasons from Blockbuster). We stayed up later than we ever do watching it--maybe the late nights from Karla's visit have worn off on us.


Saturday I did spend some time in the yard ripping out some old/dead plants and flowers and replacing them with hardier types to last us through the fall. The sales lady at Lowe's gardening center gave Maggie a rose which we put in her hair. She liked that.

Maggie still has vestiges of a cold--runny nose, so I left her at home with Patrick and went to church alone. That was nice and relaxing. I got to pay attention to the whole thing. Nice. After church I took Maggie to the neighborhood park to get out some wiggles. She had a great time although she did spent a good 15 minutes standing stalk still, staring at the other kids before deciding it was ok to play. Not her usual response to being set free to play.

She is also showing us that although she doesn't really speak (other than constant baby babble conversations) she understands a ton! I can open a very busy book, ask her to point out various items and she does--the sun, various animals, car, bananas, etc. Its SO cool! She can also easily point out my teeth, nose, eyes, and ears when I ask.

Climbing Trouble

Maggie is now climbing on everything! Oh, boy.

Funny Post--A Room Somewhere

I thought this post from A Room Somewhere was funny. It's exactly how I feel!

Um....The Head Tilt.

I thought my series of photos I took today was hilarious. A true progression of when she figures out I'm taking pictures.

Very Impressive!

Maggie stacked these puppies all on her own. I was terribly impressed--and even more impressed that I was able to capture the final piece.

Karla suggested Ross for cheap toys and books. We went there today and picked up this lovely toy that Maggie truly loves.

Butterfly Pavilion

Karla and I took the kids to the Butterfly Pavilion. This was tons of fun and totally exhausting! We checked out the spiders...

Can you see the huge spider on the glass next to Maggie??

She thought Karla was pretty brave to hold the tarantula.

Bugs, bug, and more bugs!

Karla and Natalie looking at the star fish.

Maggie could not pull herself away from the giant animated scorpion. It kept snapping and wiggling and she spent a great deal of time running back to see it.

They had a great play area too.

And of course there was butterflies that the kids couldn't have cared less about. But the drain. Well, the drain was fabulous!

Fun With Our Friends

Our friends Karla and Natalie came to visit. We were SO excited to have them. Natalie seemed comfortable right away.

The favorite toy? The dowel that locks the sliding glass door.

Some cute video of the kids playing:

New Car Seat and New "House" Seat

Our 15 month doctor appointment was this past week. We were hoping Maggie had reached the 20 pound mark in order to turn forward in her car seat. Um, no. She was 18 (third percentile) and the doctor said she probably wouldn't reach 20 for a while. But, since she's average in all other measurements we can go ahead and turn her. She loves it!

And, as reported earlier, she's climbing up on the furniture now. She climbs into our wicker chair and watches The Wiggles.

Back to Real Life

After almost a month of travel followed by two weekends in a row of house guests we are going to try getting back to our regular routine and life. This is going to take some doing! We are off sleeping, eating, and all other schedules. The house is a giant mess. There's thank yous to write, appointments to make, etc.
For this reason I'm not going to be posting for a day or two. Karla did post a lot about their trip to CO so check her out HERE to read about our adventure to the Butterfly Pavilion. She even has some cute video.
I'll get my camera downloaded and post pictures/video asap (and, yes Karla, I'll be sure to send a CD your way of all the fun documented on my camera).

Visit from Karla and Natalie

Here are some quick pics of the last couple of days. To see more visit Karla's blog HERE.

Cooler Day, Warmer Clothes

I put Maggie in some of my sister Charlottes hand-me-down jeans. So cute don't you think? She's still doing the head tilt thing when she understands I'm taking a picture.

If she's watching Barney (an impossibly annoying addition to her usual Wiggles show) I can snap all I want.

Learning a New Trick

Maggie has learned to crawl up onto the couch. This is NOT good. She still doesn't understand edges--that you fall off of them! Since this is still a new skill there is a lot of frustration involved.

New Slippers

I bought Maggie some slippers for the colder weather coming soon. They kind of make me laugh.

She loves getting catalogs in the mail as much as I do.

Video Of Rocky Mountain Fun

Some fun clips of Maggie, Patrick, me, and Samantha out hiking.

Weekend Review: Visit from Samantha

Our good friend from California, Samantha, came out to Colorado for business and spent the weekend with us. It was a lot of fun. She had recently returned from a business trip to Ireland and brought Maggie an adorable Irish Barbie Doll!! So sweet. She's very thoughtful like that.

Another benefit of having Samantha around is that we always have pretty darn good food. We took a trip over to the Cheese Importers here in Longmont and loaded up and a good variety of cheeses, jams, crackers, and honey. We had the yummiest platter of mixed cheese, bread, spreads, and fruit. De-licious!

Saturday I had a baby shower to attend so Patrick took Samantha to a local sports bar to eat and watch some football. When we met up again Patrick took Maggie for the night and the girls took off for some shopping and eating. I had been itching to try a popular place with great reviews called Bloom. I had a fantastic salad and their rosemary bread rocked.

Sunday we took a beautiful trip up to Rocky Mountain National Forest. We stopped in Estes Park for some pizza (Village Pizza is SO good). Then we hit the park. We got some short hike/walks in, saw plenty of wildlife, and (cheese) listened to John Denver. We all really enjoyed that!