It's beginning to look a lot like...

The clues:

SNOWBALL FIGHTS!

Don't even think about it, Mocha Man.

Adapted from the words of Mouse, "The best kind of (first ever!) snowball fight is the one you share with a friend"

Finished off with some Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread, and it's the perfect day.

Even if it's still November.

I Heart Faces - Got to Wear Shades!

I've been inspired as of late by the famed i heart faces website, and they have a weekly photo challenge. This is my first entry, after a few months of lurking, I'm taking the plunge and participating! Got to wear shades, here's Taz, aka MiniMatt!




Be sure to check out iheartfaces. If you like photography, you'll leave inspired!

A Tale of Two Fishies

Once upon a time, a coffee-loving family and their Colorado-inhabiting cousins went on a trek to a beautiful mountain lake.
Fishing poles were employed and everyone participated (all except the Wonder Mommies, who were otherwise employed with resting and falling in the lake trying to get the photograph above). Don't worry, no cameras were harmed in the making of this blog post.

There was some of this:


And quite a bit of this:
And, yeah, there was a little bit of this:

But there were quite a few of these:

AND, they caught 2 of THESE:

A great time was had by all, and rumor has it that before the coffee-loving family lives happily ever after, they might just go do it again.

We're pruny

The beginning of the summer marked 3 weeks of 8:30 am swimming lessons for the girls. Lessons that paid off immeasurably, as I now have one bonafide swimmer and one thinks-she-can swimmer. The latter brand of swimmer is actually a frightening sight indeed... more dangerous than the I-can't-I'm-too-scared brand.

The first time we swam here in Colorado, being new-branded-swimmers, the following took place:

"I can swim in the deep end, Mommy, watch! WATCH!!!" Cough, sputter, sputter, choke, under the water.

SPLASH! Rescue. GASP, return to breathing.

"I've got you, sweetie, it's ok... Are you ok? You may NOT go in the deep end anymore without a noodle or kick board, ok?"

"But WHY? I can SWIM!"

Uh-huh.

Swimming has been the most frequent activity here in the mountains. The pool is indoors, and at precisely 3:00pm every afternoon, when it starts to storm, we head inside and hit the pool.

They're jumping

They're splashing

Corene is even learning how to crawl on top of the water! This was a jump-while-you're-twisting trick, just looks hilarious.


Wonder Daddy time

What, you haven't seen any pictures of me? You think I hate cold water and am not Wonder Mommy? Well, you're right. This is my favorite place. This is the view from the hot tub!


Aaaaaaahhhhhh.

Colorado is art

The world is a canvas that God has already painted, perfectly. I look around here, where God put extra touches on His art, and my heart rejoices "I sing for joy at the works of your hands" Ps 92:4

Learning to capture nature in my camera is one of my personal challenges on this trip. It's great fun, and also very humbling. How many times have I heard, "Pictures don't ever do the mountains justice".

This is so true, much like taking a picture of a sculpture or taking a picture of a painting isn't anything like the original.

Being IN God's creation, that's the true art experience. Here are some of my amateur attempts to capture it in my camera.

Colorado love

We loooove Colorado. I highly recommend it.

We have been staying in a small town at 9000 feet elevation where Mocha Man is playing in a music festival. It's an absolutely stunningly beautiful town. The mountains surrounding it are fabulous. And not only that, but the atmosphere here is equally as fabulous, a bizarre mix of serious money, rugged-casual-outdoorsy-types (the locals claim that this is the birthplace of mountain biking), and Texans.

Yes, Texans.

I haven't yet met an extremely wealthy, outdoorsy Texan, but I'm on the lookout.

At church this morning, I noticed 3 distinct types of cars in the parking lot: SUV's with mud caked on them and bikes strapped on top, SUV's with Texas licesnse plates, and Lexus SUV's . They seriously all fit in at least one of those categories. Oh yeah, and then there was our humble little Honda Odyssey.

When people give us suggestions of good hikes to take, there's always ALWAYS the point in the conversation where they say, "... and then y'all'll go up this steep, bumpy... oh, now wait... what kind of car do y'all have??" And then they say, "Oh, no, you probably wouldn't make it up that road!"

So, y'all, we don't fit into any of the categories, even in the slightest... but it doesn't seem to matter. It's a comfortable place.

We have been swimming, hiking, walking the town, and swimming some more.

The hiking has been more fun than I expected, mostly because, well, 3 year old boys are just a mite less wimpy than I remember 3 year old girls being.

The boy can truck through some hikes.
And no good Colorado hike is complete without a cold river crossing. See the smile on their faces? Ya, Taz even enjoyed that, when the water was well above his knees at the deepest. Freakishly cold. Recently-snow-kind-of freakishly cold.



Of course, his sisters have stepped up and mothered him. And it's nothing short of a miracle that he's actually allowed it and kind of enjoyed it. I'll call this phenomenon Colorado love.




Colorado love.

Celebrate!

We celebrated so many things on this July 4th. First and foremost, of course, we celebrate the constitutional freedom we have in this great country.

We celebrate with our newest family members, remembering God's abundant grace to them in recent months.

We celebrate part of the fulfillment of an almost 50 year old dream.
"I have a dream that one day...little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

We celebrate summer.

And sprinklers.

And pesky brothers.

And adorable little girls.

And birthdays (7 out of 10 of us have July birthdays!)

So much to celebrate, so much to be thankful to God for.