brother and sister

Yes, I took advantage of Bloggers post-dating option and threw in a whole bunch of back posts. Over the years some of the personal blogs I've enjoyed following have left the blogging scene for various reasons- some privacy, others new technology like facebook and pinterest, yet I've still not figured out where I stand with it. I just can't get into the facebook world, I'm not that fond of it yet, but I'm still not sure how I feel about putting my family out on the internet even if I only have a dozen friends reading.

As I've said before, Joachim loves looking at pictures and remembering stories. It was wonderful to get off the phone with great-grandmommy and easily find pictures and stories of visiting her. I figured out what I really want to do is make those shutterfly books, or whatever, so I can have them on the shelf where the kids can access them easily. The idea of dropping my pictures into a digital file and typing a few words about them and then being sent a real bound book is attractive, so until then, I figure I'll keep weeding through the pictures and posting them here so I can easily collect them for my book... someday. I just don't trust technology as much as a physical book in my hand, the internet is an awesome resource but, ya know.










I take a lot of pictures and Anna has picked up on it.

blessing of water at the divide

My first three years in Colorado I made it to the blessing of the water on the great divide. This is a service held near Theophony (Epiphany) where Orthodox Christian from across Colorado meet on Monarch pass and bless the snowpack that will subsequently melt and run to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We've missed the last three years due to weather and Anna's birth, but this year the day worked out perfectly. We drove up under blue skies and while it's normally below 0 there this time of year, the sun was out and if it weren't for a light breeze we'd almost not need the winter parkas.



We walk to each side of the mountain and toss a cross of ice over the edge to melt and bless the land.

And then as tradition holds, we drive into Salida for pizza, beer and a chance to visit with friends from the other side of the mountains. Here Joachim is munching with friends from the Springs. Each of the kids get a dough ball to shape and play with while they wait. Below Joachim's dough is baking in the oven... too bad I didn't take a picture of his finished product, he'd shaped it into letters.

house siding

Here it is! The house project is complete (mostly, who's ever finished?). Below, is a picture of the house before we closed on it and finally there is a picture of the house with the siding finished, yes, we just barely finished before it snowed and technically we still need to close in the garage, but that should be a breeze compared to how far we've come.







This is from the end of the summer after we put in a lawn... a pretty big deal for the kids.

buddies and bugs

They were raking in the front lawn (I have grass!) and they naturally posed like this - it's funny how iconic it is. This summer Joachim's bug catching skills flourished. Grandma taught him how to sneak up behind grasshoppers and grab them by their hind legs (and then feed them to the chickens). It occupied him for great lengths of time. He didn't limit his bug catching to grasshoppers, he'd bring in every bug he'd catch and ask for a picture. I had every intention of printing the various bugs and presenting them to him as a book at the end of the summer, alas I deleted most of the pictures a month ago because I realized it just wasn't happening. Anyway, I'm sure there will be more once the weather turns again.

His life long buddy (of nearly five years) invited him to the zoo and it was a great day and a special experience coming from our small town.


I have to include this picture because Joachim is fascinated by Mouse Trap and every Rube Goldberg type thing. He can run around wielding sticks with the wildest of boys, but he much prefers the cause and effect of marble runs, gears and Mouse Trap. This is a tribute to the literal hours upon hours my dad has spent playing the game with him. I myself have not played it once, (and we keep it with my parents so I don't have to), but it's at the top of the list of things Joachim likes.

Godparents visit

In July we were thrilled to have dear friends from Colorado Springs visit, and it's our hope to see them in their home in PA this May. It was so nice looking through these summer pictures in the dead of January


My brother and sister-in-law invited the parish to their newly completed house for a house warming of sorts. Chris and Ben manned the grills and we dined on burgers from their field (well, after they took a detour through the butcher).


This jeep has been at there house as long as I've known them and it's never had a battery so it goes by kid power (or daddy power).

Anna's sweater & out takes

Anna's sweater knit much faster than Joachim's, there were no restarts, the pattern linked to my ravelry page.


So, withboth of their sweaters finished I set out to take that perfect Christmas picture. I got them all dressed up and we started outside, where I got a lot of "running" pictures of Anna, mostly her running away from Joachim. Anna over all was the problem, although there was some photographer error which resulted in the *perfect picture* being out of focus. When Ben got home I told him I'd taken almost almost 200 pictures and none of them were usable. He doubted that could be true so we sat down together and looked through them together. At the end he agreed, none of them were pictures we'd want hanging on our family's refrigerators. I should have just used pictures from the year without trying to create new ones, but I had to have them in their new sweaters, right?

Ben tried again the next day producing 150 more blurry, whining or blinking pictures. In the end the decision was pretty easy because there were only a few in the running.



I like this one, Joachim is so exasperated, but he held on to the promise of fruitloops if he cooperated- he was a champ.