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The last two mornings we awoke to snow! Tristan got so excited the first day that we had to go out and play in it before breakfast. Anastasia preferred her oatmeal and stayed inside. Later, when Jason brought her out, she didn't like the cold, white stuff and we all made our way inside to a nice drink of cocoa. (Anastasia even said cocoa for the first time) Today, again we were excited about the snow, but we all made it through breakfast before heading out in it. Snow is so beautiful! The kids loved playing in it, today. We went out in our yard to play this morning, Tristan was pretending to be a lion and Anastasia and I were helpless bunnies trying to run away and hide from him. This afternoon we went out to a local park to play in the snow. The kids could not get enough! It makes me so happy to see them playing in the snow and enjoying the outdoors during the cold months.

A friend of mine inspired me to do simple science experiments with the children. Then I found the perfect resource the very next day when I was looking at the Goodwill (Scholastics, Literature-Based Science Activities ). So, I tried some experiments that dealt with air. Air on the move: we made a paper bag rocket and powered it by a balloon. As the air flew out of the balloon the rocket moved across the string. Tristan would have played with this rocket all day. It was so cool! Then we saw how air can be caught and how the more surface area of something, the more air it catches. We threw spools off our deck and to one of the spools we attached a parachute. Then we observed difference between the fall of the parachute spool and the non-parachutes. Anastasia particularly enjoyed throwing the spools without parachutes off the deck and then watching big brother go down and pick them all up for her. We talked about the air around us and how we can feel air when it is windy a...

Incase my last few posts haven't clued you in, I love to read! One thing that has been happening a lot the last few years is my tendency to find errors in the books I read. I'll find sentences missing a period or a quotation mark. Slight mispellings are common, or words typed in twice. Some of these little misprints crack me up. To see the word "the" spelled "teh" makes me giggle a little and, I know the editor's intention was to catch all of those little mistakes before publication; it's really no big deal. I enjoy catching the little typo's in books, and I try to read with a critical eye. Jason asks me how many typo's I found whenever I finish a book. I am currently reading Love Powered Parenting, by Tom and Chaundel Holladay and this week, I found a misprint that made me really upset. I even e-mailed the publishing company. In one of the Bible stories retold in the book, there is an inaccurate statement. Not a controversial statement, a st...

 Quoting A.A. Milne about the weather got me thinking how sad I feel that his The World of Pooh stories are now being produced and expanded by Disney. So much of the original whit and humor of the stories is lost. Our family owns a few of the newest Pooh literature, and it is not the same! Much of the quintessential Pooh are lost in the new books. There is something simple and beautiful about the original works of A.A. Milne and the pictures drawn by Earnest Shepherd. The animals actually look like stuffed toys and in the black and white sketches, Pooh bear's shirt doesn't need to be red for a child to acknowledge him.  I do not know what the Pooh movies and TV are like now, but after seeing a little of Disney cartoons this spring, I can only imagine. I feel the same way about our friend, Curious George. Though I enjoy some of the newer works that are based on Margaret and H.A. Rey's original series, I am not a fan of the books based off of the T...

  Yesterday was, as A. A. Milne would put it, "a cold and blustery day". Except, we were not in the hundred acre wood, we were on the plains of Colorado looking for pumpkins at Wishing star farm. Despite the cold we were able to enjoy a train ride, duck races and the petting zoo. We also witnessed a fight between two large male goats. The children tried the crazy bouncy mat. Anastasia could not stand on it, and Tristan soon decided it was too cold even for that. Due to the cold it was tough to get a nice photo of the kids in the makeshift pumpkin patch. But we had fun. Later we carved our pumpkins in our very cold house. Thankfully the HVAC guy came and fixed the furnace before bedtime. The cold and the rain reminded us that it is fall!  It is beginning to feel like the holiday season!

The last few days with Mindy and Pat have been a blast. We visited the Denver Mint and drove into the mountains a bit on Tuesday. I took Mindy and Pat on a photography tour of Garden of the Gods on Wednesday morning as the sun was rising. Pat and all the elderly tourists snapped their fancy cameras for about an hour, and I even got some nice shots of Mindy and Pat and the scenery. Then we visited the Olympic Training center (Of course it was amazing!). We saw the Anasazi cliff dwellings and had a nice stroll through Manitou Springs. We even tried the water from the spring. Yuck! Anything but "sweet". Thursday we hiked Helen Hunt Falls and some more Garden of the Gods, then we visited a few shops (including Starbucks) for souveniers. Today the cold weather rolled in and we tried to take a walk this morning while the snow was still on the ground. It was too cold!!! We quickly returned home. We have played games, watched some shows and just hung out today. It's just a lot o...

Yesterday we spent a great afternoon at Garden of the Gods park hiking and enjoying the beauty. Today, we spent the better part of the day at the Cheyenne Mountain zoo and finished our day with a visit to the Airforce Academy chapel. The day began cloudy and cool, but warmed into a perfect fall afternoon. The zoo was great. We fed the giraffes and learned so much about the animals. Pat had a nice time visiting the horses and the kids loved everything! Gotta love the zoo!