Jude and Anna play with Olive for the first time

After over a year of thinking about it and weeks of planning we finally picked up our new puppy on Wednesday. Marcy and Anna drove up past Fort Collins to pick up Olive and brought her back to her new home. The kids fell in love with her right away with Jude calling her an angel when he first saw her. Anna met her last week and then did the drive with Marcy.

What a cutie

I was in New York until Thursday night so I missed the first 24+ hours. But Marcy got a decent night’s sleep that first night, it certainly could have been worse. In fact she has been a great puppy so far. Marcy has spent a lot of time reading up on dog training and we have her on a schedule and we get her up once a night to go to the bathroom and she has been pretty good then sleeping through until sunrise.

In full flight…Olive loves to run

Needless to say our weekend revolved around Olive. We took her to Anna’s soccer game but unfortunately dogs were not allowed on the ground. So Jude and Marcy took turns looking after her. Jude’s soccer game was a 45 minute drive on Saturday so Olive stayed home. And then Anna, Jude and I went to see Avengers End Game on Saturday afternoon which we all enjoyed. That was actually the second time in two days Jude saw the movie, he also went to a Friday showing given he was off school all week for Spring Break.

My favorite photo of the week

This morning, while Marcy was at the gym Anna, Jude and I played with Olive for a solid 90 minutes. She loved it but tired herself out and she was pretty listless for the next several hours. She was happy to be in her crate for the rest of the morning.

Olive loves to bite so Anna is trying to get her to chew her stick

We forgot to celebrate Anna’s half birthday on April 7 and I was out of town anyway. So, on Friday we all went to the donut place by Anna’s school where she enjoyed her now traditional half-birthday donut.

Anna with her half-birthday donut

Easter morning, excited to get some treats and presents

This weekend was all about soccer on Saturday as both Jude and Anna had games. We all went to both games and this took up most of the day. Both kids played well and enjoyed their games.

But this weekend was all about Easter. The kids were both really excited about it and even though we told them to not get out of bed until 7am they were both up by 6:30am and keen to get downstairs. Marcy had created beautiful Easter baskets filled with treats and gifts as you can see above.

Jude eating treats and reading his new book with Picky

There was an Easter egg hunt in the backyard with dozens of eggs filled with treats or money. Again Marcy was up until quite late getting all this together. And the kids were just as excited as ever to go racing around the backyard collecting eggs.

Anna doing a performance on the Karaoke machine with our neighbor Elsie

We usually get the kids one big gift at Easter and this year Anna got a Karaoke machine which she loved. She spent half the day singing along to her favorite songs. Jude got a Nintendo Switch, something he has been wanting for a long time. We played FIFA 19, the soccer game, for much of the afternoon.

Anna with our new dog Olive Rose

The excitement has been building in our family for weeks now. This Wednesday we officially become dog owners when we pick up our new addition to the family. Olive Rose Renton will be eight weeks when we bring her home and we are all excited (except Pickles the cat, who has no idea how her world will change). Next weekend we will report how our first few days have done. We are going in with our eyes wide open expecting this will be a challenging first year.

Opening up the LendIt Fintech USA 2019 conference with my partner, Bo Brustkern

My annual conference happened this past week so I have been out of town for the past eight days. Marcy came out and we went down to Half Moon Bay again after the big event. Our annual conference went well but as always I was glad when it was over as it was a huge amount of work.

On the 16th tee at Half Moon Bay Ocean Course

Marcy’s parents arrived in Denver on Tuesday and then she flew out to San Francisco the following day. I met her at the airport and then we drove down to the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay. We had a wonderful time. We spent a lot of time in the spa, we went for walks around town and up and down the coast.

Enjoying a wine tasting bar on Friday afternoon

We did a lot of walking. It was almost a four mile walk along the coast into the town of Half Moon Bay and we did that walk pretty much every day.

Walking on the trail south of the hotel, the ocean views are spectacular

Meanwhile Jude and Anna were with Baba and Grandpa. Of course, they had school Wednesday to Friday but that didn’t stop them from going out for ice cream every day.

Enjoying ice cream every day with Baba and Grandpa

They also watched a lot of movies as many of the rules were relaxed with Baba and Grandpa in charge.

More ice cream

We arrived home this afternoon just in time to see Anna get off to Cotillion class. Jude had a soccer game so I drove up to Boulder to watch the second half of that game.

It was ’50’s night at Cotillion