Our two little football fans: Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers

We have had a gorgeous fall week here. Sunny and mild every day and this weekend was perfect. I bought Anna a Peyton Manning jersey for her birthday and Jude wanted something different. He was watching the Packers one day and he said he liked them and he wanted one of their jerseys. So, he now has an Aaron Rodgers jersey. I love the Packers, they are my second favorite team, so I think it worked out well.

Jude has been asking to play football a lot lately. We have been playing in the backyard a lot but I have been wanting to get him out on a big field. So, while Anna was napping yesterday I took him up to the local school where we had an entire soccer field to ourselves. Jude had a blast and we played for a solid hour, although only half that with a football. He wanted to play tag as well. By the end of the hour, I was worn out and I a little sore today.

This week was Anna’s school trip to the pumpkin patch. It was a little chilly in the morning, so everyone was bundled up. Anna brought back a couple of pumpkins and a few other fall vegetables. Within a day Anna and Marcy carved a jack-o-lantern and she has the pumpkin in her bedroom now with a candle in it that we light every day.

Anna scores a pumpkin

I got free tickets to the Bronco game today, so I spent the afternoon there. It was such a gorgeous day that I rode my bike. But it meant that I missed the Halloween Journey night at the kids school. The 7th graders put on a show for everyone. Jude and Anna got dressed up in their outfits and went along.

Anna in her witches outfit ready to go, with broom in tow.

Our knight in shining armor.

Anna does the first snow shoveling of the season

We had our first snowfall of the season this week and it happened on a day when the kids were off school. Anna woke up so excited to see the blanket of white stuff on the ground. She immediately asked for her ski clothes and snow shovel and out she went to play. (Jude was still asleep at this point). It was only a couple of inches and the sun was out by lunch time so by the end of the day the snow had melted away.

One of the many things I love about Colorado is the weather. After that snowstorm we had a beautiful day on Saturday with 60 degrees and perfect sunshine. And both kids wanted to play football so I was happy to oblige. We have been watching a bit of football together and both kids have been enjoying it.

Playing tackle football in the backyard

We started off playing tackle football between the kids but that proved a little rough. And after some tears were shed we switched to touch football although I still had to tackle them both when they had the ball. Jude was really into playing. Last weekend we played for 3+ hours after the Broncos game and this weekend we had long games both days.

Jude is proving to be quite a good runner. He is quick and changes direction well and seeing that I have to tackle him without hurting him he can be quite elusive. And he is learning some of the fundamentals of football in these games. I do make sure he scores the occasional touchdown to keep him interested. Often he and Anna will play one on one and he likes that because he scores pretty much every time. Anna can also hold her own and has outrun Jude occasionally to score.

Jude showing his speed in backyard football

After football it was time to play in the leaves. Marcy and Anna created quite the pile in the front yard. Both kids played in this pile of leaves for ages, with Anna even taking a rest lying down on her bed of leaves.

Isn’t playing in the leaves fun!

It has become a tradition in our family to celebrate a birthday by going out for breakfast. It is so much better than a dinner date for the kids and it gets the day off to a great start. On Monday this past week Anna turned five. So we all went to Snooze to celebrate.

Anna loved her birthday celebration. But after breakfast it was off to school for the day. When she arrived home the real festivities began. As soon as she walked in the door I stopped work and we opened presents and had cake. Marcy had baked a beautiful gluten free rainbow cake for Anna which she just loved.

Then it was on to the park for what we expected to be her birthday dinner. But after getting the picnic setup we decided it was a little chilly and the mosquitos were bad so we packed up everything and went home and had a picnic on the floor in the kids playroom. Anna loved her special day and Jude handled it as best he could. It was a little hard seeing his little sister getting all the attention so I kept reminding him throughout the day that it was only 47 days until his birthday.

Today I took the kids to Elitch’s and then we came home and watched the Bronco game. For her birthday I gave Anna a Peyton Manning Broncos jersey and she loves it. She wore it all day today and when we got home from Elitch’s both Anna and Jude watched the first half of the game with me. Then after the game we went and played football in our backyard. Jude said afterwards that he wanted to play football with other kids. We will see if he keeps this interest up but I think a team sport of some kind would be good for him.

Jude is taking a liking to more sports these days. We played baseball in the backyard the other day and he really enjoyed it. He is a natural switch hitter and you can see in the photo above that he is giving it a whack left handed. His progress in the last few months with hitting a baseball has been quite impressive. But it has also been fun to see more interest in this area.

Today we watched the Bronco game and Jude was genuinely interested in learning more about it. He told me that he was going to play football and be on TV when he grows up. We will see.

Last weekend we went to a corn maze with some friends and the kids had a great time. We had to keep a close eye on them because they would just go off running in any direction.

The maze was at the Denver Botanic Gardens facility in southwest Denver and they had all kinds of fun things there for kids including this big tree that Jude just had to climb.

Colorado has been in the new a lot the last few days. It even made the news in Sydney as I have had a couple of friends there email me to make sure everything was ok. Everyone here is talking about the rain with most places around Denver experiencing record rainfall over the past few days. The kids don’t mind, though, as it can provide an instant lake. Like it did on their school playground when Marcy picked them up earlier this week.

Last weekend I was in San Francisco on business although it wasn’t all hard work. I was able to take a trip out on the Lending Club yacht which was very cool. It is a 73-foot long trimaran that is one of the fastest boats in San Francisco Bay.

While I was in San Francisco, Marcy took the on the annual Park Hill family bike ride which everyone seemed to enjoy.

One of the things that is great about our new house is our back yard. We have a large yard with lots of flowers planted by the previous owners. We even have a hummingbird feeder up but hadn’t seen any until this week. Marcy snapped this great photo of one getting nectar from the real thing.

The transition from Kindergarten to 1st grade is a very big deal at Waldorf. Jude has been counting down the days all summer until he got to be a “grader”. On Tuesday morning the big day finally arrived and he was excited. Here is with Marcy about to leave for his first day of 1st grade.

On the first day of school there is a big ceremony for the first graders and the entire school attends as well as the 1st grade and 8th grade parents. There is a rose ceremony where the 1st graders say goodbye to their parents and are led through a tunnel made of dozens of bigger kids with their 8th grade buddy. Every 1st grader gets an 8th grade buddy who they will get to know throughout their first year at the school. It was a wonderful ceremony and there was many a crying parent (including Marcy). Below is Jude sitting at his desk in the front row just before heading down to the rose ceremony.

The night before Jude’s first day of school was another milestone. Jude lost his second tooth. He proudly displayed it the next morning. You can see that the first tooth he lost has a new tooth coming in well.

It has been really hot in Denver these past two weeks and the swamp cooler broke down one day. So, Marcy set up the tents on the balcony and we all slept under the stars one night. Jude and Anna were pretty excited about it.

The last two weeks also saw the return of our piano after being completely restored and tuned. Our piano was built around 1930 (around the same age as our new house) and we bought it for $100 from a church. After having it restored it looks great and sounds even better.

We now have another musical instrument in the family. After Jude listened to the Magic Tree House story about Louis Armstrong in New Orleans he has wanted a trumpet. Instead of spending $500 on a new trumpet we decided to rent one. We may do lessons at some point but both Jude and Anna like to get it out regularly and blow through it. It is pretty cool to hear them play it.

We have spent most of the past two weeks in Des Moines for our annual summer trip. These trips always revolve around the pool and sure enough within 5 minutes of our arrival (at 9:45pm!) both Jude and Anna were in the pool. And they spent time in the pool every single day. Below is a shot of Uncle Nathan propelling Jude to the other end of the pool – which he loved of course.

All the cousins got along really well for the most part and here they are all goofing around on our first morning there.

But the trip wasn’t all spent by the pool. There were lots of activities including fishing (where Jude caught plenty of fish), some time at the Iowa State Fair, the Science Center, Living History Farms, (which both Jude and Anna said was their favorite) as well as lots of activities and games around the house. Here is Jude showing off his first fish.

Marcy and I were able to get away for a couple of days by ourselves which was fantastic. We chose Dubuque this time where a friend of ours is from. We stayed at his great grandparents mansion which was turned into a bed and breakfast. We stayed Monday to Wednesday so we ended up having the place to ourselves. Here is Marcy reading outside with a beautiful view of the Mississippi River. We stayed in the end unit on the top floor which was actually a two bedroom suite. Awesome.

We were back in Des Moines less  than 48 hours before leaving for home. The drive was uneventful and we arrived back home at 8:30pm on Friday night.

We have had a pretty low key weekend and both kids spent a lot of time playing with their toys. But the big news is today both Jude and Anna got their first pet. They had to choose a low maintenance pet and it was between a fish and a frog. Jude initially said he wanted a frog but changed him mind when Anna chose a fish. They each have a Betta in a bowl. Here is Jude admiring his new friend that he named Blue Scale, with the fish bowl decoration of the Cat in the Hat. This is a learning experience for both Jude and Anna and if they do well we will consider a dog or cat down the road but they have to take care of their fish all by themselves.

Jude has been talking about snorkeling with the fish for over a year now. Ever since he found out that when you turn six you can go to the aquarium and swim with the fish he has been excited about it. This past Saturday we did it and he had a blast. The fish are so tame in the aquarium that they come right up to you and almost touch you. Above is Jude in full snorkeling gear taken with the underwater camera they provide.

After moving almost two weeks ago Jude is settling in to our new house well. He likes having his own room again, after more than 18 months of sharing with Anna. He is very happy to just go to his room to be alone and read some books or just play with his toys. His sleeping has been great which is more than we can say for his sister.

The local public school is literally 100 yards from our house and they have a great new playground. So, we are making this a regular place to visit after dinner and on weekends. Jude likes to practice his climbing skills there as he maneuvers up the pole.

These days Jude’s favorite books are the Magic Treehouse series. We have a few of them in paperback but Marcy has been checking the audio CDs out from the library. And Jude can literally listen to these stories for hours. This is going to come in handy when we drive to Iowa this week.

Here is Jude in a real treehouse at one of our friends places. He thought it was very cool.

Big news this week for Jude. After many weeks of having a very wiggly front tooth it finally came out. He was looking at the lions at the zoo where he was wiggling it a little like he always does and it just came out in his hand. He was very, very excited. He came home and proudly showed me his tooth. That night the tooth fairy came and gave him $2 for that special tooth.

This came just a few days after we got back from Keystone where we had a wonderful time with the Dahlen family. The kids all enjoyed themselves with all the fun activities which included a hike with all five cousins while Nate and I were golfing – well done Mandy and Marcy!

Our last night in Keystone was a little disappointing. Every Friday night they have free gondola rides to the top of the mountain where there is free entertainment and lots of fun things for the kids. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and it was cold and rainy. We did manage to get a group photo at the top during a break in the rain.

This weekend Marcy took the kids up to the “Insectival” at the Butterfly Pavilion where they had all kinds of insect-type fun stuff for kids. Jude had his face painted and found fishing for crawdads very engrossing:

We sold our house on Grape St on December 30th 2011, just three days before we left for Sydney. Since then we have been renting – six months in Sydney and then a year back in Denver. But that is all about to change. On Monday last week we bought a new house in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver. We haven’t moved in yet as we still have a month to go on our lease but we are now the proud owners of a 1931 Georgian style home (pictured). We will be moving in later this month.

We had a family first last weekend. We all went to the baseball game. Last year I took both Jude and Anna separately to see a Rockies game but this was the first time the whole family went. We had a nice time and we made it through the 8th inning which was better than I expected. The kids were not much interested in the game but they enjoyed the whole spectacle.

We are now in the midst of our annual July 4 trip to Keystone. We decided to make this an extended trip this year, so we left Denver on July 3rd and will be up here for 10 days. This means we made it to the July 4th bike parade. Both kids loved being in the parade as this is the first year they had both ditched the training wheels and they were able to ride like the big kids.

At Keystone they have a bunch of activities for kids that we have enjoyed every day since we arrived. We bought the kids summer season passes and we are making the most of it. They have bungee trampolines, a climbing wall, bounce house, maze, digging for gems, putt putt and more. They also get free rides on the gondola.

Last night the Dahlen family arrived from Des Moines and Jude and Anna were so excited to see them. Anna asked at least two dozen times yesterday when Lily would be here. They arrived late last night and Jude, Anna and Lily have been inseparable ever since. We went to the top of the gondola tonight and I shot this cute photo of them overlooking Lake Dillon and the continental divide.