Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Rabbit Mountain Open Space


An activity that we all love is to meet up with Aunt Lexi and cousin Cedar to go hiking! We took a day off school today to meet them at Rabbit Mountain Open Space which is really more of a stroll through the foothills than a hike, but it was very nice weather. Natalie received her belated birthday present from them and was so excited that she insisted on opening it before we could start the hike.

Everyone was also very excited to see Lola and volunteered to walk her. Torben was overly excited and was pretty difficult to deal with since we forgot his leash. Luckily Lexi had a long strap in her car which we tied to his collar and I tied the other end around my waist. He spent the majority of the hike getting his leash all tangled with Lola's and pulling me up the trail.
Asher was excited to bring his crawler RC car along, and even brought his spare battery to use. Unfortunately he didn't anticipate the batteries in the remote control going dead and he had to carry it about half of the hike.




Lexi is about 4 months pregnant and doesn't have the same energy she usually does, so the three older kids all took turns carrying Cedar (when he allowed us to put him is his pack). I eventually carried him in my arms so he could take a little nap and Leif took Torben from me. He wasn't going to put up with the pulling, so he figured out a way to get the strap around Torben's face the same way his gentle-lead works to keep him from pulling, and had a much easier time with him than I did. I told him that's why he is going to be a millionaire someday :)

We look forward to many more hikes and adventures this year!

The presents Natalie got were a color-yourself-tshirt and a science kit. As you can see she got right into both of them as soon as we got home. All the kids got a little crazy with it and Asher and Leif ended up blowing things up in the backyard with all the other kids excitedly watching.


 

Sunday, February 25, 2024

X-Country Skiing


 We've been talking for months about taking Asher and Leif cross-country skiing with their older cousins, Paul and Ben. We left our younger three kids with Austin's sister so we could just focus on the older boys. We went to an area near Boulder called Brainard Lake. We never saw the actual lake because we stayed in a smaller area going back and forth a few times to get the boys used to being on skis. (Austin and I are hoping to go up just the two of us soon and ski near the lake, but we'll see.) Leif wasn't the biggest fan of it, especially since there were some pretty steep hills we had to go up and then down (much harder in cross-country skis in my opinion) and Leif said he much prefers downhill skis. The other three boys had quite a bit of fun and Austin and I loved it so much that we are planning to get our own skis. 


. It was super windy in the parking lot which made everything freezing and we were a little worried it would be a miserable day, but luckily once we got into the trees, there was hardly any wind.









Austin was a pro teacher and did a great job mentoring the boys. He and I haven't been cross country skiing since we were newly weds, but he picked it up again really quickly and was able to help the boys a lot.








Saturday, February 17, 2024

Sledding with Cousins


We haven't gotten much snow this winter, so even though we only got a couple inches last night, we decided to go sledding before it all melted. We were surprised, but pleased, that no one else was at the hill on a golf course that we usually go to.





The kids had tons of fun sledding and Torben had fun racing full speed from kid to kid and waiting for someone to throw a snowball for him. Ben did a really good job keeping him entertained and even kept him distracted from a few other dogs that walked past. I don't remember the last time I actually went sledding myself, but Heidi asked me to go with her and I had a lot of fun. Natalie came with us a couple times and I went with Trevor and Natalie on a few runs.

Each of the kids tried "snowboarding" for a little while.



Leif got so exhausted that he needed a little rest.





And they eventually decided to have a snow battle.




I'm so glad we got out sledding this winter. Hopefully we'll get to go again, but if not, we had fun today.