Sleeping Beauty Ballet

 

Almost a year ago, we bought tickets to see the ballet Sleeping Beauty. It was a long wait and there were months when we almost forgot about it, but it finally happened this weekend! We took Austin's mom and sister along with two cousins and the girls had lots of fun. We went to our favorite crepe restaurant first then got to the ballet a little early. The ballet was about an hour longer than anticipated, with two intermissions, which made it hard for little girls (mostly Natalie) to sit still, but they were dazzled by all the tulle, glitter, flowers, silk, and dancing around on point. The most exciting time might have been the hour before we left the house when they got to get all dressed up with a little bit of make up, fancy hair-dos (at least fancy for me- since the most I usually do it comb it and put it in a ponytail.) Natalie was thrilled to take a little purse inherited from my grandma with all her monies (a bunch of coins) and some lip gloss in it- which she applied liberally multiple times throughout the day ;)

 

As you can see she was also very excited about the hot chocolate she had with lunch. 

Here are the girls in our seats waiting for the show to start and below Heidi and Natalie during one of the intermissions.

The boys' soccer games got cancelled due to snow, so Austin took them down to Boulder to go around to as many shops as possible with his brother. Trevor is now the proud owner of a Fjallraven fanny pack!

Brace Face

Asher started his orthodontics today- he's not exactly excited, but he's a good sport about it. He has invisalign, so its less visible than regular braces and he is able to eat whatever he wants, he just has to make sure that he puts the liners back in immediately. And he needs to make sure that he keeps his teeth super clean. We are excited to see our handsome boy with straight teeth!


 

Solar Eclipse

We enjoyed the second solar eclipse of the past 6 months, although we weren't in an area to see the complete cover. The kids said this one was much like the one in October, but it was still fun to watch.

They also enjoyed the chemistry lesson that Grandpa had for Asher and Leif making goo while talking about natural and synthetic materials. I think they just liked mixing up the chemicals and pulling it out of the cup slowly. Asher and Leif learned something, but the other kids were just playing.

 

Easter

I'm quite delayed in getting an Easter post up, but here it is. The kids loved making Easter sugar cookies on Good Friday (which we decided to take off school) and dying eggs later in the day.

Heidi got a new bunny in her Easter basket and wanted to get all of her bunnies out to see how many she had.

Asher and Leif were mostly interested in the candy, but also had fun with the madlib books they got.

Trevor loves playing Spot It! and got a new version for Easter. I sat on the ground and played a few games with him . . .

Until Torben insisted on lying on the floor between us to get some attention.

Natalie was very proud of her chocolate bunny and Heidi insisted on a picture with all of the treats from her basket.

Later in the day, we had a money egg hunt at Brent and Kate's house and celebrated Brent's and Ben's birthdays. I made lasagna for the occasion and everyone else brought other parts of the meal.

Trevor was happy to enjoy his non-dairy ice cream that his grandparent's always keep on hand for him and Cedar cozied up to get a few bites too!

 

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.

 

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.