Estes Park

We took a short morning trip to Estes Park the other day. It just happened to be the Scandinavian Festival...not quite as big or well known as the Scottish/Irish Festival, but enough to slow up traffic and cute nonetheless. Many people were wearing traditional Scandinavian costumes, while others wore fun viking helmets with horns. We didn't go to the festival, though. We went to the other end of the downtown. Once there, we didn't have much time to do stuff (as often happens when you have nap and nursing schedules to keep). Cadence was convinced we were going to a park with a playground because it's called Estes Park. She was determined to find a slide, and did, but it belonged to a hotel. When we finally convinced her that we weren't going to a park with a playground, we ate lunch. I love eating out in Estes because the waiters and waitresses are always from various parts of the world and have fun accents. After that, we took a stroll down the main street for some sweets. I got a big cookie and Brad and the kids picked out some gummies at the candy shop. Right after that, it started to rain, so we booked it back to the car as fast as our little legs would take us. It was a fun little outing and we are so grateful to be within day trip distance of this beautiful town!

All things Cadence (with a little Finn thrown in)

It's amazing how obsessed you become with taking pictures, everywhere you go, once you start a blog. I think Brad and the kids are going to start boycotting our outings if I keep this up. In the meantime, they are being good sports.

So I subscribe to a great magazine, "Family Fun", and they had this awesome idea for getting your kids to do chores. It was geared more towards older children, but I decided to try out with Cadence because I feel she is old enough to help out with things around the house. We've been doing it about a week and so far it is working well. The point of it is to encourage your children to help out with household chores on their own, as they see things needing to be done (i.e. doing the dishes when the sink is full; taking out the trash when the garbage is full; etc.). Of course, Cadence is still too young to do those tasks, but I was surprised at how many chores I was able to come up with that she is capable of doing. So I made a picture chart with her level of chores and if she does one of the chores she tells me and then she gets the assigned number of marbles for that task. She puts the marbles in her jar and once the jar is full, she gets a prize. I'm liking this system so far because Cadence gets to choose whether or not she wants to do her chore, there's no penalty for not doing it, and I am not harping on her to do these things (saving myself stress). Of course, if she chooses not to pick up her toys or whatever, I have to do it. But my hope in all this is that as she gets older she will want to do more and eventually learn to help out the family. Once Finn and Aria are old enough, they will get jars too. Then, rather than having assigned chores, we will just have a chore list with a marble value for each task, and whoever does the chore gets the marbles. Obviously, if one of the kids is more motivated than the others he or she will end up getting more prizes as they fill their jar faster. I must admit, I really enjoyed putting the chart together. I did a picture chart so that Cadence can look at it and be able to tell what the chore is by herself. Can you tell what her chores are by looking at the pictures?

These next pictures are just of my wounded children. Cadence and Finn were running around Brad's car out front while he watered the grass and Cadence tripped over the hose, skinning her elbow and cheek. Finn saw me taking a picture of Cadence's elbow and he wanted one too, so he

held his arm out for me to take a picture of. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but Finn has a bruise on his left eyelid. He was walking around with his blanket on his head, as he often does, and ran into a wall and then the door. He just keeps on smiling. I think his head is numb from hitting it so much that he doesn't feel pain anymore.:) Cadence took this picture of me and I decided to post it so that you could see how I look most days...tired.

Cool Beans

Thursday we took a morning field trip to Cool Beans Playhouse and Cafe. Aria kept me up the night before, so I was pretty tired, but I find that I don't get as irritated with the kids (when I'm tired) if I take them out of the house to do something. This protects me from getting easily irritated over small things, protects the kids from feeling my wrath as a result, and gives the kids an outlet so that they are not whining at home. Cool Beans is a fun place because it's like being at home, but there are a lot more toys for the kids to play with and someone else is in charge of cleaning it all up! They have a foam pit, slide, dress-up corner, play kitchen, ball area, block climbing area and toy area. They also have a little cafe, which is worth a few extra bucks to have someone else prepare and clean-up lunch for a day. We only stayed a couple of hours, but it was a nice break for all of us and well needed to maintain any sanity that I have left.

Zoo Day

So all of my posts are going to be a few days behind when the actual activity happened for awhile because Aria doesn't give me much down time to type. In fact, I'm typing this with one hand while feeding her.

This past Monday we ventured down to Denver to go to the zoo. The weather was beautiful and it was nice to get out of the house. Cadence, Finn and I went on a train ride while Brad strolled Aria around. They loved it! Finn's favorite animals of the day were the monkeys. Cadence's favorite part was feeding the birds pieces of her bread while we were eating. Aria's favorite part was when we got home. My favorite part was the peacock that hung out by us while I fed Aria. He raised his feathers twice! I love how beautiful and vibrant peacocks are. I don't know what Brad's favorite part was. It was a tiring day, and much easier to this activity when we lived in Lakewood, but I'm glad we went and that the kids got to do something fun.

Date Day!

So I've been inspired by my MOL, Mompom, and various blogs by stay at home moms to start my own blog about my family. I love reading my mompom's blog so that I can keep up with all my family's happenings in Denver, and now I want them to be able to keep up with our happenings in Fort Collins. I love all the craft and recipe ideas I get from various blogs by stay at home moms. I strive to one day be that creative and inventive with my kids and husband. I tried to keep a blog where I only posted about things I made, but I don't have as much time to make things these days, so this is my second blog attempt...I hope it works!

Today, I got to fulfill one of my dreams since having a daughter. Cadence and I went on a mother/daughter date! When we lived in Lakewood I always thought it would be fun to go on a date with her in Morrison on the main street to get a slice of pizza and a fun drink at a coffee shop. Well, she's finally old enough to appreciate a day out with me, but now we live in Fort Collins. So, instead of pizza on Main street, we went to lunch at McAlister's Deli, where Cadence ate more chips than sandwich.:) Next, off to get our nails done at the local beauty school. Cadence picked the vibrant and exciting color of white! We followed that up with an ice cream chaser at Cold Stone (chocolate with gummy bears...a classic flavor). We were only out for a couple of hours, because nursing duty calls every 3 hours, but Cadence was wiped out from all the fun and fell asleep on the way home. All in all, it was a good first date and I see a second in our future!