The Weekend in Denver

My fantastic husband booked me a flight to Denver for my birthday.  Yes, I know my birthday was last month.  I decided to take the trip at the most inconvenient time for everyone, Advent.  But everyone seemed to manage just fine.  I think I'm going to make this a yearly tradition.  I took Anders with me this year, but I just might fly solo from now on.  Flying solo.  Sound great, right?  The last time I flew solo was when I flew up to Indianapolis to see Hans.  It has been almost 7 years.  I'm not sure what I would do on a flight all by myself.

Quit daydreaming, Katie!  Back to the days in Denver.

Since I was going to be with my friend, Camera Jan, there was absolutely no reason to bring my camera.  So, look at Jan's blog here, here, here, and here to see a little of what we did.

Boy, that was an awful lot of 'heres'. 

Aside from going to a concert, baking cookies and dying my hair, we also managed to get a little shopping done, and work on some Christmas presents for our kids.  Oh--and we also stayed up entirely too late every night I was there.  We had a wonderful time and I want to thank our wonderful husbands for putting up with our shenanigans during this busy time of year.

Moving -Phase 1-

A little over a week ago we moved out of our house in Denver.  For those of you who don't know, Hans got a call to be the pastor of River of Life in Channahon, IL.  So, just a couple of weeks after giving birth to Anders, I started packing up our house.  Hans and I were in Denver for 2 1/2 years and I can't even believe how much stuff we collected over that time.  Every time I thought I was close to being done I would find another drawer or shelf that hadn't been packed.  This move was by far my worst and most unorganized.  So, instead of the one box I usually have labeled "miscellaneous"  I have about 20 of them this time.  Unpacking will be so much fun!

Aside from my lack of organization this time it also took HOURS to load everything into the two PACKRAT containers.  These containers were 16x8x8 and even though I had two we still didn't get everything to fit.  My poor dryer didn't make the cut, but it was on its way out anyways.  We started loading around 11 and finally finished loading, cleaning, patching and painting walls around 6:30.  I can't thank our wonderful friends enough for all of their help.  There is no way we could have done this without them.  I was too busy shoving stuff into various boxes and freaked out about not being organized that I didn't take any pictures.  Never fear, Jan was there!  That woman doesn't go anywhere without a camera.  She took pictures of our move and the restaurant we went to after a busy day of hard labor.

After we moved out of the house we stayed the night with our dear friends, the Meliuses.  We are sure going to miss all of our friends.  The next day we headed to Texas and stayed for about a week.  As if I wasn't far enough behind in my blogging as it is, I now have more pictures to upload and look through.  I'll get to them all someday...before Anders moves out of the house.

Right now I'm sitting in the hotel room we will call home for the next 10 days.  After this we will be staying with some new friends until we close on a house.  I did give a heads up to these new friends just how "fun" my boys can be.  We will see how long they let us stay before coming down with something horribly contagious and telling us it is better that we stay elsewhere.  So, this ends phase 1 -leaving Denver.  I guess this means we are entering phase 2 -the in-between...I don't think I'm going to like this phase very much.

While I'm very sad to have left my good friends and the place where Gus and Anders were born, I'm excited to see what is in store for us.  Tomorrow we meet our new church family and I am very excited to get to know each and every one of them.

Thanksgiving

We spent our Thanksgiving with some great friends.  Since I'm unbelievably busy at the moment I'm going to cheat and have you check out Jan's blog.  I'm pretty sure I brought my camera, but I haven't had time to look at any pictures.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Hopefully I'll be able to blog some more after all my worldly possessions are packed and loaded in PODS. We have just four more days until we move and head to Texas for a week.  **For all you Texans, Hans will be preaching at Messiah on the 12th.  He is a wonderful preacher. I should know, I have to listen to him every week.  Services are at 8 and 10:45, we would love to see you there.

A Picture Day with Jan

When I was in the hospital having Anders the boys stayed with our good friends, Jan and  Jared.  I was upset that John was missing his first school pictures, so Jan decided to do a little photo shoot with the boys.  I love when Jan takes pictures of the boys.  She is a wonderful photographer.

Taking pictures can get a bit tiring.

Thank you, Jan for all of the wonderful pictures!

My Birthday

I'm a simple girl with simple tastes.  Well, that statement isn't totally true, but I've never been one for extravagant gifts.  I got a lot of great things and before you scroll down and see what my boys got me, I have to say it was really what I wanted.  One of the gifts I got was the Pioneer Woman cookbook.  I saw the link for Pioneer Woman on one of my friend's facebook page and 5 hours later I peeled myself away from the computer to get some sleep, but was up early the next day reading more.  Ree (pioneer woman) was in Denver on Monday for her cookbook signing so Jan and I went...without kids.  Well, Jan had Anna, but she is 2 months old and is so cute and sweet.  Jan and I had a great time and you wouldn't believe how many people were there.  Jan and I got there around 6 for a book signing at 7:30. We were able to grab the last couple of seats in the last row and of course people kept coming and coming.  We got into the car to go home around 10:15 so I'm sure Ree was there until after midnight signing cookbooks.

Then, on Tuesday morning Hans cooked me an amazing breakfast and, while I went to work, the boys went shopping.

So here are my gifts from the boys and I feel I must explain them.

The photography book is from Hans.  My old digital just died a month ago (poor thing was about 6 years old) and we decided to invest in a nice camera.  I picked the Canon Rebel XS which is a great starter camera.  I love playing with the camera and learning new things, but I am by NO MEANS a good, decent or even semi-decent photographer.  My adorable husband who is ever so picky about framing a picture the proper way, gave me some more reading material and I have enjoyed it so far.  I will repeat again, if you ever see me somewhere with a nice camera around my neck, I will gladly send you pictures, but don't expect them to be good...I'm a beginner.

The Slurpee is from Gus.  He knows his mom needs some caffeine pumping through her veins if she wants to try to keep up with the boys.

John loved the Slurpee.  One of these days I'll get to enjoy a drink with out slobber on the straw...in about 20 years.

And John got me the...

trash can!!  He is very excited about this present.  My trashcan lid broke just a few days before and we were in quite the conundrum.  We could leave the lid on, but it wouldn't open, which makes it hard to put trash in.  The option of no lid at all was definitely not an option at all, what with Gus' STINKY diapers.  So, I asked my husband for a trashcan and I told him no less than three times that I was not kidding.

After opening presents Hans and John made a great lunch of homemade macaroni and cheese, because I eat like a five year old.

 

For dinner, Hans went all out and made a great roast, creamy mashed potatoes with gravy, fresh green beans with feta, homemade rolls and  my cake was a chocolate molten cake that was simply delicious.

I also received lots of cards, some money (still thinking about what I will get with that), a beautiful necklace and fantastic earrings.

Thank you everyone for making my birthday so special. 

Will it be Red?

My friend Jan takes excellent, and I mean EXCELLENT pictures. She snaps the kids whenever we go over there, but I don't always see the outcome because she is a busy mom of 5 kids with 1 on the way!! Anyway, she took these yesterday and I couldn't just post one, I had to post all four. So, do you think little Gus will have red hair? Hans is excited about having a redheaded kid and thinks we should have named him Shamus, but I like August better.

The First Two Weeks

Gus will be two weeks old tomorrow. Where does the time go? Here are some pictures of the first two weeks.


These first two were taken by my friend, Jan, when we were still in the hospital.






We didn't see his eyes until he was several days old.


My three boys





Grand Aunt Diane and Gus on the day of his baptism




John loves his little brother and wants to hold and kiss him all the time.




Eyes are open. He isn't too impressed with the world at the moment.