Paint time

I have been sick the past few days and although I feel better today, I am exhausted and weak. Both boys were itching for things to do this morning since they are used to me constantly keeping them busy. In my own selfish effort to be able to do as little as possible I broke out the art kit that Aunt Andrea gave us. It was a huge hit. We did finger painting and water colors for the better half of an hour. I am so proud of both of them, and impressed with how much Zane enjoys these creative, quiet, activities. He continued to paint on and off the rest of the morning. Too cool. Here are a couple more token photos from this past week.

Our trip to Cali

We were fortunate enough to take a trip to CA this past weekend. We stopped part way to stay with our friends Jenny and JR. They are so much fun, and handled our wild brood very well. We spent the majority of the weekend with our dear friends, the Gassner family. As you can see from the photos, we had a great time. It was somewhat fall like there. Their son, CJ had a soccer game saturday morning that both Zane and Ryder really enjoyed watching. Then we went to Apple Hill to enjoy the fall festivities, such as Apple Pie, and pumpkin patches. It's unfortunate that our trip was so short. It is always nice to see old friends. The word update for Ryder, he now says, "ELMO" with precision clarity, and diaper is another new one. So fun!

September 2009

As much as I love blogging, I haven't done a very good job of keeping this up to date this month. So, I am lumping it all together in a slide show. The boys are always keeping us busy. As you can see from the photos, the boys are playing together more and more. They now have a "cave" that is Zane's bed. It has helped to make him want to go to sleep at night. We have been kayaking every couple of weeks which is a blast. Zane is getting so smart, and so interested in doing things that exercise his mind. He will sit for hours and play with Lego's, blocks, playdough. Kib and Zane had a Daddy-son night out and they went to a WNBA playoff game. It was a huge hit with Zane, so much so that all three boys went back for game 2.
Ryder is talking more and more every day. He says Banana, and is working on apple. He sings the ABC's and Chitty chitty bang bang (neither of which are distinguishable with words, just melody). He says waffle, which is more like bobble. He is also working on his animal sounds. This age (18 months) is so much fun. I just wish I could hold on to it forever.
Everyday is something new and exciting. Can't wait to see what October holds for our little gang.

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Random September happenings

I completely butchered the blog this week (this is my 3rd attempt). So here is the skinny on our boys. Zane is just so much fun, challenging, but fun. He loves preschool and always comes home with the best projects. He is working on learning to recognize and write his name. He has been working with Daddy this week on learning to ride his bike without training wheels. He seems to be doing really well. He jsut freaks out when he notices you aren't holding onto his seat. We bought zane a halloween costume, and it ended up being way too small. So we took it back, and much to our pleasure, he decided he wants to go as a police officer (and we already have that costume).
Ryder is at that age where he is growing and learning by leaps and bounds. He has started climbing onto our recliners, and with a little help, onto the couch. This is a big deal for a kid that still wears 9 month clothes. He loves to go outside every morning and ride bikes. He is feeding himself all of his food now, which as a parent is a huge time saver.
The boys are finally getting to the point where they are playing together more, they are wrestling a bit now. And scaring me half to death some times. Zane has been using more and more imagination these days, building things, pretending. In an effort to pre-occupy him the other day I put blankets up around his bunk bed, creating a cave. It worked so well, that he won't let us take it down, and now he is sleeping with his door closed again, no more "I'm scared"
Anyway, life is great. The weather is getting cooler around here, and we are really looking forward to spending more time outseid again. (BTW, the underlining is compliments of Ryder who did something to my computer and now I can't get it off).

Our Cruise

Kib and I are back from our trip, and needless to say, it was AMAZING!!!!
We made it to Barcelona with no problems thanks to Kib upgrading us on our flights. We spent three days in Barcelona and fell in love with it. The people, the culture, the public transportation. It was all fabulous. We saw so many of Gaudi's amazing buildings. Frankly, we didn't know who Gaudi was before our trip, now, we are amazed by him. The food was amazing in Espana, as well as all of the places we visited.
Once on the cruise, we started our trip with a day at sea. There is so much to do on cruise ships, it's great. We went rock climbing, roller blading, I worked out (got some personal training sessions in) and we ate, and ate, and ate. Oh those coconut cookies, they were my kriptinite.
Our first port was Mt Visuvius and Pompei. This was the day that I was looking forward to the most. I studied a lot about Pompei in school, and to see it in real life was a dream come true. We first went to Mt Visuvius, it was almost a mile shorter than it was 2000 years ago, and still magnificent. We climbed to the top and we were able to look in the crater. No Lava, but cool none the less. Then we went to Pompei, what an amazing place. The Romans, city of Pompei, were so advanced for their time. As our tour guide said, "we havn't ever invented anything, we just think we did." So true. I don't think Kib was initially excited about this day, but by the end, he was enthralled with it all.
The next day we went to Rome and Kib and I decided to see it all on our own. And we did. We used our feet, and some public transportation, and did as much as we could in 10 hours. We went to the Vatican and saw St Joseph's Basilica, it was HUGE. Then we scurried over to the Sistine Chapel where you aren't allowed to take photos, so don't ask to see any. From there we ran to the Coliseum we got the opportunity to skip the hour wait for tickets, followed by an hour wait to get in, by joining a tour group, it was great. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, then we followed that same tour to Pantheon Park. It was a great day.
The third port we went to was for the Pisa, Italia. Not much to say about this place, it was cool to see the leaning tower of Pisa, and that's it. Big building, leaning 14 ft the wrong way. The neat part was when we learned that originally they only built the first 3 stories, and then the building started to lean, in the other direction from where it leans now. Then a few hundred years later they added the next 6 stories and tried to straighten it out, and it now leans in the opposite direction. Weird. Apparently there are a handful of buildings in Pisa that do this.
The next port was VillaFranche, France aka Nice and Monte Carlo. We spent the day hiking up to a Fort that was at the top of the mountain dividing Nice and Monte Carlo. It was a very enjoyable day. We didn't love most of the people here (what can we say, they were French) but we enjoyed our relaxing day of exploration.
We ended up with an extra day at sea, there was bad weather, and we couldn't get the ship into port, so no Marseille France this trip.
We talked to the boys almost everyday. They did great without us. Maybe a little too well, just kidding. They loved going to our friend Vonie's house everyday, and playing with Kortnei and Josh on the weekends, and they really bonded with Reyna during our absence.
We are so lucky to have had this amazing experience together we enjoyed experiencing things on our own that neither of us had ever done before. It was quite the trip and we can't wait to do it again.
Here are some of the photos from the trip, I pared it down from 700 photos to 82, so you get the gist of out trip, but just not the details.

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Our Colorado Trip

This past week we went to Colorado for a Reed family reunion. We had such a wonderful time. Kristi and Blake were able to join us, and that just made the trip perfect. We drove both ways, and spent some time camping before we went to the reunion in Winter Park, CO. The pictures are pretty self explanatory, although we took over 600 photos, and I dwindled it down to about 40. So a lot of our photos aren't here, but you'll get the jist of just how much fun we had.

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Extreme Kari Makeover

This is me at the beginning of the day on Saturday. For those of you that I hadn't told, I won a $2000 makeover. I have been dieting for the past couple of months, dropped 27 lbs, and lost 45" throughout my entire body. I went from a 10/12 to a 4/6. My name was entered in a drawing for this makeover, and for the first time in my entire life, I won. The makeover consisted of teeth whitening, a new outfit from one of our local stores, a month of free yoga and pilates, a professional photo shoot, and hair and make-up. It was just like "What not to wear" they even did a big reveal for me and my friends and family came to see "the new me." I am so grateful to my makeover team, and especially Dr. Cronin who got me on the right path. I haven't looked/felt this good since high school. Here are a handful of after pictures. I don't have the professional ones yet, but these still speak volumes.

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