Singing the abcs...

Make sure to pause the music on the right...this was last weekend. Taylor loves to sing and dance!

F A M I L I A !

This last weekend Tom and I were SO excited to have some very exciting visitors. Tom's mom, little brother Mike and our sister in law Sue (Mar's wife) and little nephew Isaac came. We had a pretty packed 3 days of fun with them. Here are some very out of order pictures and more will come next time I get the chance....

THE INCLINE: supposedly the "world's largest set of stairs". This is about 25 minutes from home in Manitou Springs. We'd heard lots about it and thought it would be a fun hike to take Sue and Mike on. It was fun...and HARD! .9 miles up these old railroad tiers. We took lots of "picture" breaks ;-)
view of Garden of the Gods from the Incline

picture break

this was us at the top...whew! We made it! Then we got to run, yes run the approximately 4 miles down b/c I had to get to a Pilates class and Tom had to get my little sister to the airport.

midway climb picture break....me and Sue (she is an awesome person to have as a sister in law! and friend! I am so lucky to have so many amazing sisters in law!)

ahhh! another picture break! ;-)

This was towards the beginning. You can sort of see how the stairs start out not so steep and then about 2/3s of the way it gets extremely steep! I have a little fear of heights so about half way up I started to get a bit uneasy, shaky and couldn't pay much attention to the view behind us. We survived though and are eager to make the climb a few more times while we live close. Anybody else want to come join us?

breakfast date...Taylor and her cousin Isaac

playing with bubbles on the patio.

my little sister Hannah (she'd been staying with us the last couple of months) and Tom's little brother Mike...

Isaac and Maddie

Cute cousins!

Catching up a little...

Boy, it's so hard to find much spare time to put up posts! So, here are some pictures from the last few weeks...

Taylor nursing her puppy! ;-) She's so funny and such a good mommy! She even occasionally pumps too! I haven't caught any good pictures of her doing that yet though...

Taylor helping in the kitchen.

Max getting a dog bath...yuck! Our kids don't seem to mind though!

Max during his first official meal of rice cereal...

Then...

Last Saturday (Sept. 27th) was our five year anniversary...it's been a very wonderful five years. I married my best friend and life with him is complete. Well, him and our little ones. I know most of you weren't at our wedding so here are some pics from that day.

We had a really nice anniversary...it started out being sort of stressful. Tom had to work, but the kids and I got to go with him. He had an openhouse for the new Scout headquarters here. But, the evening turned out to be very nice thanks to Tom. He cooked us a nice steak dinner. Our kids double dated with us through dinner...then we put them to bed and thankfully they stayed there ;-) and we had a dance in our living room. If you haven't done that with your loved one, I'd recommend it!

Now...

Last Thursday my friend Sarah took these pics for us. Tom had meetings all day so we only had a few minutes with him, but I think some still turned out pretty well. Thanks Sarah!