An unpublished post from the archives of two weeks ago...

It's been a while! April has been a crazy month of ups and downs, and I don't anticipate May being much calmer (let's hope it's more ups THAN downs, though). We've been itching for spring, and as much as I have been whining about it for the last three months, it's just not coming. I suspect that this year will be much like last year, with two weeks of nice weather at the end of May, then summer. I just take heart in knowing that it will be warm eventually, and most likely in the next month!

I don't have access to my lovely big computer right now, and that's where all my camera/photo stuff is, so I thought I'd update with some older pictures. I've had high hopes for a garden this year, so the kids and I bought some shovels and started digging. We had to do it all by hand, as this was somewhat of an exploratory measure, avoiding sprinkler pipes and unearthing years of different landscaping measures. Connor and Alaina loved searching for worms, and Alaina even got a little attached to them. When we'd find one, she would inform me that we needed to find its mommy or its daddy. Eventually, we found a whole family.


Connor quickly tired of digging outside (that surprised me!), but Alaina would have done it all day. I love the dichotomy of this picture. With her, everything needs to be "peent" (pink). Peent shirt, peent pants, peents boots, peent necklace, peent hairbow, and since purple is a variation of pink, her purple bracelet is peent, too. All that peent, but still digging in the dirt. You must curl your fingers, however, to avoid getting mud on your peent nail polish.


Despite my grandiose ideas for this little strip of dirt, we quickly learned that when watered, our "garden" turns into concrete and there is little hope for plants. I must admit, I feel a little bit defeated, and just want to shake my fists at it in dismay, rather than plant in containers. One good thing about this nonexistent spring is that it will give me time to get over this and on with growing my own tomatoes in pots. Goodbye, garden dreams!


...and a couple more funny ones of the one that begs for her picture taken. :)
Every night, when I get home from work, I go check on the kids and give them a goodnight kiss. Walking in on this scared me a bit, but it's also kind of funny. How can that be comfortable?


Three year old attitude is already setting in, a few months early. Alaina received these sunglasses in her Easter basket from Grandma and Grandpa, and she believes that this is how they are meant to be worn. Connor tells her over and over that her glasses are upside down, but she refuses to listen to him. That's really Alaina in her full glory...crazy cat lady hair, upside down glasses, face full 'o 'tude, and no pants. That's my girl.


A couple of weeks ago, Wes invited us to a barbeque at his house, and I snapped this picture of Janet's magnolias. Rather than broadcast any of the photos of Grandpa Broadhead's funeral, I think this picture abstractly describes my feelings. We love you and will miss you and your happy countenance, Grandpa.

A Post of Epic Proportions

I wrote an extremely long post about our trip to San Francisco, but I guess blogger doesn't like huge entries, so here's a link to where you can view it in its entirety with no clicking, just scrolling!
http://your-amygdala.livejournal.com/233005.html

Want some pictures?

Hey, family! If you want some photos off of my blog, simply click the picture you'd like, which will take you to my photostream on Flickr. Up on the top left, there is a button that says, "ACTIONS", click on that, then click on "VIEW ALL SIZES". It will then take you to a different page with all the sizes and there is an option at the top that says, "DOWNLOAD THE LARGE SIZE OF THIS PHOTO". I know that I am terrible at emailing out pictures, so VOILA!

It's been a busy week, and I'm not complaining! On Thursday, we went to see "Teeweesa" and baby Oliver. What a cute baby boy!


Then on Friday morning, we met up with Aunt Mary Ann and her girls, and the Whites. Sorry about posting this pic, MA, but it's pretty funny. Are we mean that we got a kick of out terrorizing Maesa with the automated puppets?


After dropping the kidlets off at home with Daddy, my mom, Kandis, and I made our way up to Park City to shop at the outlets and kick of my mom's 60th birthday celebration! You know it's a bunch of moms shopping when the biggest chunk of change we dropped was at Carter's! We shopped for a couple of hours, then met Janet, Marinda, and Mary Ann up in Midway. We ate at Tarahumara, a Mexican restaurant. I'd give our entrees a B-, but the desserts were a definite A.


Hello, gorgeous.


...And then the crazy Broadhead antics began. For some reason, they usually include terrible table manners.


Janet was unimpressed with our behavior. Cue the upturned nose. :)


Grandma got a little bit crazy with the desserts! You only turn 60 once!


After gorging ourselves at dinner, we stopped at the grocery store to punish ourselves further! I'm sure Mom's blood sugar spiked just standing next to this stuff!


We stayed at the Zermatt in Midway! What a beautiful resort! I wish we could have stayed around a little longer to take full advantage of it!


Nothing says 5 star like jumping on the bed! If you haven't noticed by now, we are models of exemplary behavior.










We stayed up until the early hours of the morning, laughing, talking, and stuffing ourselves. It was so nice to have some girl time and we had so much fun that we are already planning our next trip!


Bwahahaa!


Mary Ann compiled a book of our favorite memories of Mom. I think it was a hit! Heavy Heavy Hangover Grandma's Poor Head!
\

Of all the things that we laughed about that night, Kandis' baby legs on the huge chairs were definitely the most hilarious!


We awoke the next morning, ate more sugar, got dressed, and toasted to Mom's wonderful 60 years.






Happy Birthday, Mom! We hope you enjoyed our little trip as much as we all did! We love you!

Lots to catch up on! First of all, happy late St. Patrick's day!




Last week, Anthony drove the kids to Colorado to visit the Dietrich side of the family. I stayed behind to work, and when I wasn't at the Cheese, I got lots of cleaning and catching up done. I slept a lot, a washed every fabric in our house, I caught up on photo books, and decorated Alaina's big wall (pictures to come).

On Thursday of last week, I caught an early morning flight to meet them. (Thanks, Grandma, for waking up so early to take me to the airport!) Bye bye, little house! We live right by those white squares in the center.


No need for the personal flotation device instruction on this flight.


As soon as we surprised everyone with my arrival, we loaded up to take the kids to Cool Beans, a little cafe with a really fun playground for the kids. We got to spend some time with this little cutie, who we haven't seen since Thanksgiving.


What a looker. :)


The excitement of the day took its toll on Connor, so we had some outside time-outs. He wasn't too big of a fan of me documenting this, but I managed this shot while he was distracted by a passing car.


Saturday was Anthony's parents anniversary, so we celebrated by going to lunch in Old Town Fort Collins. Alaina wasn't feeling her best, but she was okay as long as she had her Papa and Bootsie, her latest love.


After lunch, we spent some time throwing pennies into the fountain.



Twins.


Okay, okay, she needs a haircut. :P

After a run-in with an unfortunate doorknob, Papa deemed it best that Connor have ice cream in bed, just like last summer. Connor was so excited, he had to run and show Nana his cone.



No ice cream for you, Hannah!

This last photo was one shot by accident as my flash was recycling, but I love it, so forgive the noise.


Some fun memories from this trip:
*We recorded a 15 minute Q&A with Connor in which he told us that his favorite thing about Papa is that he plays with him and his favorite thing about Nana are her hugs and kisses.
*Alaina is officially a television addict. I posted the picture of her at Thanksgiving where she was wired and staying up all night because of the tv in her room there, but this time, she just whined that she was tired all day so she could go lay down and watch tv.
*Connor was drawing on a piece of paper and said, "This is for Daynarae. 'I love you, Daynarae.'"
*Alaina said, "I'm heavy, like Papa!"
*Papa asked what was up with Alaina's hair when she woke up in the morning, and she said, "No, Papa! It's down!"
*Connor's old bike got mauled by the "Big Red Truck", so he got an upgrade!

So far, March has been rainy. Really rainy. While I would rather hole up and hide from the elements, the kids just get cabin fever. Anthony has been such a good sport to take them out on bikerides in the rain.


We decided to hit up our local Boondock's the other day. Alaina was sleepy when we first arrived, but when her eyes opened slightly, it quickly registered that we were somewhere fun. "WHAT'S THAT?!"


Both kids were naturally drawn to the arcade games that had money or candy. Yes, they are my offspring.




Connor is so eerily good with video games already. He takes them almost as seriously as his daddy.


This photo makes me a little bit sad. Doesn't he look ten years old?! I've seen this look of utter concentration on my beloved's face many a time. :)


Fortunately, Alaina is still at the wonderful stage where pressing the buttons on all the games is just as, if not more fun than actually playing them.


Anthony was pretty excited to see this giant claw game. After playing it, though, I believe his exact words, said in a happy and sarcastic voice were, "It's just as crappy as the regular one!" (But more expensive at $1.50!) :)




Then we moved on to Rollerball, which is like a kiddie-version of bowling. There were only four lanes, and actual bowling across the room, so we had that area all to ourselves. The kids loved it and were not so good at playing by the rules, but it was the happiest we had seen them all day. Gotta love Alaina's perpetual bum crack. Now that I think about it, this day was the first day that we stayed out for hours while in undies! Both kids did great!


Every time Alaina would throw the ball down the lane, she'd wait in anticipation with her hands on her head and tongue out. I thought it was so cute that she was taking the game so seriously.


...And here's where our Boondock's visit took a turn for the worse. The ball return shot a ball right at Alaina's wrist, and while she was fine, it was the end of Alaina's "bwacewet" from Tori that she's been wearing for months. She was a sad, sad little girl.


So we made our way over to the giant playplace. Both Connor and Alaina were having a blast...it is seriously the most fun jungle gym I have ever seen, and they were burning off some serious energy. I almost don't want to write down the rest, because I am seriously traumatized by the next bit of the story, but it's kind of funny...in a way. As Anthony and I were sitting on the benches, watching our kids play happily, I saw a little girl come out of the playplace with something on her leg. Her mom rushed over and whisked her away. I faint flicker of recognition went off in my brain, then in cinematic slow motion, I looked up to where Connor was playing. In my head, it was still slow-motion with my mental voice screaming, "NOOOOOOOOO!" as he looked at his hands in disgust, then wiped them on the structure and his clothes. Still hoping that I had interpretted that wrong, I told Anthony that I thought that little girl had pooped in there, just as a little boy came out with poop all over his socks. At this point, Alaina was at the top on the gym and couldn't get down, so I had to go in there. Sure enough, near the top, there was a pile o' poop, then smear marks from other kids unfortunately coming across it. I'm so bummed about it all. The kids were so sad that we had to leave, and I had been so excited to have found a place nearby that we could play in, but I just don't know if I can bring myself to go back. Anthony tries to reassure me by saying that any playplace we've ever been to has had poop and pee in it, but the image of that lone turd has been permanently etched into my brain.

What a day!