Out trip to AZ (a little late) & RATS!

Here are some pictures from our quick trip to AZ in March. We drove there with our nieces who had stayed with us previous to the trip, so we had a full car, but everyone was a good sport (except maybe Colton - who screamed bloody murder for about an hour and half straight soon after leaving at 4 in the morning! - sorry Daryn & Alyxe). Anyway we drove down so that the boys (Nate, my brothers and my dad) could go on a golf excursion for a few days to Sedona, which had been given as a gift at Christmas. We were able to spend a day or so all together though before they left.
Here is a picture of Lexi & Tyler having gramma & grandad wrapped around their little fingers :) They're both having their arm/ back tickled...a favorite pastime inherited from their mom!

Colton enjoying some time with Gramma Suzie and a whole load of beanie babies. I just love his cheesy grin in this pic!

Colton with his "betrothed", once again, Maddy. I think it's so cute she's so enthusiastic in this picture and Colton's giving her this look as if to say "Take a chill pill, lady!"

This is Colton with his new best friend the Bingo dog (that you saw in the video from a previous post).

Mother and daughter racing around the pool on those super cool "wiggle cars" (I don't really know what they're called, but they're fun!)

On our last night there, my parents took us to Amazing Jakes (which for those of you who are from the Springs is a mix between Mr. Biggs and IT'Z). The kids had a blast - most especially with the bumper cars!! Tyler was like this driving maniac with a wicked laugh, it was so funny to watch.

Gotta love the tea cups!! You won't be finding me on that ride any time soon (I'm feeling woozy just thinking about the flashbacks).

Colton and Grandad having a ball!

OK, so from the title you might have wondered where the RATS fit in....well on our first day there my brother Ben and his family brought over 2 of their pet rats because they were sick (one had heart issues) and didn't want to leave them alone. Well I don't know about most of you, but I get a little squeamish around rats mostly due to their creepy tails. I was sooon educated on them and realized these pet rats weren't anything like the stereotype I had in mind. So here's my brother with their rat Eileen (named after my late grandmother - who is about the sweetest lady you could ever meet, farthest from a "rat" you could get) grooming him.

After seeing this and hearing it was a somewhat typical routine for the rat, I was totally grossed out! But again, I began to understand that this rat is like the "alpha female", very motherly and considers my brother Ben one of her own, I guess, and so out of an act of love she likes to groom the inside of my brother's mouth. I asked how he could stand it, and he said if you try to yank her out her claws will do some major damage as you can imagine. Anyway they are actually very clean animals and very loving. So after "warming up" to the rats a bit, we all took turns petting them (some still rather timidly - like myself) etc.

Here's Aunt Jamie introducing the rat to the kids.

Even Colton got in on the action, although I don't think he was overly excited!



Here's Eileen (atleast I think that's the one) exploring my mom.

And finally, here's me, trying to be a good sport with the rat. It was hilarious because the rat quickly crawled inside my shirt and almost instantly fell asleep! It actually took a nap in my shirt, snoozing away for like 10 minutes. It was quite warm and cuddly, yet still I was a little worried about how well "potty-trained" it was, so-to-speak. If you can look closely at the tag of my shirt, you'll see it says "ANXIETY".... fitting I thought for this particular situation!! Anyway, I now have been enlightened to the sweeter side of rats and no longer find them quite as creepy, although I don't think you'll be finding one in my mouth anytime soon!

Overall, it was short trip, but we had a great time seeing our family and good friends. Hopefully next time Colton will be able to handle the trip a little better.

Soccer mom, sneaky baby & Gleamin' Booty!

All I heard about for about a week from Lexi was "Gleamin' Booty"! At first, it was rather alarming coming out of her mouth, but then I soon realized her class was studying pirates all week. It made a little more sense then, although I'm still a little confused WHY they were studying pirates to begin with. Anyway here's our little pirate with all the accessories, we're so proud! AARRRGH!!!

Now that Colton is quite mobile he quickly gets himself into all these random lil' cubbies all over the house. Here's a just a couple I found him in.

Here's Colton at his 11-month mark, standing for a few seconds longer now and gradually sitting down by himself.

Colton practicing his stair-climbing skills at 11 months. He's no master yet (as my friend Rochelle found out), but he's getting there.

I caught him in mid-blink and I just thought he looked funny, like he's about to pass out.

OK, so like I mentioned before I've graduated into "Soccer Mom" status now with both Tyler and Lexi playing. It's really fun because they're on the same team which won't happen again I'm sure. This is them warming up before their first game. They missed all 6 practices before this due to weather or us being out of town, so I was quite anxious to see how they'd do being thrown into a game right away and never having played. They had lots of fun!

That's Tyler in front of the coach, you can often find him following her like a lost puppy. It's interesting, we thought Tyler would be rather aggressive with playing and a bit of a natural because he's always been pretty physically coordinated, and we thought Lexi might be a little more hesitant and maybe struggle a bit. We now see it's totally the opposite, Lexi is one of the stars of the team and is quite aggressive, always getting in there with the other team and trying to steal the ball. Tyler tries to listen really well to the coah, but is a little confused and a bit hesitant. They're both having a blast though.
I'll have to get some more video of their games because they are truly out of America's funniest videos. There are a few kids on their team that have a whole LOTTA energy and a have a hard time focusing, let's say..... They'll kick the ball out of bounds and just keep going like Forrest Gump. The coach tries to run them down and the kid is 3 fields over at this point, ziggin' and zaggin' all over the place. The coach is sooo much fun and great with kids, so the kid keeps running, thinking the coah is playing tag with them. Anyway, it's more for the experience obviously and not too high-pressure. Nate used to be a soccer star when he was a kid, so he truly enjoys watching them play and seeing their potential. He does have a hard time keeping silent on the sidelines though, as do I. We'll get used to it!

Some fun in March

Here are some pictures and videos from March (minus out trip to AZ - which will come later). It was a good month with strangely gorgeous weather with the exception of a couple days of snow. One storm actually left us with really fun snow to play in during spring break- ironic, unless you live in Colorado Springs. This was the first time of the season we were able to do this- so we were really excited! Another fun thing that happened in March was that our nieces Daryn and Alyxe flew out to stay with us (all by themselves). It was so nice to have them here, the kids absolutely LOVED it! Daryn and Alyxe were a big help with the kids too. They were also very patient since our schedule didn't allow a lot of time to explore and do a lot of fun things, but we did manage to have some fun:) I don't have any pictures b/c I took them with my cell phone and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to download them. Anyway, here's the fun in the snow....The kids sledding down our street.

Notice their faces are really red from trying to eat all the snow!

All bundled up!

Here's Colton on his 10 month birthday :) getting comfortable with standing while holding onto something.

Colton with his lil' friend Laraleigh, "Hey mom, look what we can do!"

Colton in jail, this was Colton when waking up from a nap, I love his expression! Colton standing by himself for a few split seconds at 10 mos.

10 mos.....just like his face :)

Our beautiful, messy baby boy

Baby's got BLING! This was after having dinner with a few friends and their families. The beads was either the doing of a dad or sibling, not me.

Our handsome lil' men! This is about as close as I have to matching outfits for the boys.

This was a baby crawling contest with not a lot of action at our friends' son, Max's 1st b-day party. If you notice the baby girl (whose like months younger than the rest of the babies) is taking the dramatic lead, then at the last second Colton dashed over the finish line first after we bribed him with candy or something like that :) So funny.

The kids look like they're having a whole lotta fun, ay? Colton's got his precious pouty face on and Max (the birthday boy) has just about had it with all the partying. It's always such an adventure trying to take pictures of a group of babies!

Here's a video (my first try in downloading video on the blog) of the dads trying to change the babies' diapers and get them dressed while blindfolded at the party. Please excuse te brief nudity! Thanks Mel for the fun time and cute games.

This lil' video is of Colton and his new best friend, Bingo dog (thanks Gramma and Grandad). He gets sooo into it and has started dancing a lot now because of it. Hope you enjoy...

I was tagged...

Ok, so apparently Sarah tagged me a while ago but I just saw it, so.... here it is. The 6th picture in my 6th folder... Lexi had just turned 3 and Tyler 1. Cutie-patooties, right?! I love Lexi's crazy hair, it used to be sooo unruly (wait it still is)! Do you love the red-eye? OK, so now I tag 6 more people and you're supposed to do the same thing (6th picture in your 6th folder), and the lucky people are.... Callie, Rochelle, Heidi, Trish, Shannon & Kristen..and GO!!!