The birthday weekend!

What a weekend of birthday fun... and chaos!  Our weekend began with the arrival of my parents, Nana and PawPaw on Friday evening.  Then first thing Sat morning we got up and headed to Denver.  We spent the morning at the Aquarium followed by lunch at Casa Bonita.  If you've ever seen the South Park episode on Casa Bonita... that it exactly!  It is a 52,000 sq ft. restaurant that is made to look like the city high lights of Mexico and Acapulco.  Complete with a man in a Gorilla suit that runs around, Black Bart's Cave, Mariachi Band and Cliff Divers.  Andrew is officially a CO kid.  Seems like every CO child goes to Casa Bonita for their birthday

Then on Sunday afternoon we had Andrew's Bowling birthday party!  AHHHHH!   A.k.a  CHAOS!  This is the first year we have had a kid centered birthday party.  Normally I pick a theme such as construction, cowboy, pirate...  then we invite some family friends.  Normally 2-4 families that John and I know well and have kids that Andrew know.  I serve some sort of food then we have cake and presents.  But this year it was all kids.  Luckily most of their parents stayed for the party, but there wasn't much time for John or I to socialize.  We were too busy heading up the bowling and making sure the six 4yr old boys were at least half way in control.  By the time we got done, I was exhausted!  But the kids had a blast.  Andrew even got 3 or 4 strikes!   He ended with a 134    :)

Here are some pics from our weekend adventure!  Enjoy!

    

Mam trying to show Andrew that the scuba mask wasn't scary!

It worked!  :)

The Tidal wave exibit includes a tunnel aquarium that you walk through.  This was a pic of the turtle swimming over us.

Morey Eel

They also have spots where you can crawl under into a bubble so it seems ike you are in the tank!

Sumatran Tigers at the Aquarium

Petting the sting Rays

     

Casa Bonita

Owen, the master bowler.  And I'm holding his little brother Derek.  Both were infants that I took care of at the daycare.  We have remained friends over the yrs.

Derek trying to bowl!  He did just as good as the 4 yrs olds

Jando, one of Andrew's friends from school

Dale and his mom Kris.  Our "practically family" friends.

Best friends!

Thomas, aka Mr. Energy!  He is Andrew's best friend at church.

CHOCLATE!!!!  :)

Sugar Rush

Presents!!!!

We followed all this fun with a Superbowl party.  YEAH STEELERS!!!!!  :)

Hope you all had a fun weekend too.  I think I'm going to to seep for 4 days to recover!  j/k

Our Very Merry Christmas!

Here is a little peak into the Young family christmas morning.  We had a wonderful christmas filled with traditions, family fun time, great friends and great food! The only thing that was missing was fresh snow.  I guess you could say we had a semi white christmas.  We still have some leftover half melted/froze again snow from a few weeks ago.

 Andrew really got into the traditions this year  Everything from the normal Santa stuff to the full celebration of Jesus' birthday including a birthday cake with candles.  He was so exciting to see that baby Jesus was in the manger on Christmas morning.

We hope all our friends and family were as blessed as we were this year.

Our Pug-Deer.  I don't think he was too fond of his Christmas gift.

My 3 Christmas boys!

Passing down the memories!  Mama's favorite games as a kid.  

That's Andrew's "oooh cool" face!  He has carried these notebooks around all day!

Again with the "ooh cool" face while getting all the "odds and ends" from his stocking!

FINALLY!!!!! What an amazing day!

This is a two part praise!  

Part 1: SNOW.  We finally got "real" snow, not just a dusting.  Normally snow starts by halloween here and NOv is normally the 2nd snowiest month of the year.  THis year I thin the official numbers for Nov were less then 1 inch.  But we made up for it today as you can see form the pics below.    Cont past the photos to read about Part 2

this is what it looked like when we got up Thur. morning.

This is the view at about 11am from Maria's house.  It cont. most of the day.  I think we ended up with around 7 inches.

Part 2:  It's actually hard for me to actually say this with confidence, ok here I go...

JOHN GOT THE FTE (full time employee)!!!!

yep you read it correctly.  It's official.  After waiting almost 3 yrs and after every date we've been given falling through, this time it's for real.  He got the official offer today.  I can hardly believe it.  I truly was beginning to think this was all just a sick joke and it would NEVER actually go through.  But it did.  Have I said how shocked, amazed and excited I am?  Ok, just checking!

Like I said in the title...  What an amazing day!  God is good...  scratch that God is GREAT!!!!!! As if I didn't already know that!  :)

Tae Bo

So Andrew and John decided to work out a little Sunday morning.  It was so cute watching Andrew try to keep up with the big boys.  Sorry it's sideways.  Hopefully you have a laptop that you can turn so you don't have to turn your head!  ")

First snow

We only got a half an inch, maybe.  Most of it melted as soon as it fell.  BUt it is still or first official SNOW!  :)

Star Wars

As you can see, we had a theme for our Halloween this year... Star Wars.  We all had a lot of fun, especially me, since my costume was "Mama the photographer".  John, and Ross weren't so lucky.  They got drug into the mess with Andrew, but they had fun, well, OK Ross didn't have fun at all, but it made for cute pics and fun entertainment.  Plus I think it helped Andrew score more candy, not that he needed more, in a little over an hour he racked up half a pillowcase full.  I felt like Santa as I walked through the neighborhood with the bag over my shoulder.

Earlier in the day we met up with the Obssuths and took al the kids to the Tiny Tot Halloween in Old Town, Fort Collins.  AHHHHH  It was a mad house.  Too chaotic for me.  But at least I got a good pic of Dale (Buz lightyear), Cole (giraffe), Maria (Tigger), and Andrew(Clone Trooper)

Pug Yoda I am.   Hate you I do!

Cutest little Clone Trooper.

Adams's Falls and Mr. Moose

Ok so it's been too long since I got my little booty in gear and posted anything.    I really don't have may great pics to post but I can at least give ya'll an update.

Where to begin...  how about Andrew and school...  yuck!  I can't really say that it is a little better, but his teacher still bugs me.  We had our parent teacher conference a couple of weeks ago. *Yeah the year is 25% over* anyway... It went fairly well.  John didn't really notice anything about Ms. T.  It's gotta be the "mom's 6th sense"  Plus I get to see her reg. day to day behavior.  LIke when the last little boy in Andrew's class to get picked up, was putting his papers into his bag and then saw his mom, he got so excited (normally dad picks him up) that he held onto his box a ran over to her.  Ms. T hollered out to him, "Jacob, no, you will finish your job."  He was heart broken.  And started crying, which her reply was "oh please..."  I heard him through his tears ask Ms. T, "I can't go home with my mom at all?"  Mom came over to him so Ms. T didn't respond.  Is it really so hard for her to say something more like, "Jacob lets finish your job first and then we can show Mommy all your hard work."  Instead of making him feel like he couldn't see his mom at all.  I know for many people there isn't much difference in that, but if you've worked with kids, or have your own, you know it can be black and white to a 3yr old..

As for the rest of the family... well good and bad news.  

The good news is that John's official full time job (FTE) was posted and he made the short list.  THat just means he was at the top of the applicants for his boss the chose from.  We should be getting the official offer soon.  His boss wants the start date to be by Nov 10th.  Finally!!!!  We've only been waiting for a position like this for 4 1/2 years and they've been actually grooming him for this exact position for over 3 yrs.  Over the years we've had alot of hurry up and wait.  The gov.'s specialty.

Now the for the bad part, I almost broke my hand.  And it wasn't even while doing anything fun.  I simply slammed my knuckle into the couch.  Not on purpose of course.  I thought at first I just popped my knuckle.  But the next morning I woke up and most of my hand was swollen.  What little movement I had the first night was gone.  We had it checked out and the x-ray didn't show a fracture, but there was quite a bit of soft tissue swelling which is what was causing the pain.  I had to wear a splint for what seemed like forever, really only a week or so.    I'm glad to say it's pretty much back to normal.  I was even able to put my wedding ring back on last night.

As for my job, things are still going good.  Maria is growing like a weed.  She now holds her own bottle, sits up on her own, and is just days from crawling.  Then the fun will really begin.

We had a ton of fun this summer, from several trips to the zoo (which I forgot my camera each time) to camping out in Estes and enjoy the Colorado wildlife.

My parents brought their pop up out here and we joined them for Labor day weekend in the mountians at Estes Park.  The night beofre we got there they had a bear wondering around in the tent camp area, a few days after we got there a cow elk and her calf came wondering up about 30 yrds from the pop ups.  And on the las night we had 6 white tails does and a young buck come with in 20 ft from out pop up.  But I must say the wildlife highlight was as we were driving to Grand Lake for the day.  There were a ton of cars pulled over which normally means elk.  I've seen about as many elk as I have white tails in my life now, so unless they are buggleing, I'm not that interested.  But this was no elk.  It was a bull.  A bull MOOSE!  yep I got to see my first moose.  It was awesome.  Unfortunatly he never fully came out of the brush so the pictures weren't that clear, but it's enough that you can his his nice rack and know it was the real thing.

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful summer, is enjoying fall, and is getting ready for thanksgiving and christmas.  Yep I said it, Christmas.  You know it's only 61 days away.  Or for us, it's basically 42 days way, since we will be celebrating Christmas in MO Dec 6th-14th.  Hopefully we will get to catch up with most everyone.

I'll try to post some fall/halloween pics in a couple of weeks.

I will leave you with a few pics from our hike along the river to Adam's Falls in Grand Lake and the Moose.