I remembered

So summer is officially in full swing here in beautiful Colorado. We had a long cold spring, but the heat is on now.....guess we'll get to see how well those solar panels are working and if they are gonna save us some big bucks on the old electricity bill.

So let's see, what has happened since the last post...... We drove back to St. Louis at the end of May for a wedding. Chris' brother David and his lovely bride Beth tied the knot. A good time was had by all. I regret not fitting in a little euchre with my arch rival Uncle Tom and his side-kick Stoneface(Chris' dad)........it's game on the next time I visit! Mia managed to stick her finger in David and Beth's wedding cake before the official cake cutting with pictures happened. Sorry about that guys - but honestly, after having had a generous piece of that wedding cake, I have to say I don't blame her for diving in. That was probably the best wedding cake I have ever had. Kudos!

I also flew back to Ohio to visit with my dad and grandma. They are both in the same nursing home for broken hips. Dad has good days and bad days. He has a slow recovery due to diabetes. I am hoping he will continue to get stronger. My grandma, who is 95 years old, seems to be doing a bit better than my dad. The staff seems to think that she may be a candidtate for assissted living. Please keep them both in your thoughts....they need all the positive energy that they can get. And thanks to my fabulous Uncle Jo for handling the situation single handedly. I did get to see a few old friends during my visit. It was good to catch up with everyone from Shadyside. Also a big thanks to my friend Sharon and her family for letting me stay at their house and drive their car around on my trip. You guys are the best.

My friend Deni came out for a visit about 2 weeks ago. I took took some desperately needed time off at work and Deni and I did whatever we wanted for a week. We even managed to fit in a trip to Santa Fe with 2 other friends, Reynee and Andrea. I got a couple of cool new things on the trip. It was great to be able to relax a little and have some girlie time.

Last weekend for Father's Day we took the kids to a new park. Then, we drove around a huge community garage sale and scored some sweet new big kids bikes for Wes and Mia. one of the bikes needed a new tire. Chris just fixed that and we haven't had a chance to get them on the bikes yet, but I'll have to snap some pics when we do. I don't anticipate things to go that smoothly for Wes. You see, right after we bought the bikes we went to a sporting store to get helmets. They had a big row of bikes set up, and after circling them for a few minutes, the kids both hopped up on a couple of them. Mia picked a cute little pink princess bike and drove it around the store pretty successfully. Wes, on the other hand, climbs up on a big 16 " bike. He's all perched up there as happy as a lark.......and then you guessed it.......without even pedeling the bike, falls off of it and gives himself a big scratch next to his eye and a soon to be bruise. I'm like really?? We're not even riding the darn thing yet and you manage to pile it up right here in the store. Maybe I need to get a big roll of bubble wrap for him and mummifly him up before we send him out on it.

So about the title......no, it's not about remembering to finally post a blog. As many of you read last year about this time, Chris claims I forgot our wedding anniversary. I still say technically I didn't, but we will never agree on the truth of the story. Anyways, this year I was sure to remember.....I even had the card several days in advance. My friend Joleen came over last night to watch the kids for us and we went out for a big fancy dinner. Happy 6 years babe.

When I grow up....

So, the cutest thing happend last week. Every day on the way to and from the kid's daycare, we drive past this Walgreens that is being constructed. Every day we comment on the new building and take notice of what has changed since the last time we saw it. The other day as we were driving home Wes noticed that some of the windows were installed. From time to time the kids play the old "when I grow up" game and name all of the typical stuff that they would like to be.....fireman, trashman, doctor, etc. Well after seeing the guy putting in the shiney windows at the Walreen's, Wes declared that when he grows up he wants to put windows in buildings. And then the cute part happened.....after a short pause, Mia says "mom, when I grow up I want help Wes put up windows so he wont be lonley at work." How cute is that??

Happy Easter

Wow, has it really been 3 months since the last blog entry?? I've been catching a lot of heat about it recently so I thought it was time to get on here and do the deed.

So what's been happening to the Colorado Tepen's for the past few months? Well, we had an extremely mild winter out here this year. Besides the last blog post, I think we only had measureable snow like one or two other times. The mountains on the other hand have had a record snowfall season. Crazy how that works out here.

Spring has been on the cool side so far. In fact, the Easter bunny had to make an early visit this year for the egg hunt as we are actually expecting snow tonight - yikes! Wes and Mia had a pretty good time finding eggs in the backyard this afternoon. Although they have been going through a pretty rough time in the behavior department recently. And they were in rare form when they got up from nap today. Almost lost the couple of new things that the Easter bunny brought them because of the fighting. So my question is, who the heck named the "two's" as being so "terrible". I mean, the two's were a breeze for us.......the three's on the other hand........I don't even know what to say about the three's. It's like one minute they are laughing and having a great time and saying funny things, and the next they are hitting each other and screaming and crying. I'm sure all of you out there with kids can relate......just picture those moments with 2 kids at exactly the same age......just trying to catch a little sympathy here.

Wes and Mia have been really making leaps in the vocabulary department. A couple of weeks ago we enrolled them in a phonics program through their daycare. They have lots of 1 on 1 time with their teacher and they are learning all the sounds that the letters make. They are especially good at recognizing other words that have any of the letters of their names in it.

The kiddos have been pretty healthy this year. We had a short bout of the throw up's in December, and then nothing until last week when they decided it would be fun to have Strep throat. Chris and I managed to avoid it, and they are feeling back to normal now thank goodness.
Chris and I have been doing pretty good too. Chris has been trying to finish up the bar facing for a few weeks now. He is almost ready to hammer the new facing in place and then I'll be able to get down there and stain it. We will post final pics of the basement once it is all finished. It has turned out even better than I had thought so far.

Well, I'll put a few pics on now and I promise to try and not let the blog go for so long with out a new post. Happy Easter everyone!

Wes and Mia after the hunt.

Wes' new dump truck and Mia's new fairy dress from Grandma and GrandpaTepen.

Police woman Mia and Fireman Wes to the rescue!

Let There Be Snowmen!

About a week ago we got our first measurable snowfall here in Denver. I know, you say "what! Denver hasn't had any snow yet?? Don't you get tons of snow out there!?" The answer is, no, we do not get a ton of snow in Denver. The mountains on the other hand usually get hammered with storms and we rarely get any in town. We had one little snow during the first week of November, and until last week, we seriously have had exactly zero snowfall here in town. Anyways, the kids were sooo excited because they desperately wanted to make a snowman after seeing "Frosty the Snowman" for the first time. Unfortunately, the kids were only able to help do a little shoveling before heading back indoors. The temps were in the single didgets and the wind was really blowing hard, so it was just too darn cold for them to be outside for that long. A few days after the snow storm the temps finally got up in the 30's, so Chris bundled up the kiddos and headed out to the front yard to craft our first snowman. Wes and Mia decided that a 3 ball snowman was lame and that only cool snowmen were constructed of 4 snowballs. I had just enough time to snap a few photos of the snowman before Wes and Mia went all Hannibal Lecter on him.....I think Mia started by eating his nose, then Wes started punching him and in about 30 seconds our cool snowman had been mowed down to a measly blob. Poor snowman! I guess we will have another chance to make more snowmen as we are getting another storm here today. It has been snowing all morning and is very cold. Anyways, enjoy the photos!

Yo Ho Ho I need a bottle of Rum

Well, we are halfway through our first Christmas where the kids actually realize everything about Santa, presents, good food and high alcohol content beverages. We slept in an extra hour this morning until 5:30, got out of bed and took showers to prepare us for the rest of the day. Or did we take showers because Diane had a bad case of stink toe, not really sure. We headed downstairs to see what Santa brought. The stockings were no longer hung by the chimney with care, they were now sitting on the coffee table because there was too much stuff and they were too heavy. Underneath the tree was overflowing with presents. The reason for this will have to fall on the Curnes family. There were more presents from them than everyone else combined. I'm thinkin Sharon went on one of her no taste beer binges (she likes to drink Michelob Ultra, ick), and forgot that she already sent two boxes of stuff to turn around and send two more.

The kids were running around like terrors, not listening, throwing stuff, wrestling each other, stealing each others presents, pushing each others buttons, so same as any other day. They settled down to actually eat some breakfast and lunch though. Wes climbed up onto the countertop so he could get a piece of chocolate off the bar. Went down for nap around noon and sat up there chit chatting for half hour before I sent the boss up to take care of bizness...and here we are...bloggin' it.

Wanted to thank my mom for the box of dirt. It seems that whenever diane says she wants something, my mom tends to get it as a present for both of us. Still refusing to let diane have the pink pair of slippers I got for my last birthday...(just kidding, they were red with flowers on em.) lol. She actually got us a fancy tomato planter kit, included dirt....never have had any luck growing decent tomatoes out here, will be nice if this thingamajimmydoohickeytomatogrowy device works. Sad when you have to have good tomatoes imported in from MO. Ok, my mom didnt really get me slippers for my bday....it was a pair of earrings.

Also thanks to everyone for all the presents, cards, gift cards and sanity checks. We are all doing great and having a nice holiday season.

For those of you that dont know, I was able to find a job and will be starting Jan 10. Oh yeah, you might not have heard, URS more or less told me to go home and not come back unless I had billable work to charge to about three weeks ago. It was a nice thank you for almost 13 years of hard work, especially around Christmas....dont let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. Such friendly folks they are....well actually, some of them actually are.

Ok, Ok, Ok, my mom didnt get earrings for my bday this year. It was something I could use...Such a sweet mother. My very favorite mother.

Getting ready for bbq season coming up....dehydrating some habenero and jalapeno peppers as we speak...working on 2.5 lbs of the green ones and half pound of the orange ones. Once they are dry I will grind them up into a powder and now be able to spice things up around here.

We got a new video camera for Christmas. We should be able to post some vids once I get it all figured out. Gotta go better than Diane and her webcam this morning. Spent half an hour trying to figure out why she couldnt connect with her friend Deni. Turns out she started the wrong program or something...but finally got it up and running...then Charlie says I just see some fat guy there.....I turned around thinking Santa was behind me. He must have just left....

Gosh, what else is new around here...had a new pigeon house built on the roof of the house. It is actually solar panels, but the pigeons have decided to make it their new home. Gonna put a scope on my pellet gun so I quit missing them damn things. Driveway is covered in their crap. Used to not miss from the back deck, cant hit them for anything yesterday.

And to Grandma Gondira, your grandchildren are wondering why you arent talking to them. Life is too short to hold grudges, and besides, what did they do to you. Small minds, small minds and I'm not talking about the kids either. If you sit and think about what you are doing, I can guarantee that you will regret it later in life. You only have one real family, it is a shame you are throwing it all away.




Wes and his twin American Girl boy doll. No, the clothes didnt stay on long. Gotta see what is under there. He says thank you Grandma T.

















Mom combed Mia's hair before she headed downstairs for the morning...is that a Christmas to be had or what? Looks like a little Christmas Troll. Be glad she still has her pants on cuz they werent for long after this pic was taken.








Mia in her dressup clothes she got from us. The ceptor is no more though, took one wack on the table from Wes to destroy it.


















Picture with Santa. Wes wouldnt sit on his lap and we were lucky to get him to stand next to him. They both wanted clothes from him. Kept on asking, where are the reindeer....mmm taste like chicken.

Cupcakes