Much Needed Girl Time and Stuff

Tim and I highly value our respective "girl" and "guy" time.  We each take a couple weekends per year to get away and do something for our own guilt free sanity.  I spend a lot of my freebie weekends with my deary, Amy.  She lives in TX, so we rotate our visits.  She flew out last weekend and we ditched my Denver crew to hibernate in Vail.  It was bliss.  We ate, drank, sat by the pool, giggled like I hadn't giggled in months, hiked 3.5 miles, straight up (more on that at a later date) and chatted for hours and hours about everything and nothing at all.  We needed some good Amy-Gwen time.  Thanks for coming out friend.  

Amy took tons of pics on our deceivingly difficult hike, so I'll post some of those later with a more adequate explanation of the experience.  In the meantime, below is a hodgepodge of phone pics from the past month, worthy of being shared.  The first shots are from a trip up to Palisade I took with a crazy fun co-worker, Kaye.  We have a warehouse up there in dreamy Palisade, land of vineyard after vineyard and peach orchard after peach orchard.  We toured a peach processing plant, took tons of photos and videos, picked some fresher than fresh produce, drank some wine, bought some fun Palisadey farmers stand products, ate a delish dinner and relaxed.  Oh yeah...we worked too.  

 You just never know when you'll happen upon a giant plastic cow and a nudist colony.  

 The landscape up there is unbelievably stunning.  Like nothing I had seen along my treks up I70.  

Since my work partnered with Vail Cascade Hotel, I've been blessed to get up there for meetings.  Maria joined me for one of them.  We did all the same things Amy and I did during our beautious 24 hours away.  

These are two random, fun shots of my Dude in Chicago.  Mom V treated us to Dude's fanciest lunch to date.  They gave him ice cream to boot.  He thought he was hot shit in his high back leather chair.  Then we tracked down the funny statue man that dances like a robot for money.  Dude was absolutely entranced for 10 solid minutes until Dad drove by on Michigan Ave, forcing us to get in the car.  Chicago commuters aren't known for their patience.

Images from Dude's Big Day

You'll see below what a blessing it is having my friend Amy around.  I couldn't have asked for a cooler gift to commemorate Dude's first day of 1st grade.  This week...so far so good!  We moved on from doing cartwheels alone at recess to playing Star Wars with other boys, so that makes my heart happy.  We're getting in the swing and we're keeping our week nights simple to help with the adjustment.  We're proud of our little man for rolling in typical Dude fashion.

I like to think that we'll do these lovey-dovey mother son shots every year on the first day of school.  I know. We won't.  But I'll pretend for now.  

Amy and I were holding Dude's hands at the bus stop and he pointed out our awesome shadow.  Of course Amy managed to capture the awesomeness.  

Not sure what I'm doing here, but it looks like I'm having major reservations about letting him go.  Perhaps I did.  

This was his reaction to seeing us waiting for the bus at school.  

And there's this.  Some day he'll love me for posting it.  Our hope is that 1st grade will be about growth in all areas, including putting our finger up our nose.  Although, I did witness a little girl in his class doing some major digging and eating, so that calmed my nerves.  And grossed me out.  At least we're past the eating part - most of the time.

  This is the final goodbye blowing Mom and Amy a kiss.  Which is what induced my teary eyes.  

First Day of First

We've been ready to get back to school around here.  Well, this Mom has been for sure.  Squirt and Duder have had WAY too much time together this summer and were overdue for a split.  I don't know that Dude had much of an opinion about it.  But ready or not, Monday was the day. 1st grade baby.  Tim and I met with his new teacher last week and walked away floating on air about how awesome she seemed.  Calmed my nerves for sure.  We'll call our new teach Mrs. M. 

We mentally pumped him up on Monday morning, fed him a hearty breakfast, talked up all the awesomeness that would come with another year of learning and growing and hoped for the best.  Amy (my Texas Amy) was in town, so we acted like "my two moms" and put him on the big yellow bus.  We then hit Starbucks and dallied over to the school where we would meet him when he got off said bus.  (This is how things are done at our school).  All the parents from our bus stop were at school too, so I wasn't the only crazy one following the bus around like a parent stalker. 

Dude jumped into my arms after he got off the bus like he hadn't seen me in a week.  He promptly held both our hands with super hero force until the bell rang to start the outdoor assembly.  He lined up with his class and sat on the black pavement (which slowly reached boiling point).  His blond spiked head kept turning around and waving at us, a sure sign of his nervousness.  They all listened intently to Principal Ryan, wrote their names in chalk on the pavement and said the Pledge.  At this point Dude was melting - I could see it.  Luckily they got up and walked into their respective class rooms.  We held his hand during this transition as well, showed him his desk and school supplies, got him situated on the rug and blew him a kiss goodbye.  He smiled his bravest smile and blew a kiss right back. 

I chose to ignore the tears that welled up in my Mama eyes as I walked out.  Didn't expect that.  I also didn't expect him to be so nervous and shy, so that took me off guard.  It helped that the school day was about 2 minutes long that day and he got off the bus to greet me once again shortly after.  Squirt was at daycare, so we took the day and ran with it.  Riley joined us for Planes (pretty cute in a total Car like fashion) and played in the toy store by the theatre.  Dude and his little sis got along like a dream that night, so the separation proved effective. 

When Dude got home from that first 1/4 day of 1st grade, he shed some light on his initial reactions.  It went something like this....

"Mom you didn't tell me about taking the BUS home!  Principal Ryan had to help me cause I was confused.  (true story...bad Mom).  The emotion I felt today was very shy to the WHOLE school.  I was very scared at recess because my teacher wasn't there and I didn't want to be in trouble for going to the wrong recess.  I asked another teacher and she said it was the right recess, so I wiped my tears, walked around the playground and did a cartwheel.  You know, I'm just getting used to this 1st grade stuff Mom.  I'm soooo glad I live here with you.  Can we stop talking about 1st grade now?  My lasagna is getting colder and colder." 

Melt. My. Heart.  I wish I could follow him around like a Mom ghost some times.  This week I've had the urge more often than not.  Ask me next week and I'm sure I'll be over it.   Amy took some sure to be fabulous first day of school pictures for me as my camera baby was at Canon getting some TLC.  I'll post those later.  Here's praying for a fantastic year.     

Dreamy Camera Day

When we visited the Botanic Gardens in Chi-town, I was blessed with the dreamiest photog day one could ask for.  It was overcast and cool with perfectly ideal photo light.  The kind that almost takes the picture for you.  I strolled around with my then working (now broken) camera and bonded with the stunning floral masterpieces that were showing off that day.  Here's what my little eyes saw.

What to focus on...the pink beauty or that little green beauty about to become a pink beauty...

I'd say we have a rather creative God.  Amen?