Jackson James

I still refer to my younger brother as my "little bro" and just recently came to the realization that he's just not so little.  In fact, he's a 35 year old man who recently became a father.  The "little" needs to go away I guess. He's a dad now, which brings so much joy to our family.  Little Jackson James entered the world earlier this month - the most astonishingly beautiful little bundle you can imagine. Becky was a rock star throughout her pregnancy and delivery and they're doing amazingly well as a new family of three. I won't have the opportunity to meet the little monkey until this summer, which is painful. Meet Jackson.

 Be still my Auntie heart.

    

Celebrating Maria

We take neighbor relationships with us whenever we move.  And we move a lot, so we carry a long list of people from house to house.  One of our most precious longstanding neighbor ties is with the Sheas.  They lived across from us at our last house for 8 years.  We watched our kids grow up together, shared daily life, meals, ingredients, stories, tears, walked through loss and birth and everything in between.  It was rather heartbreaking when they moved just a mile away, but we followed in their footsteps shortly after. We've managed to stay in community, despite the lack of daily encounters.  Maria recently had a significant birthday so 2 other ex neighborhood mama friends I organized a surprise birthday celebration for her.  We set up our dining room table on the back patio and did our very best to make her feel like a princess for the night.  I think we succeeded.

Cheers Maria.  Happy happy birthday girl.

 All previous neighborhood lovelies.  God places us right where we wants us.  And I reap the benefit of amazing women like this as a result.  

 

Random April Goodness

The Magical Annual Enlighten Foundation luncheon.  We're all treated like queens and walk away feeling like we can change the world.  

 Sweet, strong Lisa.  

 We bought a pick up.  Why?  Because of days like the one pictured above.  And because Tim loves to lend a helping hand using his vehicles.  And because it will tow his race car.  All great reasons and I kinda love driving a truck.  

 If you can read this, good for your eyes, but it's an electronic conversation Dude had with a customer service rep at the National Wildlife Federation.  He wanted to inform them that the Puffin we adopted for his birthday had been given a formal name, Fire Forest.  They chatted about random facts about Puffins and she promised to let the workers know what his Puffin's name is.  I can't make this shit up people.

 Spring Break snow storms.  It's Colorado and that's all I can say about 18 inches of white stuff after 3 weeks of 70 degree sunshine.  

This precious babe warms my heart.  I live vicariously through her baby self. 

Glorious Easter

We've spent the last couple Easters with our Glassmans.  This year followed that tradition, with the addition of more lovely people we rather adore.  My sweet Lisa, Bill and their 3 growing boys, Lisa's lovable mama Cindy, and our beautiful sister Steph and her friend Mike joined the group this year.  It was a hodgepodge of amazing folk that brought a smile to my heart.  I soak in the chance to design a dining table that will allow guest to feel special and loved and this was no exception.  I salivated over burlap, flower filled sticks, name tags, Easter printables...We cooked a number of pork dishes and the side dishes were more than adequately filled in by our guests.  The snow was starting to melt and we were blessed to sit in the glorious sunshine with Randy's famous (to me) coffee creations in hand.  Cindy blessed us with a poetic prayer, as I knew she would.  She's a biblically grounded woman who amazes me every time she speaks of God's grace.  And that's what Easter speaks to after all.  Grace, community, dining on the body and the blood, and celebrating the reality of life everlasting.  Amen to that.

Leading up to Easter, the kids and I decided to get crafty (doesn't happen often) and make little satchels of Easter love for neighbors and special peeps who need a smile.  They turned out sweet as can be.

Easter Day...We do a color coded Easter Egg Hunt with our four kiddos before the food portion commences.  Little Hayes was able to partake this year.  

 Don't laugh at my puppy.  We needed to near shave him and he's just now coming out of his state of embarrassment.  

    

Rewind to Best Birthday Party Ever

Based on the success of this year's birthday party for the Dude, we're going to plan all future parties two days before it's go time.  We had this dreamy museum party planned for Dude and a slew of his friends and two days before the party realized that our museum membership, a generous gift from Tim's employer, was not quite at the gift level that it used to be.  The cost of said party was not in the cards, so we racked our brains for a brilliant Plan B.

Enter, STAR WARS WHO DUNNIT SCAVENGER HUNT.  We clumsily made this up as we went, but it worked like a charm.  The kids were assigned a character and I wrote a script for a mystery they needed to solve.  WHO FROZE Luke Skywalker (Dude) to stay 8 forever????  We took pictures of the clue location spots and cut them into puzzles.  As they assembled the puzzles, each one pointed to the next clue location. By the end, they knew who the culprit was - Princess Leah.  A shocker, I know.  She just didn't want her brother to get older.  The motives were really quite pure.  We ended with some air hockey and a ridiculous amount of light saber fighting and tackling.  Gotta love a basement you can care less about.

The culprits...

This cake has a sweet little story behind it.  We ordered this at King Soopers.  As Dude asked the nice woman to add "swirls" around the picture, she said, "Oh! I have just the thing" and hauled out a box of candy "squirrels." I cracked up at the irony that they actually carry candied squirrels, she cracked up at the misunderstanding and Rylan just showed genuine concern that she did NOT place squirrels on his robot cake. Made my day.

 The first puzzle piece was handed to each team of two.

 

 Our old neighborhood little library - location #1

 Peabody (our school) playground - location #3 (the McCabe house was #2)

 Starbucks - Location #4

 The baristas had custom made steamer cups ready for the party goers.  They were good sports with my fanaticism.  

 Final location was Crazy 8 - they were NOT troopers.

 Birthday morning pancakes from our very best breakfast chef.  

 Poor kid.  His mom loves a good (or even mediocre book), so he's gifted with my passion.  Luckily he adores the written word as much as I do.

    His big gift, combo from grandparents and us...VEX IQ.  The ultimate in robotics.  He's already mastered it.  So there's that.