Camping!



This was a first for our little family!  Jeremy didn't do a whole lot of camping growing up, but my family did and it's been something that I've really wanted to do for a while.  We were very blessed when another family in our church told us back in March that they were planning to reserve a cabin for their family (of seven) and wondered if we would like to join them and get a cabin for ourselves. We jumped at the chance and I'm so excited we did!  Our friends, the Becks, have five kids and the youngest three are within a few months of our three, only they have two girls to our two boys and then a boy to our girl.  :)  They have been camping most of their lives and go often throughout the summer and had accumulate enough camping gear that they had some to share with us.  Here is Derek with the fish Kyle caught within five minutes of casting the first morning! 

 Bryce (and Kyle) LOVED running around outdoors, eating meals outside and getting very dirty. We don't have too many big sticks around our place, so the boys would often find the biggest one they could carry and wave them around, smacking the ground and trees and being completely and utterly "boy".

 The Becks brought a canoe they had borrowed and Candice and I had a fun time taking the kids around the lake. (The Becks two oldest, boys, love to fish and they spent a fair amount of time in the middle of the lake with their dad fishing from the canoe.)  Kyle was so excited to go until he was handed a life jacket and told that if he fell into the water he needed to roll onto his back.  He looked at me as if he was saying, "Are you kidding me, Mom?" Needless to say, just Bryce and the girls hopped in for rides.  The water was beautiful.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but you could see clear down to the bottom along the edges of the lake where it was about 12-15ft. deep.

 It wouldn't be a camping trip, or any trip for that matter, if no one has a meltdown at some point. Abby took care of it for us this trip.  She did extremely well though, with this being the only instance where she really cried.  It was great having the cabins because when the babies needed a nap, we set them up in their pak n' plays and closed the door so they could have quiet while the rest of the kids could play outside.

 Poor Jeremy has allergies that are pretty rough this time of the year.  It usually lasts until the first hard freeze, but he has found some relief in the mountains in the past.  It was not so this trip and we actually left camp to drive the almost 20 miles into Eagle to get him some meds. so he could get some relief.  He really enjoyed himself and mentioned future camping trips!

The Becks traditionally make hot chocolate for everyone in the morning to help fight off the chill.  Bryce was so proud to have his own cup of "coffee" as he called it and proudly posed for Daddy. He kept commenting about how good it was and that it wasn't too hot for him. :)

 Here are some of the kids at breakfast the first morning, eating their pancakes. It's amazing what a little bit of fresh air does to the kids appetite!

 Here is our cabin. It was divided into two rooms inside, the front room holding a stove for heat, a table and benches and quite a few shelves to put things. The back room held two sets of bunks, one with twin beds and the other had a full on the bottom with a queen on top. I was so glad they had some good curtains and that the trees were all around to block the morning sun.  The kids actually slept in until 7:30 each morning!

 I snapped this picture just before we left after our wonderful weekend. The boys had such fun and played so well together. You can tell how much they really enjoyed each other in this picture! And how dirty they were when we left!

End of summer fun!

Summer is quickly coming to a close around our house with the start of school and all the activities that come with it. (I don't think the weather has gotten the memo about summer winding down, the temperatures around here have been consistently in the mid-90s.)  On Jeremy's last day of summer camp, his group was scheduled to swim at our local rec. center, so I packed up all the kids to join them!  I can't take them by myself, since they only allow two non-swimming kids to one adult.  Here's my sweet family in the kid-friendly area. 

 Abby loves the water. She will splash and laugh and want to stay in until she starts shaking and her lips turn blue. The boys really enjoy playing in the water and I'm hoping throughout the winter they can possibly do some swim lessons so next summer we can enjoy the pools even more. 

 My little girl is a great eater!  She will consistently eat as much as her 3 1/2yr. old brother, Bryce. (It's not to hard to do, especially considering Bryce is just now weighing in at a whopping 25lbs!) Here she is after enjoying some ravioli we had for dinner one night.  I usually put a bib on her, but neglected to this particular night... not that it would have helped much.  After this meal, she went directly into the sink for a bath!

 This is the first time I have attempted a garden since being away from home.  I loved helping my mom in the garden growing up.  When we got married, we lived in the apartment and I didn't have anywhere to plant things.  When we moved to our current house, I hoped to be able to start one, but with moving and then the next summer being very pregnant, this is the first I've been able to do it.  It's not the easiest to maintain since it is located a little ways down the road from our house (at the end of the dirt road).  I only planted a few tomatoes, cucumbers, a zucchini, a squash and some pumpkins, since I wasn't sure how successful the garden would be. So far things are doing well, but it is hard to keep everything from shrivelling up in CO!

 The boys started school last week.  Kyle is attending prekindergarten four mornings a week, while Bryce goes to preschool three mornings a week. They really enjoy going for the most part, and it is nice to have a few hours to spend one-on-one with Abby.

 After we picked the boys up from school (Jeremy didn't have to start until the next day) we took our kids to the local amusement park.  Jeremy goes with his summer camp kids at least twice a week, so he had a season pass. Elitchs had some kid of deal on Tuesdays and we were able to go for free, which I was really glad for because the kids were only able to ride four rides in the two hours we were there.  It was a hot day (mid-90s), but Abby managed to stay happy!

 Here is daddy and his boys on one of the rides.  I'm not sure why, but they only had a few attendants working the kids rides.  They would work one ride while the another one sat empty with a full line of kids, then they would shut down the ride they just ran and go work another one.  It made for a lot of waiting around in the hot sun, but the boys did pretty well.

 Josh and Kristina were able to join us for the day and all the kids got to ride the boat together.  This was the last ride they did, you can see Kyle looks like he is done in this picture. We had a great time together as a family and made some good memories! 

Jason and Lauren are going away...

So we threw them a party! Jason is enlisting in the Navy and will be heading off to bootcamp towards the end of September. After he completes that, he will be going to Charleston to study in the Navy's nuclear program and at that point Lauren will leave to join him. Originally his date to leave was just a few days after the party, but due to a clerical error, he gets to spend a few more weeks with us.  There were four generations of Laird/Polsons present at the party, one of the blessings of living so close to family...

Jeremy helped get everyone into the mood and downloaded "Anchors Away" onto his ipod to play as people came into the house. We probably heard the Navy fight song about one-hundred times that evening.  Here he is saluting the camera before we cut into the cake.

 Here are most of the nephews and Abby.  Tara was sleeping upstairs, but Collin (in the red shirt) was representing for Josh and Kristina's family.  Titus (in the blue) is the son of Luke, a good family friend and the bass player in the guys former band.  There were several other kids that came to the party and they spent the entire evening running around the backyard and playing really well together. My boys slept especially well later that night!

 We set up a table out front with a memory book and an address book for people to fill out.  Address books are quickly becoming antiquated in our digital age, I had to run to several stores before I could finally find one! Lauren was really excited to collect addresses in hopes of being able to send out Christmas cards and updates to people. If you are interested in them having your address, email it to me and I'll make sure they get it!

 We started out with what seemed like a lot of food, but after four-hours of party and at least 50 or 60 people, several of which were hungry teenagers, all we were left with was a few cut-up veggies. Several people brought Jason cards and going-away presents.  Luke even got him the game of Battleship!

 We love you guys and will definitely miss you!!

Family of Five

Things have been busy around the Polson household for the last eight months... has it really been eight months since you've heard from us? People ask how life is with three kids. My response is, "It's great! Not really difficult, you just have less time to do things." We love being a family of five and Abby has brought so much joy into our lives! Here is a little bit of what has been happening in our lives recently...

We got a new computer just after Christmas (which we spent in NY again, three days in the car there... three days in the car back) and we didn't switch over any of our picture files so my pictures only go as far back as March. I know that I'm missing a few months where I just didn't take any pictures, poor Abby will be like many other third-born children, there just aren't a lot of pictures of her. I'm hoping that trend won't continue, especially since Jer replaced our small camera for Mother's Day. The picture above is our family of five on a trip to the mountains at the end of May. All of Jeremy's immediate family went up to Carbondale to a house for several days and we hired a photographer to take pictures, since it was the last time we would all be together for a while.

Here are Bryce and Abby back in March. Her hair was finally long enough for me to get a bow into it! She has really fine hair just like Bryce, so I have a feeling it is going to be a few years until I can do much else with it.

We celebrated Bryce's third birthday in March and my parents got him his first bike. As you can see, he is so excited to be learning how to ride...

On our way home from Carbondale in May we stopped by the Maroon Bells, just outside of Aspen. There was still quite a bit of snow, so we weren't able to do any hiking, but it was beautiful! Most areas of the mountains had record snowfall this past season and when we drove over Independence Pass the snow was still higher than the roof of our car.

My three wonderful kids. Abby started crawling at the end of June and now that she is mobile she loves to be in the middle of whatever the boys are doing. Her brothers are definitely her favorite people. No one can get Abby laughing like her two brothers and when they come into the room her face lights up and she often squeals in delight.

Jeremy and I celebrated six great years of marriage on July 10th. Jason and Lauren graciously stayed at our house with our kids and we snuck off to the mountains to stay in a B&B in Winter Park and the next day we drove Trail Ridge Road to Estes Park. I highly recommend it if you are ever in CO! Everything was so green, it reminded me of back East. Unfortunately, it takes the mountains getting 200% of their annual snowfall to get them that green, but it was breathtaking!

The boys accompanied Jeremy on our church's Annual Men's camping trip. The boys were so excited that "no girls were allowed" and that they were going to fish for the first time. The fish weren't really biting so Kyle said he never wanted to go fishing again, but they really enjoyed the rest of the trip.

Last week we did our first family adventure of the summer together and took the kids to the local aquarium. The boys thought it was pretty cool to see fish up close and even Abby enjoyed watching the sharks swim around the large tank.

Jeremy starts back to school in two weeks, so it feels like the summer is quickly coming to a close. Kyle will be going to Belleview's pre-kindergarten this year and Bryce will be attending preschool a couple of days a week; it's amazing how quickly they are growing up. Hopefully we'll do a better job of taking pictures and updating everyone as changes occur!