Springtime in Colorado!

Springtime in Colorado can be a confusing time. The weather is aways a little bit crazy. The beginning of March started mild for us.  Abby potty trained in January and has been doing great taking herself to the bathroom. This particular day in early March was a warm one, so she decided that she needed to dress accordingly. She disappeared to go to the bathroom and returned wearing this, after stripping off her jeans and shirt.

The following weekend, we had snow! Jeremy had left the day before for a varsity girls basketball regional game and we were a little worried he wouldn't make it back for Bryce's birthday the next day. He was able to catch a ride back home later that night, thankfully! Here's our only snowman of the season so far.

The birthday boy had a great day turning five, despite the fact he couldn't have a party with his cousins for a few more weeks.

Just a few days later, the snow was gone and Bryce was flying his new kite.

We had another mild weekend (meaning the temp. was 70 and I had the windows open), which was great for the kids to get outside, soak up some vit. D, and get all of their energy out. Unfortunately for me, it meant I had A LOT of mud coming in the house. :) Guess what happened the following weekend? It snowed. I'm pretty sure my flowers are a little confused. 

The final weekend of March looks to be beautiful! Our kids had some pictures taken today in Olde Town Arvada, and it was almost 70. Some of their pictures were taken in an old-fashioned candy shop, so we purchased these lollipops for them, partly as props for photos, but also as a thank you to the business for letting us use their space for our photos. The kids rarely get candy, so they were enjoying them on the way back to the car. They went in the trash when we got to the car about five minutes after this photo... Bryce cried.

 

We usually do family pictures each fall, but with Jeremy helping out with the football team, we never got a chance this past fall. We took advantage of the kids looking nice and stopped by the castle to take some family pictures. We're looking forward to enjoying the "warm" spring weather this weekend, even more so since they're calling for snow on Monday. We hope you have beautiful weather, wherever you may be this weekend, celebrating our Risen Savior and all that He suffered for us on the cross.

Two of my favorite things!

Colorado has been painfully dry for a long time now, but we got our first "snow storm" with about 8" of the fluffy white stuff on Sunday! Here are my loves enjoying it!

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!

Introducing...

...our little girl, Abigail Lynn!

I figured it was about time... since she will be two months old in another week and a half! :) I still can't believe that the Lord blessed us with a girl. It is so fun to think about having someone who will want to go shopping with me, help me cook and bake, and do girly stuff. She may not grow up to enjoy any of those things, but I don't care... I have a girl!

Here she is just after she was born, on September 22. It was a relatively quick labor and she was born at 10:15pm, weighing in at 7lbs. 14oz. and measuring 20 3/4in.

Me and my baby girl just before leaving the hospital. Nana was sweet and headed to the store before visiting us and bought her something girly to come home from the hospital. We headed to Babies R Us on the way home because I was so worried that I didn't have anything pink at home. I look super tired in this picture, partly because I was tired and partly because I was anemic after giving birth. I'm still trying to get enough iron because as of my six-week check-up, I am still anemic. It has made recovering a little bit more difficult, but as of now I'm feeling pretty good... just tired... most of the time!

A few days later, the boys bunk bed FINALLY came! They've been enjoying them, but they often don't fall asleep until an hour or two after we lay them down because they're too busy singing and talking together.

Daddy and his baby girl! She is a pretty good baby. The first week home we had two nights where she slept a five hr. and then a six hr. stretch. I'm hoping she'll be sleeping through the night in the next couple of weeks.

The boys absolutely adore her. Kyle is always asking to hold her. He gets really close to her face and will often whisper to her, telling her how cute she is and that everything is OK. When the boys come home the first thing they want to do is give her a kiss and tell her hello. It is so precious!

She is growing rather fast. We haven't taken her into the Dr. yet, but my creative husband will weigh her using the Wii Fit and she has gained about three pounds since we came home from the hospital. She has also grown at least two inches and fills out all of her three month clothing!

Bryce has had a little bit of a difficult adjustment with his sister's arrival, but is excited about her and will ask to hold her once in a while. It is not something we do often, but this was one of the first times he "held" her. She looks like she is enjoy it, right? :)

When she was two weeks old, my parents came out to see us. We were able to go and get some pictures taken with a local photographer. Here is one of my favorites. We didn't have too many pictures with Abby, since she was sleeping, it was rather chilly and babies that young don't make very many photogenic faces... at least mine don't. This one is so precious, showing how excited and eager the boys are to have a little sister.

Where did the summer go?

I knew I have been a blog slacker recently (for the last six months!) but I didn't realize how bad it was until I actually looked at the blog! Wow... sorry to all of you who have been curious about what we've been up to and how the pregnancy is going. We are here... we've just been really, really busy this summer. I can't believe it has already come to an end. Unfortunately, I didn't take too many pictures of a lot of our activities and I'm just now beginning to realize it... that's how crazy it's been! I'll share what I do have and fill you in on what we've been up to.


The summer was pretty warm (I think it was trying to make up for a lack of a warm spring) so we decided to invest in a little pool for the boys. They loved it and so did Jer on that particular day!

We took a short little trip up to the mountains at the end of May with some of Jer's family and stayed in a "mountain" house. It was beautiful, being located just outside of Breckenridge, it was surrounded by some massive peaks and had some great hiking. I know I took pictures there... but I have no idea where they are! We did stop by the outlets in Silverthorne though, and picked up some new attire for the kids. We had a lot of fun buying a little girl onesie, even though we have a 50/50 chance of using it! We figure whichever one doesn't get used could be gifted or maybe the Lord will give us a chance to use it down the road. (Don't read into that statement too much!! The third one isn't here yet!!)

We travelled to NY for the first couple weeks of July and spent time with my family, which was a blessing since we only get to see them about once a year. I do have pics from that and will post them later. Not quite two weeks later, Jeremy's extended family started arriving in town for some family time and a local, annual conference they attend at the beginning of Aug. We had the blessing of hosting Jer's cousin, Dave, and his sweet family. They are some of our favorite people and we're glad that we can call them family!! ;) It was a crazy time because they all took turns with an illness, Jeremy was busy with his band, Crossfire, that had the opportunity to play at Heaven Fest, and the rest of the family were traveling back and forth between Denver and Silverthorne. Just after the last of the family left, school started back up for Jer. This is his seventh year teaching at Belleview and he really enjoys it still, which is a blessing!

Two weeks ago, Kyle started school in the Pre-K program at Belleview. This is him on the first morning of school. Can you tell he was excited? He was so cute, he picked out his clothes that morning and was all ready and waiting to go. I hope you enjoyed the quick update... I'm sure there are things I've forgotten and I know there are pictures I'm missing... but hopefully I can fill in the gaps later on!