Painting with the Aunties

We have a long standing tradition of a family Girls Night Out.  My Mom, Aunt Pam, Aunt Melinda and I love to get together and eat, drink and make merry.  A few years ago Pam retired and moved to New Mexico where her son and his family live.  Since then our family moved overseas, my Mom started working more, and Melinda's kids grew up and got super busy-making her super busy too. Since our return to the US the nights out have been sparse, but we try hard to make time in our mismatched schedules.

This month we had time for not one but TWO nights out to celebrate Pam being in town!  Our most recent was dinner out followed by Canvas and Cocktails. If you don't know the drill, you drink and paint along with a group.  It's pretty easy, there's a leader who helps you step by step and gives you ideas of how to mix colors, etc. Even if you aren't artistic at all you can handle this kind of painting.  If you don't like what's being offered that night you're free to paint whatever you choose. We had a good time and since it wasn't our first time we felt a little more free to experiment with colors, etc this go round.

The teacher's painting is there in the back.  Our little corner of the shop was definitely the contrary corner, we were the only ones who broke away from the suggested color scheme and Pam went Kandinsky style.

It was also Halloween dress night. If you wore anything resembling a costume you qualified for a free glass of wine.  Meet Ms. Money and the Purple Fairy.

It doesn't take much to get us all wound up and goofy!

Family Treasures

We've been lucky to have a lot of family time lately.  My Grandpa Moore, who is widowed, recently moved into an assisted living facility. My two aunts and I have been working on sorting family memories and belongings at his house.  I go at least once a week and this week we were also able to make time for our whole family to go on Sunday.

While the aunties and I worked our way around basement Travis did a basic home inspection and flexed his muscles toting and carrying the heavy stuff out of the basement for us.  FFM and his cousin Skylar washed ancient and dusty toy treasures for a while but before long the warm autumnal breezes beckoned them to the great outdoors and we found them crunching leaves in the backyard.  The resourceful duo found a couple of rakes in the garage and made a leaf pile and were merrily jumping and burying each other.

The kids took the last two pictures, for a while my phone was buried in the leaf pile along with the kiddos.

I see now that they were snacking during the leaf excitement   FFM is covered in chocolate and Skylar has a packet of pretzel chips.  There might be some well fed squirrels in that backyard today, I'm not sure all those snacks made it back inside!

Not What We Planned for Our Weekend

October is a fickle month.  We never know if we are going to have warm, balmy sun or a blizzard. This weekend we had a little of everything except the blizzard. We tried to go to our favorite pumpkin patch, open only this weekend, and were thwarted twice by lashing rain and gusting wind.

Saturday we planned on early breakfast followed by pumpkin hunting and fall festival.  We ended up spending a lovely morning with extended family, then browsed for new light fixtures indoors out of the pouring rain, and hung out at home. Travis changed out our front and back door hardware while Finn and I worked on our own project.

 Since Daddy was busy taking lots of measurements FFM really wanted to help.  He was getting a little in the way so we made our own plan.  He had a Mission Notebook and two pages of measurements to take. His mission was so much fun! He measured all kinds of things, a chair, a phone, an animal, a window, it went on and on.

Saturday night I headed out to girls night out downtown and the boys stayed in and had pizza leftovers for dinner and read lots of books.

Sunday, ah lazy Sunday, the sun finally came out.  We opted to wrap up some of our outdoor chores that have been lingering. We had some exterior trim to paint after gutter work a couple of weeks ago, winterize the lawn, cut back some of the perennials, and hack back the cobwebs that pop up everywhere.  FFM mucked out his playhouse and got it ready for winter.

We had a few moments of panic when FFM disappeared and neither Travis or I could find him anywhere. After the recent Jessica Ridgeway news we JUST had a chat with him about stranger danger and not taking off without permission. No kid in house, front yard, or backyard. There weren't any other neighbor kids out and about so we were at a loss. We finally found him camped out in our car. We got our new one on Monday and he's still very excited about it. When he found it unlocked he climbed in to play in and 'clean' it. Another stranger danger chat and a few tears later we were all calmed down. Now I just hope the car is OK!

We wrapped up early, had early dinner, and had time leftover for family game night. We love game night! Add in cheesy caramel corn and Dots and it's one great time.

Cameraphone

We get so silly sometimes. Thank goodness for cameras on every new piece of tech so we can document it.

Eleven

We celebrated a lot this year.  It's been a fantastic year!  I got pleasantly snarled in the photo albums and spent a lot of time reminiscing before I finally got around to writing this post.  While I had a good time with the dusty albums it didn't top Anniversary Date night with my tied-for-favorite guy (the other one is shorter, younger, blonder and had to stay home with a sitter tonight much to his chagrin).

This year I think about all the wonderful things going on in our family.

click photo to enlarge

My cousin Sarah, just next to Travis, was a member of the bridal party and played piano at our wedding.  She got married about a year and a half ago, FFM was the ring bearer, and she and her husband are expecting their first child. 

Sarah's brother, James, is in the front row 4th from the right (next to my Mom).  He  just graduated from the University of Kansas this May.  

My cousin Matt, next to James, is here in Denver now at pharmacy school at Regis.  He and Lindsey got married in May.  Another rip roarin' party for us, especially for FFM who got to carry rings again and dance with all the bridesmaids.

That handsome ring bearer and beautiful flower girl?  He's a great athlete and aspiring farmer who is hoping to be off to Colorado State University to study agriculture in a couple of years.  She just started her freshman year of college, a whole year early.

Emily, the pretty blond in the top left corner, she's a fantastic artist and is now teaching high school art.  This summer we got to see one of her original metalwork pieces and it was stunning.

See the tiny baby in the back?  That's Skylar, my cousin.  She tested into the gifted and talented program in her junior high this year and one of the best soccer players I know.  I'm so proud of her!  I'm also really proud of her brother, Ryan, who was just a twinkle in his parents' eye at this stage of the game.  He is so kind and generous and I'm glad he and FFM get to grow up together.

So much has changed since this picture was taken!  Our siblings are all married now, new lives have come, and a few have passed on.  I see family that have retired, sold businesses, changed career paths.  We've all journeyed through quite a bit of life since this photo was taken, and I can think of so many joyous occasions we've all been able to share.  I think of all the happy stories we tell about this day, and anticipate the ones we'll tell in the years to come (I think since were no cousin stories generated from Matt's wedding that the rules state there must be twice as many from the next wedding...you know who you are!)  Here's to many, many more years of all of us together,

xoxo,

Maggie and Travis

DJ F

I need to be faster with the camera phone and he needs to be slower. Then things wouldn't turn out so blurry.  And I should get him cooler headphones.

I know he's not spinning so isn't really DJ-ing, but it's the classic headphone to the ear move that makes me think of DJs.  I did not teach him to do this, he generated this move all on his own so he could listen to piano and other stuff all at the same time.  He's gotten to a point with piano that he plays ALL the time so I plugged in the headphones a few days ago because I had to arrange a bunch of appointments on the phone one afternoon and I wanted to do it without Ode to Joy blasting in the background.  I turned around today and there he is, DJ style, rocking out to a tune of his own making.

First Snow 2012

It's always exciting to get the first snow of the year.  We finally have had some fall weather, then we got back up into the 80s for a few days, then were warned of a cold front headed our way.  Any time there is the slightest chance of snow the TV stations all go bonkers and I usually take their estimate and knock at least 30% off.  Last night the news said our accumulation was likely to be 0.0" so I really didn't expect to see any on the ground.

As we all know, those weather people don't always get it right.

It's not very much, not even worth measuring, but every tiny bit helps in our dry, dry year!

Life in a Swing State

Oh, how I wish I was referring to the swing found at a playground.

Unless you live outside of the US or somewhere under a rock right here at home you know that yesterday was the Presidential Debate here in Denver.  Leading up to the debate the biggest news here was a massive closure of the central part of our freeway system for five hours starting at peak rush hour and the cold front that might bring snow.  No biggie.

What the news hasn't talked much about, until today, was the other political joys we've garnered living in Denver/Colorado the last 30 days.  Perhaps it's just the fact that we're a swing state, or the hosts of the first debate, but we have been deluged with advertising.  (For any international folk out there, a swing state, according to our pals at Wiki is: a battleground state...a state in which no single candidate or party has overwhelming support.  Swing states get extra attention during elections because they are still  'undecided'.)

a map showing swing states from a few months ago, examiner.com

We've felt a little battered.  We still have a landline at our house (we live in a hilly spot and the topograpy makes cell signals unreliable.  We're not dinosaurs I promise) and the political calls have gotten so copious we simply stopped answering.  Any given afternoon we'll get between 4-8 calls.  Not so many in the morning, but it's not unheard of.  Then a few more in the evenings.  Some days we get just a couple, then another huge spurt.  I don't even bother getting up to look anymore, it's hardly ever anyone we know.  They are all hiding from their phones, too.

Tonight on the news Travis experienced political ad redemption.  The pain and agony of pushing fast forward endless times on the DVR to skip ads really has been more than normal.  Both campaigns bought more TV advertising in Colorado last month than anywhere else.  Nearly 8,000 ads.  Obama had twice as many as Romney.  I'm pretty sure that the radio buys are about the same and other media outlets aren't too shabby, either.  I sure hope our city and state get some good revenue out of all this spending.  As far as influencing my vote, I can't say that any of the ads have done anything other than annoy me.