Bookworm

FFM likes to be read to and to 'read' on his own. We've got books all over the house and he'll just plop down periodically and pull out a book and start reading. However, until a couple of weeks ago his reading was limited to HIS books.

Our library has a pretty fancy used book section. It's a whole room/coffee shop/lounge and is usually staffed with a volunteer and it feels a bit like a tiny B&N. We walk through every once in a while to see if there's anything good, and the last time I found a nice copy of the "Denver: Then and Now" which compares pictures of downtown Denver at the turn of the century and now. For $2 how can you pass that up?

We got home and FFM dragged it into my favorite reading chair and even though it's a 'grown-up' book would not let go. He was totally engrossed-turns out the book is full of trains...
Shortly after that episode, F appeared next to me all dressed up and had me guess who he was. After several incorrect guesses he announced he was "SKIPPYJON JONES, Mommy!" Ah, I see! SkippyJon has become a favorite story around here and while we've got several books we always check for new ones at the library.

Quote of the Day

F: I want to play with that girl!
Dad: Yes, do you remember that girls name? It's Claire.
F: Yes! I want to play with Clarence! Clarence want to play?

Day 1

Joy and excitement! I only hope that the first day of school is this exciting for FFM for the rest of his life. The preschool we picked for this year has a summer program so our first day of preschool was today. Hooray! The after school photos were more exciting than the before school ones, here's F showing off his art project. He's upstairs right now not-napping (grrr!) because he's so excited to tell Daddy how his day at school was.

Ahead of Schedule and Under Budget

FINALLY it's seems spring/summer have arrived to Denver. I finally was able to stop bringing in my plants a little over a week ago, I finally broke out some sandals, and the biggie, last week it was finally warm enough to put Mr. Man in some shorts. Bring it on, we're ready for summer!

Due to the belated start to our warm season this year and as it's our inaugural spring in the house we're learning all the ins and outs of our outdoor space. This entails things like tweaking the sprinkler system, learning the best place to put the patio table on the deck, and how often we'll have to mow. It also means some outdoor projects, a la the rocks/bush/new flower bed, drip lines for my container pots, and of course tweaking the sprinklers.

There's been a big push to get projects done because we're planning on having fun this summer. The mountains are calling our name, but we're going to get our chores done first. However, we had to get one last one done first before calling it quits - the privacy fence.

We requested permission* from the HOA to add a privacy wing fence and gate to 1) to screen the playhouse so it can't been seen from the street 2) make it harder for FFM to escape out of the yard and 3) to screen Travis' little pile of junk that's accumulated over there on that side of the house. We planned to use our garage sale proceeds and use the 3-day holiday weekend to complete the project.

Travis got up at his normal work time on Saturday and was about this far along by the time I finished breakfast!
FFM got permission to use the camera and snap some shots at the end of day 1.
By the time I got up on day 2 (and I don't sleep in, Travis was getting up really early) the gate was up.

Then the fun part, pickets go quickly!

Voila! Completion, end of day 2. One whole day ahead of schedule and well under our budget. We went out for pizza to celebrate.

*Our neighborhood encourages open fencing like split rail to maintain the open greenbelt feeling of our neighborhood. We totally agree with this philosophy but in our opinion a wing fence doesn't really affect that feel and apparently the board agreed. Plus our neighbor is on the board and is a big fan of FFM and wants to keep him extra safe, too ;-)

Moab

Ah, camping. We MISSED camping. Yes, we could have done it while we lived overseas, but it's one of those things that actually requires quite a bit of equipment. And it was ALL in Colorado. And there wasn't any cost effective way to get it to any of the places we lived (trust me, we did the math a lot of times). And while we did buy a lot of duplicate stuff while we lived overseas, buying a whole other set of camping gear was just more than we wanted to spend and more than we wanted to haul around the world with us. So, while vagabonding from place to place we gave up camping for a while.

Enter May 2010. It's been a chilly winter here in Colorado, so not wanting our very first camping trip with F to be a disaster, I chose Moab, Utah for our first destination. Utah's a great place to go this time of year. It's a little lower, a lot warmer, not too far away, and Moab is a town so if for some reason camping goes seriously awry you can always bail out and retreat to a motel without to much difficulty.

I needn't have worried, our little boy is an outdoor natural. Night noises? I don't think he heard them at all. Dirt, bugs, critters, rocks, sticks, peeing in dirty/stinky/holes in the ground? AWESOME!!!

F's intro to camping wasn't as cut and dry as we'd hoped. Our first night was a scorcher, but was so windy we left our tent fly on to keep the dust out. The next night was cold and so windy we had sand dunes inside our tent, even though it had been zipped up all day. The third day it was chilly and windy and rained mud. Yup, it rained mud. My mom didn't believe me until she saw our car when we got back. There was just that much dust in the air. Other than the incredible wind, the cantankerous weather didn't bother us. And to fix the wind, we all just strapped our hats to our heads and charged forth (hanging tight to F whenever close to the edge....) Simultaneously Travis and I commented that the wind was great because it was keeping all the little buggies away.

In case the previous paragraph leads you to think otherwise, we had a great time in spite of the weather. We haven't been to Moab since 2005 and that was in November and quite different. Sharing some of our favorite spots with our child was such a great experience for us. As a family we've gotten to see so many new things together that taking F to familiar trails and familiar sights is a new treat. And to have him be excited and enthusiastic is icing on the cake.

Now, if we can just figure out how to get him to take naps during camping trips it'll be perfect! With all the exercise and on a lot less sleep the little guy was a bit of a wreck by the end of the trip. Sort of like jet-lag.... ;)


Click through the slide show to see F's inaugural camping trip.