Father's Day and Other Happenings

We're doing really great.  I think I'll let the pictures do the talking this week.  (:

Morgan is in soccer with some preschool friends.  He really enjoys it.

And while we're on this subject, here's Morgan's routine after preschool.  He conks out mid-snack while we're on our way to pick up Jacoby.  I'm not sure you can tell, but he's also the dirtiest little thing you've ever seen after a busy day at school!

 We went on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was a beautiful day and the boys hiked three miles with minimal whining/fussing/complaining.  It was really great to get out and spend time together.

Bierstadt Lake was our final destination

We were so proud of these guys!

Almost done!

After the hike, we picnicked in the car and drove up to near 12,000 feet where there's still lots of snow!

We celebrated the best dad in the whole world on Sunday.  Grandmanette and Grandpa Michael were here for a visit.  Grandpa Michael treated us with a trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  We saw a planetarium show on the solar system, which both boys loved.

Happy boy...

The boys are crazy about frisbee right now

Jacoby is perfecting his catching skills and really enjoys our time together in the evening.  And I keep thinking that all is well with the world when we're outside playing together as a family.  He carried the frisbee the entire hike in case we had the opportunity to play.  I sat by his Kindergarten teacher at a meeting last night and got to share with her how much Jacoby loves reading.  He's on to book four of the Mercy Watson series.

Here are a few of the lovelies growing in our garden and around our yard.

 The boys go in for a bunch of fresh food allergy testing tomorrow.  Morgan is getting tested on a lot of foods already in his diet just to make sure everything is ok with his system.

Jacoby is getting tested on a few foods we hope to be able to add back into his diet:  stone fruit, coconut (oil, milk, etc), pumpkin, oat, soy butter (which will be a stretch for me to get my mind around since it looks and smells just like peanut butter), and some others.

Another week

We're off to another busy week.  Jacoby had a bone scan this morning, so that should be the end of our medical appointments, with the exception of some fresh food allergy testing in a week or so.  The boys get to go to the Boulder Reservoir for swimming on Wednesday with Morgan's preschool friends.  They went to the recycling center a few weeks ago and had a great time.

Justin finished up his class and is finally enjoying a bit of down time.  He's gearing up for dissertation writing and reading.  He's riding the bus to work now, which gives him quite a bit of time to read and also saves us a bucket load on gas money. We're looking forward to spending Father's Day weekend with Grandmanette and Grandpa Michael.

The boys are busy!  I converted our downstairs hall closet into an art center, all under the assumption that these two are old enough to have markers and scissors within reach and won't destroy the house.  I think it's working out pretty well--today they apparently spent the whole day playing "school".  They were the principals disciplining kids who were misbehaving.  Not that any of my kids have experience with that...ahem.  (:

Jacoby is reading his way through the Mercy Watson chapter books.  We're just about finished with book two, and Morgan brought him books three and four home from the library tonight.  They're really good books for his level and we're all enjoying having him read to us.

We have lots of things growing and blooming in our garden and yard right now.  I'll have to get some pictures posted.  I love being out in the yard.  Tomorrow the lawn is getting aerated in an attempt to help it recover from some neglect.  I had hoped it would make a come-back this spring, but such is not the case so we talked to some experts at our local nursery for some advice.  We're crossing our fingers this helps!

My yard sale went well last weekend and I got rid of plenty of stuff.  The thrift store comes and picks up the rest in a few weeks.  We visited the Longmont museum on Sunday and enjoyed the new Lego exhibit.

Here are a few pics.  Enjoy the week!

 One of my favorite Lego displays

 The boys really liked this excavation model

 I love this picture of my second child.  He's on his tippy toes joining in with all of the big boys so he could race his Duplo car down the track along with all of their serious Lego vehicles.

 It took around 66,000 Legos to build this

After getting stuck at Lowes with Mommy again, Momo got to spend some time on the tractors.

Here are the boys in front of the giant Legos outside of the museum.  It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Busy Times!

We've transitioned right into our summer routine and its been busy around here!  We're getting caught up on appointments that I pushed into June so Jacoby wouldn't have to miss school.  Monday was an eye exam for him, which came out fine.  Today was an allergy appointment for both boys that lasted two hours...sheesh.

Jacoby started his summer program at a new school last week.  It's ok--I don't think we love it, but we'll make it through the summer.  I'm less than impressed so far with how they handle food allergies.  I think Jacoby will be safe but he won't be included.  Sigh.  Other than that, we're in swimming lessons, gymnastics, and soccer, which the boys enjoy.

Justin has papers to grade and then he'll finally be done with his awful class on Friday...so glad to have that behind us!  We're having a yard sale on Saturday with the rest of our neighborhood.  I actually have quite a bit to sell, so we'll see what our profit margin ends up being.  (:

Here are some pics from the past week or so:

 This is Folsom Field at CU--the finish line for the BolderBoulder.  Members of the armed services ran the race and then went off to the side to do push ups.  (:  I had the Graham family in mind.

 Here are my running friends--they signed up for the Bolder Half Marathon with me in September.  And so did my youngest sister!  So excited to run a race with her!

 Here's our Big Summer List.  We had fun coming up with all the things we wanted to do this summer.  Jacoby makes a list everyday and likes to cross things off...takes after his mom that way.  Yippee!

 Showing off the popsicles they made last weekend

 After being cooped up in a doctor's office for two hours, the boys ran and ran tonight during our bike ride.

Jacoby documented our time at the allergist's office this afternoon with my phone.  Here's a little photo collage.  Most of the time was spent discussing Morgan, his recent diagnosis, and how we should proceed with his treatment.  They tested a few things today to get a base line started, and there were some interesting results (i.e., super allergic to chicken, which he's never, ever eaten, and negative to peanut...?!?!..I so dislike skin testing).  We go back for more testing in a few weeks.  Crossing our fingers we'll be adding in some new foods to our diet!

So Many Things...An Update

Well, my friends, it's been a big week at the Barber house.  Most notably, I am the proud mom of one smart first grader (and can I get an amen and a hallelujah on the end of Kindergarten?!).  I'll let the pictures do the talking on everything that's been going on around here.

The Kinders hosted a parent appreciation tea the week before school ended.  It was a very sweet program and they did a great job.  I've got more to say on this, but it belongs over on my other blog so stay tuned.  I'll just say that there was finally affirmation that all the hard work we've put in this year paid off.  (:

I spent a lovely, exhausting, crazy four days in Spokane earlier this week for our spring board meeting.  This is water coming off of the Spokane River Falls.  A little nerve-wracking standing on this bridge!  The meeting went very well and I'm so glad to be a free woman now!  I'm not supposed to travel again until the fall, but I may be nominated to attend the memorial service in Reno for a long-standing board member who recently passed away (and will be greatly missed).

Voila!  I'm finally planting flowers and loving every minute of it.  Morgan helped with these.

Oh. my. goodness.  So much to say about this young lad and all he's accomplished this year.  He's reading above grade level and scored an "outstanding" on his third trimester reading assessment.  Yay!  I was a weeping mess when it came time to say good-bye to his teacher and assistant teacher.  They took such good care of him this year and were so great to work with.

The last day of school community picnic

Last picture in front of his classroom.  The tee-shirts are hand-drawn faces of each Kinder and their names...so cute!

A new tradition we've started for Jacoby.  We'll do this for Morgan too, but will probably start with his Pre-K teachers, since they will have been with him for four years. 

We spent the morning at the Tree Farm tooling around in a golf cart looking at trees.  It was so fun and we found a great little tree for our front yard.

The boys had a great time

We had a really good tree helper who took us all over and gave us a good education on planting trees.

If you need a tree planted, Justin is your guy.  He did a great job.

So excited to watch this little thing grow!

We also came home with two blueberry bushes

Here's my weekend project.  (:  This, and I'm running a 10K race on Monday with some of my BFFs from work.  And did I mention that I talked these same BFFs into running a half marathon with me in the fall?  (:

And in case you need a little cheering up, this video is just for you.  I'm going to miss these guys!

Mother's Day & Other Updates

We've been a little too busy the past few weeks.  I'm hopeful that come May 23 (post-board meeting and the last day of school) we'll be fancy free and just slightly less busy.

The boys are doing well.  Jacoby is a reading machine right now.  He's reading chapter books on his own plus really anything he can get his hands on.  Morgan loves all of the reading Jacoby is doing and is content to sit with him and listen.

Justin is really busy.  The class he's teaching is sucking up huge amounts of time, especially on the weekends.  He took a lot of time today to make sure my Mother's Day was special.  He made us french toast for breakfast.  And I requested a family project this year instead of a gift or flowers.  So, we traipsed off to Lowes for a few supplies, came home and put together a container fountain for our patio.  I love it!  It's just perfect and is lovely to listen to.  We've been busy in the yard with some landscaping projects.  The seeds went into the garden today and we finally decided on a tree for the yard, so that and other flowers will be going in around Memorial weekend.

I'm so looking forward to having my meeting behind me.  I've been enjoyed long runs in the morning, getting ready for the BolderBoulder 10K on Memorial Day.  I'm trying to decide if I want to pursue a half-marathon in the fall but sort of on the fence about it.  We're going to participate in the neighborhood garage sale in June, so I've been sorting through our stuff looking for things we're ready to pass along.

We have a busy summer ahead.  Morgan will be joining his preschool friends for another round of soccer in Boulder.  Jacoby wanted to do gymnastics again, and both will be in swimming lessons.  We've already got a weekend of camping on the calendar.  And we're going to participate in the summer reading program at the library.

Here are a few pics.  Have a good week everyone!

The start of our new edging and flower bed.  I'm sure I had the neighbors worried when I started covering the grass in newspaper.  (:

That's better--now for some plants and flowers!

Morgan's teacher appreciation gifts (Jacoby gave these as well).  The boys loved putting them together--they chose the cups and the treats to go inside.  The teachers loved them.  And I heart Pinterest even more...

We got a ton of rain last week.  So we went puddle jumping (or worm hunting if you're Jacoby) one evening during a break in the showers.

Jacoby reading & Morgan listening

The boys working on our fountain

Ta-Da!  It's so lovely!

Getting reading to plant our seeds

Mother's Day 2013