Catch up...

I've got some good news and some bad news.....If you've read one of our last posts you heard that our final gold fish died (remember the picture). Well, last week I saw one that we thought never made it the first night--we just figured he had been eaten by a fox or something. He'd been hiding from us this whole time!! So he was alive afterall!! So that's the good news, here's the bad news. Matt's been finishing the basement and he had a guy here helping him out. The helper guy, as Casey calls him,overloaded the circuit and blew a fuse. We sorta forgot that the fish pump was connected to the basement circuit. Sooooo....we no longer have any fish!!

Now wait, I have other good news....Now I realize it's February and I still have who knows how many more months of winter left (so this declaration may change), but I can finally say I LOVE LIVING IN THE MOUNTAINS!! It's taken me three years of secretly wishing we could move back down to the front range (secretly because I didn't want to hurt Matt's feelings), to realize I really enjoy living here. I don't know what changed my mind....Maybe it's that we now have our own house and life settled down for a few months (certainly not right now), or that we can go down to Denver pretty easily and see family and friends, or that I'm finally back into competitive sports (plug for my v-ball team--we're tied for first going into the tournament--we have a guy from Slovachia who's like 6'7" and an amazing baller--no one can get it through his block or return his hits). Who knows what happened, but life's great here in the mountains.

Casey is constantly cracking me up. He doesn't mean to, in fact, he gets upset if anyone laughs at him (good or bad) he doesn't like the attention. Luckily for us we were able to laugh at him behind his back--while he was sleeping. I had gotten down from the top shelf of his closet some things from last winter. Included in this was some things Annabelle has outgrown. I had set them on a lower shelf to later be put in storage. While he was suppose to be sleeping, he was actually trying on clothes. You'll notice he's in a very boyish pretty purple coat, much too small pink full body baby snowsuit, and a front carrier....I love this boy......


So part of the reason we love living in the mountains is the snow!! I come from a place that rarely got snow--when it did snow it came down sideways so we really just saw it in passing. It's been fun discovering fun things to do on/in the snow. Matt's been helping the kids learn to sled standing up. They're actually pretty good at it.
The snowhill we like to go sledding on is too fast for the kids so we put them on our backs and tell them to hold on tight....Casey is having a lot of fun here on dad's back....That is until he fell off. We told him to hold on tight:)!!!....

Matt and I are finally getting into skiing (that too has taken three years). Actually, me skiing, him snowboarding. It's ten bucks for night skiing here so we get a babysitter and go for it. We've been having lots of fun falling and relearning how to ski/snowboard. I think getting off the lift is much scarier then going down the hill. Matt and I got tangled one time and I lost my pole the next time. The only time I didn't have something go wrong was when I was by myself.

We have a fox den up the hill from us. Sunday morning I walked passed our front window and there was a fox walking in front of our house. I grabbed the camera and followed him out the door (wet hair, in my pajamas--I wasn't going to miss this photo op). He was much too fast for my slippered feet. I caught sight of him again down the road, by then he was hot on the tail of a female fox. She was yelping trying to get away from him. It was so fun to watch (only because to the best of my knowledge he never caught her). If you look really close at the photo you'll see the foxes--they're not sagebrush (I wish we had a better camera)....

Pretty cool.