Our house has become quite the fun entertaining house thanks to Justin! A couple weeks ago a friend came over wanting to set up a couple slack lines using our trees so he could practice. Of course we obliged! He ended up leaving the slack lines set up for a couple weeks for us It is really quite fun if you’ve never tried it before. Major balancing and you feel like a total rockstar if you actually make it across. I totally made it across the little red one. Go me. We have a friend who loves slack lining so we invited them over for dinner along with some other friends and had a big ole’ party with a fire and everytime. Too fun.

But not fun enough I guess… As if slack lines weren’t fun enough, Justin decided he needed to up the ante and build himself a zip line. Why, you ask? Why not. He and the friends who came for dinner proceeded to set up the zip line. The next afternoon it was finished, tested and ready to go! Ava was the first kid to go down. She LOVED it!

Brie was next. She was a bit scared but Justin sent her down and she had a great time. She’s been asking to do it again. It think it’s time to set it back up. We had to take it down due to the random huge snow storm that blew through here last week.

Amanda went last and she loved it as well. If only we could make it a tiny bit faster and longer it would totally rock. The kids think its cool to be riding down a rope, they don’t care.

Oh, I almost forgot, these two. During spring break we had the privilege to watch these two pups. Dolly on the left and Otis on the right. If you have never had the chance to spend any time with a basset hound, you are missing out. These guys are hilarious and completely adorable. I think Dolly and I had a special bond. We just got each other.

Ok so now the fun part. I took video of the kids on their way down the zip line. Enjoy!

 

In the next couple of days after this we had a couple different families over to play at our house. The zip line was a huge hit!

I think we need to start charging admission!

In preparation for Easter we got down to business and dyed some Easter eggs, 18 of them. AVa was anxious to dye them, she had been asking all week if she could. It was actually getting annoying. I didn’t want to cook the eggs too early and then have them go bad. She is one persistant little one though. Finally the day came where she got to dye her eggs.

And off we go. Ava was very good at hogging the colors. She proceeded to let her eggs soak in the dye for at least 10 minutes while everyone else was waiting (impatiently) for whatever color she was using. At one point she had 4 colors with eggs in them sitting in front of her. “But I like to take my time” she said. Oy.  Amanda enjoyed herself as well. Not quite the color hog as Ava. She was going for mostly solid color eggs.

Brie, ever in fashion, dyed her eggs the fastest of all. She cracked a few in the process but she sure did have fun! I did remember to make sure they knew why we were decorating easter eggs and what Easter was all about. I reminded them a few times to make sure they knew Easter is not all about bunnies and Candy. Jesus had a little something to do with it too

FInally Easter morning came around. No one wanted to sleep in, even after Justin tried coaxing them back into bed. Oh well. Let the egg hunt begin!!! Amanda was really cute this year. She just got so excited every time she found an egg.

Brie was finally old enough to “get” hunting for eggs. She didn’t get many eggs but I’ll tell you what, she was thrilled with the ones she did get.

We hid all of the Easter baskets this year. It was funny because as soon as one was found, interest in the eggs was lost. They wanted their baskets!

Ava’s reaction to her basket was my favorite. She found her basket then about 10 second later she discovered there was a Fashion Kitty book (her favorite) and she squealed in delight! I did a mental pat on the back for me for that one. Way to go mom for picking out the perfect present!

Brie was also thrilled with her basket. Mostly with the chocolate bunny that resided in it.

Easter was awesome. We ate egg salad sandwiches, drank chocolate milk from our easter bunnies and enjoyed dinner with some fabulous friends AND to top it of it was a gorgeous day!!

Justin was gone this weekend, so I had to find a way to keep the kids entertained by myself. I had heard that the St. Patricks Day Parade in Colorado Springs is supposed to be pretty cool. I hemmed and hawed about it all morning and even asked a friend who is a parade enthusiast to help me decide to go. I was worried about parking, potties and the general attitude of my kids. In the end I decided to just go. Why not, what else was I going to do all day.  So off we went!

Finding parking was very easy, we parked a couple blocks away from the parade and walked. Thankfully it was a lovely day and the walk was pleasant. We ended up parking ourselves toward the end of the parade route right up in front of the action. We had to wait about 45 minutes for the parade to start and actually get to us, which was a little annoying but at least we had good seats.

My favorite part of any parade is the marching bands. Good Lord, that drum line, there is no way you can’t LOVE it!

This was the master of ceremonies (or whatever the official titile). I have no clue who he is but he seemed like a nice man.

Of course the bagpipes. And marching bagpipes! Best part of the parade.

We actually know this pirate personally. We works at the coffee shop Justin and I go to every Thursday. Super nice guy and looks exactly like Orlando Bloom.

This is the Mayor of Colorado Springs. He’s really tall.

High school marching band. There were NOT enough of these in the parade.

Some dude doing sweet tricks on his bike. A front wheelie.

I felt bad for these two. Their job is to walk behind the horses and scoop the poop. One poop bucket we saw said “Pot of Gold” on the side of it.

Sweet fun bike. I think I want to try one of these. There were tons of them.

Speaking of horses, here they are. One of the horses in this group started getting a little uneasy and started going sideways right toward us. That was a little scary.

I was kind of surprised a funeral home participated in the parade. A little creepy but this horse and funeral carriage was pretty cool. When I die I want to be walked through the streets in one of these.

I think this was the coolest float. It was for the sheet metal workers. Sheet metal Leprechauns. Holy Sheet! Ha.

A huggy bear. I am actually shocked Amanda is smiling here. She normally hates bears and all things dressed as animals that want to hug you.

The firemen.

These guys were funny. They were dancing gorillas for some bar. Amanda and Brie both said they liked the gorillas but did not want to hug them. I don’t blame them.

What parade is complete without live stock?

Leave it to Chick fil a to have an awesome float. These cows were actually choreographed and looked cool while dancing. I immediately wished there was a chick fil a in Woodland Park after seeing this one.

The shriners were up next. This guy was quite popular. Want to know why?

This is why, hidden in his shirt was a teeny tiny little puppy. I swear it weighed no more than about 2 pounds. Adorable.

The only thought going through my head at this moment was “I wear fezzes now, fezzes are cool.” Ten points and some serious respect if you know who said that.

The most unexpected and funniest part of the parade was the basset hounds. Short, floppy dogs, happy as can be walking down the street. Stick a fork in me. Speaking of Basset’s, we get to dog sit two of them next week and I can hardly wait. They are hilarious.

This guy just looks cool and makes me want to be Scottish.

The Scottish dancers.

These were funny, elliptical machine bikes. I would totally be into elliptical machines if I could god somewhere while using one. Pretty sweet.

All in all the parade was pretty fun. It was really long but worth it. Got the kids out of the house and kept them busy, got to hear cool music and see fun things. Can’t beat it really.

As Always on St. Paddy’s day, the Leprechaun came for a visit. The girls were super excited the night before St. Paticks day because at school the Leprechaun was causing all sort of trouble. They were curious to see what he was going to do at our house. I had my work cut out for me because normally I just leave a few treats and decorate the house in some green stuff but this year I had to step it up a notch. I added some sneakiness into the mix. I didn’t want to do anything in their rooms because, frankly, if I though some one came into my room at night while I was sleeping and rearranged my stuff, I would be a bit weirded out. So I stuck to the living room.

I switched the benches and chairs to the opposite sides of the table.

The lucky charms box with cups and forks to eat breakfast. The kids thought this was pretty funny. Amanda is still laughing about it. I mean, how do you eat cereal with a fork!

When the Leprechaun walks through the house he leaves confetti and candy in his wake. Upon waking up this was the girls first clue that something was up. The confetti went down the hallway.

The classic lamp on the table and elephant in place of the lamp. Kids thought this was funny too.

 

My personal favorite, green milk. Ava saw this first and couldn’t believe it. Amanda and Brie were surprised and they all thought it was hilarious to eat cereal with green milk. Point of interest: I made myself a little cafe au lait and used this milk, the green milk foam was very festive.

Since the Leprechaun is a sneaky guy and made the house a mess, he saw fit to leave a few gifts. Every one got a little rat ( I wanted a real one but Justin said no. Party pooper.) Amanda and Brie’s rats have not left their sides. Ava was a bit more indifferent. Maybe she’s getting too old for this stuff. They also got those little green hershey kiss things you see in the picture.

Ava wanted to round up the confetti and glue them to her flip flops. How festive!

Here’s the cereal in green milk. It’s..uh..not very appetizing, but I can tell you it tasted darn good!

There were a couple of other things the leprechaun did that I did not get a picture of, one was the girls shoes. He decided to swap all the boxes the girls shoes were in. I thought they would find this funny but they all started getting made that their sister put her shoes in their box. That backfired a bit. My personal favorite, the leprechaun turned the water in the toilet green. Brie was the one to discover this and she came out all excited and showed everyone. They thought it was super funny! When you gotta go, you gotta go I guess!

I hope you all had a great St. Paddy’s day and that the Leprechaun was good to you too!

Saturday was ski day for us and a whole bunch of other people we know. We signed Amanda and Ava up for lessons, dropped them off and hit the slopes. I hit the bunny slope at first because it had been 15 years since I had last been on ski’s. I survived the bunny hill so decided it was time to hit the big girl slope. It took a little while but I got the hang of it and was on the blue routes before long.

We skied with our friends all day until our legs were completely tired out. By then it was time to pick up the kids and see how they fared in their lessons.  They fared WELL! Ava was going down the bunny hill, doing turns and stopping!!!  Amanda was going down the little ski lesson hill like a champ!  Dude my kids were SKIING!!

This is Amanda getting ready to grab onto the “carrot” lift to get to the top of the hill.

There so goes! I don’t know why but this amazed me to no end.

And down she goes. I still can’t believe this!

Then began the most terrifying 10 minutes of my life. Justin asked the girls if they wanted to try the big hill.

What?!  Huh?!

They are tiny and that  mountain is HUGE and FAST!

They were all too eager to go. So we did. Getting on the ski lift went great. Here are Justin and Ava in the front.

This is me and Amanda following behind. And I am thinking, “Holy crap are we really going up this GIANT mountain?!? Really?!?”

On the lift!

I still can’t believe they can ski after one day!

At the top of the lift both kids fell getting off the lift. That could be because we pushed them to get them out of the way. It’s a fast lift! The ride down was totally scary for me. I just kept envisioning Amanda or Ava losing control and flying down to the bottom. My stomach hurts just thinking about it. Amanda and I stayed in a wedge position the whole way down (that was tiring) and Justin and Ava hit a little powder (she fell). She also turned and skied like a real skier!

Justin was good enough to get a video of this trip down the mountain. Epic man.

It was a super fun day and the kids are hooked to skiing, which is good because so am I.

p.s. if you are wondering where Brie was, she spent the day with my friend Jenny and was happy as can be!