Sugar and spice and everything nice

That's what little girls are made of?!?!?!?


She refers to herself as "E"

And moments later . . .

Bye Bye Room

We're gearing up for our big move this weekend. I hate moving!!! , so there has been lots going on - packing, painting, spackling, cleaning, more packing, more painting. Did I mention I hate moving? We're all excited to get to the new place, where we'll have more room to spread out, but Hope is having some anxieties about the whole thing. She says that she doesn't want to leave our house because her room "gives her comfort" and she doesn't want to be in a house that someone else used to live in because she "will feel like she's sitting on someone else's floors". I know she'll love it once we're there and get settled, but it may take some time. We started painting her room here back to a neutral white, so we let her write on the wall before we started:

"I love you room. Bye Bye. I love you. Love, Hope"

We've already started painting her room at the new house and she's gotten new bedding and has picked out new decals for her walls. I'm hoping the new room will give her comfort too!

Eeeerriieee!

Hope put a token into one of those fortune teller machines and this is what popped out:

I guess the fortune telling machine in the movie Big isn't the only one with magical powers.
I especially love the part about the understanding mother. ;o)

:o)

Big Pappy Boot Camp

Hope spent all of last week with Brandon's dad (and Terry and Ben and Bryce and Ethan) at Big Pappy's Boot Camp. She drove back to Albuquerque with them after their visit here. In only five days they visited the Natural History Museum, the book store, Ben and Jerry's, Hinkle Family Fun Center, and Tinkertown Museum, went hiking, went fishing, had a picnic, played putt-putt twice, went swimming twice, made cookies three times, planned a skit, and had lots of play time! Needless to say, Hope had a great time and came home EXHAUSTED! We drove down on Thursday to get her and we all stayed until Sunday. Big Pappy Boot Camp officially ended on Friday at bedtime, so we were there for the final day on Friday. Brandon got to go with all of the campers to Tinkertown Museum and on a hike and picnic. Since this is the only day of camp we were there, these are our only pictures:


Tinkertown Museum

Ben, Ethan, Bryce, Hope, EJ, and Brandon picnicing

EJ, Ethan, Hope and Bryce - Tinkertown

Hope, Ethan, Ben

Game Time!

Dining Hall - all of the meals at Boot Camp took place outside on the patio table!

Notice that I'm not in any of the pictures. Thanks to Keith and Terry, I was too busy that day doing this:

And this: don't I look good?

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

A whole entire day at the spa - what a wonderful birthday gift!!! Thank you!

At the end of the week Big Pappy officially named this the 1st annual Big Pappy's Boot Camp, which means Hope will be able to enjoy it all again next year! I wonder if he'll accept 2 year-olds! :o)

It's fun to stay at the Y. . .M. . .C. . .A

Big Pappy, GT, Ben, and Bryce drove up from Albuquerque this week and we took a little trip up to Estes Park to stay at the YMCA camp. It was beautiful! We had a great cabin, and there were so many fun activities for the kids. Hope and the boys took a "tree art" class where they learned about trees and collected things to make a picture. We accompanied the kids to a "pathfinders" class in which we all learned how to use compasses and got to try out our new skills in a little game. I think Brandon and I had even more fun than the kids at this one. We swam, we played mini-golf and even fit in some time to relax and read. One of the downsides I'll get to the other in a minute was we were only able to fit in a one night stay. We've already decided to go back next year for at least 3 or 4 nights.

The other downside was I hardly took any pictures. Here are the few I got:

Beautiful View!

Ben, Bryce, and Hope - Tree Art

EJ smelling the flowers

pregnant deer

Everyone left this morning to drive back to Albuquerque, including Hope. She's going to spend the week at "Big Pappy Boot Camp". My goal is to get more pictures of everyone when we drive to Albuquerque to pick her up . She was very excited about all of the fun activities they have planned and spending time with the boys (Ethan will be there too), but was a little anxious about leaving home by herself. Last night she told me, she was "ervous - excited and nervous mixed together". We miss her already, but this will give us a little extra time to start getting packed up for the big move and the chance to get rid of some things without protest !