Jordan and Chelsey

This is Jordan.

Evan and I went to high school with Jordan. He was in a million extra curricular activities with us. He played the piano at our wedding. He is a lawyer just like Evan. He's been a friend for years and years now.

Jordan met and married a FABULOUS lady named Chelsey. When we first met her I remember thinking that I liked her. I liked her a lot. She made me giggle. I love to giggle.
Jordan and Chelsey came to visit us for the weekend. We'd talked about them visiting for months and we finally found a weekend that worked well.
The weather was perfect! We showed them fun things like Evan's office, Peterson AFB's airplane museum, restaurants we love and, of course, Garden of the Gods. I even took Chelsey with me to Pioneer Woman's book signing in Denver, but that is a post all its own. (I MET PIONEER WOMAN!!!!!!!!)


Jordan and Chelsey came with a game plan on how to win Julia over. They only had 2.5 days to woo her and get her to love them. She was a chatterbox almost immediately. She could tell they were her kind of people.




I can not even tell you how many pictures I have of Jordan doing this dance (minus the mountains as a background, though).


Elisabeth loved them instantly. She was about 3 the last time she'd seen them. She asked to sneak into their suitcases so she could stay at their house for a while. She's very excited that we might be seeing them again when we travel to Illinois in the fall.

We had so much fun! We laughed so much that my cheek muscles were sore for the whole weekend.

Thanks for visiting Jordan and Chelsey! And thank you for the lovely gift you left for us!! Elisabeth was super excited to be in charge of giving it to us.

Elisabeth declared on the ride home that you two would make GREAT parents. I think she's thinking of asking you to adopt her the next time she sees you.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

I am trying something new today. It's called Scavenger Hunt Sunday, and I've been watching the lovely Brooke over at My Boysterous Life post her scavenger hunt pictures for weeks now and I love what she comes up with. This week, I thought I'd actually join in.

Dude, it was harder than I thought it would be!!

So, this week, I had to search for:

1. SHADOWS

2. PATTERNS/REPETITION

3. BRIGHT WHITE

4. STRONG

5. WARMTH

This was super fun to play, though. I will probably do this next week too! :)

10 on 10: February

It is already time for February's 10 on 10.

Here is my day. It's actually my day most days.

Virtual Coffee

Hello! It's freezing outside, so hurry up and grab a mug. I've got a full pot of coffee waiting for you!

If you were really here having coffee with me...you'd notice that Elisabeth is home. That would be because she has another snow day. It's 2 degrees with a high of 5 and a -14 degree wind chill. Oh, and 3-5 inches of snow coming our way to fall on top of the snow we already have. She hasn't had a normal week of school in ages.
While we sat and sipped our coffees...I'd tell you that Evan took took the girls to a Daddy & Daughter Dance at our YMCA on Saturday night. He took Elisabeth last year and this year Julia joined them.
I took pictures of them all dressed up, sent them on their way and then watched a movie while they were gone. It was lovely. Evan sent me pictures and texts to tell me that Julia was being a grump. She wouldn't dance, didn't like the refreshment choices and wasn't keen on all the people that were there. She sat in a corner and rolled around on the floor the whole time. Elisabeth, of course, had a blast. She loves it when Evan swing dances with her and flips her all around.

So, when they finally came home, I asked Julia how the dance was. "It was veddy fun!" She told me about how she did the chicken dance (she did not) and that she danced with Evan (not voluntarily). I guess she wasn't as grumpy as she looked.

I am very done with feeling trapped in my own home. Yes, I do get out to run errands and whatnot, but I want to go on walks outside again and go to the park and plan days around being outside. And this wind, this bitter wind, is just miserable.
I'd offer you another cup of coffee because I'm just not ready for you to leave yet...because when you leave then I'll need to start on my to-do list and I just don't want to. One of the main things involves sorting through little girl clothes that need to go into their appropriate tubs in the basement. When we first moved here, there was no rhyme or reason to how Elisabeth's old clothes were thrown into tubs. Since our dining room was void of furniture, I literally dumped every article of clothing and sorted them into tubs according to size from newborn all the way to 6x. It took me a full week. Now, when Julia grows into the next size, it is most convenient to just find the next tub of clothes, but when she and Elisabeth out grow clothes, then I have to find the appropriate tub to put the clothes back into or buy a new one. It's just not fun. It's not hard either, but I'm one of those people that will put off a pretty simple task because the thought of it makes me grumpy. I'm super fun and efficient.

I will say, though, that it is sweet to find the clothes that we loved seeing Elisabeth in and putting Julia in them. When we decide to have baby #3, part of me does hope it's another girl just to see her in these clothes all over again. Of course, if we do end up with a boy, then he'll be decked out in all of Ethan and Owen's clothes and that will be just as fun!

Before you leave to fight those cold temperatures...I would need to squeal with excitement that this Saturday, I will be in line to see Pioneer Woman in Denver. I will have my books with me for her to sign. I will have my camera charged and ready to go. I will have a small paper bag so as not to hyperventilate with excitement. Not only am I beyond thrilled to meet one of my favorite blogging/cooking people ever, but I'm going to a book signing which is something I've never done before but always wanted to do. I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, I will tell you all about it afterwards. :)

Thanks for stopping by! Make sure and stop over at Amy's Lucky Number 13 and say hi to her and all the others having coffee with her today. See you next week!

My own personal library.

One of my goals in life is to have a personal library in my house. I've wanted one for as long as I can remember. People who have whole wall book shelves make me green with envy.
For a while, I just kept every book that ever came into my possession. I had boxes and boxes and boxes of books in my parents' basement and shed. Eventually, my dad told me I needed to go through them and decide what ones I needed and what ones could be donated. Then, when we joined the Air Force and were told we had a weight limit of what they'd pay to have moved, I knew I'd need to be pickier about what my library would be made of.

So, I went through all my books. We had one tall bookshelf that was housing as many of my books as it could hold and then I had piles of books everywhere throughout my house. I feel like I've done a pretty good job. I inherited another bookshelf from a friend and now I have a shelf for books to read and a shelf of books I've read and want to keep. I'm slowly on my way to having my library.

Some of the books on my keep shelf:

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

The Harry Potter series

Almost the entire James Bond series

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Just a few of them, but ones I do so love.

Notice I didn't even mention the girls' books...that's its own separate library. :)

Snow days...well, more like...Cold days.

While my family in friends in Illinois sent pictures and messages about the blizzard hitting them, I was both a bit sad not to see so much snow and grateful that I didn't need to shovel any of it.

They are on their 3rd snow day, with even Chicago Public Schools actually closing their doors (which is a HUGE deal).

We had 2 days off of school as well, but not because of snow. The temperatures were in the negative teens with wind chills in the negative thirties.

Dude, it was cold. Cold cold.

So, we bundled up and hung out.

We watched movies and colored and baked and read.
Of course, we also built things with legos. And by we, I mean Evan.
And even though we couldn't even open the door a crack without feeling like the wind was going to freeze our faces off, and even when the pipes froze and burst, and even though there didn't seem to be enough layers to keep me warm, the girls played so well together.
They played games and read and giggled. They barely bickered. They were sweet and kind. It was awesome.
I love them a little extra now.

Virtual Coffee

Well, hi there! It's Tuesday and half the country is either buried in snow or waiting to be buried, so a coffee date sounds perfect right now.

(Just so you know, the pictures on today's post were taken a few weeks ago. Today it is -14 degrees with a wind chill of -34. The girls and I are inside where it's warm and not outside losing fingers to frostbite. Thank you.)

If you were really here for coffee, I'd tell you that, like everyone else in the area, I went grocery shopping yesterday. I super didn't want to, but it was actually our grocery shopping day, so I needed to. Plus, we had no milk and my house can not function with out milk (or so Evan and Elisabeth firmly believe). It wasn't near as busy as I thought it'd be, but it was busier than it usually is. Julia now walks next to me when we shop. She's been protesting riding in the cart for a while now, but she would always walk off or roll all over the floor (ew) or not listen when I'd tell her we needed to leave an aisle. So, I told her the rule: If you don't listen to Mommy, you ride in the cart. Yesterday was the first day where she didn't have to ride in the cart at all. She loves to help put groceries in the cart and pick out fruit she wants to eat. She's generally fun to take to stores, which is pleasant since she's home with me all the time.

Today, since we are stuck home all day, I foresee movies and baking and maybe some art projects. Elisabeth LOVES art projects. She's always making things and gifting them to people. She's shown lots of interest in scrapbooking, so I think we might do a little bit of that today. Julia will probably color like it's her job. Oh, and reading. We'll totally need to do some reading.

I have been going through my recipes lately and organizing and menu planning. I plan on talking more about it later on Virginia Cooks, but I super love recipes. I have a new binder I'm slowly filling up full of never tried recipes that I can not wait to get to!!!!! Elisabeth was watching me clip and tape and re-write and commented, "Wow. That's a lot of recipes. I love when you make new things." She earned a lot of points for that statement.

The wind here is wicked crazy today. I mean, the wind chill alone is ridiculous, but the wind gusts are 21mph. Poor Julia keeps asking to go outside. She doesn't understand "loss of limbs to frostbite" yet. She just stares at me like I'm a moron and asks again. But, the funny thing is, the sun is shining as happy as could be. It's one of the best things about living in Colorado in the winter--the sun still shines. It makes for less depression that it's so cold out because you can still sit in the sun inside.
This Friday, Elisabeth has no school and one of her friends is coming over to play for a while. I think we're going to make and decorate Valentine's Day cookies. Evan and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day (I told him the year we started dating it was something I didn't want to do and I think that's when he decided to keep me forever) but we do celebrate it with the girls. We usually have a heart shaped dinner of some sort and get the girls something small for when they wake up. We also send out cards to loved ones. We usually make cards for Elisabeth to pass out to her classmates too, instead of the store bought ones. Makes them a little more meaningful as she passes them out. Ooh, maybe we could start on those today!!!
Thanks for stopping by today, even with the weather as frigid as it is. Make sure and stay warm by stopping by Amy's Lucky Number 13 to see how everyone else's winter storm is going with a cup of virtual coffee chat.