Fire :(

On June 9th I got up early to go garage saling with my Mom. We both live on the west side of town, right next to the foothills so we started out in those neighborhoods and very early on, about 9 o'clock, we noticed a tiny little smoke plume rising from the mountains. By the time we got home around noon it was MUCH worse!

The next day we went to a Rockies game and that evening when we got home it looked like this. It is really scary. I do live right next to the foothills but I understand the chances of it getting into Fort Collins was slim, I knew they would do everything in their power to stop that from happening. But just LOOKING at it... it's such a terrible sight, and it's SO close! It looks like a huge volcano, or bomb exploded right next to my house. I couldn't stop looking out the window. I have always been scared to death of fire. I used to HATE July 4th because I'd sit up in my bed at night listening to fireworks going off and just be terrified that one would land on my roof and start my house on fire. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and get worried that the heater would start something on fire so I'd get up and go around the house moving everything away from the vents.

Like I said, I didn't really think that it would get to Fort Collins, but every night I'd go to sleep I couldn't even see down my street it was so smokey. So one night I woke up in the middle of the night because the dogs were barking and right away my sleepy, irrational head thought - the fire got to us! And I freaked out!

This is the next afternoon view from my Mom's house. I went over to her house to pick her up so that we could go somewhere to try to get my camera fixed. All day I kept hearing on the news that so many people were going up to look at the fire and I kept thinking, 'dumb people, you're just getting in the way!' And then after picking Mom up and seeing the mountains we look at every day right in front of me on fire, I let my curiosity get the best of me and we drove up to Horsetooth (to join the crowd of dumb people).

 

We drove up to the reservoir close to the spot where Kevin proposed, but a little south of that. I didn't want to go too far north and get too close to where I thought we'd be interfering with firefighting traffic or any of that. This is the view looking south across the beautiful water - mountains untouched by fire...

Then this is the view from the same spot looking north. It was a terrible sight. You could see houses so close to the fire line on the other side of the water.

This is the view from Overland Trail, right next to my Mom's house. Sometimes I actually think I have a little ESP, or something like that. Several weeks ago when the Hewlett Gulch fire was happening it was further west and we couldn't actually see any fire and just saw smoke plumes, not actual mountains on fire. I remember driving down Overland looking at the mountains and actually thinking - how scary would that be if these mountains right in front of me were on fire and I could actually see it. Then this happens, and those mountains right in front of me are on fire, and I can actually see it...

We sat and watched it for a long time, watching the helicopters and planes fly in the fight the fire. I can't imagine being a firefighter, that would pretty much be the job of my nightmares! I am SO thankful that we have people that put their lives on the line to protect people, their homes, and the beautiful land that we live on. They were actually worried that if this fire jumped the Poudre Canyon it could run up the canyon and get into my Dad and Jan's neighborhood. 2 weeks after this fire started, that's exactly what happened. They had been on pre-evacuation for days and days, had left and come back, and on day 14 were emergency evacuated because it jumped the river and made a run for it. It got to about 50 homes in Glacier View, but luckily (for now) stopped before it got to them. It is still burning but as of now, Day 19, it is now 65% contained. Of course no one knows what will happen every day, but it hasn't grown for a couple days now, even in the terrible fire weather we've been having. Now there's a fire just south of us in Colorado Springs that has been blowing up out of control and burning into crowded neighborhoods. Sometimes I think that we are just ruining this planet and there's so much global warming and that's why temps and getting higher and higher and things are getting drier and drier and fires are going to start all over and we won't be able to do anything about it - but then I try not to be so pessimistic and negative. (Hopefully that's not my ESP talking :) )

My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who lost their homes or have been effected by this fire. And I thank God that one of my homes for the past almost 25 years has been spared.

Grandma's house

Grandma goes to Arizona during the winter. She was able to stop by for a quick visit right after Sammie was born, but we hadn't had a chance to see her since she got back for summer - so we made it out there for a day. Sammie just LOVED her Grandma Dorothy! She was so comfortable with her that she practically fell asleep on her shoulder. It was SO nice to get to see Grandma and hang out with her all day. I understand that it takes a lot to feed all of us and keep us (the children) entertained all day and I appreciate everything she does! I wish we were a little closer and we could have her over to our house for dinner all the time and play our favorite games all day and night :) Hopefully we can make another trip in the next couple of weeks because we already miss our Grandma!!

(BTW - my camera is driving  me NUTS! Without my flash everything is blurry ALL THE TIME! I decided I'd pick out my own birthday present this year and get a nice new one - I'm SO excited! Bare with me until then :) )

Garden - planting!!!

Memorial Day is also the day that we got the plants in the garden. The kids had a lot of fun helping. We did sunflowers from seed, which Gracie helped with.

And Bradley helped me put the plants in - seedlings (right? :) ) I am not ashamed to admit that this is my first attempt and I know I will do things wrong and will learn as I go, but I'm not COMPLETELY clueless about gardens. Everyone was over for the BBQ when I started planting and Bill (bless his heart for trying to help me :) ) came over and was explaining to me that I needed to take the plants OUT of the plastic before I planted them - I don't know a whole lot, but I knew that!!! Silly Poppy. BUT one mistake that I would have definitely made without Bill's help is the tomato cages - I always thought they had the pointy part at the top and the circle on the bottom - not the other way. Oops! :) Good thing he was there to help me with that :)

This was the day we planted, we have the sunflower seeds on the left, then tomatoes, then 2 rows of different sweet peppers, then zucchini on the end.

This picture is 2 weeks later. It was SO exciting to see the sunflowers starting to come up - all the sudden something was there :) I think next time I'll do the spacing differently, I did 2 rows of sunflowers - 2 different kinds and only one row came up for some reason, so the left part of the garden is pretty bare - then on the other side the zucchinis are taking over, but at least they're on the end so I can kind of drape them over the edge if needed. The dogs are being very good and not bothering it at all. I just went out yesterday to look things over with Dad and Jan when they came over for fathers day and there was a tiny sunflower sprout laying on the dirt, I picked it up and asked Gracie if she pulled it out and she very proudly and matter-of-factly told me "yes", so we'll really have to watch her to make sure she leaves things alone :) I am so excited to actually see the veggies appear and be able to pick them and eat them. I'm so proud of myself for not killing everything :) Yay me :)

Memorial Day

We decided to have a BBQ for Memorial Day, it was a beautiful day!

 Breaking out the lawn games!

 My absolute favorite teacher Mr Perez came to spend the day with us! He and Mom are good friends so we get to see him every now and then. Junior High freaked me out, I was the shyest I've ever been in seventh grade. I don't think I talked to anyone but my very closest friends. Mr Perez (whom I'm now supposed to call Jorge - which is VERY difficult for me :) ) helped bring me out of my shell a little bit. He is the nicest man and now one of Bradley's favorite people!

Garden - Started!!!

Yay, I finally did it this year!! Every year I say I want to do a garden and I never get around to it but I think Bradley's enthusiasm about the garden pushed me over the edge this year and we finally did it! I have been trying to read as much as possible about what to plant and where and how big. I definitely wanted EASY plants for my first time around. I do not have a whole lot of confidence in myself to keep any kind of plants alive, so I definitely needed to start with hardy plants that will take a beating and keep going strong. I heard good ones to start with were tomatoes, peppers, squash, and sunflowers - so that's what we did :) We decided to do a raised garden bed, 4x8 with netting around it to keep the dogs out. I have since found that the netting is actually to keep Gracie out - the dogs couldn't care less but Gracie is messing with it every chance she gets. Bradley LOVED helping set up the garden, he'd grab any random tool he could find in the garage so he could participate - the fireplace set seemed to do the trick just fine!

 The worms were very exciting! It's amazing how many of them there were! I'm not the biggest fan of dirt under my nails and slimy worms, but seeing Bradley's excitement about it all made me jump in on the fun with him.

 The worms even trumped the tools there for a little bit. By the way - I am weak! I mean, I always knew my husband was a big, strong man, but he made the digging look SO easy so I jumped right in to help. It was NOT easy!!! It made me realize just how weak I am! It would have taken me hours longer to dig what Kevin did, so I decided to just take pictures of him instead

 Unloading the dirt from the truck

 Ready to plant!!!

to be continued :)

Sammie's 4 months!

I just can't believe she's 4 months already, and yet - just like I've said with the other two - it feels like she's always been here! She is such a sweet, sweet little girl. She has big beautiful eyes that are always looking around and taking everything in. She'll stare at Kevin for however long it takes for him to look at her and then she'll just smile and smile. At her 4 month appt she was 13 pounds 2 ounces and just as happy as could be. My doctor kept saying how she was an 'unusually happy baby' and how she didn't remember Gracie being that happy all the time :) She LOVES her brother and sister, she watches them so closely and will just laugh and laugh at them when they play, run, jump, dance or do anything in front of her. I still have to tell both of them to back off a little because they are right in her face every chance they get. She has rolled from front to back a couple of times but mostly likes to roll MOST of the way and then changes her mind and goes back to the back. Tummy time is not her favorite but she tolerates it for a while and she's definitely a strong little girl. I am trying to get her to sleep without swaddling her sometimes now, but it still wakes her up more than when she is swaddled. She has found her feet and loves to grab them and play with them, but they have not made it to her mouth just yet :) She LOVES to suck on and chew on her hands though! She has always been a drooly baby and she is even more so now, I feel like she is in the beginning stages of teething. I think she really likes the sound of her own voice. She will scream more than cry really and she sticks her little tongue out when she screams. (If I can get the video to upload, you'll see - it's really cute). She loves laying on her back and batting at toys above her. I swear she just has this 6th sense and can feel when I am not in the house with her. We have softball games every thursday night and no matter how long I have her asleep before we leave and no matter who's watching her - she will wake up within 5 minutes of me leaving... every time. Lately she's been waking up really early and I try and try to get her to go back to sleep, which seldom works.

Fun with Friends!

My how my kids love company! It's such a treat for them when they have friends come over and play. Bradley goes a mile a minute and is such a good host, finding the best toys of his to share. The other morning I watched the Gilmartin kids for a few hours while JK had to run an errand. This was the first time I had all 5 kids on my own and when I was talking to Mom we realized that I was watching a 4, 3, 2, 1, and 0 :) year old. So, I had to line them all up on the couch by age and take a few pictures :) The kids were great, well behaved and had a blast together!

Then the next week we had MORE company! We had our not-quite-monthly-but-as-much-as-possible get together with the high school gang :) Once again, we lined the kids up by age - I even tried to get Lanissa to stick her belly in there on the end so the soon-to-be-born newest Larsen baby wouldn't feel left out :) (For some unknown reason when we were taking pictures of the kids my flash on my camera broke, so now without using the flash my pictures are blurry a lot of the time and it's driving me crazy! So bare with me and my blurry picture quality until I can get that fixed!) I am thankful for my friends. Even if we sometimes go a while without speaking much or hanging out as much as we'd like I feel just as close to them - actually more so - than I did 15 years ago. I love that our kids can play and call each other friends.

Pigtails

Even though there's only about 4 hairs in each - we make it work!!!

I have been itching to be able to do stuff with my little girls hair! I have been patiently, patiently waiting :) I LOVE pigtails, and since most of her hair is right on top :) I figured we could make it work as long as they are right on top of her head :)

She's getting better at leaving them in, it depends on the day, sometimes she asks for them, then other times she takes them out 2 seconds after I put them in, over and over...

She's just so cute, she doesn't need hair - but it sure is fun to play with now that it's here :)

Sammie's 3 month update

Trying to catch up again, I am about a month behind and now that Sammie is 4 months I guess I should go back and post about her 3 month update :) She is one smiley, happy baby! She laughs a lot, and at the funniest things. I'll just be talking to her and out of no where she'll laugh. She likes to be scared (most of the time), and drools like CRAZY! We have those outfits that come with bibs that I had never used before with the other 2 kids, but I need to get them out of storage because now I see how handy those bibs would be. Sometimes I have to change her outfit multiple times a day so she's not in soaked clothing. And she LOVES to suck on her hands now, they are almost always in her mouth! She's still a great eater and a pretty good sleeper. She'll usually take one long nap a day and then the other one is pretty broken up and sometimes it takes me getting her back to bed 4 times before she actually stays asleep. She's starting to loose her hair, which makes me sad, but she still has way more than her siblings did :) She sure concentrates on stuff, she will just sit there and stare at us for so long just watching and she has the biggest, prettiest eyes. She's starting to reach up and grab at the toys that are hanging around her and she is getting stronger and stronger! I'm hoping she doesn't need to be swaddled that much longer because she gets out of it multiple times a night no matter how tight I make it. She is sure one sweet, sweet baby!