My baby is 2!!!

2 years! I can't believe it's been 2 years since my baby was born. Claire has been such a blessing to our family and I cannot imagine our lives without her. I felt so miserable in the months following her birth that everything was such a blur to me! She's growing up so fast and brings such joy and light to our home.

For her 2nd birthday we celebrated with just our little family, since we still don't know many people here in Colorado. First we took Claire to the movie "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," since she adores her new Ice Age figurines from McDonald's. Every once in a while, they have a Happy Meal toy that's a real winner! We enjoyed the movie, then went over to Red Robin for lunch, then to Chuck E. Cheese's for games. Claire could ride the horse ride all day and she'd be happy! Our little birthday girl fell asleep on the way home, so we waited until the next day for cake and presents.

Claire has some definite favorite things, as of late, which made planning a party theme much easier. We chose a rubber ducky-themed party, because she loves ducks. Ashlyn and I made her a rubber ducky cake, which she loved! It was a fun and exhausting birthday weekend for our baby girl. Thanks for all those who called, sent cards and e-mails for Claire's birthday. We missed celebrating with you!

Now that Claire is 2, we get to pay for her plane tickets and movie passes, even though she'd still rather sit on my lap.

Boxes, mosquitoes and frogs...OH MY!

Moving is always exhausting, emotional and exciting. This is my 13th move to my 8th state, and I wish I could say that it gets easier! I found myself secretly wishing that our moving truck would crash and burn on the way there so I wouldn't have to unpack it all. YIKES! I've decided that we have so much stuff because we've lived in so many homes that I like to keep things "just in case" it will work in the next place we live. It's terrible, but I also think I'm not wasteful and I'm just trying to be prepared... That's my story and I'm sticking to it;-)

The first night we rolled into Colorado it had just rained and there was an enormous rainbow that seemed to settle right over our neighborhood. It seemed like a good sign! The kids were happy to see the home for the first time and were ready to explore. Right away our next door neighbors came over to say hello and their 2 girls and Ashlyn caught a good-sized frog in our driveway, which Corey played with until I had intervene on the frog's behalf. There's nothing like catching frogs together to cement a friendship! We were absolutely eaten alive by mosquitoes, but that's a given considering that it's been raining here for weeks. It is very green and beautiful, so we'll take it.

I sometimes wonder if we've just moved to the middle of NOWHERE. It's about as different from Arizona as you can get. We are surrounded by farms, barns, cows, horses and tractors. The land surrounding Dan's office is full of PRAIRIE DOGS! Everywhere we go, people are riding bikes and enjoying the great outdoors. I am excited to live near beautiful mountains again. Some nights everywhere you turn is a photo op... it's really beautiful. I am just really missing my friends and Dan's family in Arizona and I am feeling the loneliness of a new city. We've been here 2 weeks and I am still unpacking and trying to find a place for everything and still haven't found my home phone, but I'm making progress. I'll post more pictures when I'm done:-)

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I am really looking forward to the nice big yard so the kids can run around and play outside. Ashlyn's first reaction was, "Wow, Mom! It's going to take me a lot longer to mow that lawn than ours in Arizona!"

We're still here...

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss

I've loved having a blog, to express my feelings, to document our lives and to stay in touch with friends and family. I know that some people have gone private, which is great, except that you can only invite 100 friends to read your blog. Unfortunately, we had a very mean comment on our blog a few months ago which made me reevaluate my blog. I almost gave up and quit blogging, but it's my connection to so many of you that we no longer live by. So, I'm giving it another shot and I hope that our un-named "friend" will respect our privacy. We are plugged in in Colorado and have not fallen off the planet...

Hugs,

:-)Alli