Thanksgiving in Denver

We traveled up to Denver for Thanksgiving last fall, staying with family -- including three cousins, which our girls loved!


Richard and Laura had just moved back to Denver from Tulsa last September, and were unpacked enough into their new house that they didn't mind our family of five moving in for a week. One of the highlights of the week was a night out -- Richard, Laura, Dale, and I went to a Broncos game while the grandmas watched all six kids. Despite missing the first part of the game due to a seating confusion (four other people showed up just before kickoff with tickets for our seats!), we had a fantastic time. And the Broncos won, too!

We were busy through most of the week and unfortunately missed out on several adorable pictures of the kids together, but we did manage to take a few.

Here, all six kids (Sarah, Elizabeth, Adelaida, Benjamin, Cordelia, and Estella) look out the back door at a squirrel on the deck.


The kids had a movie night one evening, watching Ice Age and eating popcorn. On the couch are Benjamin, Cordelia, Elizabeth, Adelaida, Sarah, and Estella.


Getting all the kids together and sitting was rare. Most of the week was more like the following pictures.

We were fortunate enough to watch an impromptu dance recital in the kitchen (while we were preparing dinner, of course). It started with Sarah, Elizabeth, and Adelaida ...


... showing us all of their dancing poses ...


... and soon Estella and Cordelia joined. Estella brought my shoes into the kitchen, increasing the tripping hazards, and Cordelia decided to do a toddler headstand under Adelaida's princess dress. It was chaos.


During another meal prep, we had five little kittens (Adelaida, Estella, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Cordelia) crawling around the kitchen. The kids had a blast together!

A special bond

Estella and Cordelia certainly do share a very special bond. They sleep in the same toddler bed (despite the fact that we have two beds in their room, Estella has always joined her sister in Cordelia's bed), pat each other's backs when they are upset, and love to feed each other. Lately, they have enjoyed giving each other adorable little kisses, too!

Cordelia gives cute little smacking kisses, and Estella gives great big sloppy open-mouthed kisses. They give kisses when they hurt themselves, and the kisses often magically heal the hurts. Here, Estella had bumped her head on the closet door and Cordelia immediately jumped up to give her a kiss. The kiss healed the bump, and Estella was laughing within seconds!

How to patch holes in jeans

For the first four years of her life, Adelaida could be described as cautious, gentle, and calm. Her clothes looked as good when she outgrew them as they did when she first got them. Then she turned four and suddenly she was rough on her clothes! During two weeks in January, Adelaida wore holes in the knees of two pairs of jeans. Both pairs of jeans were hand-me-downs, and if we didn't have two more little girls who could wear them in about a year, we'd probably throw them out. But we do have two little girls who will need Adelaida's hand-me-downs, so I decided to attempt to mend them.

Please remember that I am not particularly artsy or craftsy, so this was quite a big project for me!

The first pair of jeans has heart-shaped pockets. I wanted to add another denim heart to cover the hole in the knee. I found some iron-on denim patches, but was warned that the iron-on backing often peels off.


I first cut out a heart-shaped patch and ironed it the over the hole (the blue color is from the wash-away marker I used to trace the heart).


To complete the look and keep the iron-on patch from falling off, I sewed around the heart with heavy yellow thread (like the heart-shaped pockets). It didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped, but not bad!


The second pair of jeans has pink stitching around the waist and embroidered pink hearts on the back pocket.

 

I cut a round-cornered rectangle of iron-on denim and ironed it over the hole in the knee.


Next, I stitched around the rectangle with pink thread.


Finally, I stitched two pink hearts over the patch.


The final product looks pretty good, much better than the first pair!

Our new house

Four days before Christmas, we moved into our new house.

This came about rather suddenly, from thinking about moving to owning a new house in three months. Here's the chronology:

September: we started thinking about moving into Albuquerque (we previously lived in the mountains outside Albuquerque and wanted to move closer to the city).

October: we contacted a real estate agent and decided we'd put our house on the market in the spring and then buy a house after we sold ours.

November 7th (Wednesday): I saw a listing for a house that I thought might be good for us. I convinced Dale that we should look at it, despite the fact that we wouldn't be ready to buy a house until after our house sold, at least six months in the future. I called our agent and she set up a showing for that Friday.

November 9th (Friday): we saw the house, loved it, and decided to put in an offer on the house.

November 10th (Saturday): our real estate agent contacted the selling agent, who informed her that the sellers had received an offer the previous day and were planning to respond to it by 5:00 that day. We quickly revised our offer to make it more appealing, sent it to the sellers, and waited. Those were five of the longest hours! Finally, they accepted our offer, and we were under contract!

November 11th (Sunday): we listed our house, which we had planned to sell before we purchased another house... and hoped that it sold quickly.

November and early December: we met all the deadlines of the contract, and continued to keep our house in "show ready" condition every day, despite not having a single showing during this time.

December 19th: we signed the paperwork for closing on the new house.

December 20th: we got the keys to the new house! We took the kids to it for the first time and watched them run around the empty house for a while.

December 21st: moving day. We expected it would take four men about three hours to move, and instead it took six men about fourteen hours to move. I'm not going to say anything else about that.

December 22nd-25th: we unpacked, settled in, and got to know our new house. And enjoyed the fact that we could go to the store and be back in less than twenty minutes!

December 29th: we had our first showing on our old house! And then we waited...

January 8th: the people who saw the house on December 29th (and twice after that) put in an offer on our old house! Soon, we were under contract.

February 19th: we closed on the old house! Once again a one-house family, and feeling very happy about it!

We certainly miss several aspects of living in the mountains, but we love our new house and overall know that we made a good decision. We have great space (both indoor and outside) for the kids to play, enough bedrooms for all the kids to have their own room (if that becomes an issue in the future), and we are close to parks, school, work, and shopping.

One-and-a-half, times two!

Last month (yes, I'm a little behind in the blogging), our baby girls had their half-birthday! Yes, they are now one-and-a-half years old, growing up right before our eyes. They are becoming such big girls and are so much fun. Cordelia (on the left) loves to talk and is very loud. She likes to play independently and enjoys legos and puzzles. Cordelia is very empathetic and, when one of her sisters is upset, Cordelia will pat her on the back or offer her a toy to make her feel better. Estella (on the right) wants to do everything Adelaida does and follows her around all the time. Estella gets attached to toys -- a different toy every day -- and carries it around all day long. Estella loves to draw and to brush her sisters' hair. Both of the girls are happy toddlers and fun kids. Happy 18-month birthday, Cordelia and Estella!

Here are some of the pictures of the girls over the past year and a half:

These are pictures we had taken of the girls when they were just a few days old. Cordelia is on the left and Estella is on the right. That infant stage was so precious!

Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) at three months. They were just becoming aware of their environments.

Six-month-old Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right).

By nine months old, Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) were laughing and giggling and becoming so much more fun.

On their first birthday, Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) were both cruising around furniture and getting ready to walk. Independent steps came in the weeks after their first birthday, and by thirteen months both girls were walking more than they were crawling.

At fifteen months, Cordelia (on the left) and Estella (on the right) loved to play. Estella liked to figure things out and Cordelia loved to laugh at silly things.

Now they are eighteen months old and they are transitioning from babies to little girls. Cordelia is on the left and Estella is on the right.  What fun they are!

Here is one more picture of our one-and-a-half year olds: Cordelia giving Estella a kiss!

Happy birthday to our special four-year-old!

Adelaida amazes me every single day. She makes me laugh, she tells me stories, and she gives me so many hugs every day. More than I ever expected, I love her!


And today, we celebrate another milestone as Adelaida turns four years old.

Here are some of the traditional pink panther pictures of Adelaida over the past four years:

two months old


nine months old


one and a half years old


two years old


three years old


four years old

A princess, a flower, and a leopard

Halloween was a lot of fun this year -- Adelaida was old enough to enjoy getting dressed up and Cordelia and Estella were still young enough that they weren't frightened of people in costumes.

As usual, we had several Halloween-themed events in October: a Halloween Festival at the girls' school, two playgroup Halloween parties, and Trick-or-Treating in Old Town Albuquerque on Halloween. All were fun and we got some use out of the Halloween costumes!

Adelaida (princess), Estella (flower), and Cordelia (leopard)


This is a picture of Adelaida and her two best friends at school: Paul (Spider-Man) and Baylor (astronaut). She does everything with these two boys and they seem to like her as much as she likes them!

Snow!

We had a few inches of snow fall on Thursday evening, and another couple of inches last night. This morning, we were lamenting the fact that, this time next week, we won't have a sledding hill just outside our front door anymore, so Dale decided to take advantage of the snow while we still can.

Fortunately we hadn't yet packed the sleds, so Dale bundled himself and Adelaida up and they trekked up the mountain (ok, really they walked up seven snow-free steps to the top of the six-foot "hill").

Dale and Adelaida, ready to sled!

Wheeeee!

"Let's do it again, Daddy!"

Adelaida's first solo sled run.

"Can we have hot chocolate now?"

Busy, busy

I try to post something at least once a month, but somehow it has been almost two months since I last posted anything! We are busy, at times too busy to let you all know that we're still here and still doing well. But surely I could post just one picture of our girls, and a few sentences to let you all know what we've been up to lately...

Estella, Adelaida, and Cordelia in their Thanksgiving dresses. Dale thinks that Adelaida looks like the master-mind in this picture and Cordelia and Estella are her minions, ready to do anything she asks of them! It's hard to get three little girls to sit still for the camera, and this is one of my favorite pictures of the girls right now.


The girls are all healthy--except for a few colds, a week with the stomach flu (I'm still not sure how Estella didn't get that nasty illness!), and a little gasping-for-breath lips-turned-blue hypoxemia episode that earned Cordelia a hospital admission. Nothing out of the ordinary for a family with three young kids, and thankfully Cordelia's episode seems to have been a one-time event and she is just fine now.

The kids all dressed up for Halloween (I'll post pictures in a future post), we traveled for Thanksgiving (more on that soon), and are packing all of our belongings for a move next week (also in a future post). I'm enjoying my job and Dale is traveling a lot (really nothing post-worthy there).

Oh, and I achieved one of my goals for the year -- 2012 Christmas cards were mailed in 2012! Much better than last year's cards, which were approximately seven months late. :)

December is busy, for all of us, it seems. I hope your December is filled with fun times spent with family and friends!