Kennedys in Colorado: Part 1

Amy, Chris, Katie, Megan, and Jessica road tripped it again to CO, ending in Denver/Broomfield! The got in late last Tuesday, and we have been busy ever since! Everyday had been filled with activities...We have down the normal things so far, Coors, Celestial Seasonings, REI, etc. We have been having a blast, even though we have all had to cram into our little house, I don't think the Kennedy's mind though. Here are a few of our adventures together (more posts to come)...

At Boulder Falls

The fam...and falls

Kennedy Fam...and falls

Coors tour!

Good job girls

Good job adults

Down at the creek near REI

Grey loves water...or not

Corn on the cob shot - Katie

Jessie

Megan

Grey?

Swimming at Boulder Res. - Such a nice backdrop!

Father and son

Front Room

Before the Kennedy's came out to visit us (check for future posts), Mary and I decided to re-do our front room! Well really it was a trip to IKEA, cause it just opened, and then we came home with furniture. We have been talking about it for a while, but never thought we would be able to do it before school started again. It turned into a fairly easy job...only one trip to Home Depot (made Justin sad), 2 trips to IKEA (made Mary happy),one trip down to Parker and back (to pick up a craigslist buy) and about 2 days of work. The space before was never really usable, and people rarely sat up there, so we wanted something functional that made the house seem bigger. So here you go...

Really old before: This is what the room look like when we first moved in, we then later replaced the brown chair with a desk, but we forgot to take pics...oops

Grey helping get out his new clothes before the room was torn down and cleaned

All furniture moved to the center, and the walls taped

New wall color! We decided on a cool grey (gray?) color so we could do more color with other things

Our new chairs, table, lamp, and roll top desk (from craigslist)!

The desk is sooo nice, cause we can just open it up and throw things in, also it keeps our laptops a lot nice than the old desk

Mary made these curtains! Fabric also from Ikea...good job mary!

Finished room with pictures

Bonus pic: Grey and Raeana met up for a hug

Grey's First Solid Food!

We decided it was time to at least start the introduction of some solid foods into Grey's diet...much to Mary's chagrin. Last night we bought a few sweet potatoes, put them through the food grinder thing, and added some BM (breast milk you sicko) to water it down. Mary has been doing a lot of reading up about it. We are going to start pretty slowly, and only a couple ofteaspoons at a time. It went pretty well! Greyson took 4 or 5 good bites with the spoon, then gagged once and cried. We thought that was pretty good for the first time...haha. Mary I think was more excited to use the high chair she just got done re-finishing (thanks Auntie Erica for the good find!). Below is the process, plus a couple of bonus pics.

Mary prepping the new food (sweet popos)

Old food

Grey is intrigued about his new chair...Good job mama!

Chairs are funny

I believe this to be some sort of optical illusion...the tray is not that big!

Testing it out on Mama's finger first..."mmm, not bad!"

"What the hell are you putting in my mouth!

Over all he did pretty well...we are proud of you Greyboy!

Best Buds II

Mary is doing another clothes transition...look at what we found Auntie Erica! It fits and everything..also it matches my skin quite nicely.

High chair before

High chair after!

Adventure in Oregon: Part 2, The Finale

We just got back this last Wednesday from a great trip to Oregon! We can't thank Becky and Marcus enough for making it possible for us to come out there! We ended our trip with more exciting activities...Thank you Curls!

We had to go berry picking one of the days we were there! We ended up picking logan, black, and boysenberries. The blueberry rows were closed for ripening...but we snuck in to eat some anyways! Mary ended up making about 24 jars of jam while we were there!

A very normal Mariposa pose

Becky and James...pointing

This is where most of the berries went...and when I say that, I mean on her face and to the dog, Daisy.

One night we went to the mall for dinner...Mariposa decided it was time to get her ears pierced! Here she picking out the perfect pair...of course they ended up being pink.

Waiting anxiously

They gave her a bear to hang onto to help calm her. You will notice I do not have any pictures of the actual piercing....it was an all hands on deck situation..meaning hold Mariposa down until both ears are done!

We HAD to stop at the Lego store..duh. We got to make our own lego self-portraits! Here is the CC family. (if you look closely mary's arms are backwards...did not know until we looked at the pics later...haha)

Our last night at the Curl house, Justin made individual pizzas on the grill, while Marcus made yummy corn.

James and corn

MariP and corn

Bunny and corn

Right before we headed to the airport...thanks again everyone...we had a blast!

Gemma Language...turtle is the best!

Adventure to Oregon: Part 1

Five days after getting back from Alpena, we hopped back onto a plane to Oregon to visit with the Curls! Grey is getting really good at flying now...but he would describe it as sleeping...cause that's all he does on the plane (at least for now). We took a plane from Denver to seattle, then a puddle jumper into portland. Since the Curls got the tix for us, we got free wine on both flights due to Marcus' status with the airline! (thanks again Becky and Marcus!) We got in Wednesday afternoon, and we will be here until this wednesday....below are some pics of our activities so far!






View of Mountains fro small plane into Portland...I want to say Mt. Rainier above, and Mt. St. Helens below.











Gemma has big eyes!






James, Uncle Justin, Daisy, and Grey hanging out on the couch...reading about star wars legos of course!






Chillin' on the new garden perch






Playing with Baby Grey...Mariposa really likes Greyson a lot!






Such a cutie.






Auntie Mary and Mariposa helping Becky with RVWP's aka Red Velvet Whoopie Pies!






They are soooooooo good!







Best of buds






It's been really nice weather so far...so hot that we had a water balloon fight!


Good sequence of photos...watch out Marcus!




















Geocaching at a park...Gemma ran opposite of us for most of the time...haha






We found it!






Mariposa had an oopsy moment...then James had to proclaim that he "touched the pee".






Down at the Hillsboro gamers market...while we were there we got to be apart of an attempted world record for most people yo-yoing at the same time! We ended up falling a couple of hundred people short we later found out.






Mariposa had a dance recital on Saturday. She was little reed riding hood trying to get away from the bad wolf.






She did a really good job!






Grey having "fun" with cousins






Mary and Justin did a fun day with the 2 older kids to downtown Portland for the weekend market. Riding max downtown!






Eating market food!






Outside of the market






A stop a fountain






Bunny being a pigeon






Then our highlight of going downtown...geocaching! It was a very difficult find... We ended up walking for about 30 minutes before finding the cache (with three kids mind you). The instructions said that we could only find it between the hours of noon and five on Sundays, so we knew it must be a store. Using the GPS, we decided it was the library with only 5 minutes to spare! With the help of two nice librarians, we found the logbook, hiding as a book in the reference section. Soooo much fun!







See it?







Yeah! This picture was taken by the nice librarian while the security guard was yelling at us to leave...







Bunny, James, and Grey using the GPS to solve the mystery.







Gemma didn't even come with us to Portland, but she was still t!








We ended the night with ice cream, sunset, and porch swing. Such a nice day!