Best Boulder Blast

Memorial Day Week-End is my favorite holiday in Boulder. We discovered the Creek Festival last year and had a lot of fun getting our free samples from all the booths and admiring local art. This year was even better with Joshua being a little bit older. He enjoyed the little train and tried the bounce house this year, he begged us to let him try kayaking on the pool but I thought he was too young for it so he had a complete melt-down. It still didn't ruin the awesomeness of the day.

Then on Sunday we tried avoiding the crowd and went on a walk along the creek, but in the opposite direction. It was still crowded but not as bad.

Try convincing me we don't live in the most beautiful place on earth!

Oh, and the best is still to come: Bolder Boulder is tomorrow morning and the rubber duck race in the afternoon!

A busy week

We are going to Fraaaaaaaaaance!!!!! I am so excited I feel like a 5 year-old on Christmas eve. It's been two years since I last saw my family in France. It will be the first time William meets his Grand-Papa and Grand-Maman. We are leaving on Wednesday and we will be there for 3 weeks.

I'm really lucky I have great co-workers who are so nice they will back-up for me during 3 whole weeks. I totally owe them. Since I'm going to be gone during almost the entire month of June, I wanted to work on a few things before I left. So I had the idea of making photobooth cutouts for the children's Festival that will be held at the end of June. Again my awesome co-workers helped and made some really cute accessories and cutouts for the photo station. They still need some work but I think the result is very cute.

From Little Monkey to Homo Erectus

I can't believe how fast our little Williboo is growing. He's already starting to balance and stand by himself. Sadly, I think we can attribute his strength and stability to the roughness of his brother. This little guy is tough.

This is him showing off his new skill this afternoon:

waiting for the summer

I think we've had the worst month of May in decades this year. We had to spend more time inside than we have in the entire winter. The rain poured for weeks and weeks, we had wind, storms, hail, thunder and lighting up until last week. At last it seems it's over now and we're going to enter summer without having a chance of tasting spring. Oh well...

I had a fright last week when I opened my door after a storm and discovered 3" of water on the courtyard, only a few feet away from 2 of my close neighbors' doors. This made the possibility of a flood so much more real to me. I must admit when I heard my manager talk to us about flood prevention during training this year and last year, I didn't take the threat very seriously (although the creek path was flooded for a few days last week). Well now I do, and I don't think I'm the only one.

On a good note, we definetely made good use of our rain boots and had tons of fun jumping in the puddles.

The end of a semester

Last week marked the end of a semester but especially the graduation of Russell with his Master's degree in Communication. The weeks that preceeded were stressful... very stressful. I'm so glad it's over now. As we were all in survival mode (meaning trying really hard not to murder each others) I didn't really feel in the mood to post anything.

However the kids have reached some pretty cool milestones these last few weeks. First thing William finally started crawling... ok now I realize he wasn't that late (8months and 1/2), but with the whole slow-weight-gain story (that's another thing that was stressing me out beyond mesure), the constant waking up at night, being toothless until 9months old, I was starting to worry that my baby was behind. And suddenly, after months of trying all the bottles and sippy cups on the market, we finally got him to drink from a bottle, and within a month to be completely weened. Since then he's gained 1 and 1/2 lbs in one month and... well, now he's refusing to eat with a spoon. Stubborn?

He also started pulling himself up on furniture and he's sleeping much better.

Joshua keeps learning new things. Things I don't even try to teach him, like fishing (with a baseball bat as a pole)? He can "read" his name, Mommy, Daddy and Cody and sing the entire alphabet song. He's a fun two year old, with good days and awfully bad days.

Here are a few pictures of things we've done recently:

"Fishing" in the bathtub (he's wearing a swimsuit because we were pretending to be in the creek), A fort under the table.

Random 104F fiever that made my day.
Water coloring

"Driving" the police car!
With Brian the Easter Bunny.

Posing by the police car during the FH Easter Egg Hunt

A hike to Red rocks up Settlers Park.

The Family Housing Family week : visit to the Butterfly pavilion

Fun times with neighbors and friends (eating with Sean and Kaden, riding the toy car with Lars, William and Ossam, and our Indian neighbor).

A Football game with Lars, a wagon ride with Katie at the good bye party for the Franke-Philips family, and Sammy’s birthday party.