Snippin', Sippin', Start of Summer

Camryn FINALLY got her first hair cut!!! It only took over a year and a half for her hair to be ready for it. No more bangs in her eyes and, more important, no more mullet. We went to Cool Cuts and it was awesome. We're going to have to convince Matt to take Cole here for his hair cuts from now on (instead of with him at the men's hair cut place). Our girl was so sweet, she immediately won Camryn over by putting an Elmo DVD on the TV in front of her. Oddly enough, Cam wanted nothing to do with the cool car or fire truck to sit in. She preferred to sit--on her own, but with baby doll--in the big kid chair. She did amazingly well. I thought Grammy and I were going to have to hold her down while she had a fit the whole time. Much to our surprise, she sat totally still and came away with the cutest, layered, little girl short hair cut ever! It was even better when she got a bow put in her hair at the end of it all. 

 As if this place wasn't cool enough, there was a Thomas the Train table there. Cole had a great time playing with that...until he heard the Elmo song. Then he came over and couldn't get in the fire truck fast enough to join in with Cam and watch her get her hair cut and Elmo.

Throughout her little hair cut, she kept sneaking glances of herself in the mirror!

 She knows she looks good! And I'm so happy not to deal with tiny rubber bands and struggle with barely-decent looking pigtails every day now. Clips are a million times easier!

 So, I had to document this--While down at home we went to the mall one day and parked outside of Macy's Kids. The same Macy's Kids where about a year ago Mimi happened across the best baby doll ever, as far as Camryn is concerned. She is completely attached to her "baby doll" these days (see pictures above, where baby doll, too, got her first hair cut!) and just like earlier this year with Cole's bear blanket, I often worry what will happen if the horrible happens and we lose/forget baby doll somewhere. I thought it was just some random display at that Macy's a year ago and figure there's no way I'd be lucky enough to find another one on Ebay. Not so, and I screamed out loud with excitement when I walked by the same, exact display of the same, exact baby dolls we randomly latched onto a year ago. Except the ones last week in Texas were in pristine shape and super duper clean compared to our original one, of course. I instantly bought 2 right there on the spot and these 2 news ones now live up on a shelf in my closet. Just like our second bear blanket, they're nice to have as back up for when original baby doll gets so gross from her day to day that I barely even want to carry her with tongs to throw her into the wash to get clean again. Oh, happy day that we found baby doll backups!!!!

 First day of June! Let summer begin! We're so happy that Maggie and Fisher are living in Ft. Collins this summer. We've already got to spend fun times with them and look forward to many more ahead.

 Cole--and Camryn--are absolutely IN LOVE with Fisher. They love everything he does, they want to sit by him for every meal, and they follow him around constantly in excitement whenever he's been around with us lately.

 Last night Matt and I got to go have fun with our friends here at Sippin and Painting. Most people know how much I love those places where you get to have fun drinking and painting, and last night was one of the best yet! I'm so happy Tami arranged it all, I love how our pictures turned out and we loved spending such a great time with wonderful friends here.

 I choose to represent our family on the bottle labels. Matt chooses to represent math. Seriously. Lordy.

 Stop it Tami with your PERFECT wine glasses!!

 This morning Fisher and Maggie went back to Ft. Collins and the babies were quite sad about it. After waving out the door and saying "bye bye Fisher" about 20 times, we drowned our sorrows in a good Barney video. Clearly I think glasses are in our future or something? Our babies can't seem to watch TV close enough these days...!

It's actually been getting pretty hot during the days here lately. Nothing like back at home, though. While hot, you can still be rather comfortable doing lots of things outside here without having to be in a pool to be able to ignore the heat and enjoy things. As the sun starts going down, the temperature outside is awesome and we want to be out in it every evening here. Tonight we hung out in Golden and had a nice, relaxing evening.

In keeping with the fun, start of summer, tomorrow is Splash Day at school for the babies! We've got our awesome swim suits, our cool water shoes, and our new, fun PBK monogrammed towels (you know I can't resist those!) all packed up in our bags ready to go tomorrow...

Texas Trip

The week before Memorial Day, we headed down for a Texas visit. Matt was working from the office in The Woodlands all that week, so we decided to join him. But first we had to have a little more fun here...

Cam and I had our own girl's time (dropping Mario off at camp then having some Starbucks treats) while Matt and Cole both went for hair cuts. 

Later that night, the night before we left not-so-bright and early the next morning,  I got to go see Kristin Chenoweth in concert. Had a great time!

The plane flights this time around, while still not ideal, were a little bit better. Sitting in the premium seats more toward the front gave us more wiggle room, and having Matt as another lap the babies would sit in all made things not as crazy as they've been. I had to take a picture because only seeing is believing--Cam actually sat on Matt's lap for about 10 minutes and watched a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!!! There's hope! I can't wait for them to be entertained by shows/movies more. I'm still shocked they watched that movie in the planetarium. Still, at home, I'm doing good if they'll sit and watch something for 15 minutes tops. (And only still with those same 2 movies--Farm Video or Baby Noah.) But again, I think there's a light at the end of this tunnel?? Maybe, just maybe, there will be a day sooner than later when they'll be better occupied by good kid shows?!

 We were so excited to get to attend our church we love so much from back home. This time they were in the Raccoon room. Even more exciting, there was a little outside play area connected to their room that they got to go out and play with. Once again, I loved hearing the beautiful music at our church and coming away feeling re-energized with fresh, positive vibes for the week.

 Mimi had great reading books and coloring books to play with. Cam, of course, read every book 10+ times. Cole took to the coloring.

 We already knew we liked to play with the Thomas the Train train tables, but we discovered how fun it is to play with in the kids area at Barnes and Noble. They really took to the whole children's' section, in general. I hadn't been brave enough to take them there on my own yet--so with back up, we had a great first experience--and we can't wait to go back and read/pick out more books and play with the train tables again on our own.

 While working in Houston all week, a couple of Matt's days were spent down at Rice. He loved being on that campus again and seeing former professors and favorite buildings. I got to go down one of the nights and hang out too. He got to stay in the very cool Hotel Zaza. Ooh la la. Time for an appletini for ME.

 The next day I got to go see Cheryl! Sorry Cheryl, I didn't get any pictures with you my first time seeing you that week. Instead I got some of Lucy. She's a good picture poser. This is what I got to look at for a while Thursday morning--can't beat starting out the day with a sweet puppy dog gazing up at you! While I'm a big fan of Kristin Chenoweth, I promise I'm not a stalker--despite the fact I saw her in concert again with Cheryl down in Houston during the week! The show was even better the second time.

We had a fun time going to the Zoo with Mimi and Brent. Since our elephant exhibit has been under construction here, we were so excited to finally see real, live elephants finally! Even better, we got to see 2 baby elephants too. So adorable.

 Besides the elephants and giraffes, the other exciting highlight for us that day was the petting zoo. They had a blast in there! It's too bad our Denver zoo doesn't have a children's and petting zoo area :(
Camryn literally went around to every single goat in there, petted them sweetly then waved in their faces saying "hi". As for me, I'd like to have some of what all the goats are on. I know they are calm, gentle animals to start with, but these were some of the most out-of-it, dazed-out creatures I've ever witnessed! Nothing startled or bothered them. They were the perfect animals for all the kids to come pet and love on.

 ...More hanging out at Mimi's while I got to go out another evening and have more drinks. This time I had my MOST FAVORITE: The Key Lime Pie Martini from Uni Sushi. Yes, please.

Finally got to try out Mi Cocina while we were there. Sooooo good!

Somehow I ended up without any pictures of all the times spent in the pool at Grandpa and Grandma's??!! We got in lots of fun swim times. The babies loved it and Cam did NOT want to get out of the pool. Looks like I'll have to do swim lessons this summer. This time we'll try to schedule them for Saturday mornings so Matt can be the main parent in charge of it all with us! Other great times were spent hanging out--and watching and listening to animal sounds on the iPad...

We were so excited to finally meet Noah! And here's an actual picture of Cheryl, not just her adorable dog.

At the airport headed back.  Thank goodness for raisins while Matt returned the rental car and we had too much time to spend strolling around outside of security until he met back up with us.

And an even more, HUGE thank goodness for the President's Club there. This one in Houston has a great family room too. There was a pretend airplane in there for them to fly, a fun kid's table to have snacks at (awesome snacks in the President's club suited just for us, of course: bananas, m&m's, raisins, cookies, cheese, crackers, A BAR!!), and a DVD player that they actually sat and watched about 5 minutes of Madagascar on. Oh! AND a changing table kind of area--all in the family room there. LOVE IT! The only thing they might want to (and probably will after us) add is some air freshener spray. The babies each had number 2 diapers while in there. I'd so much rather change those kinds of diapers in that wonderful room--NOT in an airplane bathroom. Been there, done that, no thank you.

Meanwhile, Tiger was getting some much needed rest after all his hard work watching over the babies for a week!