Silliness

Silly Anna:

This is how silly Josie and silly Ruthie slept last night:

Josie fell off the bottom bunk onto Ruthie's bed and Ruthie fell off her trundle bed half onto the floor. Does that look comfortable to you? I had been thinking lately that maybe Josie and Anna could trade bunks and Josie could be on the top, but after seeing this I'm not so sure:)

And a not so silly but very beautiful picture of my Josie girl, who keeps wanting me to take a portrait picture of her lately:

Warm Days of January

This is one of the things I love about Boulder, warm days in January. Yes, tomorrow it could be in the single digits (I don't think that's actually predicted for tomorrow, but a 50 degree swing happened just last week). Three little girls are outside enjoying every last ray of warm sunshine they can soak up with their little bodies.

Josie is making chalk paint: scrape chalk to make chalk powder, add water, stir, repeat.

Anna is busy painting with her chalk paint some objects that she found.

They said this is bounce town.

Anna is trying to walk her slack line at bounce town, or mostly she just bounces on her slack line, holding a hiking stick for balance.



Barefoot in January. Well, barefoot and not screaming and running back inside in January.
Who knows what crazy scheme they will come up with in the next 5 minutes!

Ice Skating

Classic wintertime. Sliding around on ice.

You can tell from their faces that these girls love it! And it can get a bit chilly. How many layers do you think Anna is wearing in this picture?

It was fun to skate together but these girls actually did better when they weren't holding my hand.

Ruthie's even tried it twice now and was getting considerably better by her second day. She could make it most of the way down the rink on her own before falling, with Mom spotting close behind ready to catch her before her head slammed into the ice.

Racing along! One of their favorite games on the ice was having me time how long it took them to get around. It wasn't very precise fun, mind you, since the time depended more on the route they took, how close to the rail they stayed and how many people happened to get in their way than whether or not they actually went faster that time. They But don't tell them!

Josie says "I love skating! I like it a lot and a lot and a lot! I like swinging around the corners with Mommy. I like going fast. I like falling and then sliding on my knees. "

Anna says: "I had hockey skates on. I like them. I went really, really fast."

Ruthie: "I was just cold there."

Poor Ruthie. She was so patient. Even the day that she did skate she was done way before her sisters were ready to be done skating. If you're not skating then being outside for that many hours does get chilly. By the time Daddy took her home the last day she was done, and cold. And that's the last thing she remembers. Mostly we had fun playing around the rink while Anna and Josie skated, special Mommy and Ruthie time. We had a place that was our 'house', I was the 'big kid', as Ruthie called me (as in "Hey big kid, come over here!") and Ruthie was my Mommy.

I took a bunch of videos of the girls skating as well. Some of them are a bit chopped since they have to be under 24 seconds for them to be a small enough file to post here. If you don't get enough of these girls skating in these videos and for some reason you want to see more then skype with me. We figured out how to show our desktop while skyping instead of the video stream of us from the webcam, so I can play the video on my computer and you can see it. Technology these days!

A video of all of us skating Day 1:

Anna, Day 1:




Josie, Day 1:

Anna says she wants to be an ice skating ballerina when she grows up (otherwise known as a figure skater). Day 2, practicing spins:

More of Anna's practice spins, Day 2:

Anna and Josie racing the clock around the rink (they hate racing each other, they just want to know how long it takes them personally), Day 2 (Part 1):

Part 2:

This is one of the only videos I got of Ruthie since most of her time on skates I was spotting her. She actually got to where she could go quite a significant way down the rink before falling, and if I was with her she didn't stay near the rail.

Anna making a lap around on her hockey skates, Day 3 (Part 1):

Part 2:

Snowshoeing

Nighttime snowshoeing right out our front door.
For living in a city (a BIG city, says this small town girl) we sure do live in an ideal location, right on the creek with a wooded area straight across the creek from us. Perfect for trying out new snowshoes!
It was an exploration in Antarctica. We saw tons of penguins and had to map out unexplored terrain. Or at least that is what Adventuring Anna was doing. I asked Ruthie if she saw the penguins and she said "Where? I don't see any penguins, Mommy. I just see a log." The three year old realist. Josie and Mitch were our cartographers. I was Cook Kate in charge of provisions. Trekking into the moonlight:
Ruthie did plenty of this:

See! I really was on this expedition! There's proof in the pictures.

Our next exploration was in the daylight. I brought the backpack to put Ruthie in if she got tired, but this intrepid explorer made it the whole way (with the help of some M & M's that I used to bribe her). She had to hold my hand the whole way or else her snowshoes would trip her up, but she did it all on her own.

Down the trail they go! We were looking for a Mama Moose and her calf. A snowshoer coming towards us told us it had been sighted up ahead of us, but by the time we got there it was gone. We just saw the tracks.

The lunch spot.

It was a bit of a winter wonderland listening to the sounds of nature around us, the wind in the trees, the few birds, the water of the creek rushing along below the ice as we trekked along at our slow pace taking it all in and enjoying each other's company.