More pictures...

The girls got fairy gardens for their birthdays from Tadd and Carri...they spend a great deal of time playing with and rearranging the items.

This face...look at how cute she is?!?!

Look who got a haircut...nearly held still for seconds at a time.  Joe did a fabulous job of wrangling him and getting it done.

Anne...you may never speak to me again...but this was my first trip to the library as an adult. :-(  There is a training website called Lynda.com that hosts a ton of technical training videos and I was going to have my work buy for me but then one of the guys that I work with pointed out that if you have a Pikes Peak Library district card you can take the training for free.  Well, that was apparently enough of a motivator to get me to go in there and while we're at it check some books out for the girls.  Obviously from the pictures the "littles" had a blast at the train table.

We officially have a 1st and 3rd grader.  Crazy huh?!?!? Here's Tyler's graduation ceremony.

Look at both of those faces...love them.

This is the view from in front of my office building.  With the Thunderbirds flying over for Air Force graduation.

Joe was home with the kiddos that day so he drove them up so they could watch the air show. 

When in Vegas

When I was in Vegas I attended a talk given by the author of "Save the World & Make it Home for Dinner".  His talk was about gender synergy in the workplace and how you need both men and women to make companies successful.  He started off by saying that years ago he was hired on by a fortune 500 company to help with relationships within the company.  When he found himself standing in the hallway with a woman who buzzed past him, he stopped her and asked what she wanted.  She sighed and said I just want to save the world AND make it home for dinner.  He said that he realized at that moment how different men and women were and that in all of his years of working with powerful men at these companies most of them didn't care about making it home for dinner and none of them had ever said they wanted to save the world, more money, bigger house...sure.  Even taking better care of their own families but never the whole world.  At this point I already had tears in my eyes...yes this is exactly what I think everyday.  He went into some of the fascinating science between a pink brain (mostly found in women) and a blue brain (mostly found in men).  The pink brains are so much better at the two qualities that are making and breaking companies - multi tasking and empathy.  It was an hour of my life that flew by and will forever leave an impact on me, specifically in work...I will remain my pink brained self and be empathetic and multi-tasking and keep raising the bar.

And my front gardens are already....

And my front gardens are already looking really nice.  The perennials are coming up awesome and since I am not pregnant or nursing I actually have the energy to work on them. :-D

If you blink you'll miss it.

I swear life happens so fast that if you blink you'll miss it.

I am COMPLETELY in love with my job.  I can work from home at anytime, or go in for a couple hours if I want or really anything else.  They just shipped me off to Vegas for a big technology conference, what an honor to be surrounded by so many top notch tech geeks.  Wow.  It was the first time I have ever been away from the kiddos though, that part broke my heart and I am pretty sure there were tears on both ends but Joe held everything down like a boss - for that I am forever grateful.  I even ran in a 5K while I was out there - turns out geeks who choose to run are fast little buggers but that's ok, I didn't mind coming in last. ;-)

The kiddos only have three more days of school left (again if you blink) - I'll be super happy when I can setup a summer routine and not spend so much time running back and forth.

These two just crack me up, they are always "playing" together.

The girls school hosted a PTO fundraising carnival.  What a fun time we had.

Hopefully everyone has this good of a helper on Sunday mornings to make biscuits.

Poor little Hunter didn't feel good so she was sucking her thumb throughout Costco.

Joe bought this hammock and usually has at least three kids piled on him.

Kelley and I ran in a 7K up in Woodland Park with the Broncos.

A hummingbird flew into our kitchen so I captured it with a butterfly net to release it outside.

We all went and enjoyed Field Day at the school.

The view from the kiddos school is just about criminal.

For Mother's Day Joe and the kids got me these awesome lights for the back patio.  Also, see all the rocks in my flower beds?  There are literally thousands of flowers planted under them.  Joe has brought in over four tons of rocks and I planted my flowers and then we covered them up - my thought process thinks that the rocks will act as a freeze barrier for the next couple weeks and then when it's nice and warm out we will have flowers everywhere.  I will post more pictures if my gamble pays off. :-D

Catching up....

Though I probably won't have time to actually catch up on everything.

Let's see some of the big news -

I am now gainfully employed after exactly 11 months.  And I absolutely LOVE my new job.  I am a network and systems engineer for a company called Interbank1 that takes care of the IT for Peoples Bank.  Peoples Bank has about 30 sites throughout the US employing roughly 1,200 people, both banks and mortgage branches and we make their lives easier by making sure everything is running smoothly.  We are also owned 50% by Peoples Bank so we can take advantage of their insurance and other benefits while still being somewhat of our own company - one with only 27 employees and so far just about the smartest and friendliest people I have ever been around.  They allow me complete flexibility on where and when I work, so for the most part I work from home, though I do try and make it into the office at least one day a week for about a half day just to see some of the other guys.  Most of the engineers and management work from home but the technicians work from an office in Gleneagle which is about a 14 minute drive from my house, so I'll drive in there to hang out with them.


Here's the obligatory picture dump. :-D

Costco had bathing suits on sale, the complete rash guard sets with hats that I love so much, look at these cuties!

Chewy AKA Hunter is finally old enough on movie nights to sit in her highchair next to Jackson and watch the show.

J moved to New Orleans but not before we were able to stop by her old work for some lunch and dancing with the house band.

We got a new driveway...I am not sure who was more excited Joe or Jackson.

The driveway before.

Who knew paving was a spectator sport?

Chewy's birthday cake.

After baths with her siblings helping her open presents.

Look at that driveway, it's recycled pavement so it will wear differently than new traditional new pavement but wow, what a difference?!?!?!

This little girl will eat anything and everything.  This is her devouring a bean burrito from Taco Bell.

Or here, I believe this was an ice cream cone in its past life.

Tyler puts her in this wheel barrow and they stroll around the house. 

She has really been working on walking lately.  The girls were home from school the other day and were taking videos of her walking in the playroom while I worked.  I am positive that everyday this little girl wakes up and is thankful to be in this family, she is an absolute joy to be around.

I swear I'm still here....

Whew, what a crazy ride this life is.  I told Joe the other day as we continue to wait and change things about our lives due to circumstances...on one hand it would be nice to have the foresight it would take to make the best decisions but then what fun would life be if it were predefined?  So here we sit, I still don't have a job, Joe hasn't sold the business (in fact he is debating on expanding it) and the kiddos are growing and loving and changing everyday.  Crazy huh?!?!?!

I can't get over how much I love seeing the four of them together - four individuals set to change the world - who all fit in one corner of the living room.

Austin has a wonderful teacher this year (as she always has) who does these amazing things like having a "class pet" who is a bear and travels to each kid's homes and the kids journal about what they did with JoJo.  Like here eating breakfast before school - in a tiara. :-)

This little girl is just amazing...still not officially crawling though she army crawls at a very fast clip.

Argh...Joe built the bunk beds...and I hate them.  The safety concerns for me could keep me up for a week, perhaps the kids will decide that they hate them too someday. ;-)

Again I just love the four of them hanging out, like here watching movies.

Oh my word...there was an fundraiser event last weekend called "Touch a Truck" where they brought a whole bunch of trucks and what not into a building and allowed kids to crawl all over them, what a cool event.  And Jackson was near passing out for the whole thing.

And Summer got to join us too. :-D

We even found a snowplow with Jackson's name on it. 

Summer looks so much like my brother here it hurts my heart.

And the sickies...the kids have been out of school for most of the week fighting off what must be Ebola related, running fevers as high as 104.5 and just feeling like junk.  They are watching movies and laying around looking quite pathetic currently - like Goose pictured here last night.

The sound of an angel.

I cannot get over how cute her little laugh is...this is what heaven must sound like.