Our zoo and camping trip

For Derek's work, they took everyone to the zoo! So, the whole company brought their family to the zoo here and everyone else in the zoo left! It was great! We had the whole zoo to ourselves and they put on a animal show for us, fed us dinner and left the train and carousel on for rides for free! Maggie absolutely loved the carousel ride. She begged to go on. The animals were fun to see. It is interesting though, I really miss the Topeka zoo. I like how it is smaller and you can see the animals fairly close up! The lion as we were leaving was roaring, it was a good end to the zoo.

We as a family took off into the Rocky Mountain National Park for some camping. We didn't actually end up camping in the park, we were just outside of it next to a really big lake. I don't remember the name or I would share it! We camped for 2 nights. It rained both nights. The last night, it stopped before we went to bed and we saw all the stars. Spencer and I saw several shooting stars! Some funny things, we had a fun time trying to get our fire to light. It turned into a big joke when we gave up after like an hour trying to light it, and used the camp stove. When we just sat down to eat, we looked over to a roaring fire! We laughed and Seth said, humm... I want another hot dog!
We went hiking and fishing also.

More summer fun things

Some of the summer fun things like we said, the kids got to spend so much time with most of their cousins. They were so happy to spend time with them and play with them and etc. They climbed mountains, played at a beach, went to mini golf and laser tag and riding go carts, also we went to Wheeler farm, and most importantly we saw our niece Anna get baptized. It was fun to be with everyone. My parents moved from Houston to a new house in Eagle mtn. Utah. We stayed with them at first.
They didn't have any grass in yet so all the kids loved to play in the powder dirt. Spencer dove into the powder dirt and was covered. He shook his head and powder flew everywhere. It was hard to keep their house clean until that grass came.
Maggie was sick the first week we were there, but soon got better and became fast friends with her cousin Eli. He is 5 months older than Maggie. He is so adorable.
They shared everything. Seth has a feature on his camera that adjusts the smile of people, sometimes when picking pictures it is hard to tell whcih ones have them until they are published. See if you can see which ones have the adjusted smiles!

Summer fun things

Summer went by fast also, as everyone else has said for them too!
We started off with some visitors and then went to Utah for 3 weeks.
To much happened to name everything. I should have gotten on to share it all at the time. My cousin came for a couple of nights, all of our nieces and nephews were there at some point too! It was a lot of fun to see everyone. I am sure glad that our kids had lots of time to spend with almost all their cousins and both Grandparents.
Derek wrecked on our sister-in-laws bike and split her helmet in two while mountain biking with Ric and Jed. He said he was way to over confidant in his abilities after not mountain biking for how long? Needless to say, after landing literally on his head, he is doing so much better now and only aches sometimes. I am glad he wasn't hurt worse.

Camp Tahosa 2010 extras

Group earned the "outstanding service" award for gathering so much firewood. The view made up for the lack of fish on our poles.

Camp Tahosa 2010

S experienced his first Boy Scout Camp at the High Adventure Base Tahosa in the mountains about an hour from Boulder. Hiking, knots, service, Samuel the Lamanite patrol, burnt food, campfire, smores, chipmunks, mountain pine beetle, mountain blue bird, firewood, kayaking, canoeing, fishing (no luck), compass, beans, skits, devotional at outside chapel, skills challenge games, and fun. Three stakes join together to put on a complete 11-year old campout that accomplishes a lot of scout requirements.

Aunt R holding M at the Butterfly Pavilion

M enjoyed being held by and playing with Aunt R during her very helpful visit

Top of the Museum of Nature and Science overlooking Denver

Denver has an amazing Science and Nature Museum with a great view of Denver. Fun visit with fam, g-ma, g-pa, and aunt!

N "heart" Spiders

After a lifetime of suffering from intensely severe arachnophobia, N has been cured through jokes from her family and the example of her children. She has not only started to tolerate the presence of spiders in the same building, but she is holding them! What’s next? Petting them? Charlotte’s Web becoming her favorite book? Keeping them as pets? Loving them!

We love to have Grandma and Grandpa come!

We love to have Grandma and Grandpa come. This time they brought Reb also! We had lots of fun with them here, and Reb is still here! The kids love to play with them. This time Maggie loved to play ball with Grandma and Grandpa out on the driveway and giggled each time Grandma had to run and get the ball. Spencer loved to goof around like usual and try to make everyone laugh. Seth loved to play air hockey with Grandpa and Reb also. We celebrated Grandma's birthday while they were here, that is the picture! Glad they could come!

Maggie's curly hair

So, by the day, Maggie's hair gets curlier and curlier, I took a picture this morning to show the front and back. It reminds me of my brother's hair as well as a couple of my nieces hair.

Hiking on Memorial day

We are really enjoying the times that we can go out hiking! We went to Rocky Mtn. National Park. It was soooo beautiful there! Our hike that we went on was to see waterfalls, we didn't want to do a really hard hike, but nothing way to easy. So we set off, we found 3 waterfalls,lots of elk, and chipmunks. The hike wasn't that bad. It was pretty easy for kids,and only round trip about 3.5 miles. Here are some pictures from that fun time.

Seth's birthday

I wanted to put some pictures in of Seth also. He had his #11 birthday recently also! I am so proud of Seth for who he is becoming. He is so fun to play with. In fact, he wants to play with me right this second. I am pushing him off so I can finish this! What a Mr. Yo he is. I love our deep talks we have.

Spencer's Birthday

Spencer had his Birthday and it was Great! He woke up so early ready for the day! Dying to open up the gifts. He is such a smiley kid. He has been since he was born. He has smiled and laughed since he was like 2 and a half months old, and that smile pretty much hasn't left yet. We called him smiley when he was a baby.
He loves to have fun and tease anyone he can.
He loved 1st grade, and has become quite the reader, and a wiz at math. He brightens the room when he comes in! We are so glad he is in our family!! These are some pictures of him that I really like. I want to put in one of him as a baby, but, our scanner seems to not work! So when it does, I will put that on. It is great.

School is over! Summer has begun

The boys were soooo excited to have summer start. For the past month Spencer has been asking when it would end. He was ready to play.
Yesterday Seth had his 5th grade awards ceremony at school. The "graduation" from elementary to junior high. During the slide show, all the kids broke out in song with a song that was played. I had never heard it before! I guess I am out of the loop now on the hip songs! I am too much in the 80's songs and kid songs. Seth claimed he had heard it lots before and knew all the words! He sang it too me. He did! I wonder where he heard it! I can't believe that he is going to junior high in like 10 weeks. I like to see him grow, but a part of me really wishes he would stay small like Maggie so I could keep cuddling him, actually I wish they all could...I think you all know what I mean!

our new house and the hot air balloons!

Here is a picture of our new house!
The hot air balloons were the best event so far in our very own neighboorhood! We got up at 6am twice to watch these take off! The first day they put a couple of balloons up to show the public, but the weather wasn't that good, so they didn't fly them. The next day (Sunday morning)they put up the balloons, it was so neat. We found out that the balloons are made of silk, and they are very sensitive and delicate. They start out in price of $40,000 and go up in price for the bigger or more personalized ones. Pretty expensive hobby! The hot flame that shoots up was loud and we could feel the heat fairly well standing 10-20 feet away. It took a lot to get the balloons up in the air too. They rolled them out, tied it to the basket, hooked a big blowing fan to inflate it then started to pull ropes on the balloon while the flame was blowing in also. It was really cool. I will have to post the video that Seth took of one of the balloons going up.
Spencer was sad that he couldn't go up in them. He wanted to so bad.
The Balloons were the start of the town fair. We went and hung out and met Jedi knights, and storm troopers, a sand guy, and someone else...I don't remember what he was called. That made Spencer's day.
Maggie is walking almost everywhere now, when she wants to go fast, she crawls, but when she doesn't mind how long it takes and wants the cheers she gets from walking she walks. She loves dogs, and loves to bark like a dog too. The boys taught her how to say "duh" so she says that a lot. That makes them laugh a lot.
Well, lots more unpaking to do, I better go!

Kid Battle Royal

Here are all the kids piling on Uncle R! I'm sure glad Uncle R built up his muscles before we came... he will be using them more often since there are more kids in Colorado!

Flatirons

We went hiking with the kids twice and once with the Denver relatives! Here are the boys on the Flatirons trail above Boulder. Can't wait until a few more weeks and the snow stops falling and starts melting at the higher elevations!

Colorado

We moved for a new job. Here's the view from D's office. On a clear day, many more mountain peaks are in veiw. The top level conference rooms in the office are all named after mountain peaks. Great job with a great company www.whitewave.com

We are finally online again!

Yeah!
After a month and a half, we finally have moved into our house in Erie Colorado, and got Internet again! I can't believe how addicted I am to the Internet, it has been hard not to have it!
I will post some pictures later, I realized that I haven't taken any of our new house yet, but I do have to say, the kids are doing well in school, and Spencer just found out yesterday that another 1st grader lives next door! So, he played with him for a while, that was fun.
Maggie has taken lots of steps now, she is into everything. Her hair is as curly as ever. I should have named her Shirley.
Seth just turned 11 and was very excited to have this past birthday. He gets to go on all the boy scout camp outs now, with Derek.
The weather here is crazy! It was like 80 on Monday, and yesterday we woke up to 1-2 inches of snow!
I will get more done soon, just wanted to let you know that we miss all of our friends back in Kansas and beyond.

NEWS

Okay, so I missed writing about Christmas and New Years.... They were GREAT! All except for the part that we all the stomach flu. We went to Houston, Texas and had a way fun family reunion on the beach.

I am not sure how to tell any one person in particular this news, because I think I will cry. We are way excited but sad also to leave the place we have lived for for the past 6 1/2 years. We have made wonderful friends here and had so many events happen here. The Jayhawks fight song will always be embedded in our kids memories!

Yes, you guessed it, we are moving! Derek accepted a new job in Colorado. He leaves to start work in 3 weeks from now, the kids and I stay until the house sells, or 1 or 2 months! (Which ever comes first.)

We, like I said, are really excited and look forward to the new adventure, but we really wish to keep all the friendships we have made here!

Maggie's getting big

Here is a picture of the outfit that she wore home from the hospital at almost 1 month old, 4lbs. It was big for her also. The other is the pj's she is wearing now. They are a tiny bit big also, it is amazing to see a preemie pj next to a 12 month pj. Also a preemie onesie next to a 9-12 month onesie!

Here is our race pictures!

Here are some pictures from November!

Highlights of November

This past month flew by, literally!
>Seth recieved his Webelos activity badges! Yea!
>Grandma Anderson came for a stay! We had lots of fun with her here. We made/bought gifts for other people, we played games, got some projects done, and simply played around. It was a good visit.
>Maggie had her first birthday! I can't believe it has been a whole year since she was born! She has grown a ton too! She is 17.5 lbs. (3.12lbs when she was born) and the nurse measured wrong on her height. Acording to her, she srank like 3 inches since her last well check visit. Crazy! We mesured her, but I forgot what it is. I will have to look. Babies are so amazing the things they learn and how they grow just in that 1st year of life!
Maggie loved her cake! She dived right into it and started to shovel it into her mouth by the fist fulls. It was comical!
>Seth, Derek, Grandpa Anderson, and I (Nat) ran the thanksgiving day race! It was a lot of fun! Seth pushed me big time. Only like 5 min into the race Seth says to me, mom, your too slow, can I meet you at the finish line? So, I ran all but like 50-100 yards of the race so that he didn't have to wait to long for me. He ran practically the whole way also! Seth got 8th place for his age group! Derek and Grandpa walked the whole way. Derek said he didn't even break a sweat!
>Thanksgiving was fun also. We ate great food and had fun being with eachother.
>The day after Thanksgiving, we went to Science City! That is a way fun place to be. The kids had a fun time. We liked the optical alluions a lot.
>We noticed a few spots on Maggie the days previous, but didn't really look too close, that night though, we noticed that the spots seemed to be spreading more. She had had a chicken pox shot the Monday before, and that is about the time the spots started to show up. Well, we figured out after talking with the doc and some friends that had the same thing happen to them, that yes, she had broken out with a mild case of the chicken pox! We felt bad then for taking her all those places, but she doesn't walk or really interact with anyone besides us, so I think it was fine.
She ended up with more than 40 spots all over her body. They have since crusted over, so I think they are done now. Hopefully!
That is our November!

Halloween

This year, Seth was Beaker from the Muppet's. It was funny that all the adults knew who he was and loved that he was Beaker, not many kids knew who he was at all! Who doesn't know the Muppets? That is crazy!
Spencer was a "spy kitty" it is a game that they play at school him and his friends made up.
Maggie was a cow.
Derek was a spread sheet. It is what he works on everyday. He won a prize at work! Yea!
We went to pick pumpkins at the pumpkin patch and played in the corn barrel again! We all love that!
What a fun Halloween this year!

Birthday

It is a fact, I really like to celebrate birthdays. This year was one of the best ever. My mom called a couple of weeks ago and asked me what I wanted. I said I wasn't sure. We talked a while later and I told her that what I really wanted was to be with her, not really expecting to be able too. She said that sounds like fun and said lets see what we can do and hung up. I was shocked and excited! I also felt a little guilty for being so selfish asking that.
My mom and dad drove the 11 hours it takes to get here and it was pure fun to have them here. They drove by on Friday and picked the kids up from school. That was a request from Spencer. My visiting teachers wanted to bring a birthday dinner so we had a great dinner. The next day we took off for the 3.5 hour drive to the Temple. It was wonderful. I love going to the Temple, I love the way I feel inside. We did sealings and this is the first time that I have done that with my parents! To see them kneel across the alter for those who have died before and look googly eyed to each other I could almost picture their wedding day. It was the coolest feeling. I love my family, and I couldn't imagine not being with them when I die. I am so glad to have such neat parents that taught me, loved me, and have set a great example to me. It was one of my all time highs that day. Thanks for coming up mom and dad!