Clouds

I took these pictures of some awesome clouds in our area right before we left for Yellowstone.






This last one looks like a mushroom cloud. Unfortunately I was a little late with this one because the sun wasn't hitting the whole thing anymore. The clouds really were surreal and I saw numerous people taking pictures of the sky with their cell phones.

Birthdays and Stuff

This is a collection of news worthy things that happened between Sydney's Birthday and our Yellowstone trip.


Sydney's Friend Parish had his birthday recently and his uncle landed right at their house. They have a house on a private airstrip so the kids were all excited to see the plane pull up.


They also had horse riding there so Sydney took old Thunder (name changed to protect his identity and also because I don't know what it is) around the yard.


They have awesome views of the mountains as well.


Seriously?! Seriously?! You're giving a bunch of 5 year olds cupcakes this big?!


Opa and Oma came out to visit for Memorial Day so Melissa and I could run the Bolder Boulder. We were in different waves to allow Melissa to run ahead while I enjoyed reading the backs of thousands of people's shirts.


People say Sydney looks like me but photos like this show the Melissa in her bursting out.


Sydney and her friend Sarah.


Sydney and Bryce hanging out at the kiddy pool in our neighborhood.


This is Bryce and his friend Dillan trying out the water in the big pool. The pool opened with freezing cold water but I think they finally fixed the heater so stop on by!


This picture was taken at Sydney's friend Sarah's birthday party. Bryce is licking the frosting off part of the cake decoration while Sydney is cleaning off the frosting on her hands. It was a proud moment for me so I had to document it.

Sydney's 5th Birthday

Sydney's 5th Birthday was back on the 23rd but we recently got back from Yellowstone so I haven't been able to post any pictures yet. We were blessed to have Melissa's dad Sandy here during her party at a local Bear building place. It was a pretty small party compared to last year's bouncy castle extravaganza, but she had a great time.


Sydney giving a few of her friends a squeeze.


They all waited in line to name their animals. I was trying to convince Jack in front to name his duck something like Donald or Quackers or something but he insisted on naming it the same as Sydney's whale: Kalee


Sydney getting ready to blow out the candles with Sandy in the background armed with cupcakes.


It took her a few blows but she got out all 5 candles. Bryce looked on proudly at his big sister.


Here is the group picture after they had all been hopped up on frosted cupcakes.


This is my boy Bryce, leading his "girlfriend" Kayla off to show her the "woo" which in this instance was a police car around the side of the building. Sandy kept taking him out to see the police car because he is obsessed with anything that has lights and a siren. Eventually two young female police officers came out of the substation and let him sit in the car and turned on the lights and siren for him. They did this THREE times as he convinced Sandy to walk him out to see the police car.


Here is Sandy trying to explain to Bryce that we aren't going to go see the police car for the 10th time. It may be hard to see but at this point he was all red and absolutely freezing cold going out to see that police car.


We were mean and didn't get Bryce an animal (he already has his blue dog) but here is Sarah with her rabbit, Sydney and her whale, and Aiden and his dolphin (who is also apparently a police officer).

Dan Crow

Dan Crow came to visit Cross of Christ Preschool back in April and here he is, live in concert. The kids just loved him and he was very entertaining. This one minute video doesn't fully do him justice but hopefully you can get a taste for what he's like.

Random things we've been up to

Here are some random pictures from the past few weeks that are too good to just sit in my iPhoto library.

Sydney has been in soccer since March and last weekend was her last game. I'll post a few more pictures of this later but here are some from earlier in the season.


I'm not sure what kind of pose she's trying to strike here but the coach was busy telling her to "watch the ball!"


This is a classic shot of Sydney playing soccer. Both feet off the ground, grinning from ear to ear, not watching the ball (notice the other kids looking ahead to the ball). If you look closely you can see me hard at work assistant coaching on the sideline.


This is Sydney's (and probably most of the kids) favorite part of Soccer ... the snack after the game. Bryce didn't make it in this photo but he's usually not far from the snacks. That is if he's not trying to run out on the field to play.


After soccer we sometimes head to the nearby park. Melissa appears to be super excited to be spotting Bryce on the climbing wall.


Sydney and I like to play Carcassonne which is actually a really fun game for adults but it's basically a big puzzle so if you don't play by the rules you can have fun with kids too. Bryce sometimes like to "help" us play by stealing the pieces.


Sydney had this picture taken with all her Barbies for her "All about me" poster at preschool. Ironically she was also wearing her Barbie PJs when we took this picture.


This is Sydney and her Lamby which she's had since birth when Heather Spitzner gave it to Melissa for a baby shower present. We liked it so much we got Bryce something similar except it is a blue dog which we have originally named "Blue Dog".


Recently Ball had a bring your kids to work day and they always do a big liquid nitrogen demonstration for the kids. Here the guy is breaking apart a head of lettuce to make a salad after freezing it in the dewar next to him (dewar is a fancy name for a liquid nitrogen thermos).


Sydney's last swimming lesson they got suited up in life jackets and jumped off the diving board in the deep end. We were really proud of her because she jumped off right away on the first try. Most of the kids really had to be encouraged although unfortunately no one had to be thrown off the end (boring!).


This picture was taken at kindergarden orientation at Arapahoe Ridge Elementary where she will be going to all day kindergarden next year. Please join us in praying for the sanity of her teacher.

Melissa's Working Out

Melissa's been working out a lot lately and got a glamor shot taken. Check it out!

Denver Zoo

We recently went to the Denver Zoo and we got a lot of good pictures of the animals with our 10x zoom. Enjoy!

Slideshow Test

Apparently you can create Flickr slideshows right in your blog. Here is one of Carson's baptism:

Dan Crow

Dan Crow came to visit the Cross of Christ Preschool and you would've thought it was American Idol or something. All the kids knew his songs and were singing bits and pieces before the show. They even had a pot luck before the show which Dan ate at (I'm not sure if that was part of his official compensation or not). Sydney told me Dan is the funniest person in the world although I'm second.


Dan even ate at the kids table which they all enjoyed.


Sydney sat enthralled as Dan delivered his message of hope ... no, wait, it was actually a song about kissing a cow.


Dan the man warming up the crowd.


Sydney, Dan, Meredith, and Maggie all posed for a picture. For once, Sydney was the only one without her mouth open.

Sydney Swimming

We're trying to get Sydney to learn how to swim before our neighborhood pool opens up on Memorial Day because we'll probably be spending most of the time trying to prevent Bryce from drowning himself. She just finished a round of lessons at Broomfield and graduated to the next class which is hopefully entitled "Learning how to actually swim."


Here she is practicing her "big arms".


Here she is practicing her back float with her instructor which we at first mistook for another kid in the class. I'm not sure if he lost a bet or what but he has since changed his haircut.


She loves the water!