Katye’s Wedding Pt. 1 - Aquarium

Finally! Pictures of Katye’s wedding last September in La Jolla, California. Katye had lived in La Jolla for years and was always telling me about its greatness. Despite my failures to visit year after year, once I finally got there it didn’t disappoint. Katye and Tim organized a great wedding week. We always seemed to have our hands full with the kids, so we failed to capture photos of several beautiful scenes and events. Nevertheless, we still managed to snap some nice ones.

This first set is from our outing on my birthday to the Birch Aquarium…

Jolee, Adrienne, June, and my Aunt Mary…

checking out the starfish…

enjoying their very first push-up pops after a full morning at the aquarium…

Jolee on the ropes

Jolee was much more excited about rock climbing today than she was a week ago. I wouldn’t say she’s completely comfortable with the concept (I’m not sure I am either), but today she was eager to try scrambling up the wall.

make sure to listen to her name her favorite climbing holds…

wish really not granted

Just the other day I said I was hoping for all the snow to miraculously melt this week. Well, that didn’t happen. In fact, it snowed nearly every day this week. A-Basin, a local resort that typically stays open into early June, just this week reported its deepest base snow depth since 2003 (105”)—in case you didn’t notice, it’s almost May. I tried running the trails on Wednesday and I was literally post-holing up to my hips every few steps. I felt like I was training in Siberia preparing to fight Ivan Drago.

Things looked promising this morning with no overnight snowfall and warm temperatures, but that quickly changed this afternoon.The bear has gone back into hibernation.

that didn’t take long

Junie just got back from school and she had some exciting news to report: her first tooth fell out!

hiking and sledding

Some photos from a February hiking and sledding journey we took on the roads and trails behind our house…

wish not granted

As I mentioned in the Easter post, yesterday was closing day at the Breckenridge Ski Resort. The final snow tally for the season was 519”. I was hoping that the day after the season ended—today—all the snow was going to magically melt away. But alas, it was not to be. This was the state of things at our house this afternoon. A lot has melted but there’s still a long way to go (and it’s snowing too). That’s the bear’s nose poking out in the snow mound in the bottom left corner of the photo…

and these are just some extra photos from the mountain last week.

heading up the Imperial Express SuperChair (highest lift in North America goes to 12,840 feet)…

my sister Molly…

watching a storm roll in…

hunting and eating

Easter was worth the wait. We had a wonderful day.

We managed to get everyone dressed in their Sunday best and out the door in time for 8 am Mass. After that we returned home for an Easter egg hunt…which was then repeated several times. The girls were incredibly fortunate that Adrienne’s mom was staying with us; she hid the eggs over and over and over again much to their delight…

After the egg hunting festivities, we prepared for the arrival of our guests. Molly and Phil arrived in the early afternoon, so Molly and I headed out for our last few runs of the season at Breck—it was closing day. The snow was surprisingly good and we managed to get in five runs before they shut the lifts down until November.

Mike, Jenny, and their sons, Emmett and Owen, joined us for dinner later in the afternoon. It was a lovely affair.

have you ever seen a more dignified looking table of toddlers?…

I’m proud of my bunny napkins for the kids…

the awesomeness of Emmett’s seersucker suit is beyond description…

little brother, Owen, also pulled off the seersucker look in style…

Dinner was great—HoneyBaked ham, asparagus with lemon tarragon sauce, lemon fluffy, scalloped potatoes, Hawaiian rolls, 7-layer salad, and English trifle.

I’d be remiss to not mention that Jenny should charge a fee to attend our dinners; she cleaned up everything after the meal. And if that wasn’t enough, she also covertly planted Easter eggs for our kids in our yard the night before.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

milk teeth

Time to put the tooth fairy on alert—Junie has a loose tooth. I actually can’t believe she’s on the verge of losing a tooth. It just seems so grown up. And while June prepares to replace her current set of teeth, Jolee is trying to put the finishing touches on her first set. And as all parents know, cutting molars isn’t fun for anyone. We’ll let you know when June’s tooth finally gives up the fight and lets go.

her bottom right central incisor is the wiggly one…

monkey training

Today the girls took their first of several weekly climbing lessons at our rec center. Jolee is a bit young for a formal class but she still had fun nonetheless. Junie was into it right from the start. (sorry for the blurry photos—I had something set wrong on the camera)

and here’s a video of June’s day…