Where did January and February go?

They're gone and good riddens!  With the past two months we've had seemingly a ton of snow and rain, though welcomed in our arid elevation, present challenges to our everyday life.  Frozen pipes at the cabin, frozen mountain bike trails....I mean really, this winter weather stuff has got to go! (Just kidding, I love it when it precipitates here) 

The boys headed off to the Annual Rock and Gem show in Tuscon this weekend so what did we girls do?  Do laundry and clean? Sit at home and cry? Cook and prepare food for when the men came home?  NO! We went SHOPPING!  Shopping for shoes (we each got a new pair), shopping for Spring decorations.  This was exhausting work so we had to stop mid-way for lunch at Baja Fresh.  When we were done we both needed some "down time" from our work so we watched a show or two before heading over to a friends house for dinner.  We then had a sleep over, went out to the cabin, went to church.  Oh the fun continues.    

Relaxing after a long day.  We borrowed the CD player and headphones from Faith - not sure I'm ready for the isolation of headphones.  

Final result from our shopping trip.  A beautiful spring mantel.  Not much else in the house got decorated...next shopping trip.

Mountain Biking.  Balin and I signed up to go to a marriage conference, and went...for the first session, with Paul Tripp a couple of weekends ago.  We went with 3 other couples and a widow friend and it was great.  Really.  But after Friday nights session we decided that our marriage therapy needed to happen on our bikes.  So off went.  If you look closely you'll see snow in the background - and we're wearing shorts.  Yes it was cold but after 10 miles you're sweating anyway so it balances itself out.

My new bike - ready to pounce down the trail.  Love Her!  She is over zealous is her excitement (talking about the bike here) and she forced me to sign up for the 25 mile race in April.

Trying to document and photograph my children can be somewhat arduous.  Notice Sam in the second picture - yes the red in his face is because he's mad and is about to stomp off.  The difference between boys and girls: I've got lots of pictures of Perrin.

 Hiking. The dogs thought I had forgotten about them, with my distraction of my bike and the evils of hiking in the snow.  But here's evidence that I do love my dogs and I do take them about for hikes.

This is the reason I don't take them "walking" very often as three on a leash is a little....taxing you might say.

 Check it out - warm, trimmed out, water running, showers flowing cabin!  We've figured out our plumbing issues, cleaned everything up and we're ready to play.  We headed out there last weekend when it was snowing and had a great time.  The kids sledded in about 8" and had so much fun. The dogs on the other hand were a mess and made me wonder if they couldn't wear boots and snow suits.

In January my mom gave the girls their birthday/Christmas presents with a trip to the American Girl Doll Store in L.A.  They had so much fun running around the store and deciding what they should spend their allotted funds on.  It was a good thing it was a grandma sponsored trip because you can bet I would have said no more often than yes.  After an hour in the store, we spent the majority of the trip in the hotel room playing and watching American Girl Doll movies.  Everyone would agree that it was a once in a lifetime event and a bunch of fun. Thanks Grandma!

Play Dates: As always our days are filled with lots and lots of people.  Sam and Perrin have friends over every week and love using their imagination in playing games, hide and go seek, Legos and Dolls.  What a blessing friends and family are and we look forward to warmer weather and even more play dates.