the lovely thing about being out by yourself, is that one feels a little safer about letting kids play outside by themselves.  i didn’t feel so great about that anywhere else we’ve lived.  i love the girls having the opportunity to run, jump, play tetherball, four wheel, and now they’ve started building forts in the forest.  we even tested our labradoodle to see if she was very smart, and held her while the kids ran off into the woods.  then i’d let her go, and she would enter the forest where they did, and track them down!  so amazing!  i love the outdoors, and am grateful that my kids get to play outside more.  it’s healthy and important to be in nature, get exercise, and most importantly, using your imagination!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Albert Einstein

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we were blessed to adopt nadia at three days old.  she was born three days before madison’s birthday, and we brought her home on madison’s birthday!

so, enters the circus birthday party.  we are excited for them to have a combined party, and to have a little circus fun!  more to come!

it’s funny when you ask someone, how far is it to the three sisters?  such an ambiguous questions?  the whole trail is called that, and when you picture what you think you are hiking towards, and you don’t find it, and you ask other trail members, no one has a clue.  so we hiked past the “three sisters” rocks, thinking it was something else.  but it was a great hike nevertheless!  a good work-out for us climbing folk, and amazing to watch mountain bikers going up and down the amazingly steep mountain sides.

a week after being in colorado, we decided to hike down the switchback near our home.  our road is shared by us and one other person, so we hiked down to that house.  it’s gorgeous down there, a pond…a stream…trees everywhere…mountains in the background…and snow still left on the ground.  it was a fun, beautiful little hike.

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when looking for a home to live in, we didn’t seem to find a lot of what we really liked.  we are only interested in renting right now, since we don’t feel it beneficial monetarily to buy if we aren’t going to be here many many years.  we actually don’t know what our permanent plans are, but we are going with the flow.  we would love to live abroad in a few years, so we are just seeing how things play out.

we came across a beautiful home, in the mountains, investors had it built, hasn’t sold because of the economy, and the rent price was great…the only catch was, they leave it on the market while we live in it.  so we decided to chance it, and live in our dream area, in a dream home, risking we might have to move if it sells.  but it hasn’t sold in two years, so we figured we’d go for it.  even if we have to move, we’d still stay up in the mountains, we absolutely love it up here!    here is the back of this great house, which actually faces towards all the mountain peaks we look at through those great windows.  but i’m not giving out the address-i don’t want anyone to buy it while we are living here!

when moving to colorado, and in the mountains, there are a few musts…

1.  kids four wheeler

2.  kids bb guns

3.  everyone has their own fishing pole

4.  everyone has a good pair of hiking shoes

our driveway goes in a circle around the house and yard, which is perfect for many hours of circular four wheeling.  the girls just absolutely love it!  i love that they are outside having fun!

our little nadia has a fantastical imagination.  she does such an extremely well job of playing by herself, which is such an important thing for a child to do.

our little almost four year old still doesn’t have much hair…no we don’t keep it that short, it just has grown ever-so-slowly.

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my little camden…

from the very beginning she has loved jewelry, purses, high heels, and anything else feminine!  i for one, love that!  this morning she came asking again to try on my high heels, and we decided to turn it into a photo shoot!

march 31.  2012

The young women’s presidency is awesome in this ward!  For New Beginnings, the theme was “Color Me Beautiful!”  The food was rainbow colored, and during the program, the youth and parents did the “color test.”  That was such a great idea, finding out how we think differently and understanding why we all don’t do things the same.  Then the girls spoke on each value taught in young women’s:

Faith
Divine Nature
Individual Worth
Knowledge
Choice and Accountability
Good Works
Integrity
Virtue

It was a lovely night!  We so enjoyed having Jarom there with us!  We are so blessed having our dad home with us now!