Crazy and Chaotic are the best words to describe our household. Just when I think I have all the tasks completed, something pops up. For example all the children are playing, not acting their age and hitting, not squabbling over whose turn, but actually playing and I hear a crash in the kitchen the dog has decided to create some excitement, by pulling in a kitchen towel, that had dishes drying on it! Or if he feels he needs some attention he’ll grab a toy or a shoe or a kitchen towel and prance by, for no other reason than to get our attention. If the dog is behaving then Theo has learned to climb the stairs, and is teetering at the top. Theo is napping, the dog is snoozing, Freddy and Stephen commence to playing a convoluted game of keep away that involves screaming, laughing uproariously, and wrestling.

Mr. Sniffer is making lots of progress, he rarely surfs the counter for food, it just drops from the table of children to him. He’s getting better at not attacking our guests, and sits for a while before sniffing them over. And he has discovered snow. The first and smaller of our snow storms, he wasn’t sure what all this cold stuff was, but refused to venture outside. We had to take him on a leash to get him outside. He’s got the idea now and actually plays in the snow, chasing snowballs, digging in the powder, and eating the white stuff.

1 storm trooper

1 power ranger

1 un happy Eeyore

1 Mom pinned into her Cinderella costume

1 great Halloween!

We are so fortunate to have such a large and generous family! It’s complicated but stay with me, my dad’s stepbrother owns a home in Aspen and generously shared it with us for the weekend! Leaving late Thursday evening, we made the long drive to Aspen. We arrived late to beautiful weather and gorgeous fall colors. Bedtime was late for the boys, but they went to dreamland quickly. Fog, dew, and golden leaves awoke us on Friday morning! The fog and scenery were straight out of a town and country pictorial. Fish were biting and weather was better in Aspen than Denver! (For my out of state friends, this is very unusual, Aspen gets more weather that Denver, but we were blessed with the perfect Fall getaway weekend!) The guys tried fishing in the stream, but it was a bit of a hike for a mountain goat, and the stream moves fast, for such young boys. A pond, a pond just for fishing, is exactly what we found. Freddy ‘caught’ the first fish, sort of. He got the first bite, felt the tug on the line, and got so excited that he’d ‘caught a fish, he yelled and called and did not reel it in ; ( We still counted it. Stephen went on to catch 3 fish and actually reel them in! Theo was not the best sleeper in an unfamiliar bed. In fact he didn’t sleep much at all on Friday night so neither did I! Michael got some sleep, and when he got up I went back to bed. I re-awoke two hours later to the smell of breakfast cooking! Yea!

More fishing, jumping on the trampoline, and some baseball in the yard! Good sleep on Saturday night (finally) but sad to wake up to our last day of the get away! We lunched in Aspen and headed home!

What happened to October? Oh yeah, we went to Aspen and had the best time, prepared for Halloween and had lots of unseasonal snow! Well, in our Halloween preparations we carved pumpkins, Freddy proudly exclaimed that his pumpkin was all cleaned out! Check out the picture below, I finished cleaning it out! Freddy wanted to carve a cat into his pumpkin, and we handed him a kid safe pumpkins carver, but of course he got the thickest pumpkin of the lot, and I ended up finishing the carving. (well I really did most of it, he just poked a few holes for me) Delightfully he set to cutting up discarded pumpkin chunks, and thought this was a fantastic way to carve pumpkins. I carved another pumpkin, old school, and Michael also carved several pumpkins. For the first time ever, Stephen diligently carved away for a full 40 minutes and completed the carving of his very own pumpkin! Of course we toasted some pumpkins seeds, and being Colorado we even had a snow pumpkin, snow Jack-o-lantern, and snow people with Jack o lantern heads! The snow was unseasonably early, but this is Colorado and really what is unseasonable? (oh and that last picture is of my own personal snow plows hard at work! )

Honeycrisp are a type of apple that are only available now. IF you haven’t tried one, run and grab the last few at the store now, before they are gone for the season. They are my favorite apple of all time. Pink Ladies are a close second, sweet and mellow, and more available throughout the the year. Stephen has the same love for Honeycrisps as I do, and he very politely asked for the apples with the honey in them for snack. Yep they are that wonderful!

The boys are doing well in school, as far as I can tell. Stephen tells me school is awesome, he’s trying to write number sentences (that’s addition problems for you non teaching folk) and he tells me he’s cool. As long as he’s learning and likes school I think we’re heading in the right direction. I love that  he thinks school is awesome, I hope he continues his love of learning.

Freddy says he likes school, but when I ask him what he did that day, he says he doesn’t know. He says with pride, that he goes to school. Then at random times he sings some songs from school. He’s not ready to tell me  right away what he’s done but plays his card a little at a time. We’re proud of our boys!

Theo is amazing. He’s 9 months and crawling everywhere, he’s pulling himself up on anything stationary. Sometimes that’s not a great idea, like when he pulls himself up on the water table and it falls over on him. He’s shown me he’s growing up by knocking over a box of  ’cheese its’ and then eating one. And why am I buying the super expensive baby cereal bites, if he can eat ‘cheese its’? I remember a similar incident with Freddy, Stephen was ’sharing’ and gave Freddy a pretzel, which Freddy promptly ate. So maybe it’s time to move on towards some more table food for the little man. I’ll keep you posted!

Today I had to take a class to update my CPR and first aid. Not the funnest way to spend a Saturday, but necessary. When I took the class two years ago the instructor told a lot of stories, listened to our stories, and was a genial guy. I was hoping for as much today. I arrived just before class started, no small feat for a mom of 3 boys with a stop to drop off a child before arriving at class! The instructor introduced himself, a sheriff’s officer, and let it be known he was a smart a$$. He started making jokes at the introduction and immediatly lightened up the room. I thought this day will be ok. We reviewed the signs and symptoms of a heart attack, how to perform the heimlich, good samaritan laws, and some trash talking about police vs. fire department. As a fire department wife, I smiled and played along. Then it came time to practice our CPR skills on the ‘annie dolls’. We stood up and gathered around for a demonstration. A student at the back, sat back down and someone asked if she was ok. The woman replied, ‘I think I’m going to faint.’ Our instructor rushed to the student’s side, and another student quickly joined the instructor and the ailing women. The second student we would later learn was a fully registered nurse. The instrutor and nurse helped the ailing women down to the floor and began real life first aid right before our eyes. For a split second a thought passed through my brain, ‘is this all for real?’ One look at the women on the floor and it was clear she was in dire need of some help. I asked if I should call 911 and Mike, our instructor said yes. I grabbed the nearest cell phone and spoke with 911 answering a myriad of questions like where we were located, and how old was the patient. While I was looking at the women’s feet I glanced at her face and took a stab  at her age being about 40. Another student corrected me that this lady wasn’t that old, she must be in her 30’s! Were it not for the seriousness of the situation I might have debated her age, but I continued to talk to the 911 operator. The 911 operator asked for my cell phone number, which of course I didn’t know because I grabbed the nearest cell phone. It happened to be Mike the instructors. He gave me a funny look when I asked for his number and I joked I was married and didn’t want to do anything with it. The 911 operator told me  help was on the way and to call back if we needed anything else. I moved outside. When these things happen, time seems suspended. It seemed we waited forever for the fire department to arrive. They came in and took over. The women who as it turns out was 38 years old, so I wasn’t too far off, was taken to the hospital and hopefully will heal quickly. As things settled down and we headed back into class one person pointed out to Mike our instructor, “we all passed right?” and I pointed out “I bet you were happy to see the fire department today.” He laughed, sort of. So if you are going to pass out or faint or have a heart attack, consider doing this in the middle of CPR training. Working together, we called her family before the paramedics ever arrived and tried to call AAA to come and pick up her car.

I guess  at the end of the day I am grateful. Grateful for my health and my family. Grateful  we have first responders, fire departments, paramedics, nurses and even sheriff’s officers who seem to be calm cool and collected in the face of an emergency. I think I handled everything ok but I had butterflies in my stomach for a long while after the incident. Shakey even. Turns out the nurse who assisted was a neo natel nurse, she knew her stuff. I’m grateful for calm nurses. May you my dear friends be in the presence of qualified help if you should fall seriously ill.

I’m a little late in posting this but I was waiting on pictures before I posted.  We had a beautiful day for  a baptism. Great weather, Great priest  with a funny and enjoyable homily. Fr. Bill, a visiting priest from Colorado Springs, talked about the difference between wisdom and educated. I don’t have his wit so indulge me here. Education is nothing more than a collection of experiences, and  wisdom is experience coupled with judgement. “I have met some very educated people who were dumber than a rock, and I have met very wise people without much education” Oh how true. May Theo grow to be a wise man. Theo’s Godfather, Paul,  joined us all the way from California for the celebrations! Michael’s sister, Mary, lives locally and joined us for the Baptismal celebration as well. We had a hurried, but blessed Baptism for Theodore, who in our family tradition wore a Baptismal gown made for his older brother and a Baptismal garmet hand stitched by Great Grandma Zukowski! He also proudly wore a bonnet made for him by Aunt Ya Ya. Which someday he can use for his beloved on his wedding day. A time of celebration and family!

And for your extra enjoyment, check out the family group shots, you’ll notice Freddy re-baptizing himself, then making lovely faces on Theo’s special day. Life with a 3 year old is exciting, and rarely dull!

While eating a popsicle, Stephen commented that when he sucks on it, it gets bigger. (I think he meant longer) My neighbor was out of earshot of the kids and quipped, “Lynese you’d better close your bedroom door.” Too funny!

One of my little pumpkins is potty training, he was sitting on the potty, farted, and innocently looked at me and said “I burped.” The same little guy told me there’s a waterfall in the potty, which is great but I told him not to touch that waterfall.

I was day dreaming one day when Stephen asked if  I was ‘lost and thoughtful’ instead of lost in thought

Freddy grabbed my phone and asked to play a game, then when I said yes he said ok what’s your ’stage coach’ also known as a pass code!

Stephen pointed out that when he swallows his food, it’s like a roller coaster for his food.

But even better than the cute things they say and mis understand is how often they are so wise and say exactly the right thing at the right time. Tonight was busy, not even bad, just a lot to get done. Pick up photo for the “citizen of the week” poster board, stop by the firestation to pick up printed out page for ‘citizen of the week’ poster board, drop off baby quilt….We kept changing our plans and editing to complete our tasks, we skipped the stop at the firestation, to get to my parents house for dinner. We rolled in to my parents house at just the right moment. We enjoyed a nice dinner. After dinner my parents walked Stephen around and solicited some orders for a school fundraiser. We packed up, loaded into the van and were halfway out the driveway when a neighbor walked up and asked to place an order. And how sweet that? My parents truly are blessed with great neighbors. We loaded up once again and were on the road home, when my cell phone rang, mom called to tell me we forgot Stephen’s “Citizen of the Week” poster board. So back we go once again. I let our a curse word and explained that we had to go back for Stephen’s poster board. Stephen piped up quickly with “don’t worry mom, everyone makes mistakes.” That’s exactly what I needed to hear at that moment, because of course as a mom, I’m worried that now I’m keeping the boys up past their bed times on a school night, and of course we have to have that poster board, because tomorrow is the day for presentation. But despite my worries, Stephen is right everyone makes mistakes. We backtracked, got the poster board, drove home safely, even managed to enjoy the lightening show by mother nature. Now everyone is in bed and I hope asleep.