hopstah.com – Page 6 – Something I do for fun.

2022-06-11 Another Action-Packed Saturday

I don’t remember what we did on Saturday as I write this (Monday) so I’ll just leave a couple of pictures from the day.

In the late afternoon, we all went to one of Bethany’s friend’s house where she was having a memorial service for her husband who died just after Christmas last year. He was sick and it wasn’t unexpected but it is heartbreaking nonetheless. Bethany and this woman went to the same school growing up and have reconnected since we moved to Colorado. Bethany has been a much-needed friend and listener to this woman over the past few years as she dealt with her husband’s declining health and the toll it was taking on her. I’m proud of Bethany and am so thankful she could provide some emotional support for her friend.

On a separate topic, I set a new personal best on my mountain biking loop!

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
00:33:00 hours	00:32:29 hours	7.33 mi.	13.54 mph	30.50 mph	580.71 ft.	462 kcal

2022-06-10 My Evenings with the Kids are the Highlight of My Day

Today my mom bought the kids some treats. For the girls she got some new clothes and for Jack she bought a Lego set. Louisa felt like a million bucks in her clothes. For possibly the first time ever, she has shorts that didn’t used to be leggings and she is LOVING IT. They’re even short shorts – not down to her knee like all of her other pairs.

Working leaves very little time to spend with the kids during the week, so I try to finish work and get right in with the kids. Now that the weather has been great (even a little hot like today’s 90 degrees), and with it staying light out so long, I have been taking the kids to the neighborhood park pretty frequently.

Norah spent lots of time climbing on the playground equipment.

And Jack played with his playground friend, Ethan.

I love seeing them make friends just immediately.

Meanwhile, the girls climbed to the absolute top of a rather tall tree.

Jack also got in on the tree climbing.

And to finish the day off, Norah got upset about something that she, herself, did.

You know it’s time to wrap things up when the tears start flowing.

It was a good day, and now the weekend begins.

2022-06-09 Grandma Arrived Today!

My mom arrived today from Michigan and the kids are so excited. She got here earlier in the day than we were expecting, which made the surprise even greater. We had been telling the kids they probably wouldn’t see her until Friday morning, but then around 1:30 this afternoon I heard the kids yelling to me that Grandma was here!

She’s going to stay for about a week and just live life with us. Our normal life is pretty chaotic, so I hope you’re ready, Mom! I’m going to take some afternoons off next week so that I can spend a bit more time with her and to help keep the peace with Bethany.

In the morning, Bethany took Norah to story hour at the library. With the nice weather, they had story time outside in the park and Norah loved it. They had bubble machines and Norah went chasing lots of bubbles.

This afternoon, Julian came over to play so that his dad could get a little work done at home. We love having Julian over – it gives all of the kids a distraction.

Norah doing some gardening. Note the differently-sized boots.

Julian was “attacking” Grandma while Jack was giving her healing superpowers.

Louisa is riding Bethany’s bike because she outgrew her bike. Everybody’s happy.

2022-06-08 Fun Neighbors

This evening when I came up from work (from the basement), the entire family was across the street at Mr. Mike and Ms. Abby’s house, sitting in their driveway while Mike worked in the garden. Abby was letting our kids get her cars filthy as they were trying to help “clean” them with a pail of water, a scrub brush and a squeegee. It seems that Mike and Abby had been talking about taking our family to Pirate’s Cove this summer. They’re super sweet. They have a granddaughter who is 12 years old, so they’re kind of like neighborhood grandparents to our kids.

Bethany found some baby Crocs for Norah. The hat she’s wearing in the picture below has been worn by all of our girls. We got it for Louisa when she was probably a year old and we were living in Phoenix. We’re big fans of sun hats, or at least Bethany and I are and we do a pretty good job of enforcing them on the kids.