Madison River Sunday

Josh caught a crawfish within minutes of arriving at the river. He kept it alive until he was ready to fish with it.  Going after the Big One.

Luke was helping start the fire when he found this "L" shaped piece of wood. He wanted to keep it but he also wanted to help build the fire.  I heard "mom can you take a picture so I can burn it and still remember it?"  Sure bud. 

As soon as the fire was built, the boys started fishing.  Dad casts, Luke reels it in. 

This was the first fish of 2015 -- and a big fat brown too!  Luke was so happy! 

Josh got a little help too, what a good daddy.

Mike caught two on his new fly rod and reel. Ruby was VERY curious about the fish.  She was never far from the action. Mike bought her a new collar that looks like a rainbow trout, so we think that it was good luck! 

Luke caught another fish, this one he casted and reeled in all by himself.  He was so proud of doing it all, he asked to release it too.  

Fantastic Friday

Friday was an incredible day with blue skies and warm calm air. I was lucky enough to be able to take a hike with a dear friend and our puppies. Ruby was thrilled!   

We rode bikes home from school, and stopped at Dinosaur Park on the way.  Wildman Luke was in fantastic form! 

Josh climbed while Luke and I were at the playground. He's always challenging himself to new routes on old boulders.  

Lacrosse Dude

Josh started Lacrosse this week. It's so fun to see him learn a new sport --and such a fun one! I think he looks so tough in this picture! 

After an hour long practice inside, and a little running right at the end, this is one sweaty boy!

This is the whole league for kids under 9.  35 kids.  25 have never played lacrosse before. The coaches have their work cut out for them! 

Luke had a friend at practice, and when I got my phone back from letting them play with it I found this keeper of a picture. Silly Selfies. 

Sunday Views

Josh completed the second session of ski lessons and is now a high black level. He's crazy.  His instructor said it's fun to watch him ski because he has no fear.  My heart skips a beat (with fear) when I hear that. 

After lessons we went for a neighborhood walk in the sunshine.  Luke would only go if he could dribble the whole way.  

Doesn't this look fun?  I am SO ready for summertime!

Carpenter Kathi?

Our playroom needed help. ASAP.  I'd been daydreaming about what to do to it to fix our overall messy lack of organization, but I figured out what I wanted to do on Tuesday Night.  This is the BEFORE.

We had two trips to Home Depot, where the boys were tons and tons of help. 

What is the worst that could happen? Sword fighting with 2 x 4s in the store...my God. 

This was the Friday night view...all clean and floaty. 

And Saturday night, this is what we have.  Yes, it's still a touch messy, but I'm so glad it's all in one place. We threw away 4 garbage bags of crud, and took a gigantic box to the goodwill.  Purge time is happy time. 

Leprechaun Day

A leprechaun came to our house the night before St. Patrick's Day and look what we found!  

I wore a green sweater with a gold necklace on St. Patty's and I got all these comments about "going all out" for the holiday.  Yeah, well look at my mom. I come by it naturally. :) 

Snow Shoeing in 53degrees

The cub scouts went for a snow shoeing adventure on Saturday.  It was such a gorgeous day, it was hard to justify winter gear when we really wanted to ride bikes. 

Luke was up for the adventure, as usual. 

His enthusiasm was short lived. He laid down on the snow about 100 yards from the starting point and said "I hate this." I told him we could turn around as soon as we could tell the group we were leaving, and Luke just kept rallying...to the next point, to the next point, and pretty soon we were done. 

We left a little early because Mike was coming home from NY, so we got to head back alone.  The boys were thrilled with the opportunity for a photo. 

The trail we were on was pretty packed down, we could have easily hiked it without snow shoes, so Josh decided to test them out in deeper snow.  

Ruby followed him, and we mentally designed her four tiny snow shoes for the future. 

And they're off...

It was a pretty day, and a nice little outing. 

Florida, are you ready for us?

Luke loves to take selfies.  Do you just love his cheetah orange neck pillow?  Only one I could find at 9PM the night before...

These two were on the same row, opposite side of the plane from us. 

We had a layover in Minneapolis, so we killed some time walking around and playing. Luke sees this picture and says "Josh was the girl" every time. 

Are we too old for this stuff? never!

I think Josh is smiling. 

Clearwater

This was the first family picture of the trip, and the best!  The boys are holding Winter's prosthetic tail. 

Gotta love green screens -- don't we look scared? 

They took a bunch of pictures of the kids posing, and then sold us them on a flash drive shaped like Winter (with a removable tail for the USB side... very clever). 

Who can resist poses like these? 

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It's funny that Josh made this face, because he was just told to stand with his hands together, he had no idea that this was the picture. 

We got to see Winter and Hope up close!

We were there for some of Winter's physical therapy, so we got to see them put her tail on and then watch her swim.  Very cool! 

They boys liked watching all the sea creatures like turtles, sharks, otters, and on and on. 

This is an underwater view of Winter swimming without her tail.

Who can resist a 3' turtle shell? 

Not us!

Luke requested this picture and this pose. 

After the Aquarium we went to Frenchy's for lunch.  (After watching Dolphin Tale later, we saw that Chris Kristofferson's character talks about going to Frenchy's!)

He kept laughing as he fell over and got soaked...he's a trooper!

The rest of the day we just enjoyed the beach. We bought little boogey boards and let the boys try to figure out how to ride them. Luke was so happy just "hitting waves" as he called it, we didn't spend much time on technique. 

Josh loved it! 

This is his typical face, and his reaction to salt water in general. 

We buried the boys..so fun!

We had to wet Josh's sand because the place he was laying was too dry. He was very patient...

Luke decided he'd like to snorkel.  First thing to do is put on flippers and walk 30'. The  penguin walk was awesome..I should have video'd it. 

Lotta sand kicked up.

These two worked hard on a sand castle (and on fiddly farting...)

He's so happy.

We had to hit up Ron John's Surf Shop (which was below a Hooter's...) so Luke posed for us. 

And then we headed home, very tired.  Gramma looks a little rummy, but it was such a sweet moment that I had to snap it. And post it, ha ha ha.