I'm going to skip the usual apologies for the long gap in postings, etc etc. Suffice it to say we've been busy! Here's a
photo gallery to accompany this posting, with some narrative details to follow.
When we left off, Logan had just celebrated his birthday. The first picture in the gallery shows him opening his first bank account using some money he got - our credit union has a kids' savings account with lots of incentives for saving. Now that he's five, Logan gets $2 per week to do with as he pleases - he distributes the money among spend, save and share jars and actually has done a great job of depositing saved money into the bank. We keep a bank register, reconcile his quarterly account statement, and he has given some money to charity and used his spending money mostly for gumballs, but also to buy stamps from me when he insisted on using real stamps for an art project or for the occasional treat that we didn't want to buy for him.
I'd better tighten this up or this post will be as long as a novel before I'm through! Anyway, later in February we celebrated my birthday with a trip to Benihana Restaurant. It took us two times to get there - the first time we relied on my car's GPS navigation system and ended up about 50 miles from home, south of Denver, somewhere in a remote office park. It was a fiasco of epic proportions - we were uneasy that we were on the wrong path the whole time, called the restaurant several times to double-check the address, and still ended up in the wrong place. But the boys were real troopers (it was actually particularly heartbreaking how completely they trusted that we were taking them to get something to eat!), and when we went back they very much enjoyed the show and we all had a fun time.
Let's see, other highlights include a trip to the Denver Aquarium and the Gold Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. Also, Logan's class was doing a unit on musical instruments so Jason took a couple of guitars in, demonstrated the differences between acoustic and electric guitars and did a singalong. We also had an arborist come out and prune all of the trees in the yard - creating 25 large wheelbarrows full of chipped wood which I used to mulch my flower beds.
Max continues to grow like a weed, and after working diligently has mastered crawling. I'm happy for him to pause at this stage for a bit, but he's already moved on to pulling up on low objects and it's only a matter of time before he's cruising and then walking. Sigh.
Spring unfolded slowly and beautifully here, just like last year, and I have been doing some gardening. I briefly took possession of a plot at the local community garden but then relinquished it (after spending four hours cleaning out grass and weeds) because it was just going to be too much on top of everything else I have going right now. But I did claim a couple of small areas in my back yard, even fencing them against the deer, and now have a small herb
garden (rosemary, chives and thyme) and veggie patch (beets, carrots, lettuce and peas), along with my tomatoes and cucumbers in pots on the deck. Basil, cilantro and parsley go in next week, and we signed up for a share in
Pachamama Organic Farm so each week from June 4 through October we'll get a basket of fresh, locally grown organic produce.
The last set of photos in the gallery are from this past Saturday, when we took the kids to the Boulder Creek Festival. Zach enjoyed going on the swing ride (like a swinging merry-go-round) and he and Logan got to do some fun adventure activities. Logan will be attending a 1-week day camp sponsored by this organization later in the summer.
Yes, it's hard to believe but summer is upon us - school ends June 5th. We will be doing some traveling, having some visitors, doing a few day camps and some fun activities, and we'll try to keep you posted! Until the next post! -- Jeanne
So, I'm talking on the phone with my friend Kara this morning, and Max, who is just shy of his eight month birthday and who has been crawling for all of about two weeks, scoots over to me and pulls himself up to standing. And now that he has realized he 
can do it, it's all he wants to do all day long. Doesn't he realize he owes his existence to the fact that I wanted another baby???
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