Cute Photos

Since we've been bad about keeping up with blogging, here are some early summer pictures. Max in the hiking backpack, kids at a fire station open house - including Logan driving the bomb-squad robot, hiking in Chautauqua, and summer reading in the hammock

Alex's Memorials

Last month, my Stepfather, Alex Combs, passed away. I flew to Anchorage for one memorial service and then drove and boated to Homer and Halibut Cove for another.

In addition to my brother and Mom, Alex's three sons - Sam, Jonathan, and David - were there along with Sam's wife Jayna, Daughter Alexa, and David's daughter Analise.

Because Alex was quite a well-known Alaskan artist (called "The Father of Alaskan Abstract Art" in a newspaper obituary) as well as a long-timer art professor, the Anchorage memorial was held in the Anchorage Museum. Alex designed a series of friezes that adorned the outside of the building for years until it was remodeled at which point the friezes were moved inside. Over 100 people attended the Anchorage memorial including former colleagues, students, friends, and neighbors.

Two days later, in the small, island outpost of Halibut Cove the entire community gathered to inter Alex's ashes in a hole dug into bedrock which was later capped with concrete. Overlooking Katchemak bay, the small cemetery has beautiful views in all directions. As a temporary gravestone, a bust of Alex, sculpted by one of his students was set up over the grave. The bust has been sitting outside for 20+ years and was covered in moss and lichens and gorgeously aged.

At the Halibut Cover ceremony, members of the community spoke from the heart about their love for this big bear of a man who was always quick to laugh and to hug, slow to anger, and a generous giver of his time and himself to all who he met.

Also, because Alex wished it, we sprinkled some of his ashes over his garden (the potato patch to be exact).

After the memorial, we made s'mores, and toasted to Alex with a bottle of Absinthe he had in the cupboard. All in all, it was a celebration of the life and art of this great man who rose from abject poverty in rural Kentucky to go on to build ships and act as a salvage diver in WWII, play professional football (WAY before the NFL), study in Europe, move to Alaska, teach high school and college art, and finally to retire to a small island where he created art literally until the day he died.

Alex lived "A Long and Artful Life" and we'll miss him very much. A link to some photos of the memorials and the trip can be found HERE.

Why do they always want to grow up so fast?

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???

I remember when my sister-in-law Christene and I announced our third pregnancies almost simultaneously, my mom sighed and said "it's like puppies and kittens - you girls want more babies, but you forget that they grow up!" Don't tell my kids, but my mom was kind of right! :-)

Oh well, luckily I'm still pretty enamored of my older kids - I guess I'll keep the lot of them. But from here on out I'll have to get my baby ya-yas by befriending expectant mothers. :-)

Jason joins YouTube's fame-seeking masses

Jason has a new favorite coffee, produced by the lead singer of one of his favorite heavy metal bands - Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. He loves the coffee so much that he made a commercial for it, which you can find on YouTube, or watch it right here. It's fun for a laugh. Incidentally, Zach was napping during the shoot so he's not featured in the video. Enjoy!

Quarterly update

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

Jason and Andrew in New York City

Last week, my brother Andrew and I met up in New York to do the "5 Boroughs Bike Tour" a slow speed ride through all 5 Boroughs of New York with 29,998 of our closest friends. The next day, we visited Hyrian's Brooklyn office. Here's a quick video of our trip!

Where do I start?

We've done a lot since my last post, most of the days threaded through with a series of illnesses on the kids' part, including six days of stomach flu each for Zach and Logan (thank goodness not at the same time!). But for now the whole family is healthy (not even any residual coughing!). So on to some of the fun we've been having!

First of all, here's a photo gallery to accompany this posting.

Logan's reading ability is amazing all of us, and this birthday a whole new world has opened to him with the gifts of some chapter books from various grandparents. He has been introduced to the Magic Treehouse series by his Grandma Kathryn and Grandpa Herb, the Spiderwick series by Mimi and Pop Pop, and his very own personal serial called Sam the Magnificent, authored by Grandma Diana (no link available - yet!). We have been sharing the reading with him - he usually reads the first page or two of each chapter and we read the rest. Of course, as always, we as a family still enjoy regular trips to the Boulder Public Library, which has an incredibly well-stocked children's section.

In fact this past Saturday we had a big family outing to the library, but since the weather was so nice we took with us a big bag of bread crusts we've been saving and fed the ducks at nearby Boulder Creek. I have very fond memories of feeding the ducks at Pollywog Pond when I was a girl, and the boys seemed to enjoy it just as much. I think this will become a regular activity for us. Looking at the photo gallery you'll see that the weather has warmed considerably but there's still a little ice on the creek - it's clear and nearly invisible, but still strong enough to hold the ducks so they look like they're walking on water. And also, we should mention that here in Boulder, even the ducks get whole grain foods! :-)

The previous weekend we had a wonderful visit from Mimi and PopPop as well as my Aunt Judy and Uncle Jim, who are spending about six weeks in California from the East Coast and decided to take a quick side-trip to see us. My mom and dad took most of the pictures and I need to get them from them, but we snapped a few cute ones of Aunt Judy holding Max.

That's it for now, love to all!