Joel had a friend sleep over last night and this morning he came down and urgently asked, “Dad, can you come upstairs?” We were both wondering what was sooo urgent, then I heard Joel as he went up….”Dad, there’s this mini-clip game and I need you to press the button fast.” Oh, so you need our long-forgotten skill of pressing the fire button really fast? Most of his games require strategy, but every once in awhile I’ll hear, “Mom, can you come….” And I know that my skill that once got me top honors in Galaga is needed. He needs to play “old school”, when speed at pressing the fire button was all that stood between you and your ships death. Yep, we may be old, but we’re good for something!

At church today Hannah stayed in the toddler room and made it the whole service. Bethany was in there to help her transition and snuck out when Hannah wasn’t crying. It’s a major thing that she stayed in the whole time. Hannah thinks the baby room is evil, she hates it. I can’t even go in there to change her diaper without her thinking I’m going to abandon her in the room of high chairs and baby toys. But, the toddler room is a little different, no cribs, no high chairs and a kitchen set that looks like hers. I spied on her during service and she was sitting in a chair listening to as story, later she was contentedly eating a cookie. Maybe we have a trend?!

Our pastor spoke about ‘What to do when….temptation hits’. See, we have a target and the goal is Jesus’ two greatest commandments..Love God, Love others. Well, temptation makes us stray off target and miss the goal. Temptation is the bait, sin is the biting of that bait. Remember Jesus was tempted, but he didn’t sin. So our goal is stay on target. Love God and love others.

We go to the airport to pickup my Mom at 4pm today so I will probably not blog too much this week. But afterwards I’ll go back and put up pics and write about what we did.

We went to a GS swap Friday night with our troop and others. It was a beach theme so there was food in sand pails, boats and beach music fun and games. The girls made clothespin photo holders goofy glasses and colored pictures. Each girl had to make 20 swaps with the beach theme. Our troop did lots of different ones; we did a few shrinky dinks in the shape of beach balls, palm trees and starfish and some foamy fish with glitter. Other girls did marbles with beach pictures glued on and foamy things with shells on. When it was time to swap Bethany and Grace went around asking, “Do you want to swap with me?” Even Hannah got a few to put on her necklace.

My ex-step-mom was there with us to join the fun (she was in town for a client and stayed the night to go to dinner with us.) She thought it was a cool event, it made her want to get my niece into scouts. We all had a lot of fun; I can’t wait to do it again!

We went to a teen shelter last night with our church to serve dinner to the kids. My kids helped me wash and foil wrap potatoes to cook. We assembled everything at the shelter and our kids served the teens. Even Hannah helped out by putting cokes on the tables. As soon as everyone was fed, we got to eat too. So there were teens and young adults with all kinds of body piercings and tattoos sitting next to tow-headed young ones eating and telling jokes.

We had a tour of the facility and saw the dorms, computer lab and rules. The kids were impressed that everyone there has to do chores and live by the rules to stay there. They help teens get a GED and a job, housing and help with pregnancy, drugs and alcohol addiction. The teens thought the little kids were cute and our kids learned a lesson. No matter what your situation God can bring you back to Him and is always there calling out to you.

We were having rain last night, but today we’ve been having monster mutant snowflakes. Not that I mind! Some of the flakes are as big as a half-dollar. Some of it is sticking. Hopefully as the night gets colder more will stick. We need the water anyway. But, I guess there will be no park day tomorrow. Just as well, we have experiments and presentations to work on.

I swear having Hannah around means I never have to go to CSI school, I can practice here!
Scene of the crime: Hannah in her room covered in black marker (when she was supposed to be napping.)
Evidence: black marker on her pants and hands, 1 missing marker.
Other useful evidence: Shampoo on floor in bathroom.
Construction of crime: Hannah opened her baby gate, got out of her room and went to the study. She then proceeded to open the desk drawer and get a black marker. Then she went back to her room to practice body art on her jeans. At some point she decided that this might get her in trouble, so she went to the bathroom and tried to clean up with shampoo. Then to further vex the investigators she returned the black marker to the desk drawer and went back in her room to feign sleep.
My comment: It’s pretty sneaky to put the marker back and pretty smart to think shampoo will clean up the mess. Also good that she wrote on herself and not the wall!

Well, I didn’t realize the GS thing at the event complex was Sat. So, we’ll be going back on Sat. to see the booths and do the activities.

It was neat watching the horses compete though.

Joel and I were pretty good about picking the winner, until the last one. I’m not sure how that guy won - his horse was over the rail, didn’t pick up his legs cantering and loped wrong. But he won.

Hannah, though not in this pic, was happy to see the ‘nay, nays’.

We’re going to the horse show today, but I thought I’d share Hannah’s excitement over Dora.

See, she thinks that Dora cannot complete her mission without her help. So she is very serious when watching, lest she miss any clues or direction.
Dora asks her to say, “Woo-woo” and Hannah says, “Woo-woo”
Dora, asks her to say, “Back-pack” and Hannah says, “Back-pack.”
So, Hannah is sitting there clapping, singing, pointing and saying blue or yellow to get to the right path.
When suddenly, swiper! Oh no, “wi-eee!” says Hannah. So Hannah helps deter swiper by saying “wi-eee, no!”
Dora has been asking Hannah all along, “Where do we go next?” Hannah replies “Town, ham (which is her generic word for I don’t know how to say the word you want,) and treeeee.”
Finally, Dora arrives at the big tree and saves the kitten. Yay! Hannah she couldn’t have done it without you!
*Here’s Hannah’s version of the back-pack song.
“Back-pack, back-pack, back-pack, back-pack, haaammmm, haaaammmm, you. Back-pack, back-pack, haaammmmm,haaammm,too. Yum, yum!”

We went to the Fox Theater today for their ‘Gypsy Spring’ show. First we learned that Gypsies shouldn’t really be called that; they’re of the Roma or Romani people. We listened to their music and found out that they first came form North India before traveling around the world.

There was a dancer, a musician and a storyteller. The musician started by playing a flamenco guitar, while the dancer did a Spanish gypsy dance. (Gypsy is Gitano in Spanish.) He was awesome. You know how they have to play really fast on the guitar? Well he did, and there was a plastic piece to the guitar that he could thump like a drum. The dancer twirled and played her castanets.

She had to practice for 2 years to get the 1,2,3,4 –5 roll down pat; and practice must work because dang, she was good.

The storyteller came out and told a few Gypsy stories and let us know of some famous Roma people: Charlie Chaplin, Yul Brenner and Rita Hayworth (at least my kids could pick out Chaplin and Brenner, I doubt most of the others could – we watch a lot of old movies.) The musician picked up the mandolin and played a tune that I would associate more with the European Gypsies. The dancer had changed her outfit and she twirled around again.

Then another story about why you should never drop bread crumbs on the floor (because it is unlucky; bread is luck and dignity and if you drop it you lose it.)

We went to the park to eat lunch because it was such a gorgeous day.





But, since we can almost never be out without an accident, Joel fell off the swings. It wasn’t very far, but he was acting very weird afterwards. (He said he was tired and slept in the car. Joel never admits he’s tired.) I put a call into the doc and she said observe him at this stage since he seems better.

Why is it that we push our children to crawl, we can’t wait till they walk, climb stairs and run. But no one ever encourages them to climb out of their playpen?

Hannah can finally get out of the playpen. She does sleep in a big bed, but sometimes I have to put her in the study in the pen because the girls want to play in their room or they go to bed early. Well, she can get out of the playpen now. Apparently. I put her down for a nap and then 30 minutes later I heard her special thump-thump down the stairs. Grace says “Hannah was knocking on the door and saying ‘mama’ so I let her out” She was out of her crib, I queried? “Yes, all by herself.” Great.

Also she can climb to the top of the bunk bed, she just hasn’t figured out how to get down yet. It was a pretty funny sight the other day; she was at the top holding on for dear life saying, “Halp, halp!” (she’s from Texas so she says “Halp”, not “Help”!) Eventually she’ll learn how to come down, but for now nothing on Bethany’s bed is safe.

The kids tried a science experiment yesterday. 1 c cornstarch about ½ c water. Stir together.

Now pick up the mixture and roll into a ball, now stop and it returns to a liquid. It’s not a liquid or a solid, it’s a suspension. The molecules stick together when energy is applied and move apart when you leave the stuff alone. They all thought it was cool. Here’s a future scientist.

Here’s Joel with the goop:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Liese4/Science1

Yesterday after church and a sermon entitled “What to do when….you’ve drifted away from God”
1. Admit what caused you to drift away. Reasons we drift:
–overconfidence
–laziness
–fear of ridicule
–need for immediate gratification
Realize God wants to be gracious to you. Isa. 30:18
· God’s love is unconditional. Titus 3:5
· My sin has already been paid for. Col. 2:14
· God doesn’t repay with anger or judgment. Ps. 103:9-11
Return to Him immediately! God wants you back. Jer. 15:19

We went downtown again for the 2nd day of Doors open Denver. Here’s Hannah getting ready to get in the backpack! We decided that she walked to slowly yesterday.

If you see 5 children it’s because Joel’s friend Austin spent the night and went with us everywhere today. Also good about today free meter parking, I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time.

First stop number 32, the clock tower.


You normally can’t go up to the observation deck, but today we could. Amazingly (to us) the Daniels and Fisher Clock tower was the first skyscraper in Denver’s skyline. It was built in 1910 and was originally part of the Daniels and Fisher dry good mercantile – ‘Denver’s finest mercantile’ of the day. It was modeled after the Campanile in Venice.

We had an awesome view from the top and spied a fountain that was off to play on later. I thought these umbrellas were pretty cool from the 13th floor.

Next RNL design, #39. A modernistic building, home of an architectural firm.

Then Number 31, Ernest Fuller fine art gallery. It’s housed in the original Wells Fargo building built in 1874. Here are some bricks on the inside of the building.

This building was built by a guy who sold it to a stagecoach king. The stagecoach king was bought out by the Wells Fargo stage and then ….Wells Fargo bank. An interesting note is that the building has been in the same family since 1880. The owner of the gallery was very nice and let the kid’s touch one of the bronzes, it was only $7,900.

36, Larimer square. Lest you think the square and the street were just named because they like the name….The first house in Denver on this site, owned by a Gen. Larimer and his brother.


Anyway the granite building was built in 1882 as a 4 story mercantile. Of architecture note: a bay front, railings along the cornice and a stained glass window that was once boarded up, but now restored for all to see.

Finally we went to the fountain behind the clock tower that the kids saw from the observation deck.



The water is turned off right now, so it’s a really neat blocky climbing place. Everyone had fun. On the way back to the car Hannah had fun going to each bicycle holder and swinging on it.

And just to prove I was there…